strategic marketing plan methodology

What is Strategic Marketing Planning? A Step-by-Step Guide

In today’s fiercely competitive business environment, understanding what is strategic marketing planning and creating a successful plan is crucial to achieving growth, profitability, and long-term sustainability.

This step-by-step guide will not only help you comprehend the importance of what is strategic marketing planning but also provide essential insights on how to develop and implement a well-rounded marketing strategy to stay ahead of the competition.

Short Summary

• Strategic marketing planning is a systematic approach to achieving business objectives and optimizing resources.
• Key components include market research, target audience identification, objective setting & utilization of the 4 Ps of marketing.
• The process involves effective execution & monitoring with regular reviews for successful results and continuous improvement.

Understanding Strategic Marketing Planning

Strategic marketing planning is a systematic approach that our agency follows to reach predetermined marketing objectives. It provides the essential foundation, guidelines, and steps to achieve those objectives. Strategic planning plays a pivotal role in optimizing marketing efforts and achieving better results, ultimately leading to business growth and profitability.

Definition and significance

Strategic marketing planning is defined as a systematic approach to achieving marketing goals through the analysis, segmentation, and identification of competitive advantages. Efficient marketing operations are crucial for the successful strategic marketing implementation of the successful strategic marketing plan. By employing successful strategic marketing planning , businesses can ensure that their marketing plan is well-executed and delivers the desired results.

Crafting a successful marketing strategy primarily emphasizes the marketing mix, which consists of the following:

Incorporating price into a strategic marketing plan is essential to guarantee that the value of the product is justified to prospective customers.

Key components

The essential elements of strategic marketing planning include:

• Market research
• Identification of the target audience
• Establishment of objectives
• Formulation of the marketing mix
• Assessment of performance

A SWOT analysis is a tool used to evaluate a company’s internal strengths and weaknesses in comparison to external opportunities and threats.

Defining the ideal customer profile is crucial in creating efficient marketing communication strategies, conserving time and resources by concentrating on the requirements of the current consumer, and serving as the foundation of any marketing campaign.

The Strategic Marketing Planning Process

The strategic marketing planning process is a comprehensive approach to achieving business objectives by conducting market research, identifying the target audience, and setting marketing goals that align with overall business objectives. This process enables marketers to gain an understanding of the business’s current standing and craft suitable marketing strategies, optimizing marketing efforts and achieving better results.

By following this process, marketers can ensure that their marketing efforts are aligned with the overall business objectives.

Market research and analysis

Market research and analysis play an essential role in understanding external factors, market trends, and consumer behavior and conducting a competitive analysis to identify potential opportunities and threats. By analyzing the business environment, prevailing market trends, and consumer behavior, the likelihood of the marketing plan’s success is enhanced.

A competitive analysis assists in identifying opportunities for improvement in the largest competitors’ marketing strategies, enabling the agency to focus on areas where they are lagging behind.

Identifying target audience

Identifying the target audience involves:

• Defining the ideal customer profile based on similarities between existing clients and prospective customers
• Recognizing the target audience is significant in the strategic marketing planning process
• Assisting businesses in creating efficient marketing communication strategies
• Conserving time and resources by concentrating on the requirements of the current consumer
• Serving as the foundation of any marketing campaign

It is important to understand the target audience in order to create effective marketing campaigns that will reach the target audience.

Setting marketing goals

Setting marketing goals requires using prior data and desired business outcomes to establish realistic objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). In strategic marketing planning, specific marketing goals may include acquiring a certain number of new clients, growing followers on social media, or sourcing additional leads for the sales funnel.

Establishing marketing objectives enables the ability to:

• Assess performance
• Assign resources
• Maintain a clear direction
• Make decisions based on data
• Ultimately leads to improved marketing results.

Developing Marketing Strategies

Developing marketing strategies involves crafting the marketing mix and selecting appropriate marketing channels to reach the target audience effectively. The marketing mix is a combination of product, price, promotion, and place, which can be utilized to select marketing channels by determining which channels are most effective at reaching the target audience.

By understanding the target audience and the marketing mix, marketers can determine which channels are most effective.

Crafting the marketing mix

Crafting the marketing mix involves focusing on the four Ps of marketing to create a comprehensive marketing strategy. The components of the marketing mix are:

A successful marketing strategy primarily emphasizes the marketing mix.

Each of the four is one of the four. Ps of marketing must be carefully considered when creating a marketing strategy. Product refers to a product.

Selecting marketing channels

Selecting marketing channels involves choosing the most effective digital and traditional channels to boost brand recognition, draw in new customers, and accomplish marketing objectives. Digital channels such as websites, social media, email, search engine optimization, and online advertising are available, as well as traditional channels such as television, radio, print, and outdoor advertising.

Choosing marketing channels can assist businesses in:

• Connecting with their target audience
• Maximizing visibility
• Utilizing resources effectively
• Increasing brand recognition
• Monitoring and assessing outcomes.

Implementing and Monitoring the Strategic Marketing Plan

Implementing and monitoring the strategic marketing plan involves executing the plan, managing projects, and measuring performance to ensure success. Execution and project management are essential components of the strategic marketing plan, which can be ensured by using tools such as Teamwork or Plaky to assign tasks, set timelines, and track milestones.

These tools can help ensure that the plan is executed on time and that all tasks are completed.

Execution and project management

We utilize project management tools such as Teamwork or Plaky to assign tasks, set timelines, track milestones, and ensure the successful implementation of the marketing plan . These tools offer a convenient solution to marketing planning by providing capabilities for task management and assignment, as well as a pre-made marketing strategy plan template.

With these tools, teams can easily collaborate on tasks, assign deadlines, and track progress. This is a very good article.

Performance measurement

Performance measurement entails tracking progress, assessing effectiveness, and making data-driven modifications to marketing strategies, tactics, and KPIs/OKRs. Monitoring progress assists in assessing the efficacy of marketing strategies and tactics and in recognizing areas that require adjustment.

Assessing effectiveness enables us to recognize which strategies and tactics are successful and which are not and to make adjustments as needed.

Adapting to Market Changes

Adapting to market changes in the strategic marketing planning process involves:

• Modifying the marketing strategy to remain competitive
• Consistently reviewing and updating the marketing plan
• Recognizing and responding to the changing needs of the target market.

It may also include product adaptation to appeal to a new or evolving customer base.

Regular review and updates

To avoid potential implementation issues caused by fluctuating internal and external factors and to guarantee compatibility with corporate objectives, it is essential to regularly review and revise the strategic marketing plan.

Regular review and updates of the strategic marketing planning process are essential for the following:

• Assessing effectiveness
• Responding to changing market conditions
• Ensuring alignment with business goals
• Optimizing resources.

Continuous improvement

Continuous improvement involves executing, monitoring, and refining the marketing plan to reach goals, increase competitiveness, and foster strategic thinking. Launching, executing, reporting, and iterating the marketing plan should be done in an orderly fashion to ensure objectives are met, competitiveness is increased, and strategic thinking is promoted.

Ongoing improvement is fundamental for any effective strategic marketing plan. It guarantees that the plan is current and that objectives are being achieved. Moreover, it encourages strategic thinking and boosts competitiveness.

In conclusion, a successful strategic marketing plan is pivotal to achieving business growth, profitability, and long-term sustainability. Through a step-by-step approach involving market research and analysis, target audience identification, goal setting, marketing strategy development, implementation, monitoring, and continuous improvement, businesses can adapt to market changes, stay competitive, and achieve their objectives.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the marketing strategy planning.

Strategic marketing planning is the process of creating a plan to achieve a specific marketing goal, such as increasing revenue and profits or improving the brand’s visibility. Companies use this process to outline their objectives, the programs they’ll use to reach them, who is responsible for those metrics, and when they’ll be achieved.

These objectives are typically broken down into short-term and long-term goals, each goal having its own set of strategies and tactics. The plan should also include a timeline for when each goal should be achieved, as well as a budget.

What is the purpose of a strategic marketing plan?

Strategic marketing planning is an essential process that involves creating a plan to reach specific marketing goals. This plan outlines objectives, programs, who is responsible, and when the goals need to be achieved in order to increase revenue and profits, gain visibility, discourage competitors, or improve their appearance.

What are the five parts of a strategic marketing plan?

A strategic marketing plan consists of five core components: product, price, promotion, place, and people. These are the key elements that you need to focus on in order to create a successful plan that will help your brand reach its goals.

Each of these components should be carefully considered and planned out in order to ensure that your plan is effective. The product should be tailored to meet the needs of your target audience, while the price should be reasonable.

What are the 4 phases of strategic marketing planning?

The 4 phases of strategic marketing planning are formulation, implementation, evaluation, and modification. This process involves setting goals and objectives, analyzing internal and external business factors, product planning, implementation, and tracking progress to ensure successful outcomes.

Setting goals and objectives is the first step in the process. This involves identifying the desired outcomes and the resources needed to achieve them. Internal and external business factors must be considered.

What are the key components of strategic marketing planning?

Strategic marketing planning involves market research, target audience identification, goal setting, creating a marketing mix, and assessing performance. It is essential for businesses to have an effective strategy in place to be successful.

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How To Build a Strategic Marketing Plan (+ a Free Template!)

You know what you want your campaigns to achieve, but you’re not quite sure how to get there yet.

Sound familiar?

For even the most experienced marketing teams, it can prove difficult to turn aspirational business objectives into actionable steps. While you’re busy trying to figure out what actually works, resources are being spent left and right while showing minimal returns. Fortunately, you can avoid falling victim to this common trap.

Read on to learn how to create a strategic plan to hit your own marketing goals — plus, since you’re already here, be sure to grab your free template to get the ball rolling.

What Is a Strategic Marketing Plan?

A strategic marketing plan is a comprehensive outline for the advertising and marketing efforts of a brand or organization. Founded on audience research and industry trends, this ultra-focused, strategic plan formalizes the steps an organization will take to promote its offerings to a target market of existing and potential customers.

The strategic marketing planning process follows 6 key components:

• Know where you are .
• Know your audience .
• Know where you want to go .
• Pick your channels and tactics .
• Develop your budget and your revised tactics .
• Measure and adjust your strategy periodically .

By following these steps, your team will be well on their way to achieving a sustainable competitive advantage — all while making sure each marketing dollar is well spent.

Why Is a Strategic Marketing Plan Important?

Planning for any major undertaking is essential for success.

The modern media landscape is crowded; researchers have estimated that most Americans see between 4,000 and 10,000 advertisements per day .

A strategic marketing plan lays the groundwork for your brand to delight and satisfy your customers. As the old saying goes: “Proper prior planning prevents poor performance.”

By taking the time to develop a thoughtful marketing strategy, you’ll gain several benefits, including:

• A better understanding of your brand’s value proposition.
• Deeper knowledge of your audience’s needs and desires.
• A roadmap for how to manage your brand’s growth.
• Methods for measuring your marketing performance.

Creating an effective plan takes time, but when you see the results, you’ll know it was well worth the effort.

4 Basic Marketing Strategies: The 4 P’s of Marketing

Today’s digital marketers have a long pedigree of great thinkers who have shaped the way we think about appealing to customers.

We may be producing content for distribution on digital channels that few people could have predicted several decades ago, but the basic principles combining human psychology and economics are still relevant and powerful today.

In fact, the marketing mix commonly deployed in any modern campaign was first conceived by Harvard Business School professor Neil H. Borden and subsequently expanded upon by University of Minnesota professor E. Jerome McCarthy.

Though first published in 1960, McCarthy’s four P’s of marketing are still the common starting point of an effective marketing strategy.

A product can be a tangible item or an intangible service that satisfies a need or want.

B2B and B2C marketers need to possess a firm grasp of both what the product is and how it provides value to customers. The more specifically you can define these aspects, the more confident you will be in your marketing strategies.

For example, when selling products and services to other businesses, you’ll need to know what challenges your customers face and understand how your offering solves those problems.

Importantly, marketing and sales departments need to be aligned so that every customer encounter can occur within the same context.

The cost of your offerings has an obvious influence over your customers.

Having a complete understanding of the product and its features will help stakeholders determine the best possible pricing strategy.

You may need to determine if it’s better to offer your product on a subscription basis or as a one-time purchase.

Your product’s price point will impact your organization’s profit margins, inventory requirements and more. The marketing team can work with other business units to determine the best course of action.

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3. Promotion

With deep knowledge of the product, it’s value and price point, you can more effectively promote the offering in the marketplace.

This is where your strategic marketing strategy will come into play.

As you’ll see a little further on, your marketing plan should include the various channels you’ll use to communicate with your customers.

These days, the avenues for communication are much more varied than when the four P’s were developed, but the advice remains the same. Whether you’re promoting your product on a billboard or on Instagram, you need to ensure that each touchpoint supports your brand’s goals and addresses key customer needs.

The fourth P can refer to a physical location, a digital touchpoint or a mindset.

As the old saying goes, it helps to be in the right place at the right time. Marketers can control this factor by developing thoughtful buyer journeys – or sales funnels – and lead nurturing campaigns that help customers make a purchase decision.

For example, if you find that your customers are most inclined to buy once they understand the cost-saving benefits of your offering, you can construct a marketing funnel that places your audience in that position before making the hard sell. So, if customers read a blog and then download a white paper about cost savings, you could include a call to action at the end of the white paper, encouraging readers to call for more information.

6 Steps of the Strategic Planning Process

When making a marketing plan, it’s a common mistake for new marketers to start with the deliverables. Full of enthusiasm, they’ll dash off several blog articles, social media posts and pay-per-click ad headlines. Often, their eagerness will begin to wane when they don’t see huge results from their efforts.

This happens due to a lack of foundation.

The best marketing strategies aren’t built on gut feelings, enthusiasm or brute force; they’re built on carefully researched information, scientific analysis and psychological understanding.

An effective strategic marketing process includes:

• Deep knowledge of your organization’s goals and how your marketing plan promotes those objectives.
• Researched findings about your customers’ needs and desires.
• Campaign-specific marketing goals (E.g. building thought awareness or driving sales) supported by measurable performance indicators.
• Tangible collateral and associated distribution channels.

Follow these 6 steps to create an actionable marketing plan for your business:

1. Know Where You Are

Before you can make a plan, you need to know where your organization stands today.

Work with relevant stakeholders to define the goals of the business and how the marketing department currently supports them. Consider the brand’s current search engine optimization strategy and how it will benefit the organization’s marketing efforts.

Conduct a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) to pinpoint what you’re doing right, what you can improve on and how external market factors will affect your customer relationships. This process can open up areas in need of further analysis.

The beginning of the planning stage is the time to consider everything that might influence your market position.

2. Know Your Audience

Understanding your organization is one side of the coin, knowing your customers is the other side.

Segmenting your audience is a good way to identify the number of marketing tactics you’ll need to employ. For example, if you find that only half of your customer base uses social media, you’ll need to spread your efforts across multiple channels.

The importance of scientific research at this stage cannot be overstated. Even if you have years of experience in the field, you can’t fully predict how your customers’ expectations, needs and wants will evolve over time.

Conduct surveys, do research and – most importantly – talk to your audience!

3. Know Where You Want to Go

With a firm understanding of your offerings and your audience, you can start thinking about next steps.

Define your goals for the year, then break them down into quarterly, monthly and weekly objectives. Tie these goals to the organization’s long-term goals. For example, if your organization wants to increase revenue by 10% over four years, what marketing objectives must be accomplished for that to happen?

Be optimistic when setting goals, but never lose sight of real market conditions.

For every target you establish, you should define metrics by which to judge your success. Metrics can tell you when to adjust your course of action.

4. Pick Your Channels and Tactics (Think Big)

An effective marketing strategy addresses the entire sales cycle.

For B2C brands, that might be as simple as making customers aware of your brand. For more complex B2B brands, you may need to build thought leadership, spread awareness, develop engaging relationships with potential buyers and more.

There are many unique ways to appeal to B2B customers .

