Marketing Plan: Intersection of Planning and Improvisation

Before the frenzy of annual strategic planning begins, I thought I’d take a moment to discuss some strategies you might want to consider as you build your strategic yearly marketing plan. Naturally, your strategic marketing plan should contain your best guess on how you will advance your brand and product positions throughout the upcoming year: where you will allocate resources (money and time) and any particular agenda you must accomplish in the new year. The secret when building a marketing plan is not to get too caught up in the specifics because alterations to “the plan” are a guaranteed certainty. Accept that now, and you’ll be a lot happier. Now, I’m not saying I don’t plan — acknowledge that accurately predicting the exact moment you’ll need a promotion for widget X is improbable.

Creating Your Marketing Plan

You know you should run consistent branding on media channels throughout the year. Include these in your marketing plan. Go ahead and budget for (and once it’s approved) secure annual buys for branding on traditional and online media. You’ll get a better price with the annual buy, and in the worst-case scenario, you can switch out your ads for promotional as you need. While we’re talking about branding, I think television is best suited to branding messages. Producing good spots is expensive; you won’t want to make many television ads for your various promotions. Spend the money to produce good-quality spots and use them repeatedly. Several mediums work well for branding and promotions: radio, billboards, online ads, and social media. The newspaper should only be used for promotions (especially those targeting an older demographic). Speaking of promotional, one thing you know you’ll need are promotional windows throughout the year. So, build your plan around it. One technique I have used regularly is to create 8-10 promotional windows that I intend to execute throughout the year. Those promotional windows include budgets for traditional media, social media, guerrilla tactics, staff spiffs, and incentives. “Pencil” in your best guess what you might be promoting during those periods – but state in the plan that the specific item will be chosen 2-3 months before the promotional period to meet business needs. That will allow you time to produce the collateral and traffic the media. Once your budget is approved, work out your annual or quarterly buys for your promotional windows. You don’t have to commit to what ads you’re running; you are just running them. You might as well get an excellent price for the media, though.

Marketing Plan Extensions

Another often overlooked item is coordinating your marketing plan with your training department (if you’ve got one) to ensure your staff’s skills are sharp on the promoted item before you begin marketing it. How often have we all stood before a sales clerk who didn’t know how to handle the request we just made for whatever is being promoted? Save your customers the heartache and your staff the embarrassment by ensuring they’ve had a good brush-up on your promotional item before it hits the airwaves. Also, make sure they know what you’re planning on promoting so that they can help you to succeed with the plan. (Spiffs and incentives help a lot here.) The beauty of a well-written strategic marketing plan is that it exists at the intersection of planning and improvisation. Building both into the plan is critical to its (and your) overall success in the upcoming year. So start thinking about what your plan will look like for the next year. You’ll be glad you did.