3 Reasons for Creating a Strategic Marketing Plan

Whenever we meet with a prospective client, one of the first things we explain is our belief in the importance of having a solid Strategic Marketing Plan. For all business owners, large or small, writing a yearly Marketing Plan that identifies what you’re hoping to accomplish, and how you will go about doing so, is the foundation for all that you do that year. With the Internet, it’s easier than ever to reach your customers & prospects, connect with them, build relationships, and drive sales, that many business owners jump right in without first creating a Strategic Marketing Plan. This post will provide you with the top 3 reasons why it’s imperative that you create a Strategic Marketing Plan for your small business.

Before we get into why it’s important to have a Marketing Plan for your business, let’s first define what we think a solid Strategic Marketing Plan looks like. Let’s start at the top…When we create a Strategic Marketing Plan for a customer, we start out by learning their business. We then go through exercises aimed at finding out what our customer’s organizational goals are, and who their target audience is. Once we have a strong understanding of our customers’ business, their goals, and their audience, we start building out the Strategic Marketing Plan. 

 If you’re creating a plan yourself, be sure to list out your organizational goals for the current year, determine who your target audience is, and where those folks spend their time online. If your target audience uses foursquare, then you should have an online presence on foursquare. If your target audience doesn’t use Facebook, then don’t spend your time using Facebook as a marketing tool.

Creating your Strategic Imperatives is the next step in the process. Strategic Imperatives are simply how you will go about achieving your goals. A few examples might be, “Use online tools to reach more people, build relationships, and ultimately drive sales”, or “Create a blog to provide free articles about XYZ industry, my products, and our business philosophies”.

Once you know what your goals are, how you will achieve those goals, and who you’re looking to target, now it’s time to create your marketing tactics. Tactics are the actual campaigns that you will run to reach and engage your target audience. A few example tactics might be, “Create a YouTube Video Series to educate consumers on my services”, or “Use Twitter to promote my blog articles”. After the marketing tactics are created, your plan is complete.

Now that you know how to create a Strategic Marketing Plan, below are 3 reasons why it’s critical to your success. A Strategic Marketing Plan provides business owners with:

1. A map for achieving yearly goals
2. The ability to track success through individual tactic performance measures – Performance measures should be setup for every Marketing Tactic
3. An understanding of the time, and budget, needed to execute on the Strategic Marketing Plan