At this stage, you should think big.

• How would you market your product or service if you had an unlimited marketing budget?
• What channels would you use?
• What type of content would you create?

Get all of your ideas out so you can consider each one carefully. At this stage, you may need to conduct further research into the cost and ROI of each tactic.

5. Develop Your Budget and Your Revised Tactics (Pare Down)

Now it’s time to solidify your plans into actionable tactics.

Decide which channels you want to use and create a calendar of content you want to promote. If you’re using paid advertising like billboards, radio ads or pay-per-click display networks, you’ll need to create budgets and bidding strategies.

Compared with the previous step, this is where you get realistic.

To maximize your marketing budget, and choose the ideal mix of collateral, you’ll need to be confident that each investment of time and resources is relevant to your business goals and your customers’ needs.

6. Measure and Adjust Your Strategy Periodically

Implementing your marketing plan isn’t the end.

Once your strategy is off the ground, you’ll need to watch it carefully to determine if it’s meeting expectations. By giving every tactic a metric by which to judge its performance, you can make valuable adjustments to your strategy over time.

These alterations may be small, like posting to your social media accounts at a different time of day; they might be big, such as swapping out one tactic for another. The important thing to remember is that any change you make should be informed by keen analysis of your current progress.

Your Free Strategic Marketing Plan Template

Use this template to structure your own marketing plan. It’s designed to be extensible and easy to use. Simply make a copy of it and add or delete fields as they apply to your needs. By filling it out, this template will help you visualize your strategy more clearly and ultimately become more confident in your ability to grow your brand’s footprint in the marketplace.

Your ability to clearly plan your marketing strategy will determine your future success. The more detailed your plan, the better your chances of success. Map out your goals, choose your metrics and commit to adjusting your strategy based on scientific evidence.

[Company name]

Marketing mission statement.

Briefly outline how your marketing strategy will support your organization’s business objectives.

SWOT Analysis

What are you currently doing that’s giving you an edge over your competitors? What do your customers like about your brand?

What do your competitors do better than you? What can you do more efficiently? Where do you struggle to fully support your customers?

Opportunities

How is your industry changing? How can you prepare for the future? How can you better define your value proposition to engage new customers?

What could draw your customers away from your brand? What industry disruptions are on the horizon? What could slow the growth of your organization?

Marketing actions

Overview: Briefly describe the initiative. (E.g. We’ll build a library of infographics to help our customers understand market trends.)

Desired outcome: What’s your goal? (E.g. We want to increase organic traffic to our resource library by 3% over the next quarter)

KPI / Metric: How will you objectively measure your outcome? (E.g. Page visitors, time-on-site, clicks, etc.)

Desired outcome:

KPI / Metric:

Market segments

[segment 1].

Demographics: Superficial details about your audience. (E.g. gender, age, income and marital status.)

Psychographics: What motivates your audience? (E.g. personal interests, attitudes, values, desires.)

Challenges: What problems do they need to overcome?

Preferred channels: Where do they absorb industry news? Where do they go to ask questions and seek professional insights?

Preferred content types: How do they prefer to gain new knowledge? Do they prefer video, audio or written content?

[Segment 2]

Demographics:

Psychographics:

Challenges:

Preferred channels:

Preferred content types:

[Segment 3]

Buyer personas, [persona 1].

Name: Each persona should have a unique name.

Age: What’s the average age range of this persona?

Job title: List a few common job titles.

Motivations / goals: What do they hope to achieve? What drives them?

Personal interests: What do they like to do outside of work?

Challenges: What business challenges do they face? What’s stopping them from achieving their goals?

[Persona 2]

Motivations / goals:

Personal interests:

[Persona 3]

Competitor analysis, [competitor 1].

Company name:

Competing products: How are their offerings similar to your own? How are they different?

Areas of overlap: How do they market their offerings? Are you competing for space in the same channels ?

[Competitor 2]

Competing products:

Areas of overlap:

[Competitor 3]

Strategy overview, [product / service 1].

Price: What’s the current pricing strategy? How do customers perceive the price in relation to the value of the product?

Promotion: How will you communicate the offering’s value proposition?

Place: Which channels will you use to promote this offering?

[Product / Service 2]

[product / service 3], website / content.

Channel Name:

Intent: What’s your goal? (E.g. We will promote brand awareness through a series of blog posts written by our senior leadership.)

KPI / Metric: How will you measure your progress? (E.g. Organic traffic, bounce rate, conversions.)

Social media

Influencers.

Editor’s Note: Updated November 2021.

Alexander Santo

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Alexander Santo is a Brafton writer living in Washington. ​He enjoys searching for the perfect cup of coffee, browsing used book shops and attending punk rock concerts.

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• How to Write a Strategic Marketing Plan (With Free…

How to Write a Strategic Marketing Plan (With Free Templates)

Businesses come in two forms: companies starting with a marketing plan and companies that languish without growth or progress for months or years.

A strategic marketing plan is a decisive, detailed document encompassing a plan to grow the business over time. It might sound like a lot of work, but it's necessary to build a brand.

After all, you wouldn't set out to climb a mountain with nothing but a walking stick, and you wouldn't try to play golf without knowing how to swing a club, so why would you run a business without knowing where to take it?

What Goes into a Strategic Marketing Plan?

A strategic marketing plan is three things.

1. First, it's a set of business goals. These are SMART goals, meaning they're specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound. I  go into greater detail on setting clear goals in this post , so I won't dig deep into it here.

Imagine you're planning to drive from Los Angeles to New York City. You have a starting point and an ultimate destination, but you still need to know what route to take and where to stop along the way. Your business objectives are your destination and the stops you make along the way.

2. Second, your strategic marketing plan is your method . This is how you're going to get to your goals. I will spend the bulk of this post talking about it, so read on to learn more. Mostly, it's about itemizing your digital marketing channels, identifying how you plan to use them, and figuring out how they all work together to improve your overall business synergistically.

3. Third, your strategic marketing plan is the KPIs you use to reinforce the first two parts . It's the metrics you identify that form your key performance indicators, and it's how you measure them. How do you know what success means?

Your goals help you define what metrics to track and what levels they should reach using the channels you define in your plan.  It all works together .

Channels and Methods in a Strategic Marketing Plan

As a core part of your strategic marketing strategy, you need to outline the marketing channels you plan to use and how you plan to use them.

Setting your goals here is essential because it helps you identify your target audience. Once you know your target market, you can pinpoint where that audience exists and how you can reach them across various channels.

It doesn't do you any good to advertise on TikTok if none of your potential customers use the app, right?

You can generally divide your marketing channels into specific groups and categories. Each of these categories is broken down into particular channels, and each channel includes what you need to do using that channel, how to do it, and how often you'll be doing it, along with any other relevant information.

1. Paid Marketing Channels

Technically, all marketing activities are paid marketing. You decide between paying with your time or paying with your money.

For this section, though, think about the channels you use by fueling them with money.

• Google search ads.
• Google display ads.
• Facebook display ads.
• Facebook boosted posts.
• Twitter boosted tweets.
• YouTube video ads.
• Twitch video ads.
• Ads on other social networks.
• Ads on non-social advertising platforms.

Paid marketing is generally where a large portion of your marketing budget is going to go, so you need to be able to spend extra time on these. It would be best if you were careful with picking the KPIs you measure as well.

2. Social Marketing Channels

There are a ton of social networks out there, and they're all free to sign up, post organically, and interact with your community.

• Facebook , organic feeds, business pages, groups, and events.
• YouTube , both for longer videos and for shorts.
• Instagram , primarily for photos and videos.
• TikTok , for that added dose of micro-video marketing.
• Twitter , which is still one of the best customer service networks despite imploding.
• Reddit , which ties in with content marketing and social marketing.
• Tumblr  is experiencing a resurgence due to the aforementioned Twitter implosion.
• LinkedIn , which can still be used for marketing in specific markets.
• Pinterest , another heavily visual network specializing in certain markets.
• WhatsApp  is one of the most extensive non-US-centric networks.

This selection is a very US-centric list, and it still just scratches the surface. But this is critical: you don't need to pick all of them.

In fact, the more you try to do at once, the less likely you are to pull off any of them effectively.

I recommend picking at most 3-4 of the networks most heavily used by your target audience and starting there. Once you've established patterns, habits, demographics, content pipelines, and practical strategies on those networks, you can expand into others for added reach.

3. Content Marketing Channels

Content marketing is the foundation of other kinds of marketing because all effective marketing relies, to some extent, on the content you produce. But, more than just "the content of the ads you run," content marketing requires you to create long-form blog posts, eBooks, videos, podcasts, and other media, to post for free on your website and around the web.

Content marketing requires a keen knowledge of SEO and how Google's search engine algorithms work. Your content plan also requires investment in content production, which often means hiring teams or gathering freelancers to do the work.

We create blog content that converts - not just for ourselves, but for our clients, too.

We pick blog topics like hedge funds pick stocks. Then, we create articles that are 10x better to earn the top spot.

Content marketing has two ingredients - content and marketing. We've earned our black belts in both.

That's paid work, of course.

Content marketing can also include your email marketing channels as well. You write content for your blog and share it across the web on social media.

You gather sign-ups for your newsletter and spread your news and content links in those regular email digests.

This also overlaps with paid marketing in the form of sponsored content , where you pay for your content to be published on other sites, often those with more exposure to your niche than you would have on your own.

4. Partnership Marketing Channels

Partnership marketing can include marketing channels where you create the content and marketing channels where you don't.

Channels, where you create the content, include things like guest posting . Guest posting is your content published on other sites because of a partnership or agreement you make with those other sites. Of course, if you pay money for it, it goes right back up into paid advertising. See how it all muddles together?

On the other hand, channels where you  don't  create the content include things like:

• Affiliate marketing , where you offer monetized links to anyone who is a content creator and wants to promote your content through their preexisting channels.
• Referral marketing , where you allow your customers to earn rewards, points, or money for promoting you to others they know.
• White label reselling , where you offer a version of your product with the serial numbers filed off for someone else to slap their brand sticker on and sell on their own, with you getting a cut.

Which (if any of these) are effective for  you  depends on  your  business, your audience, and your marketing plan. Your analysis of the niche and industry will help you determine whether or not it's worth pursuing any of them.

5. Putting It All Together

As you can see, there's a significant amount of overlap between all of these channels.

Every channel can work, but they all work better together than they do apart. Small businesses that try to create "the social media team," "the blog team," and "the SEO team" are generally doomed to have disjointed marketing and inconsistent content. Instead, you need teams that work together as one whole, overarching marketing team .

Experimentation  is key.

Part of your strategic marketing plan should be identifying which channels are most important and focusing on them first and foremost. Then, develop a roadmap of which channels to expand into (and when) when those metrics reach specific milestones. There's always going to be some flexibility here, but you need to be able to handle what's on your plate before you take on more.

Other Elements of a Strategic Marketing Plan

Of course, plenty goes into a strategic marketing strategy that isn't part of the marketing channels section.

Let's run down what else you need.

• Goals . I already mentioned this above, so head over to this link to learn more about setting marketing goals for your business.
• A SWOT analysis. SWOT is a two-part, two-axis analysis of the Strengths and Weaknesses of your brand and the Opportunities and Threats of your position in the industry. Knowing these helps you identify where you can leverage your marketing efforts for the best effect and what you need to do to defend yourself against the competition edging in on your territory.
• Executive Summary, Mission Statement, Values, and Vision. This is all high-level introductory content, meant not necessarily for you but for the people in your management team who work with you to implement the strategic marketing strategy. It's a bird's-eye level overview of what your company is, what you're trying to do, and the driving forces behind you.
• Market Analysis. A specific itemized list of competitors, new and old. This can tie in with your SWOT analysis, or it can be its own set of information. You want some level of awareness of  what the competition is doing  and who they are, kept in one place for easy reference later.
• Audience Information and Buyer Personas. This is information about who your audience is , who your ideal customers are, where to find them, what they like, what they dislike, and the value of reaching them. It's all very standard stuff for marketing, and I've written extensively on the subject.
• Budgets. Money makes the world go-'round, and that's more true than ever in the realm of marketing. Whether you're bootstrapping yourself with growth hacks or you're leveraging venture funding to saturate a market, you have a finite amount of money, and you need to know where to spend it for the best effect.

All of this is put together into one comprehensive living document that grows, changes and is edited as information in it needs to change.

How to Set Your Marketing Budget

Budgeting your plan is an essential part of making sure that your plan is successful.

The most popular business promotion strategies are organic marketing, advertising, and partnerships.

Each has its unique advantages and disadvantages. Organic marketing is a cost-effective way to increase brand awareness and reach new customers. Advertising can be a powerful tool for reaching specific audiences and creating urgency around products or services. Partnerships leverage each other's networks and resources to promote both brands.

Let's break these down in more detail to help you determine your budget for each:

• Organic marketing is a great way to build trust with potential customers by providing helpful content while creating an organic search presence. Organic marketing involves content creation , social media, search engine optimization (SEO), and influencer marketing. These activities build relationships with customers and leads without requiring additional investments in advertising or partners. Organic marketing takes time and effort but can pay off in the long run. For this reason, I wouldn't recommend that newly established companies invest all of their marketing dollars into organic marketing strategies. Some of these don't pay off for months or years, and it's important to start building traction in parallel with some of the other marketing methods.
• Advertising is a more targeted approach that helps businesses reach their target audiences quickly and more effectively than organic marketing. You can focus ad campaigns on specific demographics, regions, interests, or products. With this type of campaign, businesses can ensure their message reaches the right people at the right time. It's essential to track the effectiveness of your ad campaigns to ensure that you're getting the most out of your budget. Ads are effective at generating sales immediately, and you'll know pretty quickly if they aren't working. I think it's a good idea to invest in ads and slowly taper off by investing into other organic marketing strategies as your company grows.
• Partnerships involve two companies working together to promote each other's brands, whether affiliate, referral, whitelabel, collaborations, private label, and so on. These collaborations are great for leveraging each other's networks and resources to gain exposure to new customers and drive traffic. This strategy can benefit both companies if they target similar audiences and have complementary products or services. However, it's necessary to ensure that both parties get something out of the partnership to remain mutually beneficial.

Organic marketing, advertising, and partnerships are all valuable tools for any business. Each has its benefits, but finding the right balance between them is necessary when developing your marketing strategy. The combination will depend on your target market, budget, and goals. Ultimately, maximizing your return on investment (ROI) is the goal.

Strategic Marketing Plan Templates and Examples

It's one thing to give you a bunch of theories and tell you to have fun, but it's another to give you tangible examples of what you can put together.

Here are a bunch of examples and marketing plan templates from around the web.

• Ten Templates from Visme.co . This post, in addition to running down through all the elements of a strategic marketing plan, also includes ten templates you can use to get started. The templates are based on a core concept, like the kind of business (restaurant, real estate ) or the kind of marketing (content, social), but they can give you a great idea of what you should be putting together for yourself.
• A Plan and Template from Vital . There's only one template here, but it's one of the more comprehensive examples I've seen, and the article that accompanies it is fantastic.
• Mayple's Marketing Plan Spreadsheet . This is a great example of how you don't actually need all of the wild graphical design and typography that some of these plans use in their templates. It's fine to work on that aspect, but making your plan look good doesn't have nearly as much of a tangible benefit as making it function properly.
• HubSpot's Templates . It's HubSpot. If you don't already trust their expertise, I don't know what to tell you. Their templates range from basic to advanced, so there's something in there for everyone, though you may have to find related posts to dig into deeper templates and guidelines for some of the strategies they mention.

Do you have a favorite example or template of a strategic marketing strategy you've used? Have you put together something you're proud of or consider impressive? Feel free to let me know; I'd love to see it!

