Know-How Exchange : Strategy

taj,

Pls check the following link: www.quickmba.com at Marketing Plan.

Hope it helps

Adam

Hi Taj

The links and references provided are very good, I’ll just restrict myself to some key points which have worked for me and for our clients.

Firstly, examples, templates and “Fill in the blanks” guides to writing marketing plans are very good as tutorial material and as a starting point for your efforts but don’t use them to generate your own plan. They pertain either to some other company’s marketing strategy or are generic examples. If you find yourself trying to supply data, the purpose of which, you don’t understand, or don’t relate to, it shouldn’t form part of your company’s plan. Or it shouldn’t be used until you understand it and are prepared to defend it to the senior management.

Marketing plans can easily become a visionary list of nice. OK, cool and bright things to do. In reality, everything needs to be quantitative, measurable, costed and related to profits or turnover. I tell my clients that a marketing plan without consequences is just a wish list and that it’ll never happen.

Marketing activities are best set out on a time-line, so that you can forecast the intended results. The simplest way is on a spreadsheet, but I’ll have to describe it on this forum – until we get a graphics page!

For example, Press release in October, responses in December and January, Sales visits in December, January and February. Orders will be expected in this hypothetical scenario in February, March, April and May. Company will deliver and invoice in March April May and June and bills will be paid in May June, July and August. Realism about the time that it takes for the company will see an income from your efforts is a bit scary, but it will win over the FD as it is credible.

Next, you have to quantify things. This can be forecast on the spreadsheet, but when you are running your marketing plan, the best way to measure your actions and the consequences of those actions, tracking everything from the inception of a campaign to the order on the books is to use a CRM system. OK, in this instance, it’s Prospect Relationship Management (PRM) but the same software will do both. We use Maximizer Enterprise.

Again, in our example: A Press release will cost £2400, payable in January and February. Leads from publication might be 100 in December and 120 in January. (Now apply the filters you can deduce from lead to sales visit metrics) Sales visits will be 20 in December, 25 in February and 10 in March. Orders will be 4 in February, 5 in March and 2 in April. Now attach values to the orders and using the average time it takes to get paid, put in the cash values you for when the company reaps its rewards in the wallet.

Repeat this for every other marketing activity you had envisaged!

In doing a plan in such a manner, you will have quantified all your costs and the time that they fall due. You will also have forecast the intended consequences of your marketing work with the levels of activities expected of sales in making appointments and closing deals. Finance will have a clear picture of the cash-flow resulting from your activities and production or purchasing will have a clear idea of what they will be expected to make or buy.

This is a very simplistic picture with no assessment of the possibility of multiple purchases, ongoing support activities or the salesman’s ability to take good lead and turn it into an order and another lead (Referrals). It also does not take into account the effects of a lot of marketing in a finite market place, where there are the possibilities of hitting a plateau or having purchasing be influenced by positive or negative feedback.

It is however a good starting point. It’ll also show you how limited are marketing plans which are in the form of a document or consist of a list of, “Things you can do.”

Without consequences, costs and measurements, the most flamboyant of marketing plans fail, because no one knows what they are meant to be doing, no one knows what they are achieving and no one can have any confidence, that as the costs accumulate, that there will be some profits to pay for all that activity.

I hope that this in some small way will be of assistance.

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions