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The 5 documents you need when developing your marketing plan

Coming up to the end of June, this is a time when organisations are creating new budgets and plans linked to the financial year. It is a good time to discuss what plans you actually need to put in place to really move forward.

These are the 5 documents that all marketing and comms teams need to really set themselves up to deliver.

1. The Overall Business Goals

The key to a successful marketing plan is not to come up with a really wide range of different activities. It’s an understanding of the overall business goals. This might seem very straightforward, however it is a crucial first step that is not to be overlooked.

All businesses, whether you are a for-profit or a for-purpose business, are in business to make a profit. Whether you are looking to give that profit to the CEO and shareholders or to beneficiaries of your non-profit, all organisations are looking to make money.

As a result, the very first overall business objective is usually tied to revenue. This is then supported by the organisational mission and vision about how to deliver that and drive the business forward. This might look like number of customers, or the type of customer that you have. Sometimes it is tied to market share, brand perception or customer engagement.

The first step is making sure that the senior team have discussed where the business wants to head and that there is consensus there.

Notice that I have said consensus here, I didn’t say agreement. Something that I think some businesses try to achieve is for all the senior leaders to be in agreement. Honestly that is not what you need.

What you need is consensus. Maybe not everyone agrees with the points, but they are clear on what has been decided and they are committed to supporting those decisions. Agreement on every point might not be possible, but consensus can be.

2. The Marketing Plan

This is where we build out the specific marketing objectives and the tactics that will take us there.

The main steps here are to identify your marketing specific objectives and then the key growth drivers that will get you there. For example, your marketing objective might be “create a retention plan to deliver one repeat purchase over 12 months.” Then consider what key tactics might get you there, and again with this example the tactic might be to create segmented email marketing based on customer behaviour.

3. The Implementation Plan

Once you have your key tactics and growth drivers, it is time to work through how to make it happen. This is not just a timeline document — it is more detailed than that. Going back to my earlier example, lets say that the growth driver is to create segmented email marketing unique to different audiences. Let’s think about what that might look like as an implementation plan

  • Firstly we need to take a look at our existing data and see what sort of information on our customers we have, what we are missing and how to fill some of those gaps
  • We then might consider what journey we want our customers to take, what the messaging is and how to build those comms
  • Tracking is important, so what are we going to measure and how do we use those metrics to improve

Then there are actions that fall under these points. So its not just a to-do list, its a consideration of what we need to do to really deliver the tactics, what other teams we might need to get to help us, what resources we might need.

4. The KPI Tracker

Now we need the most important document of all — the KPI tracker. This is an amalgamation of the overall business goals and the marketing objectives. It is a really simple document (you can create this in Excel) but each person in the team needs to have their own version of this. All you need to do is essentially create a list of all the objectives that you are working towards with success metrics.

Each quarter set aside some time to write down exactly what you have done to support the delivery of these objectives. If you have figures that you can add to this then that is great — for example the success of a campaign or the implementation of some new activity. You might also like to write down softer measures, such as the development of a new working relationship.

When you go into a performance review, most people can only remember the last 2, 3, maybe 4 months of activity. It can be hard to remember what you did 9, 10, 11 months ago. That is why if you have a document that has all this detail in it on exactly how you have contributed to those business growth drivers you will be in a great position to have those conversations around promotion, bonus etc.

It is the most important because no one is going to advocate for you; you need to be in a position to be able to do this for yourself. This document is the first step in being able to do that.

4. The Personal Development Plan

You need to know where you want to go in your career and to document that. Spend some time really thinking about what it is that you want out of your career, where you want to go and what path you might take to get there. Of course there is no one way to achieve your dream career, and what you are working towards will change over time, but think about exactly what you want in this moment, and what you need to get there.

Have these ideas written down and discussed with the business or your manager. It will help make sure you are clear in your own personal career goals, and any training or courses that you might need to help make it happen.

So there you have it — the 5 key documents that you need to be thinking about and setting up in preparation for the end of financial year.

If you want some detailed guidance on creating a detailed marketing plan, check out my Strategy on a Page.