James Parsons is the founder and CEO of Content Powered, a premier content marketing agency that leverages nearly two decades of his experience in content marketing to drive business growth. Renowned for founding and scaling multi-million dollar eCommerce businesses through strategic content marketing, James has become a trusted voice in the industry, sharing his insights in Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, and other leading publications. His background encompasses key roles across various agencies, contributing to the content strategies of major brands like eBay and Expedia. James's expertise spans SEO, conversion rate optimization, and effective content strategies, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.

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The Definitive Guide to Strategic Marketing Planning

By Joe Weller | June 23, 2017

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In this article, we’ve researched and outlined the key components of a strategic marketing plan that will help you align your overall marketing and business goals.

Included on this page, you’ll find the essential steps to develop a strategic marketing plan with free downloadable templates, examples of how various marketing processes work , and how marketing automation can give you a competitive edge .

5 Essential Steps for a Successful Strategic Marketing Process

The strategic marketing process is a deliberate series of steps to help you identify and reach your goals. Even more, you’ll discover what your customers want and develop products that meet those needs. Here are the steps to a successful strategic marketing process.

• Situation Analysis
• Marketing Strategy/Planning
• Marketing Mix
• Implementation and Control

Strategic marketing planning involves setting goals and objectives, analyzing internal and external business factors, product planning, implementation, and tracking your progress. Consider the example of Apple, winner of the CMO Survey Award for Marketing Excellence for the past seven years. Here’s an example of the strategic marketing plan for one of the most successful companies in the world.   Mission: Apple is dedicated to making innovative, high-quality products.

Situation Analysis: Apple’s competitive advantage is driven by its commitment to understanding customer needs, focusing on the products that are core to its mission, and fostering a collaborative work culture.

Marketing Strategy: Apple usually is first to the marketplace with new products and the company relies on brand loyalty from existing customers as a strategy when launching new products and services.

Marketing Mix: While Apple offers a range of products, it values premium pricing and relies on strict guidelines for distribution.

Implementation and Control: Each Apple product complements the others and work within the same ecosystem, so customers tend to stay with the brand, creating loyal consumers.   The strategic marketing process puts all the pieces together so that everything you do contributes to the success of your business. Rather than executing haphazard activities and ideas, developing a solid plan that weaves goals and tactics into a seamless experience is essential. You can follow these steps to create products and services that will delight your customers and beat out your competitors.

Step One: Mission

First, identify and understand the company’s mission. Maybe it’s written down and promoted throughout the organization. If not, talk to stakeholders to find out why your company exists. A mission statement explains why a company is in business and how it can benefit consumers. Sometimes, the mission statement is aspirational, motivating staff and inspiring customers. Or it is simply a straightforward statement about who you are. Either way, you can’t plan a marketing strategy without knowing clearly what business you are in and why.   Here are some example mission statements:   Citigroup: Our goal for Citigroup is to be the most respected global financial services company. Like any other public company, we’re obligated to deliver profits and growth to our shareholders. Of equal importance is to deliver those profits and generate growth responsibly.   IKEA: At IKEA, our vision is to create a better everyday life for many people. Our business idea supports this vision by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.   Universal Health Services: To provide superior quality healthcare services that: PATIENTS recommend to family and friends, PHYSICIANS prefer for their patients, PURCHASERS select for their clients, EMPLOYEES are proud of, and INVESTORS seek for long-term returns.   Unlike the other steps in the planning process, senior leaders or the board of directors typically develop the mission statement and corporate objectives. Your role is to identify those objectives in the planning process to ensure that your efforts stay aligned with corporate leadership.   The mission statement is a core message that guides and influences your marketing strategy. Questions to ask when evaluating the mission:

• Why is your company in business?
• What is the purpose of your business?
• What is the strategic influence for your business?
• What is the desired public perception for your business?
• How does your mission statement clarify your strategy?
• How does your mission statement unify your team?

Step Two: Situation Analysis

The second step of the strategic marketing process is to evaluate internal and external factors that affect your business and market. Your analysis will illuminate your strengths and the challenges you face — either with internal resources or with external competition in the marketplace. Situation analysis provides a clear, objective view of the health of your business, your current and prospective customers, industry trends, and your company’s position in the marketplace.   There are several methods to conduct this analysis. A typical analysis is called a SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors, under your company’s control. What do you do well? What needs to be better? Opportunities and threats are external factors, such as interest rates or a new competitor in the market. Here are some questions that can help you identify internal and external factors:

• Strengths: What do you do well? What are the factors that you control? What is your competitive advantage? How are your products and services superior to others in the marketplace?
• Weakness: Where are you underperforming? What is limiting your ability to succeed? Where do limited resources affect your success?
• Opportunities: What are untapped markets? Where is the potential for new business? Can you take advantage of any market trends?
• Threats: What are the obstacles? Which external factors (political, technological, economic) can cause a problem?

Download SWOT Analysis Template With Summary

WORD | Smartsheet

A 5C analysis (Company, Customers, Competitors, Collaborators, Climate) is another way to evaluate the market environment. Like SWOT, it includes an internal analysis as well as an exploration of external factors.

Here are some questions you can ask when working on a 5C analysis:

• Company: How successful are your product lines? What is your image in the marketplace? How effectively are you achieving your goals? How does your company’s culture affect your performance?
• Customers: Who is your audience and what is the market size? How much is your customer base growing? What motivates customers to buy your product or service? What are overall sales trends and how is the buying process changing? 
• Competitors: Who are your direct, indirect, and future competitors? What are their products and market shares? How are they positioned in the market? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
• Collaborators: Who are your suppliers, distributors, partners, and agencies? How can they help you grow your business? How does the stability of their business affect the success of your business?
• Climate: What are the governmental policies and regulations that affect the market? What economic factors (inflation, interest rates) are at play? What trends influence your customers? What is the impact of technology on the demand for your product or how could technology give you an advantage over your competitors?

Download 5C Analysis Template

Excel   |   PDF

You can also conduct a PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, Technological), which is similar to the climate section of a 5C analysis. This method provides a comprehensive analysis of external factors that could affect your company.

Here are some questions you can ask when performing a PEST analysis:

• Political: What laws and regulators affect consumers? What’s the impact of trade regulations, employment laws, and tax guidelines? How stable are the foreign markets and countries in which you sell products, contract with suppliers, or offer services?
• Economic: How do interest rates, inflation, taxes, and exchange rates affect your customers and your bottom line? What is the impact of the stock market on your business? What are the local business cycles and overall economic growth?
• Social: What lifestyles and attitudes affect the buying habits of your consumers? What are the demographics of your customers (age, gender, education, etc.)? How are they changing?  
• Technical: What patents, innovations and licenses can influence your company? Which manufacturing trends can increase your production levels or drive down costs? How can information technology help or hurt your product placement, positioning, and promotion?

Download PEST Analysis Template

Your analysis, no matter which method you use, will help you list the most critical problems and relevant opportunities, as well as show you how well your company can tackle projects. Once you have a clear picture of your business, you can identify potential markets and products.

Step Three: Marketing Plan

Now that you’ve identified opportunities through your analysis, you should prioritize and map out which ones you are going to pursue. Writing a marketing plan will specify your target customers and how you will reach them, and should also include a forecast of the anticipated results. These questions can help:

• How will customers respond to your marketing efforts? 
• How much will the plan cost? 
• How will your competition respond? 

The data from your market research and situation analysis will help you build these projections into your plan.   Define Your Target Audience

Few companies can meet the needs and wants of the entire market. You want to split the market into a segment that aligns best with your strengths and opportunities. Your goal is to identify customers. You can select your target market by choosing all kinds of characteristics, behaviors, and demographics. The important thing is to make sure the audience is clearly defined and large enough to support your product or service.  

  Even though you may have some information about your customers based on your situation analysis, you may need to conduct more research on their needs and wants. With research, you can create detailed profiles or personas of your ideal customers. The more you know about your target audience, the more effectively you can offer them value through your product or service. Nothing matters more than how you make customers feel about your company.   Set Measurable Goals 

How will you know if your plan succeeds? You need specific, measurable goals with milestones that measure your progress. Do you want to increase your sales? The goal you set should specify how much you want to grow the sales number, and the timeframe for meeting that target. Each goal should be actionable and attainable through tactics you control. At this stage, avoid contingent goals, which are dependent on circumstances beyond your control. With each goal, list the tactics or steps you will take to achieve it. Combine simple, clear, and precise goals (whether it’s gaining customers, improving brand recognition or something else) with a detailed plan that defines the tactics to meet your goal. For more information on writing SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound) goals, read this article .    Identify and Set a Marketing Budget 

Now it’s time to allocate the resources that will turn your plan into action. Your budget will outline all the expected costs for implementing your marketing plan, including advertising, online content, branding, public relations, staffing costs, and more. Depending on the size of your budget, you may have to make some tough choices about which goals and tactics are the top priorities. Or you may have to adjust your tactics until you reach a budget that’s affordable. By creating the budget, you can finalize and stick to your plan. For more help with marketing budgets, read 12 Free Marketing Budget Templates .

Step Four: Developing Marketing Mix Decisions

At this stage of the strategic marketing process, it’s time to focus on the “how” of planning. Your marketing mix is based on the 4Ps of marketing, including Product, Price, Promotion, and Place.  In 1960, E. J. McCarthy first expressed the 4Ps, and it is probably the best-known way to describe the marketing mix. The 4Ps will guide the way you convey the value of your product to your customers. You are positioning your product and its competitive advantage. You need to be clear about what you are marketing: convenience or quality? And you need to know who is likely to buy your product or service.    By using the market research conducted in step two, you can develop the ideal marketing mix for your target audience and the type of product or service you sell. Although there are dozens of marketing channels, you will want to choose the tactics that will reach your prospects when they’ll be most receptive to your message.  

  Product: A product is a good or service that meets the needs of your target market. Even more, products solve problems. Whether you are developing a marketing plan for Coca-Cola, a luxury hotel, or a cell phone, you have to know what problem it solves and why your product is a unique solution. Make sure you have a clear understanding of all the details of your product, including its features, branding, and packaging.

• What is the product or service?
• What does the customer want from it?
• What needs does it satisfy?
• What features does it have to meet these needs?
• How and where will the customer use it?
• How does it compare with similar products?
• Who are the competitors? 

Price: The price is the amount of money your target market is willing to pay for your product. Factors for price include any discounts, payment periods, and list price, as well as how much it costs your company to produce the product. You also need to consider overall marketplace conditions and your competition. How healthy is the economy? How much are your competitors charging for a similar product? Do they have the same business model?   The marketing message around your price depends on your market and your audience. Maybe it’s a way to position your product in a crowded marketplace. It might be a competitive advantage or a way of demonstrating the value of your product.

• What is the value of the product to the customer?
• Are there existing price points for similar products? If so, what are they?
• Will a small decrease give you extra market share? How much will that affect the product’s perceived value?
• Will discounts to certain market segments be part of your strategy?

Promotion: The way you communicate with your target audience about the value and benefit of your product is promotion. Think of promotion as an opportunity to educate your customers about your products and services. You teach them the value of what you offer and how your product meets their needs or solves their problem. There are countless ways to educate them through marketing channels including direct marketing, paid search and social, advertising, public relations, and sales promotions that create brand awareness. This extends to almost every aspect of how you present the product to your target market, and is everything that teaches your audience about your product or brand. 

• Where can you get your marketing messages across to your target market? Options include advertising on TV and billboards, direct marketing, public relations, sponsored events, and promotions. Consider the details you used when segmenting your audience.
• What marketing channels does your target market use on a regular basis? Where and when are they most ready to buy your product?
• When is the best time to promote?
• How do your competitors do their promotions?

Place: Consider place as product distribution or how you plan to get your product to your customers and make the buying process easy. Place includes distribution channels, outlets, and transportation to get the product to the target market.

• Where do customers look for your product? In a store? Online? Through a catalogue?
• Do you need a sales force to reach customers or should you sell directly to your target market?
• What are the best distribution channels?
• Where are your competitors reaching customers?

Step Five: Implementation and Control

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Identify how and when you will launch your plan. At this stage of the strategic marketing process, you will reach out to customers to inform and persuade them about your product or service. Your next steps include getting the resources (cash and staffing) to market your product, organizing the people who will do the work, creating calendars to keep the work on track, and managing all the details for each goal. It will help you stay focused and energized if you create monthly benchmarks and projects, weekly action steps, and daily marketing appointments.   Remember, the strategic marketing process is dynamic. You need to regularly measure and evaluate the results of your plan in order to succeed. This will help you see whether you are accomplishing your goals and where you need to adjust tactics to improve your results. This can include looking at revenue, sales, customer satisfaction, the number of views your website receives, or other metrics. If the numbers aren’t meeting your projections, you can make changes to get back on track. You also need to monitor the actions of your competitors. How does the success of your product affect the price of similar items on the market? Are new products being released that could be perceived of greater value by your audience? Use this information to make informed decisions about the 4Ps for your product.

What Is the Definition of Strategic Marketing?

A marketing plan establishes the goals and tactics of every marketing campaign. It keeps everyone in your organization on the same page about the direction and purpose of your marketing efforts. A marketing plan also provides a way for you to measure your success. Without a plan, you won’t really know whether you’re succeeding.

While every individual campaign should have a plan, your company also needs a strategic marketing plan to guide your overall efforts. A strategic plan identifies your business goals, the marketplace in which you compete, your target audience, the ways you want to reach them, and how you will evaluate your success. It integrates everything you say and do to grow your company. A strategic marketing plan is not a static document that gets tossed in a drawer once it’s written. Instead, a plan is a living document that guides your work and is regularly updated to reflect changes in your business, your customers, and your competition.

The process of developing a strategic marketing plan is crucial to your business. You cannot create strategic marketing without strategic thinking. This planning helps you clarify your goals and identify where you see your business in the future, which ultimately strengthens your strategy. A strategic marketing planning process also helps with:

• Providing a clear map of your company’s goals and how to achieve them.
• Getting all stakeholders to share a common goal and a have a common understanding of your company’s opportunities and challenges.
• Identifying and meeting customer needs with the right products in the right places.
• Growing your market share and product lines, leading to more revenue.
• Enabling smaller companies to compete with bigger firms.

One caution: A strategic marketing plan focuses on your goals for your products and customers. The overall business plan, which outlines all of your company’s goals, should support the marketing plan. If they don’t work together, neither plan will succeed.   What Problems Should You Anticipate in the Strategic Marketing Process 

Every manager knows to expect the best but plan for the worst. In the marketing planning process, here are some challenges you may face:

• Confusing Strategy with Tactics: A strategic marketing plan outlines your larger goal. Sometimes, this can be confused with a tactical marketing plan. The difference between the two is that the strategy identifies your goals and objectives and the tactical marketing plan outlines the details for how you’ll reach those goals. Your strategy may be a larger goal, such as increasing your market share. Tactics are the action steps, such as lowering your prices, so more people buy your product. A successful plan needs both, implemented at the proper stage of the process.
• Lack of Resources: Maybe your goal is to increase sales, but you don’t have the workforce to meet all the incoming orders. Perhaps you don’t have the resources to hire experienced people who can adequately staff the marketing pipeline. The strategic planning process will help you identify the resources you have and the best way to put them to work for the good of the company.
• Assumptions About Your Customers: Market research can help you identify your target audience. Sometimes the audience changes, and your planning process should include steps for adjusting to the evolving tastes of consumers.

How Do Specific Marketing Processes Work?

The steps of the strategic marketing process (mission, situation analysis, marketing plan, marketing mix, and implementation and control) are different than the process for a specific marketing effort. Specific efforts may support one goal or business line, but the strategic process supports the entire mission of your organization.   Target Marketing Process

Target marketing identifies the specific market segments that will help your business grow. The three main activities of target marketing are segmenting, targeting, and positioning. Organizations use this S-T-P approach to pinpoint the best prospective customers.

