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Here is a full-proof strategic marketing plan to implement for business success so you do not fall behind in the race to digital authority!

Strategic Marketing Plan: The Basics

Once you have the product/service ready, it is time to chalk out a strategic marketing plan. A marketing plan establishes your marketing strategy that is agile enough to adjust to the demands of your business. This means that a plan is not evergreen; it evolves with time.

How to Design Strategic Marketing Plan?

Technically, with his senior marketing executives, the CMO designs the strategic marketing plan according to the business objectives for a given year. Often, big businesses outsource this task for bandwidth issues or lack the market insights needed to draft a robust plan.

How can I Create a Strategic Marketing Plan?

To help you contribute confidently to your company’s marketing objectives or draft a strategic marketing plan for your startup, we have created an 8-point checklist.

Goals & Objectives

To start drafting a strategic marketing plan, brainstorm goals and objectives in tune with your overall business prerogative. Once you have the goal ready, cull out the objectives to measure the success of a goal. Notice that while a goal is a collective assessment of the objectives, objectives by themselves are to be individually assessed intermittently. For example, you can have one annual goal and four supporting quarterly objectives. If your goal is to establish your social media eminence for 2020, figure the four objectives slated for each quarter. To successfully realize a goal, you continue with an objective even after you have built its premises during the focus period.

Situation Analysis

If you are an MBA student or a professional with good work experience, you know the SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat) analysis. A SWOT analysis gives you an overview of your marketing performance. For example, during analysis, you may find out that your business is not unique (weakness), but your strength is the market with no previous exposure to your service (strength). During the analysis, you can see that similar market players with customer service attract better sales (opportunity). At the same time, a decrease in GDP could be a warning (threat) to a decline in demand over some time.

Messaging & Mission Statement

At any point in time, remember that a marketing strategy isn’t successful without consistent brand messaging and a mission statement.  Please start with the necessary information and represent the information artfully, so it effortlessly describes and enhances your product/service’s brand positioning.  For example, “‎Amul The Taste of India.”  “The Taste” is such a broad parameter that it encapsulates all the products and emphasizes the taste “Amul.”  When your mission statement, PRs, and marketing materials resonate with the same message, you’ll know that your branding will take off right. Curious about the process? Great Learning explains it here.

Mark your Territory

This is something to be mindful of so that you know where to market your product/service. If your target audience is athletes or sportsmen, then offline branding would result in better ROI than online. How? Simply because sportspeople don’t languish on social media, they are mostly practicing on the grounds.  It is important to have an agile strategy that can be molded for online communications. For example, Cricket fever in India is not only an offline epidemic but also online. Territory marking or broadly your area of promotion need due diligence before incorporating them into your marketing plan.

On your Timeline

Have you heard of a project management software already deployed at work? Great! With the help of project management software, you can manage a strict deadline. Whether it is your own company or you support another company, having a schedule for the timely execution of projects is a leading trait among successful people. It is a fact that our time estimation might not be perfect every time, and to accommodate that, factor in some extra hours. These extra hours are not a replacement for technical downtime unless you are likely to miss the deadline. Additional hours help review deliveries to have better control of anomalies.

Big Fat Budget?

It is a notion that until you have a big fat budget for your marketing, you cannot do the best. The modern marketing plan is to reap the maximum from the minimum. Making a list of areas crucial for marketing activation will give you a clear runway for a takeoff. To be able to choose the most cost-effective options ensures the overall success of a marketing plan. While paid advertising is undoubtedly an effective and easier way to earn visibility, there is nothing like organic marketing, which is always a cost-effective strategy.

Delegate & Measure

If you are very passionate about your work, it is undoubtedly a joyful thing. However, have to ensure a burn-out that is likely to happen when you are stretching too far. Whether you are a person company or a short-staffed agency, delegate work to skilled professionals so that you can focus on the execution part more than the nitty-gritty. If you are a part of an established organization, you can delegate work according to your team member’s merit. If you are a team member, focus end-to-end on your work. Remember, no output is ultimate until you have measured it against your goals.

Be Agile, Not Fragile!

Remember, once you have set up your marketing plan, you are not done. Depending on the length and breadth of your project duration, you have to be sure to review the output. In most cases, marketing managers review if the strategy is fraught with mistakes detrimental to the success of your overall business. Also, it is fair that your marketing goals absorb newer ideas and change in dimension than its original intent.  Agility is an important aspect of growth; a fragile conceptualization of a plan can mar the prospects. Agility can be taught in your marketing discipline when you are open to industry news and trends that can pollinate your strategy over some time.

Conclusion

In this article, what you have read is the fundamental foundation for getting started with a Strategic Marketing Plan 2020. You can expect to be a pro at it if you wish to. Wait, is that what you wish but do not have ample time? Try these on-demand courses from Udemy and Coursera. Visit today and if you have questions, email us, tweet to us, or comment. We want you to be independent as much as you want yourself to be independent.