You’ve probably heard the saying — if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there. This also applies to your marketing.
Many businesses (small and large) struggle to come up with (and stick to) a marketing plan for their business to drive leads, sales and ultimately, revenue.
In this blog, we’re going to look at:
In today's fast-paced business world, entrepreneurs and business owners are constantly presented with new and exciting opportunities and ideas. While it can be tempting to chase after these new opportunities, it's important to be aware of the potential pitfalls of doing so.
Many businesses struggle to craft a marketing plan due to one (or a combination) of two reasons: 1) Time or 2) SOS.
Time. Most CEOs and Marketing Managers are absolutely stretched to the max. They’re wearing multiple hats, they have no time, limited resources, back-to-back meetings and so on. They lack time. Time to think. Time to come up with a strategy or plan and then to actually execute it.
What’s the second reason? Shiny object syndrome (SOS).
SOS is a term used to describe the tendency of some people, particularly entrepreneurs and business owners, to become easily distracted by new and exciting opportunities or ideas, often at the expense of their current goals and objectives. The term refers to the way that these new ideas or opportunities can appear shiny and attractive, drawing the attention away from what is currently being worked on.
What are some symptoms of shiny object syndrome?
As an agency, we see this a lot. Shiny object syndrome can be detrimental to a business as it often leads to a lack of focus, lack of progress, and lack of results. It can be difficult for business owners and entrepreneurs to stick to their plans, and this can lead to feeling overwhelmed, demotivated, and unproductive. Sound familiar?
To avoid SOS, it’s important to set clear goals and priorities, and to stay focused on them (more on that below).
It's also important to be mindful of the time and resources you invest in new ideas and opportunities, and to evaluate them in the context of your goals and objectives. It's also important to have a system in place to manage your time and attention, and to limit distractions.
This is why a marketing plan is so critical!
A marketing plan is a document that outlines a company's overall marketing strategy for a specific period of time, usually a year.
It includes details on your target market (buyer personas/ICP), competition, positioning, marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion), budget, and metrics for measuring success.
Your marketing plan serves as a roadmap or north star for your company's marketing efforts and helps to ensure that all marketing activities are aligned with the company's overall goals and objectives.
It also helps the company to allocate resources effectively and measure the results of its marketing efforts.
No one wants a marketing plan that resembles the 1,200+ page book War and Peace right? If you can aim to get it down to one-page, you’ll be doing yourself and your team a favour. Best selling books like Traction and The 1-Page Marketing Plan recommend the same approach. So here are some tips and tricks for your marketing plan:
Below are 7 things that every killer marketing plan needs:
The first step of any marketing plan is identifying your strategy. My recommendation is that you keep this to three to five things max. The fewer things you have, the more focus and clarity you can have, not just for your C-suite but your team who will be delivering the work.
Pro tip: Don't just think 12 months at a time, but try to think about your marketing plan as a 3 year cycle.
This is a time to step back and look at which channels you want to focus on: organic search, organic social, paid search and paid social. You also want to look at why you want to focus on these channels. Don't get sucked in by the shiny object!
Over time, ideally, you want 60-80% of your leads to come from organic search, organic social or your email list. Why? The customer acquisition cost (CAC) from organic and email is way lower than paid search/social like Google Ads, Meta (Facebook/Instagram Ads), LinkedIn Ads, etc.
Take a hard look at what marketing channels are generating (not just leads) but customers for you and double-down on them. As a startup/SMB, you're going to be more focused on driving bottom-of-funnel (BOF) demand generation. If you're a mid-market or enterprise company, you'll likely want to include more top-of-funnel (TOF) brand awareness into your mix.
The next step is to define what success looks like, your goals — and they should ideally be SMART.
Specific. They should clearly state the desired outcome.
Measurable. They should be something you can track the success of.
Achievable. They should be realistic.
Relevant. They should align with your overall business objectives.
Timely. They should have a time frame attached to them.
For example, here’s a bad SMART marketing goal: Increase organic traffic.
Here’s a good one: Increase organic search visibility in the U.S. from 3 to 6% in the next 12 months.
When working with clients, we find that working back from how many new customers (or revenue) you need each month or quarter is helpful. You can then reverse-engineer this to calculate how many opportunities, SQLs, and MQLs you need based on industry-standard conversion rates.
The dreaded 'B-word'! This is where the fun starts between marketing and finance.
If you're a startup/SMB, you'll want to allocate 80-90% of your marketing budget on demand (including lead) generation and the remaining 10-20% on brand awareness (including events, product marketing). This may sounds counter-intuitive but the more brand awareness marketing you do, the less you'll spend per lead on the demand generation side of things.