• Segmenting: Segmenting divides the overall market into smaller groups based on demographics, geography, lifestyle or behavioral approaches.
• Targeting: Choose the segment of potential customers that offers the most business opportunity for you.
• Positioning: The final step is to position your product in a way that will appeal to the needs of your target audience and encourage them to buy your product.  

Content Marketing Process 

Content marketers generate demand for a product by generating a steady flow of content that focuses on the problems and desires of potential and current customers. Here are the five steps of the content marketing process: 

• Plan: Develop a plan that specifies the details of creating, publishing, distributing, and measuring a content marketing program.
• Create: Take key ideas and themes, and turn them into raw material.
• Publish: Turn raw material into various kinds of content assets, including articles, blog posts, whitepapers, online events, videos, printed documents, and podcasts.
• Distribute: Use a range of promotional tactics to distribute content assets.
• Analyze: Track and measure the results so you can publish more effective content in the future.

Product Marketing Process

The product marketing process is the pipeline from strategy to implementation for a product marketing campaign. To be successful, this process focuses on making sure the product continues to meet the needs of customers throughout the product cycle. Here are the stages of this process:

• Product: Research new ideas for meeting customer needs from a wide variety of sources, including customer feedback, sales requests, and competitor products.
• Reach: Work with other departments to implement new ideas and develop marketing plans to deliver new products to consumers.
• Audience: Track response through metrics and direct customer feedback.
• Pricing: Prioritize innovation based on the customer value, the cost of implementing them, and the revenue they will generate. 

Inbound Marketing Process

Inbound marketing draws prospective customers to your product by providing useful and quality content that entices them to find out more. The inbound approach includes content marketing, social strategies, and search engine optimization, all tactics that bring your target audience to you. It’s different than outbound marketing, a traditional approach in which you advertise your product or service, typically through television and radio, print ads, and direct mail. Here’s how inbound marketing works:

• Attract and Engage: Create targeted content that answers your customers’ questions and be readily available online. This includes blog content, a social media presence, keywords that guide prospective customers to your site when they are searching for answers, and a well-designed and helpful website.
• Convert: Get more information about your prospective customers so you can guide them through the sales funnel. Start collecting details about your customers through sign-up forms and landing pages, email newsletters, ebooks, whitepapers, and tip sheets. The key is to deliver targeted marketing to the right audience at the right time.
• Close: Once you’ve collected detailed information about your prospective customers, you can customize the marketing that leads them to buy your product or service. This includes email messaging, which is typically done using marketing automation software that responds to the actions of a prospective customer.
• Delight: While an immediate goal may be the sale of one product, your strategic goals focus on brand loyalty and long-term value. In this stage, you should be staying in touch with your customers, monitoring the conversations on social media, asking for feedback through surveys, and finding ways to provide rewards for customer loyalty. 

Email Marketing Process  

  Email marketing is one of the most powerful drivers of sales for many businesses. It has an advantage over direct mail because you can track and measure your results, and it tends to be less expensive than other marketing channels. Here’s an overview of the email marketing process:

• Define: Identify your goals and your audience. Base the content of your email on who you want to reach and what you want them to do.
• Test: Email marketing has a range of variables that can affect the performance of your campaign. You need to choose the best design, content, and format for the message you want to send.
• Send: Email is one of the largest drivers of sales for many products. Each email you send has to align with your brand, connect with your audience, and offer a clear call to action.
• Measure and Report: You want to understand how people interact with each campaign. Track the open rate for your email, the number of clicks through to your site, and when they read your marketing. This data will help you create a more effective campaign next time.

How Is Marketing Automation Changing the Strategic Marketing Process?

Marketing automation is about software that streamlines, automates, and measures marketing processes and tasks. It reduces the amount of manual effort and tracking that marketing campaigns require. Automation makes your marketing, and your company, more efficient, effective, and profitable. Whether you have a small company or a large organization, you can gain a competitive edge by automating your ability to target your audience and track and measure your results. Here’s how:

• Marketing automation helps you nurture prospects for the long-term. Automation connects multiple digital channels, including social media, email, and content marketing. You can create and deliver a comprehensive plan in which every consumer touch point is optimized for conversion.
• Marketing automation makes your communication stronger. Once you’ve collected user data, you can add dynamic content that adds personal touches to your campaign. You’re not blasting customers with broad or irrelevant advertising messages. Instead, you’re guiding prospects through the sales funnel. With every action by your prospective customer, you can automate a response.
• Marketing automation can help your company find an effective approach for email campaigns. You can test different variables like email send times, subject lines, and ideas for personalization.
• Marketing automation improves your ability to segment your customers. As you gather data about their behavior, interests, and demographics, you can refine your messaging.
• Marketing automation helps you listen to your customers. You can map sales cycles, collect email data (unsubscribe rates, open rates, spam complaints), and customer service feedback.

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Developing a Strategic Marketing Plan [With Template + Examples]

In a challenging economy, it’s easy for marketers to lose sight of strategic goals and miss the mark.  However, developing a strategic marketing plan can help you stay on target and successfully accomplish your marketing goals.

What is a Strategic Marketing Plan?

A strategic marketing plan can be used as a guide to focus marketing efforts and prioritize tasks. It also makes it easier to keep track of results as they occur, which is great for both marketing purposes as well as reporting back accurate information to stakeholders.

To make sure that you put your best foot forward when finalizing your marketing plan, we’ve made things more convenient by providing a template for this process along with some helpful tips and guidelines.

Marketing Planning & Strategy Process

Nowadays, marketing has become so important to every business. Having a good marketing plan is the key to success in any industry because it will help you have an idea of how you are going to promote your company’s products and services. Marketers are responsible for devising marketing strategies that will attract more ideal customers into buying their product or service.

The Marketing Planning Process

Picture this: You are the marketing manager in a new company and have been tasked with increasing gross revenue. You have all of these marketing ideas in mind, but how will you know which ones will be most effective? 

Marketing plans can help give direction to strategic thinking. They also give a framework for implementation so that you don’t waste time on strategies that aren’t likely to work.

In order to create a marketing plan that is tailored to your specific objectives and business goals, you’ll need to decide exactly what it is that you’re hoping to accomplish. For example, maybe your goal is to increase brand awareness by 20% over the next six months, or perhaps it’s acquiring more customers through social media activities.

One of the first steps in the marketing planning process is to decide on your objectives and goals.  For example, you might want to increase traffic to your website or improve lead quality using online resources that are readily available.

Next, outline the marketing strategy behind your objectives. For example, it makes sense that increasing website traffic could help generate leads for a business because more visitors mean increased exposure (and possible sales conversions). However, this doesn’t mean that simply driving up web traffic will automatically result in an increase in leads. It’s helpful to think about other factors like social media participation or relevant content creation as strategic goals alongside your main objective to achieve better results.

The Marketing Strategy Process

It sounds simple but knowing how to write a marketing plan can be very tricky. Below are some steps how to write a great marketing plan:

Step 1: Identify What Your Consumers Want

The first thing you need to do is get together all the necessary information about your target audience which includes demographics, social media behavior, buying habits, shopping preferences, etc. Finding out where they hang out at least three times a week will help you reach them more easily. Ask yourself how your product or service can fulfill their needs and how much they are willing to pay for it.

Step 2: Define a Goal for Your Campaign

What do you want to achieve with this marketing plan? What is the purpose of the campaign? Do you want to increase awareness, boost sales, generate leads, or grow market share? Write down all your goals and make sure that they are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound). Your marketing activities should clearly speak to these measurable goals.

Step 3: Develop Strategies to Achieve Those Goals Using Consumer Insights

After gathering data about your target market, identify how your product or service can fill the needs of those consumers. What can you offer to them? What is their perception of your product or service and how it will impact the buying decision?

Based on market research, develop strategies on how you can reach out to your target audience and how they will respond to your marketing messages. This should be tailored specifically for each group: who they are, what type of message or media they are most likely to engage with, how often do they shop, what price range is acceptable for them, how much they are willing to pay, etc. These are important details that marketers need in order to maximize ROI.

Step 4: Determine Your Marketing Budget & Implementing Your Plan

After defining all necessary information on how can you achieve your goals and how much will it cost you, create a budget for your marketing plan. 

Also, make sure that your marketing team is capable of implementing the said strategies and how they’re going to do it. 

Pay special attention to any newly developed content to ensure it responds to the target audience’s needs to help convince them of engaging with your brand, buying a product, or contacting you for service.

Step 5: Evaluate the Results

Now, you need to determine if your campaign was successful or how you can improve your future campaigns. 

You should track how many leads were generated by each source, how many sales were closed from each channel, what type of media and message engaged with consumers most effectively, and so on. Only by doing this analysis during and after launching a marketing campaign can marketers learn what works best for them and how to enhance their next marketing activities.

Most importantly, involve people who work on a daily basis with customers (sales reps, customer service, etc.) and let them share how your marketing activities impacted their business.

Types of Marketing Goals, Strategies & Tactics + Examples

Strategic marketing planning starts with strategic thinking about your business goals and how you hope to achieve them.

Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation is a strategic marketing goal that can be useful for achieving personalization with your content. By differentiating the needs of your target audiences, you are able to best promote the products and services to meet those needs.

For example, this strategic marketing plan outlines an approach to achieve customer segmentation by using market research data to better understand the demographic makeup of the organization’s current clientele. This marketing plan could look something like this:

• Marketing Goal : Develop Customer Segmentation Approach
• Marketing Strategy : Conduct Market Research & Analysis
• Determine Target Personas based on Key Findings from Data
• Develop Personas into Target Audience Groupings    
• Create Customer Segments based on Demographics, Psychographics & Overall Needs
• Develop Marketing Approach for each Target Audience based on Key Findings

Increase Traffic to Company Website

Let’s say that one strategic marketing goal is to increase traffic to the company website by 10% over the next six months. The following marketing plan outlines an actual approach for achieving this goal:

• Marketing Goal : Increase Traffic on Company Website by 10% in 6 Months (currently at 35%)
• Marketing Strategy : Develop a Cohesive Content Strategy
• Develop a Blog that is Quirky, Fun & Authentic
• Develop New Page on Company Website that Highlights Blog Posts    
• Distribute Content to Social Media Channels
• Schedule Promotion of Content Throughout 6 Month Period (including Email Campaigns)
• Track Customer Response to Content Production & Analysis for Future Growth

Increase Sales Through eCommerce Site

You might decide to start with an increase in sales through the eCommerce site by 10% over the next six months. The following marketing plan outlines strategic marketing goals, strategic tactics for success, and the specific results you’re hoping to achieve.

• Marketing Goal : Increase Sales on eCommerce Site by 10% in 6 Months (currently at $50K)
• Marketing Strategy : Increase Average Order Value on eCommerce Site
• Optimize Product Titles, Images & Descriptions for Lead Generation
• Monitor Competitor’s Prices & Adjust eCommerce Pricing Strategy as Necessary    
• Develop Lookalike Audience Using Custom Audiences Feature on Ads Manager Platform    
• Promote Email Campaigns to New Subscribers & Customers
• Campaign Results : Goal Achieved of Increasing Sales on eCommerce Site by 30% in 6 Months

Increase Social Engagement Rate

Consider this strategic goal of increasing the social engagement rate by 5% over the next six months. For example, here is how one organization approached a similar challenge using strategic tactics for success and specific results they hope to achieve:

• Marketing Goal : Increase Social Engagement Rate by 5% in 6 Months (current rate is 3%) 
• Develop a Content Strategy that Meets New Business Objectives    
• Develop Cohesive Approach for Each Social Media Channel
• Determine Editorial Calendar based on Business Objectives    
• Optimize Title & Descriptions for Social Media Channels    
• Create Graphics for Content Promotion
• Campaign Results : Social Engagement Rate Increased by 5.2% in 6 Months

Strategic marketing plans can be a very powerful document that helps to keep everyone on the same page and accountable. By including strategic marketing goals, strategic outcomes, strategic tactics, and a strategic timeframe, you will develop a strategic plan for success.

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The Definitive Guide to Strategic Marketing Planning

No matter your goal, it’s always better to have a solid plan with defined steps in place than to try and haphazardly complete tasks. With strategic marketing planning, you can ensure that every step your business takes, regardless of which team contributes, will all coherently move towards promoting your brand and attracting new customers. 

What is the Strategic Marketing Planning Process?

The strategic marketing planning process allows you to outline your company goals for reaching your audience and the steps of how to reach them. Each step of the process defines your business objectives, your customers’ needs, and how your products can meet those needs. As your goals are defined, the steps of the process also track your implementation and progress toward your objectives. 

Mission Statement

The first step for strategic marketing planning is to outline your mission statement. We describe in the section below what a mission statement is and how to write it to effectively describe your business objectives. 

What is a Mission Statement?

How to write a mission statement.

A mission statement should be no more than three or four short sentences and should contain your long-term goals as a business. Your mission statement should be concise and inline with your North Star metric. Outline your objectives and ensure they can be measured. Then, break them out into examples so that your mission is clear. 

Situation Analysis

The second step is to evaluate the situation and analyze any internal or external factors that affect your business. Depending on your industry, these factors can incorporate a large number of possible aspects. Some examples of factors include:

• Industry competitors
• Available resources
• Current sales revenue
• Customer desire

Analysis Methods

Strengths might include competitive advantages, how your products stand out in the market, what you hope to improve or do with your services, or how your employees work together. Weaknesses might include limited resources, issues your business is facing internally, or areas where you aren’t reaching your goals.

Opportunities are external and therefore not under your control. It’s important to be aware of the socio-political climate to monitor your customers’ changing needs. For example, a company that produces cleaning products likely saw the COVID-19 pandemic as an external opportunity to take advantage of by producing more and increasing their advertising. Threats are the opposite of opportunities and present unpredictable problems that your company must notice and address immediately.

5C Analysis

The five Cs in the title refers to Company, Customers, Competitors, Collaborators, and Climate. These Cs include both internal and external factors to accurately analyze the entire situation for your business.

• Customers – Who are the people buying your products?
• Climate – What kinds of external factors affect your business?
• Competitors – Which other companies are producing similar products?
• Company – Do people know your brand name? What do they think of you?
• Collaborators – Do you work with distributors, suppliers, or other affiliated companies, and how do they affect your business?

PEST Analysis

A PEST Analysis measures the Political, Economic, Social, and Technological factors that affect your business. Unlike the previous analyses, the PEST Analysis only measures external factors, so we recommend using it in addition to another type of analysis that measures your internal factors, so you can have the complete picture of your business.

The political aspect looks at the laws and regulations that influence your customers and their purchasing habits—economics shows how the stock market, taxes, and exchange rates affect your services. Social demonstrates the attitudes and lifestyle demographics that define your customers. Technical examines any patents, technologies, or production trends that might influence your product.

Marketing/Strategy Plan

With the data you collected in the prior steps, you can start brainstorming which metrics you want to collect and leverage. Depending on your industry, some metrics may be more valuable than others.

How Does a Plan Help

With a marketing plan, you can identify the audience you want to appeal to and define the best ways to reach them. You’ll also be able to estimate how your marketing efforts will affect your business by predicting the rough costs and benefits.

What to Include in Your Plan

Ideally, your marketing plan should include overall cost, how you’ll place your product or brand among your competitors, and what your predictions for customer reactions are.

Using Kissmetrics, you can create a report documenting certain factors about your customers to see who is buying your product. You can also offer surveys and accept feedback from your customers to monitor their changing desires. Another option is to monitor social media interactions with your brand by your existing customers.

In order to see if your plan is working, you need measurable goals. The best goals are tangible, realistic, and have milestones for you to monitor during the timeline you choose. Your goals depend on what you want to achieve with your marketing plan. Do you want to grow your sales revenue? Brand awareness? Are you looking to increase the number of users on your website?

Be careful not to set any goals that are outside of your control. If you have a goal to increase the number of social media engagements on Twitter and a large number of people stop using that platform, you won’t be able to achieve the goal through no fault of your own.

