Why marketing plans are vital to your business
A marketing plan is crucial and serves as the foundation for your business. With it, you define who your target market and customers are, how your business stands in the industry and against competitors, and set goals and outline the strategies to achieve them. This in-depth knowledge of your business ensures that your whole team is well-aligned and can guide your operation in the right direction.
In this episode, Marketing Manager Jailyn and Digital Marketing Specialist Allie share the key elements that make a marketing plan and the benefits of its key elements, including SMART goals, KPIs, brand personas, and more — perfect for those who have or haven’t started a marketing plan yet.
Read the full transcript from Episode 42
*Previously recorded under the 301: The Redirect Podcast as Trademark Productions.
Jailyn:
Welcome back to the 301: The Redirect Podcast. I’m Jailyn.
Allie:
And I’m Allie.
Jailyn:
And we are here today to talk about marketing plans. Um, so essentially when you are creating digital marketing for your business, for your organization, um, a marketing plan helps you to understand what are you actually, um, going to market to your audience base and who you are. So you’re messaging is consistent, um, your tone is consistent, and that the entire team in your, um, organization does know, you know, who you are and what you represent online. So going into marketing plans, we’ll talk about how you even start one. So Allie, you can go ahead and talk about that.
Allie:
Yeah. So we have a lot of clients that come to us and they’re like, “Hey, we need help with marketing,” but they really don’t know where to start. So we’re just going to go over a few different pieces that we pull together for them to really round up a comprehensive marketing plan for them. So the first thing that we’re going to talk about is setting goals. Jailyn, are you familiar with SMART goals?
Jailyn:
Yes. But if you can tell me what they actually stand for, because I know the T is like time bound, M is measurable, but what are the other letters, um, in SMART goals?
Allie:
Yeah. So S stands for specific. M stands for measurable. A is for attainable. R is for realistic. And T stands for time-bound, as you had already mentioned. So we really like to utilize SMART goals because this really helps us ensure accountability for our team, but also making sure that the goals that we’re setting, you know, are attainable, they’re realistic.
Jailyn:
Mm-hmm.
Allie:
And, you know, we have a foundation of how we’re able to actually measure them and be able to present them back to a client and, you know, either come up strategies to, you know, make sure we’re reaching that goal or, you know, make it even a bit more challenging for us.
Jailyn:
Yeah. Because even too, like, achievable, like is super important, because sometimes we can just throw a number out there and it’s like, okay. But is that realistic?
Allie:
Mm-hmm.
Jailyn:
Is that even relevant to what your business should be doing? Or even if that’s an average of what your, you know, data has been in the past. So like, making sure that you are making or setting achievable goals so then that way when you meet that goal, then you can, you know, set another goal. Because the thing is, they don’t have to be like these high numbers and I think that’s what sometimes we think about. Like, okay. Like, I want to get to like 50% conversion rate. And it’s like, um, depending, depending on businesses. I won’t say like it’s not achievable, but just depending on certain businesses. So it’s like, it’s good to start, I won’t say small, but start at a more achievable amount, versus trying to reach for the stars and then not being able to meet that.
Allie:
Exactly. Like, you can have that idea of what you want to reach for in the stars, but you- you constantly need to be working at something to stay motivated.
Jailyn:
Mm-hmm.
Allie:
Because at the end of the day, you’re not just going to set one goal and never return to goals again after, you know, you reach that 50% conversion rate you want. You’re always going to want to keep growing and scaling your business.
Jailyn:
Correct, yep. So with those SMART goals, so after you create those … I mean, how many would you say, you know, organizations and businesses need to create at a certain time?
Allie:
I would say at a minimum creating three or four and I suggest doing it on a quarterly basis, just so that way you’re able to, you know, have enough amount of time to be able to measure growth and make tweaks as necessary if things aren’t going the way that you had anticipated. And then, still be able to continue to create more or work on them throughout the year.
Jailyn:
Mm-hmm. And even setting those goals quarterly, like after we set goals, we have to understand what key performance indicators, so metrics we want to, you know, actually achieve. So is it that conversion rate? Is it engagement rate on social? Is it just more traffic in, you know, users to the website? So like, getting more specific in those metrics that you want to increase are, you know, super important to have down.
Allie:
Exactly.