If you're a mid-market/enterprise business, demand generation is likely to be more like 60-70% of your budget with 30-40% for brand awareness.
Buyer persona research is your next most important step, because if you're targeting everyone, you're targeting no one.
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of a company's ideal customer, based on market research and real data about existing customers. It includes information such as demographics, behaviour patterns, motivations, and goals. Marketers use buyer personas to better understand their target audience and create more effective marketing campaigns.
When we're doing buyer persona research, we typically drill down as much as we can into a persona's dream, goals but also their fears and worries. To cut through the noise, you need to really understand what keeps your dream customers up at night and then offer your product/service with as much clarity as possible.
Pro tip: Highly recommend the book "Building a Story Brand" by Donald Miller.
While you're focussing on an individual with buyer personas, you're focussing on a company (or account) with an ICP.
An ICP is a fictitious company that combines the key characteristics that best portray your ideal customer. By analysing firmographics such as company size, industry, location, annual revenue, and budget you can more easily define the types of companies that you serve best.
For B2B companies, you should have buyer personas and ICPs.
Once you've set your SMART goals and you know who you're targeting, you can start to get into tactics and specifically how you're going to drive website traffic, leads and sales.
One important part of your marketing plan is driving brand awareness and traffic to your website. You have two options to drive traffic to your website: organic search (SEO) or paid search/social. Let's tackle them one-by-one.
There has been a lot talk in the past 12 months around SEO and how it's going to be impacted by AI — specifically, Google's new Search Generative Experience (SGE) and OpenAI's ChatGPT. Some media are even going as far to say that "SEO is dead" and similar fear-mongering.
It's true that AI will impact organic search and organic search traffic to everyone's website will likely decline over time as Google provide more, but here's the thing — it’s estimated that Google processes approximately 99,000 search queries every second, translating to 8.5 billion searches per day and approximately 2 trillion global searches per year. On top of that, Google controls 92% of the search engine market globally.
What about links? Google has been quoted as saying "SGE places even more emphasis on producing informative responses that are corroborated by reliable sources." How does Google know who is "reliable"? Links play a big role in that.
So Google is here to stay and you need to include it as a core marketing channel for your business.
Below is a recap of where Google search is headed.
Pro tip: Google is going to become more multimodal with Gemini, so video and images will need to play a bigger of your organic search strategy.
Tactically speaking, here are some things that you should consider in your marketing plan from an SEO perspective:
This epic ultimate guide goes into way more detail here.
Social media is another important channel that can drive brand awareness and traffic back to your website.
Here are some tips when it comes to your organic social media plan:
Google Ads will always be the most bottom-of-funnel (BOF) paid advertising platform, compared to say Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok which are more top-of-funnel (TOF) — but all have a place in your sales funnel. You just need to look at what you’re able to invest on advertising and then decide whether you’ve got enough $$$ across multiple platforms or whether you’re better off focusing on one platform but doing it well.
Here are some paid ads tips for your marketing plan:
Having a website strategy is crucial for any business — it serves as the foundation for all other digital marketing efforts. It’s your #1 marketing asset, your best salesperson and it works 24/7. A modern, fast, SEO-optimised, and user-friendly website can have a significant impact on your online presence and your overall marketing success.
Here are some key elements to consider when developing a website strategy:
Keen to know how your website measures up? Check out our Free Website Grader here.
The money is in the list! And marketers attest to the fact that email marketing is the best marketing channel of all.
Still unsure? Check out these statistics.
So now that we know that email marketing is a no-brainer, here are some tips for your email marketing plan:
Last but not least, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy is an essential component of any marketing plan, because it enables you to have a complete 360 view of your customer from marketing to sales to customer service.
A CRM system allows you to manage and analyse customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, driving sales growth, and increasing customer retention.
Here are some key elements to consider when developing a CRM strategy:
Overall, having a CRM strategy and a CRM system in your business is essential for managing and analysing customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. It enables you to improve your business relationships with customers, drive sales growth, and increase customer retention. It is important to choose a CRM system that fits the needs of your business and can be easily integrated with other systems and tools.
In conclusion, creating a comprehensive marketing plan is essential for any business looking to grow.
A marketing plan should include: Strategy and SMART goals, buyer persona / ICP research, organic search (SEO), organic social, paid search and social, website, email marketing and a CRM.
It's important to remember that all aspects of a marketing plan are interconnected — what you do in one area, may have an impact on the other. It's important to consider all aspects of your marketing plan together and make sure they are working in harmony to achieve your objectives. It's also important to monitor your progress and make adjustments to your plan as needed — no set and forget!
Need a hand with your marketing plan? Book a Free Marketing Strategy Session here. 100% free and no obligation.