Likely the first part of your marketing plan outlines the estimated budget. As with all plans, you should budget an extra amount for emergency funds, but you should be able to give a rough estimate of how much it will cost to create, implement, and monitor your plan.

Marketing Mix

Now that you’ve established what you want to achieve, who you are as a company, and what is happening inside and out of your business, it’s time to begin planning how you’ll actually accomplish your goals.

The first part is knowing what your company offers. What kind of product or service does your brand offer to your customers? How do you want them to interact with your offerings? The answers will dictate your metrics and how you measure your plan’s success. 

Knowing your customers also means knowing how much they’re willing to pay for what you have to offer. 

Promotion includes the platforms you plan on using to appeal to new and existing customers. Incorporating social media postings, a contact email, reviews, a phone number to call for support, and other communication methods are all essential for promoting your brand and spreading awareness. 

This aspect is more important for physical products because you’ll want to plan how you’ll get them to the customer. Are you planning to ship them from online orders? Will the customers need to come to your store to pick up their purchases? 

Implementation and Control

The final step means it’s time to put your plan into action. This means measuring your metrics over time and comparing them to your established objectives. As time goes on, you’ll likely need to come back to your marketing strategies to update them or change them in accordance with your company’s needs. 

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Strategic Marketing Plan Template & Examples

Imagine setting out to climb Mt. Everest guided only by intuition. You wouldn’t make it very far without a detailed plan (and an experienced sherpa) to guide the way. 

Marketing may not be an extreme sport with life-or-death consequences, but you’ve got big goals to reach nonetheless. And your team’s success relies on a lot more than gut instinct. 

That’s why a strategic marketing plan is a must, no matter your industry. Think of it as the roadmap that gets your business where it needs to go each and every year. 

Drafting your first marketing plan can feel intimidating, but don’t worry. We’ll walk you through the basics, show you what a strategic marketing plan looks like, and even give you a couple of free templates to get started. Here’s what we’ll cover:

What is a strategic marketing plan?

Essential elements of a strategic marketing plan, free marketing plan templates and examples.

Let’s start from square one and define what a strategic marketing plan is. 

A strategic marketing plan is a formal document that guides your team’s marketing efforts throughout the year. It maps your annual marketing goals to your company’s overall business objectives, while also outlining how you’ll spend your yearly marketing budget.

A good marketing plan clearly outlines:

• Your target market and key competitors
• Major goals for the year and how they’ll help you get ahead
• Key results that serve as indicators for success
• How you’ll use your money and resources to meet your goals 

Keep in mind that your plan may vary based on your industry and goals. Length and format don’t matter as much as the details you include. Do your research, and make it as easy as possible for company leaders to understand how your strategic marketing plan helps business grow.

What’s the difference between a marketing strategy vs. marketing plan?

A marketing strategy details how you’ll execute a piece of your marketing plan with a specific tactical goal in mind. You might do this by launching an email or social media campaign, publishing a blog series, offering a special promo, or hosting a live event. 

A marketing plan , on the other hand, is the high-level framework that drives all your marketing strategies. It’s a big-picture look at the who, what, and why behind your marketing goals, with a focus on tying them to larger organizational objectives. 

No two marketing plans are exactly the same, but they do share some common threads. Here are 6 important elements you’ll want to identify and research before you build out your next strategic marketing plan.

• Business objectives

Everything you do as a marketing team should support your company’s overall strategy and goals. So summarize your organization’s business objectives, and let it serve as your marketing plan’s true north. Your team and stakeholders should be able to clearly see how the marketing strategies and goals you outline in your plan align with your company’s top priorities.  

• SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis breaks down your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This enables you to assess both the internal and external factors that influence your success so you can build targeted strategies that close gaps and drive results. 

• Strengths and weaknesses : Take stock of your organization’s inner workings. Where does your team or company really shine? What’s working well, and what needs to be improved? Do you have any resource limitations?
• Opportunities and threats : Now look outward to consider your market and competition. Where do you have a chance to push ahead? Where are you struggling to keep up? Are there any market changes to consider?
• Market research

Research is the core of any marketing plan because it’s what you’ll use to shape your goals and strategy. Don’t be afraid to dive deep into the details here. A well-researched marketing plan is worth the time invested. 

Focusing your research energy on these areas will equip you with a solid base for smart marketing decisions.

It’s important to understand major movements in the industry you’re marketing to so you have a feel for the pulse of the market. Thoroughly research the industry your organization works in, and be sure to report on the general climate, as well as any noteworthy happenings. If your company serves any subindustries, don’t forget to include them in your analysis too. 

Target market

Marketing to the masses rarely pays off. That’s why narrowing down your target audience is a must for any marketing plan. Consider it the filter you run every marketing strategy through. 

The more specific you can get, the better. Answering questions like these can help you paint a clear picture of your ideal buyer so you know how to focus your resources for a bigger impact on the people you want to reach.

• What are your ideal buyer’s key demographics (e.g., age, location, job title)?
• What do they care about (e.g., interests, values)?
• What are their biggest challenges or pain points? 
• Where does your ideal buyer hang out (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, industry conferences or events)?

Competitive analysis

It’s also important to understand who and what you’re up against when it comes to attracting your perfect buyer. Identify the key players in your space, and give a brief rundown of what they’re doing to win. This groundwork will make it easier to see how to differentiate yourself from the competition. 

• Strategic marketing goals

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to talk strategy. Outline your strategic marketing goals for the year, and briefly explain how these strategies support company-wide goals. Use a gantt chart to establish a timeline for each goal and monitor results along the way. This is an easy way to set expectations and keep your team and stakeholders in the loop.

• Key marketing metrics

Metrics are where the rubber meets the road in your marketing plan. Use your market research to define specific KPIs or key marketing metrics that will serve as your measure for success. This will help you track progress so you know if you need to change course mid-project to ensure you hit your strategic marketing goals.

• Marketing channels

Marketing channels are the vehicles you’ll use to reach your target audience and grow your brand. Choose your channels wisely based on where you expect to get the most bang for your marketing buck. Briefly explain the purpose of each channel and how it supports your overall marketing strategy and business goals. 

Want to build a more detailed plan for each marketing channel so you can bring your ideas to life? Check out our free social media strategy plan and editorial content plan templates for more information on planning by channel. 

Marketing budget

Establishing a monthly budget for your marketing plan—and tracking it along the way—helps you maximize ROI and identify wasted spend before it drains your marketing dollars. 

Start by listing any ongoing expenses you have so you know what you can afford to spend on new initiatives. Then do your best to estimate any new costs you expect in the coming year. Don’t forget to account for any new hires, freelance workers, or third-party agencies you might need to rely on to get the work done. 

Not sure where to start? We’ve got you! Here are a few examples of how you might structure a marketing plan so you can easily start writing your own. 

Your marketing plan may shake out differently depending on the industry you work in or the goals you’re focused on. Use these marketing plan templates and samples as a guide to jumpstart the process and come up with a marketing plan structure that works for you. 

Google Docs marketing plan template and example

The most common way to create a marketing plan is simply to write it out as a text document. This format enables you to freely elaborate on any research findings you gathered during discovery, while also making a clear case for the marketing goals you’ve set for the year.

We put together a free Google Docs marketing plan template to help you save time so you can get your planning process off the ground faster. This marketing plan example is perfect for documenting and sharing the full scope of your strategic marketing plan with your team and stakeholders.

Here’s a basic breakdown of what the Google Docs marketing plan template covers:

• Company mission

Save a copy of the template to your Google Drive or download it as a Word document, and customize it to fit your own strategic marketing plan needs.  ‍

Use template in Google Docs

Gantt chart marketing plan template and examples

A plan’s no good if you set it and forget it. That’s where a gantt chart comes in handy. Use this free gantt chart marketing plan template to track your strategic marketing plan all the way to success. 

A gantt chart is a great way to lay your marketing plan out in a simple, visual timeline that’s easy to update as work progresses. It gives you a high-level view of your plan’s major goals and strategies, while enabling you to collaborate on and share your plan with your team and stakeholders.

How you use a gantt chart to put your plan into action is up to you. Build a timeline for the tasks you need to complete as you develop your marketing plan, like the example below. 

Once you’ve fleshed out the details of your marketing plan, you can use a gantt chart to define and track your strategic marketing goals. For example, you could break your marketing plan down by quarter to show when specific objectives will come into play and update progress as you close in on your goal. Here’s how that might look.

Use template in TeamGantt

Ready to build a strategic marketing plan of your own? 

We’ve created a free marketing plan template for you in TeamGantt so you can jump right in!

Customizing the template is quick and easy, thanks to TeamGantt’s drag and drop simplicity. And since everything’s online, your whole team can collaborate on activities in real time.

Here are a few pointers to help you get the most out of our free TeamGantt strategic marketing plan template.

Drag and drop tasks to schedule your plan

Configuring your marketing plan is as easy as dragging and dropping tasks—or entire task groups—into their new rightful place. Click and drag the edges of each taskbar to set a new task duration. 

Communicate with comments 

Collaboration is easy with TeamGantt's discussion feature . Share documents and chat with your team directly from a task’s Comments section. Use Notes to communicate important information—like goals, target audience, and budget—at the project level. 

Have a more formal marketing plan document? Attach the file or link to your project so everyone has easy access to it.

Share a copy with stakeholders

Plans are meant to be shared, so we made it easy to keep even the most inquisitive stakeholders in the loop. Export your plan to a printer-friendly PDF , or share a view-only link to your project so stakeholders can see your marketing plan progress in real time. 

Sign up for a free TeamGantt account today , and save time on project setup with this free marketing plan template!

What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write One [+Examples]

Published: December 27, 2023

For a while now, you've been spearheading your organization's content marketing efforts, and your team's performance has convinced management to adopt the content marketing strategies you’ve suggested.

Now, your boss wants you to write and present a content marketing plan, but you‘ve never done something like that before. You don't even know where to start.

Fortunately, we've curated the best content marketing plans to help you write a concrete plan that's rooted in data and produces results. But first, we'll discuss what a marketing plan is and how some of the best marketing plans include strategies that serve their respective businesses.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic roadmap that businesses use to organize, execute, and track their marketing strategy over a given period. Marketing plans can include different marketing strategies for various marketing teams across the company, all working toward the same business goals.

The purpose of a marketing plan is to write down strategies in an organized manner. This will help keep you on track and measure the success of your campaigns.

Writing a marketing plan will help you think of each campaign‘s mission, buyer personas, budget, tactics, and deliverables. With all this information in one place, you’ll have an easier time staying on track with a campaign. You'll also discover what works and what doesn't. Thus, measuring the success of your strategy.

Featured Resource: Free Marketing Plan Template

Looking to develop a marketing plan for your business? Click here to download HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template to get started .

To learn more about how to create your marketing plan, keep reading or jump to the section you’re looking for:

How to Write a Marketing Plan

Types of marketing plans, marketing plan examples, marketing plan faqs, sample marketing plan.

If you're pressed for time or resources, you might not be thinking about a marketing plan. However, a marketing plan is an important part of your business plan.

Marketing Plan vs. Business Plan

A marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics.

A business plan is also a strategic document. But this plan covers all aspects of a company's operations, including finance, operations, and more. It can also help your business decide how to distribute resources and make decisions as your business grows.

I like to think of a marketing plan as a subset of a business plan; it shows how marketing strategies and objectives can support overall business goals.

Keep in mind that there's a difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy.

Free Marketing Plan Template

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

• Pre-Sectioned Template
• Completely Customizable
• Example Prompts
• Professionally Designed

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy describes how a business will accomplish a particular goal or mission. This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software they'll use to execute that mission and track its success.

For example, while a greater plan or department might handle social media marketing, you might consider your work on Facebook as an individual marketing strategy.

A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It's the framework from which all of your marketing strategies are created and helps you connect each strategy back to a larger marketing operation and business goal.

For example, suppose your company is launching a new software product, and it wants customers to sign up. The marketing department needs to develop a marketing plan that'll help introduce this product to the industry and drive the desired signups.

The department decides to launch a blog dedicated to this industry, a new YouTube video series to establish expertise, and an account on Twitter to join the conversation around this subject. All this serves to attract an audience and convert this audience into software users.

To summarize, the business's marketing plan is dedicated to introducing a new software product to the marketplace and driving signups for that product. The business will execute that plan with three marketing strategies : a new industry blog, a YouTube video series, and a Twitter account.

Of course, the business might consider these three things as one giant marketing strategy, each with its specific content strategies. How granular you want your marketing plan to get is up to you. Nonetheless, every marketing plan goes through a particular set of steps in its creation.

Learn what they are below.

• State your business's mission.
• Determine the KPIs for this mission.
• Identify your buyer personas.
• Describe your content initiatives and strategies.
• Clearly define your plan's omissions.
• Define your marketing budget.
• Identify your competition.
• Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

1. State your business's mission.

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to state your mission. Although this mission is specific to your marketing department, it should serve your business‘s main mission statement.

From my experience, you want to be specific, but not too specific. You have plenty of space left in this marketing plan to elaborate on how you'll acquire new customers and accomplish this mission.

Need help building your mission statement? Download this guide for examples and templates and write the ideal mission statement.

2. Determine the KPIs for this mission.

Every good marketing plan describes how the department will track its mission‘s progress. To do so, you need to decide on your key performance indicators (KPIs) .

KPIs are individual metrics that measure the various elements of a marketing campaign. These units help you establish short-term goals within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.

Let's take our example of a marketing mission from the above step. If part of our mission is “to attract an audience of travelers,” we might track website visits using organic page views. In this case, “organic page views” is one KPI, and we can see our number of page views grow over time.

These KPIs will come into the conversation again in step 4.

3. Identify your buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a description of who you want to attract. This can include age, sex, location, family size, and job title. Each buyer persona should directly reflect your business's current and potential customers. So, all business leaders must agree on your buyer personas.

Create your buyer personas with this free guide and set of buyer persona templates.

4. Describe your content initiatives and strategies.

Here's where you'll include the main points of your marketing and content strategy. Because there's a laundry list of content types and channels available to you today, you must choose wisely and explain how you'll use your content and channels in this section of your marketing plan.

When I write this section , I like to stipulate:

• Which types of content I'll create. These might include blog posts, YouTube videos, infographics, and ebooks.
• How much of it I'll create. I typically describe content volume in daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly intervals. It all depends on my workflow and the short-term goals for my content.
• The goals (and KPIs) I'll use to track each type. KPIs can include organic traffic, social media traffic, email traffic, and referral traffic. Your goals should also include which pages you want to drive that traffic to, such as product pages, blog pages, or landing pages.
• The channels on which I'll distribute my content. Popular channels include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
• Any paid advertising that will take place on these channels.

Build out your marketing plan with this free template.

Fill out this form to access the template., 5. clearly define your plan's omissions..

A marketing plan explains the marketing team's focus. It also explains what the marketing team will not focus on.

If there are other aspects of your business that you aren't serving in this particular plan, include them in this section. These omissions help to justify your mission, buyer personas, KPIs, and content. You can’t please everyone in a single marketing campaign, and if your team isn't on the hook for something, you need to make it known.

In my experience, this section is particularly important for stakeholders to help them understand why certain decisions were made.

6. Define your marketing budget.

Whether it's freelance fees, sponsorships, or a new full-time marketing hire, use these costs to develop a marketing budget and outline each expense in this section of your marketing plan.

You can establish your marketing budget with this kit of 8 free marketing budget templates .

7. Identify your competition.

Part of marketing is knowing whom you're marketing against. Research the key players in your industry and consider profiling each one.

Keep in mind not every competitor will pose the same challenges to your business. For example, while one competitor might be ranking highly on search engines for keywords you want your website to rank for, another competitor might have a heavy footprint on a social network where you plan to launch an account.

Easily track and analyze your competitors with t his collection of ten free competitive analysis templates .

8. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

With your marketing plan fully fleshed out, it's time to explain who’s doing what. I don't like to delve too deeply into my employees’ day-to-day projects, but I know which teams and team leaders are in charge of specific content types, channels, KPIs, and more.