Jailyn:
So even with … After you, um, you pick those metrics. So if you’re looking at the data quarterly, like where do you go from there? So like, I got numbers down for users, for bounce rate. I have it down for conversion rate, because we’ll keep using that. So at that point, I have three months worth of data. Like, now- now what? Now what should I do?
Allie:
Yeah. So from there, I like to take averages of that and compare it to the last quarter and see whether there was an increase or a decrease in overall performance of that, so that way you’re able to actually pinpoint, you know, if you need to make those tweaks to that plan, or, you know, go back to the client and, you know, figure out a solution to be able to make sure that you can reach that goal.
Jailyn:
Mm-hmm. So with those metrics that you are calculating, um, how often are you looking at those?
Allie:
So every single month we’re, you know, pulling together, um, a digital marketing performance report for our clients. So every single month we’re deep, doing a deep dive into all of those different metrics. So with that, I like to make sure that we’re keeping track every single month of those KPIs as well, since a lot of what we are presenting to our clients has to deal with those KPIs, just on a larger scale.
Jailyn:
Mm-hmm. Yep. So two, based off your SMART goals, based off of your KPIs, um, there’s benchmarks that should be set, like we talked about. Um, but then also even if you don’t meet that benchmark, or that specific goal for that quarter, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad goal, doesn’t mean that you didn’t reach the goal. It just means that you have to keep working towards the goal and like pivoting your strategy and like making sure that you’re tweaking it, because it’s not just a one and done thing. Technology changes. You know, users and their behavior changes. So just making sure that you are, you know, following up with trends, following up with customer journeys and making sure that you are involved enough to know how the customer is moving throughout, you know, the journey. That’s super important to making sure that you factor into your goals, into your marketing plan as well.
Allie:
Exactly. Like, I don’t see it as a failure if you don’t reach your goals in the original timeframe that you had established. I see it as an opportunity, because you have that chance to be able to identify, you know, why you weren’t able to reach that goal and be able to share that back with a client. But also, have that opportunity to be able to explain, you know, how you’re going to be able to work at that and changes that you need to make to be able to pivot.
Jailyn:
Mm-hmm. Yep. So after you set your goals, you set your KPIs, um, now the real work begins where you’re laying out kind of what’s that strategy that you want to have within that marketing plan. And even before you get to that strategy, buyer personas are so important. Um, making sure that you have your audience listed, making sure that you have those demographics, um, goals and metrics for those individual, um, personas as well and any kind of communication methods and personality traits, um, that help out with them. Because again, audience segmentation goals [inaudible 00:08:21] buyer personas, so making sure that you are speaking to, you know, your audience the way that they need to be spoken to, to end up having them convert is super important.
Allie:
Exactly.
Jailyn:
So what else, um, would we consider super important to have in the marketing plan? So we covered, um, SMART goals, we covered KPIs, we covered buyer personas. But what else, um, do we think that is like supercritical?
Allie:
I think for your marketing plan, you really need to have a strong sense of brand identity. Um, I really like to think of this quote, you know, “You need to brand yourself before others brand you.”
Jailyn:
Mm, mm-hmm.
Allie:
So you always need to be able to, you know, say who you are, why you’re there, what you have to offer to your clients, and really, how you’re standing out against competition.
Jailyn:
Mm-hmm. Super important. And that goes to like elevator pitches in a sense. Like, making sure like you have that information so even if somebody is just walking down the street and then they’re like, you know, you see somebody you know and they’re like, “Oh, what do you do for a living?” You have that elevator pitch to say like, “This is my company. This is what we do.” And if that is of, you know, appeal to them, then of course they’ll latch you on their plan. Figure out the website and it’ll be more so word of mouth, or like direct marketing more so than digital marketing. But that is a part of that brand messaging, like making sure the core messaging and messaging is just consistent, um, and that it is able to be known, you know, from outside of the website.
Allie:
Exactly. That really just helps, you know, build trust with, you know, leads or your current customer base. And it really just starts to attract other people that align, you know, with whatever your brand is putting off in its messaging.
Jailyn:
Mm-hmm. Totally makes sense. Okay. So that is, um, our marketing plan podcast episode. So if you do not have a marketing plan, we do have a download available, so you will be able to download that template to be able to fill in some of those areas that we talked about and a little bit more that we did not necessarily cover. Um, but it’s super important to have a marketing plan to look at quarterly, yearly and make sure that you’re updating it and referencing it, um, often just so you know what directions you’re going in, if you need to change certain things, it’s all documented in that one place.
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