Now that you know why you need to build an effective marketing plan, it’s time to get to work. Starting a plan from scratch can be overwhelming if you haven't done it before. That’s why there are many helpful resources that can support your first steps. We’ll share some of the best guides and templates that can help you build effective results-driven plans for your marketing strategies.

Ready to make your own marketing plan? Get started using this free template.

Depending on the company you work with, you might want to create various marketing plans. We compiled different samples to suit your needs:

1. Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plans

These plans highlight the strategies or campaigns you'll take on in a certain period.

Forbes published a marketing plan template that has amassed almost 4 million views. To help you sculpt a marketing roadmap with true vision, their template will teach you how to fill out the 15 key sections of a marketing plan, which are:

• Executive Summary
• Target Customers
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Pricing & Positioning Strategy
• Distribution Plan
• Your Offers
• Marketing Materials
• Promotions Strategy
• Online Marketing Strategy
• Conversion Strategy
• Joint Ventures & Partnerships
• Referral Strategy
• Strategy for Increasing Transaction Prices
• Retention Strategy
• Financial Projections

If you're truly lost on where to start with a marketing plan, I highly recommend using this guide to help you define your target audience, figure out how to reach them, and ensure that audience becomes loyal customers.

2. Social Media Marketing Plan

This type of plan highlights the channels, tactics, and campaigns you intend to accomplish specifically on social media. A specific subtype is a paid marketing plan, which highlights paid strategies, such as native advertising, PPC, or paid social media promotions.

Shane Snow's Marketing Plan for His Book Dream Team is a great example of a social media marketing plan:

When Shane Snow started promoting his new book, "Dream Team," he knew he had to leverage a data-driven content strategy framework. So, he chose his favorite one: the content strategy waterfall. The content strategy waterfall is defined by Economic Times as a model used to create a system with a linear and sequential approach.

Snow wrote a blog post about how the waterfall‘s content strategy helped him launch his new book successfully. After reading it, you can use his tactics to inform your own marketing plan. More specifically, you’ll learn how he:

• Applied his business objectives to decide which marketing metrics to track.
• Used his ultimate business goal of earning $200,000 in sales or 10,000 purchases to estimate the conversion rate of each stage of his funnel.
• Created buyer personas to figure out which channels his audience would prefer to consume his content.
• Used his average post view on each of his marketing channels to estimate how much content he had to create and how often he had to post on social media.
• Calculated how much earned and paid media could cut down the amount of content he had to create and post.
• Designed his process and workflow, built his team, and assigned members to tasks.
• Analyzed content performance metrics to refine his overall content strategy.

I use Snow's marketing plan to think more creatively about my content promotion and distribution plan. I like that it's linear and builds on the step before it, creating an air-tight strategy that doesn't leave any details out.

3. Content Marketing Plan

This plan could highlight different strategies, tactics, and campaigns in which you'll use content to promote your business or product.

HubSpot's Comprehensive Guide for Content Marketing Strategy is a strong example of a content marketing plan:

At HubSpot, we‘ve built our marketing team from two business school graduates working from a coffee table to a powerhouse of hundreds of employees. Along the way, we’ve learned countless lessons that shaped our current content marketing strategy. So, we decided to illustrate our insights in a blog post to teach marketers how to develop a successful content marketing strategy, regardless of their team's size.

In this comprehensive guide for modern marketers, you'll learn:

• What exactly content marketing is.
• Why your business needs a content marketing strategy.
• Who should lead your content marketing efforts?
• How to structure your content marketing team based on your company's size.
• How to hire the right people for each role on your team.
• What marketing tools and technology you'll need to succeed.
• What type of content your team should create, and which employees should be responsible for creating them.
• The importance of distributing your content through search engines, social media, email, and paid ads.
• And finally, the recommended metrics each of your teams should measure and report to optimize your content marketing program.

This is a fantastic resource for content teams of any size — whether you're a team of one or 100. It includes how to hire and structure a content marketing team, what marketing tools you'll need, what type of content you should create, and even recommends what metrics to track for analyzing campaigns. If you're aiming to establish or boost your online presence, leveraging tools like HubSpot's drag-and-drop website builder can be extremely beneficial. It helps you create a captivating digital footprint that sets the foundation for your content marketing endeavors.

4. New Product Launch Marketing Plan

This will be a roadmap for the strategies and tactics you‘ll implement to promote a new product. And if you’re searching for an example, look no further than Chief Outsiders' Go-To-Market Plan for a New Product :

After reading this plan, you'll learn how to:

• Validate a product
• Write strategic objectives
• Identify your market
• Compile a competitive landscape
• Create a value proposition for a new product
• Consider sales and service in your marketing plan

If you're looking for a marketing plan for a new product, the Chief Outsiders template is a great place to start. Marketing plans for a new product will be more specific because they target one product versus its entire marketing strategy.

5. Growth Marketing Plan

Growth marketing plans use experimentation and data to drive results, like we see in Venture Harbour’s Growth Marketing Plan Template :

Venture Harbour's growth marketing plan is a data-driven and experiment-led alternative to the more traditional marketing plan. Their template has five steps intended for refinement with every test-measure-learn cycle. The five steps are:

• Experiments

I recommend this plan if you want to experiment with different platforms and campaigns. Experimentation always feels risky and unfamiliar, but this plan creates a framework for accountability and strategy.

• Louisville Tourism
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Visit Oxnard
• Safe Haven Family Shelter
• Wright County Economic Development
• The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County
• Cabarrus County Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Visit Billings

1. Louisville Tourism

It also divides its target market into growth and seed categories to allow for more focused strategies. For example, the plan recognizes Millennials in Chicago, Atlanta, and Nashville as the core of it's growth market, whereas people in Boston, Austin, and New York represent seed markets where potential growth opportunities exist. Then, the plan outlines objectives and tactics for reaching each market.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

• The plan starts with a letter from the President & CEO of the company, who sets the stage for the plan by providing a high-level preview of the incoming developments for Louisville's tourism industry
• The focus on Louisville as "Bourbon City" effectively leverages its unique cultural and culinary attributes to present a strong brand
• Incorporates a variety of data points from Google Analytics, Arrivalist, and visitor profiles to to define their target audience with a data-informed approach

2. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

For example, students who become prospects as freshman and sophomore will receive emails that focus on getting the most out of high school and college prep classes. Once these students become juniors and seniors — thus entering the consideration stage — the emails will focus more on the college application process and other exploratory content.

• The plan incorporates competitive analysis, evaluation surveys, and other research to determine the makeup of its target audience
• The plan lists each marketing program (e.g., direct mail, social media, email etc.) and supplements it with examples on the next page
• Each marketing program has its own objectives, tactics, and KPIs for measuring success

3. Visit Oxnard

This marketing plan by Visit Oxnard, a convention and visitors bureau, is packed with all the information one needs in a marketing plan: target markets, key performance indicators, selling points, personas, marketing tactics by channel, and much more.

It also articulates the organization’s strategic plans for the upcoming fiscal year, especially as it grapples with the aftereffects of the pandemic. Lastly, it has impeccable visual appeal, with color-coded sections and strong branding elements.

• States clear and actionable goals for the coming year
• Includes data and other research that shows how their team made their decisions
• Outlines how the team will measure the success of their plan

4. Safe Haven Family Shelter

This marketing plan by a nonprofit organization is an excellent example to follow if your plan will be presented to internal stakeholders at all levels of your organization. It includes SMART marketing goals , deadlines, action steps, long-term objectives, target audiences, core marketing messages , and metrics.

The plan is detailed, yet scannable. By the end of it, one can walk away with a strong understanding of the organization’s strategic direction for its upcoming marketing efforts.

• Confirms ongoing marketing strategies and objectives while introducing new initiatives
• Uses colors, fonts, and formatting to emphasize key parts of the plan
• Closes with long-term goals, key themes, and other overarching topics to set the stage for the future

5. Wright County Economic Development

Wright County Economic Development’s plan drew our attention because of its simplicity, making it good inspiration for those who’d like to outline their plan in broad strokes without frills or filler.

It includes key information such as marketing partners, goals, initiatives, and costs. The sections are easy to scan and contain plenty of information for those who’d like to dig into the details. Most important, it includes a detailed breakdown of projected costs per marketing initiative — which is critical information to include for upper-level managers and other stakeholders.

• Begins with a quick paragraph stating why the recommended changes are important
• Uses clear graphics and bullet points to emphasize key points
• Includes specific budget data to support decision-making

6. The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County

This marketing plan presentation by a cultural council is a great example of how to effectively use data in your plan, address audiences who are new to the industry, and offer extensive detail into specific marketing strategies.

For instance, an entire slide is dedicated to the county’s cultural tourism trends, and at the beginning of the presentation, the organization explains what an arts and culture agency is in the first place.

That’s a critical piece of information to include for those who might not know. If you’re addressing audiences outside your industry, consider defining terms at the beginning, like this organization did.

• Uses quality design and images to support the goals and priorities in the text
• Separate pages for each big idea or new strategy
• Includes sections for awards and accomplishments to show how the marketing plan supports wider business goals
• Defines strategies and tactics for each channel for easy skimming

7. Cabarrus County Convention & Visitors Bureau

Cabarrus County’s convention and visitors bureau takes a slightly different approach with its marketing plan, formatting it like a magazine for stakeholders to flip through. It offers information on the county’s target audience, channels, goals, KPIs, and public relations strategies and initiatives.

We especially love that the plan includes contact information for the bureau’s staff members, so that it’s easy for stakeholders to contact the appropriate person for a specific query.

• Uses infographics to expand on specific concepts, like how visitors benefit a community
• Highlights the team members responsible for each initiative with a photo to emphasize accountability and community
• Closes with an event calendar for transparency into key dates for events

8. Visit Billings

Visit Billing’s comprehensive marketing plan is like Cabarrus County’s in that it follows a magazine format. With sections for each planned strategy, it offers a wealth of information and depth for internal stakeholders and potential investors.

We especially love its content strategy section, where it details the organization’s prior efforts and current objectives for each content platform.

At the end, it includes strategic goals and budgets — a good move to imitate if your primary audience would not need this information highlighted at the forefront.

• Includes a section on the buyer journey, which offers clarity on the reasoning for marketing plan decisions
• Design includes call-outs for special topics that could impact the marketing audience, such as safety concerns or "staycations"
• Clear headings make it easy to scan this comprehensive report and make note of sections a reader may want to return to for more detail

What is a typical marketing plan?

In my experience, most marketing plans outline the following aspects of a business's marketing:

• Target audience

Each marketing plan should include one or more goals, the path your team will take to meet those goals, and how you plan to measure success.

For example, if I were a tech startup that's launching a new mobile app, my marketing plan would include:

• Target audience or buyer personas for the app
• Outline of how app features meet audience needs
• Competitive analysis
• Goals for conversion funnel and user acquisition
• Marketing strategies and tactics for user acquisition

Featured resource : Free Marketing Plan Template

What should a good marketing plan include?

A good marketing plan will create a clear roadmap for your unique marketing team. This means that the best marketing plan for your business will be distinct to your team and business needs.

That said, most marketing plans will include sections for one or more of the following:

• Clear analysis of the target market
• A detailed description of the product or service
• Strategic marketing mix details (such as product, price, place, promotion)
• Measurable goals with defined timelines

This can help you build the best marketing plan for your business.

A good marketing plan should also include a product or service's unique value proposition, a comprehensive marketing strategy including online and offline channels, and a defined budget.

Featured resource : Value Proposition Templates

What are the most important parts of a marketing plan?

When you‘re planning a road trip, you need a map to help define your route, step-by-step directions, and an estimate of the time it will take to get to your destination. It’s literally how you get there that matters.

Like a road map, a marketing plan is only useful if it helps you get to where you want to go. So, no one part is more than the other.

That said, you can use the list below to make sure that you've added or at least considered each of the following in your marketing plan:

• Marketing goals
• Executive summary
• Target market analysis
• Marketing strategies

What questions should I ask when making a marketing plan?

Questions are a useful tool for when you‘re stuck or want to make sure you’ve included important details.

Try using one or more of these questions as a starting point when you create your marketing plan:

• Who is my target audience?
• What are their needs, motivations, and pain points?
• How does our product or service solve their problems?
• How will I reach and engage them?
• Who are my competitors? Are they direct or indirect competitors?
• What are the unique selling points of my product or service?
• What marketing channels are best for the brand?
• What is our budget and timeline?
• How will I measure the success of marketing efforts?

How much does a marketing plan cost?

Creating a marketing plan is mostly free. But the cost of executing a marketing plan will depend on your specific plan.

Marketing plan costs vary by business, industry, and plan scope. Whether your team handles marketing in-house or hires external consultants can also make a difference. Total costs can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands. This is why most marketing plans will include a budget.

Featured resource : Free Marketing Budget Templates

What is a marketing plan template?

A marketing plan template is a pre-designed structure or framework that helps you outline your marketing plan.

It offers a starting point that you can customize for your specific business needs and goals. For example, our template includes easy-to-edit sections for:

• Business summary
• Business initiatives
• Target market
• Market strategy
• Marketing channels
• Marketing technology

Let’s create a sample plan together, step by step.

Follow along with HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template .

1. Create an overview or primary objective.

Our business mission is to provide [service, product, solution] to help [audience] reach their [financial, educational, business related] goals without compromising their [your audience’s valuable asset: free time, mental health, budget, etc.]. We want to improve our social media presence while nurturing our relationships with collaborators and clients.

For example, if I wanted to focus on social media growth, my KPIs might look like this:

We want to achieve a minimum of [followers] with an engagement rate of [X] on [social media platform].

The goal is to achieve an increase of [Y] on recurring clients and new meaningful connections outside the platform by the end of the year.

Use the following categories to create a target audience for your campaign.

• Profession:
• Background:
• Pain points:
• Social media platforms that they use:
• Streaming platforms that they prefer:

For more useful strategies, consider creating a buyer persona in our Make My Persona tool .

Our content pillars will be: [X, Y, Z].

Content pillars should be based on topics your audience needs to know. If your ideal clients are female entrepreneurs, then your content pillars can be: marketing, being a woman in business, remote working, and productivity hacks for entrepreneurs.

Then, determine any omissions.

This marketing plan won’t be focusing on the following areas of improvement: [A, B, C].

5. Define your marketing budget.

Our marketing strategy will use a total of [Y] monthly. This will include anything from freelance collaborations to advertising.

6. Identify your competitors.

I like to work through the following questions to clearly indicate who my competitors are:

• Which platforms do they use the most?
• How does their branding differentiate?
• How do they talk to their audiences?
• What valuable assets do customers talk about? And if they are receiving any negative feedback, what is it about?

7. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

Create responsible parties for each portion of the plan.

Marketing will manage the content plan, implementation, and community interaction to reach the KPIs.

• Social media manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Content strategist: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Community manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Sales will follow the line of the marketing work while creating and implementing an outreach strategy.

• Sales strategists: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Sales executives: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Customer Service will nurture clients’ relationships to ensure that they have what they want. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Project Managers will track the progress and team communication during the project. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Get started on your marketing plan.

These marketing plans serve as initial resources to get your content marketing plan started. But, to truly deliver what your audience wants and needs, you'll likely need to test some different ideas out, measure their success, and then refine your goals as you go.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in April 2019, but was updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure t o learn more about how we use AI.

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7 Steps to a strategic marketing plan

Table of Contents

Creating a strategic marketing plan is a vital part of any marketing process because a good marketing plan brings a competitive advantage and leads to commercial success .

Of course, whatever your marketing goal might be — you won’t arrive there in a day. 

You need to invest some time into careful planning, and — most importantly — you need to maintain realistic objectives. 

Luckily, there are certain steps you should go through if you want your plan to be successful. 

So, keep reading, as in this blog post we’ll give you a quick overview of the 7 steps to creating a strategic marketing plan. 

What is a marketing strategic planning process?

The strategic marketing planning process is a procedure a company goes through to arrive at a practical marketing plan. 

In other words, an actual marketing plan is the output of a marketing process. 

One of the main characteristics of a strategic marketing process is that it should focus on pursuing a concrete goal. This makes the process more feasible in the long run.

Planning processes are usually 1–3 years long. However, the length of the process often depends on the size of your company. 

Usually, larger companies need more time to implement any changes. 

This is because these processes are often highly formalized at large companies — and need to go through several predetermined stages before they can take effect.

💡 Plaky Pro Tip

Strategic planning can be a complex process, but it’s much easier if you put it in writing. In the post below, you’ll find a variety of strategic planning templates to fit everyone’s needs:

• 14 Free Strategic Planning Templates (2024)

7 Steps to a successful strategic marketing plan

Achieving a certain marketing goal is possible only if you develop a step-by-step strategy , which should be based on detailed research and solid data.

Understanding the crucial steps of the planning process will improve your chances of creating a winning strategy. 

Here are the 7 steps to creating a successful strategic marketing plan:

• Align your marketing goals with overall company objectives
• Research the market 
• Do the SWOT analysis 
• Determine you “marketing mix”
• Set a budget
• Pick a PM tool 
• Review and update

Step 1: Align your marketing goals with overall company objectives 

First and foremost, planning is all about creating a practical plan and pursuing a clear marketing goal. 

But, in order to do that, you first need to have a clear understanding of the company’s overall goals.

In the initial stage of your marketing process, you should determine your company’s primary mission , as well as the company’s values . 

If you’re not exactly sure how to do that, our advice is to start by answering some of these questions: 

• What do we plan to achieve? 
• What’s the purpose of our plan?
• What values do we keep to?
• What are our long-term goals and objectives?
• What’s our corporate vision?

You need to understand your company’s overall goals so that you can align your marketing objectives with them.

In addition, according to Malcolm McDonald , you should think of the company’s plans for the future, including:

• What the company will do,
• What the company might do, and
• What the company will never do.

If you want to find out more about setting goals in a company whose work involves project management, check out this blog post:

• How to define S.M.A.R.T. goals in project management

At this point, you probably have an overall idea of what you’re heading for. 

So, you can proceed to Step 2.

Step 2: Research the market

Having established your goals, it’s time to analyze external factors that could influence your marketing strategy — such as:

• Business environment 
• Market trends and consumer behavior
• Competition 

When it comes to the business environment , you should be aware of the current:

• Economic, 
• Political, 
• Social, and
• Cultural climate.

These factors could have a huge impact on the final outcome of your strategy. 

Furthermore, by understanding the market trends and consumer behavior , you directly increase the chances of your marketing plan’s success. While trends indicate recent developments in the marketplace, consumer behavior helps you understand consumers’ buying decisions and what drives them. 

On top of all, market research should include a competitive analysis.  

This means — determining major competitors, as well as comparing their products, pricing, and strengths and weaknesses. 

When analyzing competition, try focusing on the following questions:

• How much do they invest in brand positioning, promotions, and advertising?
• What are their distribution channels?
• What are their new or improved products?
• What makes a competitor stand out from others?
• How do you differ from competitors?

Having conducted the market research, you should be ready to take the next step — the SWOT analysis.

Step 3: Do the SWOT analysis

The SWOT analysis is a great way of analyzing your own company’s position by identifying internal strengths and weaknesses in relation to external opportunities and threats . 

Here’s how the SWOT analysis works on an example of a new type of branded sunglasses being introduced in the market. 

The brand in question, Isee , specializes in distributing eyeglasses. The brand has great online selling rates and wants to broaden its distribution to sunglasses. The demand for sunglasses is high, and the already-established famous brands, such as Ray-Ban and Oakley , are the main competitors. 

So, what does the SWOT analysis say?

The SWOT analysis should:

• Contain just a few paragraphs, focusing on key factors only 
• Include a summary of reasons for potential good or bad performance
• Be interesting to read
• Contain concise statements
• Include only relevant and important data

We hope these tips have helped you paint a clearer picture of what the SWOT analysis should look like. 

If the answer is yes — we can move on to the next step — determining your “marketing mix”.

Step 4: Determine your “marketing mix”

After you’ve determined your company’s objectives, as well as gathered all the necessary data, you’re ready to proceed to the next stage of the marketing planning process — creating the marketing strategy .

A successful marketing strategy is concerned with the marketing mix — the so-called ‘ four Ps ’ . 

The four Ps represent the factors you should take into account when working on your marketing strategy.

P #1: Product

To create a marketing strategy, a marketer first needs to understand the product, as well as all information on the product’s:

• Modifications, 
• Design, 
• Branding, 
• Positioning, and

P #2: Price

Marketers need to be well aware of the product’s price in relation to its value, so that they can justify it to potential customers.

When forming the price, you should consider the following:

• Supply costs,
• Seasonal discounts,
• Competitor’s prices, and
• Retail markup . 

P #3: Place

You also need to think about the best distribution channels for your product, i.e.:

• Physical stores, and\or
• Online stores.

Tip: Think of the place your product will gain the most attention, and reach its target audience — that’s the place you should provide.

P #4: Promotion

Finally, you need to think about how best to promote your product. 

You should determine the best communication channels with prospects, such as:

• Advertising, 
• Sales force ,
• Sales promotion,
• Exhibitions,
• Affiliate marketing ,
• Social networking, and\or
• Digital marketing.

Determining the ‘four Ps‘ leads you one step closer to a strategic marketing plan completion — now, you’re ready to set the budget. 

Step 5: Set a budget

At this point of your strategic marketing planning process, it’s good to determine everything that has to do with your current marketing expenditures , including:

• Advertising,
• Digital assets (e.g. a website, social media, visual content marketing ),
• Promotions,
• Marketing events, and
• Sponsorships.

Now is also the right moment to calculate the costs of the future marketing activities you’ve outlined in your marketing strategy.

Tip: Be especially careful when it comes to incremental marketing expenses , as those are all costs incurred after the product launch, other than those involved in its physical distribution. 

Most importantly, any form of discounting that reduces the expected gross income is considered an incremental marketing expense. 

This includes costs such as the following: 

• Promotional discounts, 
• Quantity discounts,
• Sales commission, and 
• Unpaid invoices.

After you’ve done the math — it’s time for the 6th step — picking a project management tool that will help you put your plan into motion.

Step 6: Pick a PM tool 

At this point, you probably think that managing a marketing plan is quite challenging. 

And, you’re mostly right. 

The marketing planning process requires you to stay on top of your tasks at all times. 

Apart from actually creating the strategy, a marketing planner should implement it — task by task .

Using a project management (PM) tool such as Plaky can make the entire process a lot easier. A project management tool is great for communication within your team, as well as managing and assigning individual tasks.  

Plaky also offers a pre-made marketing strategy plan template that can help you easily create your marketing strategy. 

This customizable template will save you valuable time and help you manage your strategic plan without having to start from scratch. 

Also, the template offers features such as: 

• Person field, 
• Status field, 
• Date field, and 
• Link field.

which will turn your marketing plan into an actionable plan.

In the Status field of the Plaky Strategy Plan template, you can manage tasks by priorities by assigning different statuses, such as: To Do, In progress, Done, and so on.

Also, you can assign tasks to one person or even add multiple people in the Assignee field . 

Moreover, the Due dates field allows you to track the progress of your strategic plan, as well as manage deadlines. 

The Tag field helps you manage your tasks by categories, while the Link field enables you to attach any files relevant to the marketing plan process.

Step 7: Review and update

The final step towards your marketing plan is quite simple — review and revise your plan , and be ready to make changes on the go.

As you’ve probably noticed, all the steps are tightly related to each other and shouldn’t be seen as independent, but as interconnected. This means they can and likely will affect each other.

Plus, it’s only normal that the external and internal factors change over time. 

That’s why it is important to update the plan when necessary.

It’s a good idea to do a monthly or quarterly review of your plan and make any necessary changes to prevent possible implementation pitfalls . 

As Nigel F. Piercy states in his book, Market-led Strategic Change , here are some of the things that could hinder the implementation of your strategy:

• Strategic drift – losing the focus of where our strategy leads us may result in failure
• Strategic ‘dilution’ – the lack of strong drive behind the strategy may cause managers to focus primarily on operational decisions rather than the strategic goals
• Initiative fatigue – having too many ‘top priority ’ projects leads to failure
• Impatience – expecting results too soon, and giving up, when we should’ve been patient
• Not celebrating success – not recognizing and rewarding milestones

Tool for managing marketing projects

Manage your marketing goals, budgets, and campaigns from start to finish, with Plaky.

Conclusion: The best strategic marketing plan is flexible 

To conclude, a strategic marketing plan isn’t supposed to be followed word-for-word, but it should rather serve as guidance.

In short, this is what your strategic marketing plan checklist should look like:

After you have checked all these boxes — congratulations, you should have your strategic marketing plan!

Last, but not least — don’t worry if everything doesn’t go exactly according to your plan, as here comes a final tip for all the perfections out there: the best strategic marketing plan is a flexible plan.

✉️ Can you think of any other important steps to creating a strategic marketing plan? If yes, feel free to contact us at [email protected] , and we may include your ideas in this or any other future blog posts.

Isidora is a project management author and researcher at Plaky. She graduated from the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade where she got her MA degree in English. Isidora’s guiding principle as a writer is to create reliable content enriched with both textbook and real-life examples.

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What Is a Marketing Strategy?

• How It Works
• Marketing Strategies vs. Plans

How to Create a Marketing Strategy

The bottom line.

• Marketing Essentials

Marketing Strategy: What It Is, How It Works, and How to Create One

Investopedia / Daniel Fishel

A marketing strategy refers to a business’s overall game plan to facilitate the buying and selling of its products or services. A marketing strategy determines how to reach prospective consumers and turn them into customers. It contains the company’s value proposition , key brand messaging, data on target customer  demographics, and other high-level elements.

A thorough marketing strategy covers the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.

Key Takeaways

• A marketing strategy is a business’s game plan for reaching prospective consumers and turning them into customers of their products or services.
• Marketing strategies should revolve around a company’s value proposition.
• The ultimate goal of a marketing strategy is to achieve and communicate a sustainable competitive advantage over rival companies.

Understanding Marketing Strategies

A clear marketing strategy should revolve around the company’s value proposition, which communicates to consumers what the company stands for, how it operates, and why it deserves its business.

This provides marketing teams with a template that should inform their initiatives across all of the company’s products and services. For example, Walmart ( WMT ) is widely known as a discount retailer with “everyday low prices,” whose business operations and marketing efforts are rooted in that idea.

Marketing Strategies vs. Marketing Plans

The marketing strategy is outlined in the marketing plan —a document that details the specific types of marketing activities that a company conducts and contains timetables for rolling out various marketing initiatives.

Marketing strategies should ideally have longer life spans than individual marketing plans because they contain value propositions and other key elements of a company’s brand, which generally hold constant over the long haul. In other words, marketing strategies cover big-picture messaging, while marketing plans delineate the logistical details of specific campaigns.

For example, a marketing strategy might say that a company aims to increase authority in niche circles where their clients visit. The marketing plan puts that into action by commissioning thought leadership pieces on LinkedIn.

Benefits of a Marketing Strategy

The ultimate goal of a marketing strategy is to achieve and communicate a sustainable competitive advantage over rival companies by understanding the needs and wants of its consumers. Whether it’s a print ad design, mass customization , or a social media campaign, a marketing asset can be judged based on how effectively it communicates a company’s core value proposition.

Market research can help chart the efficacy of a given campaign and can help identify untapped audiences to achieve bottom-line goals and increase sales.

Creating a marketing strategy requires a few steps. Here are some of the steps you should consider when creating your marketing strategy.

• Identify your goals: While sales are the ultimate goal for every company, you should have more short-term goals such as establishing authority, increasing customer engagement, or generating leads. These smaller goals offer measurable benchmarks for the progress of your marketing plan. Think of strategy as the high-level ideology and planning as how you accomplish your goals.
• Know your clients: Every product or service has an ideal customer, and you should know who they are and where they hang out. If you sell power tools, you’ll choose marketing channels where general contractors may see your messaging. Establish who your client is and how your product will improve their lives.
• Create your message: Now that you know your goals and who you’re pitching to, it’s time to create your message. This is your opportunity to show your potential clients how your product or service will benefit them and why you’re the only company that can provide it.
• Define your budget: How you disperse your messaging may depend on how much you can afford. Will you be purchasing advertising? Hoping for a viral moment on social media organically? Sending out press releases to the media to try to gain coverage? Your budget will dictate what you can afford to do.
• Determine your channels: Even the best message needs the appropriate venue. Some companies may find more value in creating blog posts for their website. Others may find success with paid ads on social media channels. Find the most appropriate venue for your content.
• Measure your success: To target your marketing, you need to know whether it is reaching its audience. Determine your metrics and how you’ll judge the success of your marketing efforts.

Why Does a Company Need a Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy helps a company direct its advertising dollars to where it will have the most impact. Compared with the data from 2018, the correlation between organization and success in marketers jumped from being almost four times more likely to almost seven times more likely in 2022.

What Do the Four Ps Mean in a Marketing Strategy?

The four Ps are product, price, promotion, and place. These are the key factors that are involved in the marketing of a good or service . The four Ps can be used when planning a new business venture, evaluating an existing offer, or trying to optimize sales with a target audience. It also can be used to test a current marketing strategy on a new audience.

What Does a Marketing Strategy Look Like?

A marketing strategy will detail the advertising, outreach, and public relations campaigns to be carried out by a firm, including how the company will measure the effect of these initiatives.

They will typically follow the four Ps. The functions and components of a marketing plan include market research to support pricing decisions and new market entries, tailored messaging  that targets certain demographics and geographic areas, and platform selection for product and service promotion—digital, radio, Internet, trade magazines, and the mix of those platforms for each campaign, and metrics that measure the results of marketing efforts and their reporting timelines.

Is a Marketing Strategy the Same as a Marketing Plan?

The terms “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” are often used interchangeably because a marketing plan is developed based on an overarching strategic framework. In some cases, the strategy and the plan may be incorporated into one document, particularly for smaller companies that may only run one or two major campaigns in a year. The plan outlines marketing activities on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis, while the marketing strategy outlines the overall value proposition.

Companies need to sell their products and services to generate revenue and put them on the path of being a successful business. To sell their products or services, they have to let consumers know of them. They must also convince consumers to buy them as well as convert consumers from competitors. Having a marketing strategy that outlines this process and more is a crucial step in converting consumers into customers.

Walmart Corporate. “ About .”

CoSchedule. “ Trend Report: Marketing Strategy 2022 .”

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The Marketing Planning Process: Step-by-Step Breakdown

Erica Chappell

Managing Editor

September 7, 2023

Want to learn about the different steps that go into the marketing planning process? Managing a marketing project is a bit like managing a fast-food restaurant.

You have a very limited time to prepare the product (campaign). And you have to coordinate with staff members who are handling completely different duties. If it’s done right, you’ll be attracting a ton of loyal (and hungry) customers.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the strategic marketing plan process , how you can implement it in your business, and the best tool to help you with the entire process.

What Is a Marketing Plan?

Benefits of the marketing planning process, 1. document your business goals, 2. conduct a marketing audit and research, 3. define your buyer persona, 4. set a budget, 5. identify a marketing tactic, 6. schedule the marketing campaign , who benefits from using a marketing plan.

Order up! Let’s go.

A marketing plan is a document that showcases your company’s marketing strategy for the upcoming month, quarter, or year.

Here’s what a marketing action plan contains when you unbox it:

• Your current marketing activity and position
• A detailed overview of your marketing goal and business goal
• A description of customer needs
• The metrics you need to track (ROI, number of potential customers, etc.)

And what happens when you create an amazing marketing plan? You’ll be able to stay focused on your marketing goal and also create an equally amazing marketing strategy. Here’s how you can create a marketing campaign that can make even the pros jealous!

Marketing efforts, when done right, can result in significant positive effects that can kickstart your business’s success. Here are a few benefits of proactive marketing planning .

Learn about the top marketing tools for new businesses !

Provides benchmarks and accountability

Through the planning process, you will be able to set benchmarks and create a roadmap for your marketing strategy to reach business goals. Making this visible allows the entire team to be accountable for their actions and tasks. It will also ensure everything runs smoothly as everyone knows what’s happening and how they need to work together.

Encourages team collaboration

Because the marketing planning process will likely run across departments and need a fair bit of collaboration, it opens up cross-departmental communication and unifies the organization. Also, getting your team involved early allows you to be realistic with your planning.

Reduces risk

Now, you have a marketing strategy. By having a planning process in place, you now have a framework to gain an overview of the target market, competitive advantage, and market segmentation. This allows you to be better prepared for risk factors that you might not have foreseen.

Challenges your beliefs and assumptions

Since business is always changing, having a marketing planning process allows you to keep adapting more effective strategies. By continually honing your marketing efforts, you might run across new tools and techniques, incorporate new ideas from different team members, and challenge your standard operating procedures .

What Are the Steps in the Marketing Planning Process?

Creating a marketing plan for the first time might seem like a convoluted process, but it’s actually super simple. The planning process becomes 100x easier to deal with when you break it down into these six steps:

• Document your business goals
• Do market research
• Define your buyer/client persona
• Set a marketing budget
• Identify a marketing tactic
• Schedule the marketing campaign  

Let’s take a closer look at each step.

Before planning a marketing strategy, you and your marketing team should ask your senior management to highlight your corporate objectives. 

Ideally, every large-scale business goal and objective should span 18-24 months. This gives you enough time to develop marketing initiatives that align with these overall business objectives.

Let’s say you’re the marketing manager for Los Pollos Hermanos from Breaking Bad. The business owner, Gus Fring’s business goal might be to increase restaurant revenue to $3 million in the next year.

You’ll need to create a SMART marketing goal that can contribute to his business goals. For example: 

• Gain 20% more repeat customers
• Increase hot chicken sandwich sales by 35%
• Boost shipment and distribution revenue for other products 😉

Curious about SMART goals? Check out our guide for tips on how to create a great business goal.

After you’ve decided on the goal, marketing project management tools like ClickUp can help you document and track them. In ClickUp, Goals are high-level containers that can be broken into smaller objectives, known as  Targets. Targets can be measured by units like numbers, $$$, true/false, and task lists.

Bonus: Marketing Tools for Small Businesses

When you meet your Targets, you achieve your marketing goal too. ClickUp automatically updates the progress percentage as you meet Targets in real-time. This can motivate your sales and marketing teams as they see the numbers rising every day!

Want to monitor more marketing metrics? 

ClickUp is loaded with features that your teams need to manage your project or marketing program. Its Dashboards are the way to go. Each unique dashboard offers a lot of Custom Widgets that let you track marketing KPIs and every marketing objective.

Track sales, conversion rates, social media engagement, and more, with a Line Chart, Bar Chart, Pie Chart, Battery Chart, or however you best visualize data!

Want to get there faster? Use the ClickUp Content Management Template to easily track your content goals, budgets, and resources all within one space. Get this content branding template for free !

It’s time for a serious throwback. You need to take a look at all the marketing decisions and initiatives that you’ve taken in the past few years. Additionally, you’ll also have to go through old reports to see which marketing tactics worked and which didn’t.

With the help of a marketing audit, you’ll be able to avoid the issues your marketing department has faced in the past. Take it from Gus: ClickUp Docs let your team collaborate in real-time on your audit, marketing research , and annual marketing plan documents; it’s like Google Docs , but way better!

Not only can you embed lists, tables, images, and videos, but you can also assign actionable tasks directly within a ClickUp Doc. And to make your job even easier, ClickUp lets you save your work as a marketing plan template that you can use later!

After the audit, you’ll need to determine where you’re currently placed in the market and market trends. Ask your team:

• Are your customers price-sensitive?
• Have new competitors slowed down your business growth?
• Do you have a competitive advantage over other businesses?

But why just limit feedback to your company?  Your customers and clients’ opinion matter too. 

After all, they’ll be using your products or services. With the Form view , you can create detailed customer survey forms faster than you can say Heisenberg . 

Choose from different fields of text, labels, questions, and more. ClickUp allows you to publicly share these forms, and it then collects responses within the tool. This way, you can directly take action on their responses by including their inputs in the marketing plan.

How well do you know your customers, really? In this phase, you’ll need to embrace market segmentation. What’s that?

Essentially, you’ll need to identify the different kinds of customers in your target market. Then you’ll have to narrow your focus to a specific target audience. After that, you’ll have to create a buyer persona. These are fictional representations of your ideal customer in your target market. Ask your team:

• Who is this person?
• What are their needs and priorities?
• How do they make decisions?
• Where do they work?
• How much do they earn?
• What do they like, and what do they absolutely hate?
• What media do they consume?

You’ll need to really get into their minds, so you can tailor your marketing strategy that appeals best to them. For example, Los Pollos Hermanos settles on a buyer persona named Walt, who’s a middle-aged high-school chemistry teacher. 

Now that you have an idea of who he is, how he behaves, and what he wants, you can market to him better! But how do you come up with a buyer persona? Two words: Mind Maps .

Drawing Mind Maps in ClickUp can help your marketing team organize your thoughts and ideas when creating a persona . Just place a central idea and add relevant thoughts when they pop up. 

And remember the more detailed the persona Mind Map, the better. Knowing your customers well will allow you to create a personalized yet strategic marketing plan that connects to your target audience.

You might have tons of cool strategic marketing ideas, but if they don’t fall into your marketing budget, it would be almost impossible to execute them. And even if you do break the bank to work on them, there are no guarantees that you’ll be rolling in dough in the end.

So how much should you spend on your strategic marketing plan? Allocating 7-15% of your company’s income to your marketing department is ideal, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all rule. 

However, keep in mind that any initial marketing activity can be expensive. This includes getting a logo , branding , and creating a campaign from scratch. How do you track all your marketing expenses?

In ClickUp, every task can have additional details called Custom Fields . With these fields, you can record data like phone numbers, labels, checkboxes, and more.

In this case, you can track the budget, and cost of each marketing activity and task with the ‘Money’ field. What’s more is that with Column Calculations , you can automatically add up your spending to see whether it’s in line with your budget.

So no more half-measures when you’re creating your strategic marketing plan!

Bonus: Marketing calendar software !

Now that you know exactly what your customers are like, it’s time to choose the right distribution channels where they spend most of their time. After all, your target audience has to see your ad, right?

Let’s take a few platforms where you can implement your strategic plan , and the best tactics for each:

• Blogs: Content marketing + Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Facebook/Instagram : Social media marketing + Influencer marketing
• Google: SEO + Search Ads
• Newspapers: Print advertising 
• Television: Commercials + Sponsorships

Let’s look back at Walt’s persona. Since we determined that he gets all his news from TV, our marketing effort should focus on creating a wonderful commercial:

Remember that the message of your strategic marketing campaign should reflect customer needs. In this case, this commercial should reassure their target audience that their food is high-quality and fresh—99.99% fresh.

However, you don’t have to focus all your tactics on one single platform. A healthy marketing mix between offline and online media ensures everyone gets your message. Now, it’s up to your marketing team to decide which route they want to take.  For example, you can create and publish new content on your blog, host automated webinars , and at the same time promote offline content to convert your audience. With ClickUp’s Chat view , you can discuss tactics, and sales deals, attach images/videos, and assign tasks in your marketing mix.

Now we’ve finally reached the end of the strategic marketing planning process . After you’ve got the marketing plan locked down, it’s time to list all the tasks that need to be done in order to pull it off.

How do you do it?

With ClickUp’s Gantt Charts , you can create a dynamic timeline of your marketing campaign activities from start to finish. The Gantt view lets you visualize the start and end dates for each task, and any important milestones along the way.

With Task Dependencies , you can indicate the sequence in which you want to complete your tasks. All you have to do is draw a line between two tasks, and you’re done!

Now, your marketing team won’t be able to work on a dependent task until they’ve cleared the preceding task. Need to work on a digital marketing calendar ? You can schedule all your marketing activities through ClickUp’s Calendar view .

It’s super easy to schedule posts or tasks, and adjust due dates—all you have to do is drag and drop.

Note: Since the strategic marketing process requires your team to be quick on their feet, ClickUp offers marketing plan templates for your content calendar , SEO management , campaign tracking , promotional calendar , A/B testing , and graphic design processes . 

Just apply the marketing plan template, and you’re ready to start planning in seconds! However, note that ClickUp isn’t just built for the strategic planning process ; it can help with every marketing process from execution to monitoring. 

So, ClickUp has more features ? Here’s what ClickUp has to offer:

• Flexible views : visualize your tasks in a to-do list , Kanban board , or a Calendar
• Assigned comments : change a comment into an actionable task and assign it to a team member
• Collaboration Detection : know when your coworker is working on the same task or Doc as you
• Pulse : see what your team is doing in real-time; great for remote teams
• Agile Dashboards : monitor Agile and Scrum metrics with diagrams like Velocity Charts , Burndown Charts , Burn-up Charts , etc.
• Team Reporting : track and monitor your team’s performance and progress
• Automations : speed up your strategic marketing process by automating repetitive tasks and marketing workflows
• Integrations : allows you to connect with other important work software like Slack, Google Drive , and Outlook
• Mobile Apps : dynamic iOS and Android apps to help you manage projects on the run
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Get Planning on Your Marketing Strategy With ClickUp

So what’s the secret behind running a great strategic planning session? All you need to do is figure out what your customers want, set a time and resource budget, brainstorm the best way to serve your customers, and that’s it. We told you, it’s just like the restaurant business. 😁 

And as most restaurants have sophisticated equipment to help you out, you’ll need a dedicated marketing automation software and project tool like ClickUp to help you out too! From Goal Trackers to Dashboards and Timelines , it’s got everything you need you to get started with your marketing plans.

Get ClickUp for free today, and cook up the perfect marketing campaigns!

Want more tips? Read our expert roundup to get more marketing management ideas .

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Business Management & Marketing

What is a strategic marketing plan process & example, introduction .

Many businesses and companies consider marketing as a way of advertising a company’s products/services on various platforms. It’s a bit oversimplified approach and it would consume a lot of your marketing budget. However, developing a strategic marketing plan is the key to achieve your marketing goals. Today, we’ll discuss what is a strategic marketing plan; and the strategic marketing planning process. l

What is a Strategic Marketing Plan? 

The strategic marketing plan (SMP) is the process of developing a marketing strategy that discusses your marketing goals, how and when you’re planning to meet those goals, and who would create metrics. The SMP provides the founding of developing long-term marketing decisions. 

Strategic Marketing vs. Marketing Plan 

The top-level management provides direction to the business in the form of a strategic marketing plan. The SMP acts as a blueprint for the marketing plan and guides that how the company should implement its strategy. Under the surface of SMP, you’ll find a marketing plan providing tactics to achieve them. 

Many SMEs abruptly launch marketing without developing strategic marketing and marketing plans first. It results in the form of consumption of a plethora of resources without getting anything in return. 

Strategic Marketing Planning Process 

After discussing what is a strategic marketing plan; it’s time to discuss the strategic marketing planning process. It comprises of series of steps, and those steps are as follows; 

Mission 

First of all, you should recognize and comprehend the mission statement of the company and you may find its cliché slogan across the organization. If you don’t find it, then you should talk to the company’s stakeholders and ask them about the reason for its existence. They would tell you why the company is running the business and how it’s benefiting the customers. 

Mission statements are sometimes inspiring, aspiring, and motivating for the company’s stakeholders. Or they tell people what they are in simple words. However, you can’t develop a company’s marketing strategy without comprehending its mission statement and the reason of its doing the business. 

The mission statement of  IKEA  is as follows; 

“At IKEA, our vision is to create a better everyday life for many people. Our business idea supports this vision by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.”

In short, the mission statement delivers the key message that impacts your marketing strategy. Some of the questions that you should ask while analyzing the mission statement are as follows; 

• Why the company is doing this line of business 
• The purpose and goal of doing the business 
• The strategic influence on your business 
• The desired public image of your organization 
• How the company’s mission statement is influencing the marketing strategy
• How the mission statement is uniting the marketing team

Situation Analysis 

Situation analysis means that you should analyze internal and external factors that are impacting your business and market. The analysis would help you to focus on internal strengths, the challenges company is facing, internal resources, and external competitors. It offers a clear view of the health of your business so that you could comprehend the company’s market position, industry trends, and potential customers. 

You can conduct the situation analysis in many ways.  Swot analysis  is a very famous analytical tool for studying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. However, strengths and weaknesses are the controllable internal factors, while opportunities and threats are the uncontrollable external factors. 

• Strengths:  how well your business is doing, its competitive advantage, factors that you can control, and superiority of your products/services in the market. 
• Weaknesses:  what areas where your company is not performing well, resources impacting the success of your business, and what factors are stopping you to succeed. 
• Opportunities:  the untapped areas of the market that you haven’t exploited yet, taking advantage of the new market trends, and the growing potential for new businesses
• Threats:  the obstacles business is facing in the market, political/economical/social/technological/legal factors are impacting the company. 

5C analysis is another famous tool of analyzing the company and market like swot analysis. Some of the main elements of the 5C analysis are as follows; 

• Company:  your successful product/service line, the image of your company in the market, the effectiveness of your company in terms of achieving goals, and how the company’s culture is impacting your performance. 
• Consumers:  the market size of your target audience, growth of your customer market, the eagerness of customers to buy your product/service, sale trends, and changing buying pattern of customers. 
• Competitors:  future, indirect, and direct competitors of your business, product/service and market share of competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, and their market position. 
• Collaborators:  agencies, partners, distributors, and suppliers of your business, growth of your business, and stability of your business impacting the success. 
• Climate : regulations and government policies impacting your business, inflation and interest rate impacting it, market trends, the impact of technology, and how you can use technology to gain a competitive edge. 

Planning/Marketing Strategy 

The company/market analysis helps you to recognize the potential opportunities available in the market. Now, you should map out the plan that how you should pursue those opportunities. It means that you have to write a marketing plan focusing on the target customers that how you would approach them and forecast the expected results. Keep in mind the following questions; 

• How you would reply to competitors 
• The cost of your marketing plan 
• The reply of customers towards your marketing plans 

The situation analysis and the marketing research would give you sufficient data to establish a plan. 

Defining Target Audience 

Only some companies recognize the needs and want of the customer market. You should divide the market into different segments relevant to your strengths and opportunities. It’s to recognize customers and you can choose the target market based on demographic, behavior, and other characteristics. It’s significant to remember that you should define the target customer market and it has the capability to support your product/service. 

However, it’s probable that you would have some information about your target customer market from the situation. It is better that you should conduct thorough market research to recognize the needs and wants of customers. It would allow you to develop a profile of your target customers. The more you know your customers, the better you can develop a product/service for them. 

Goal Setting 

If you want to develop successful goals, then you should create measurable and specific goals. If you want to increase the sale of your business, then you should set the goals that would deliver you the results on time. In short, your goals should be realistic, attainable, and achievable that you can measure their performance. Make sure to create the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-oriented) goals. 

Marketing Budget 

After developing the plan, it’s time to implement your plans. While doing so, your marketing budget should include various costs like staffing costs, public relations, branding, online content, advertising, and much more. When it comes to it, then you have to make some tough decisions in terms of prioritizing it into various areas. Or you can create an affordable marketing budget, make sure that it should be relevant to your budget. 

Marketing Mix 

The marketing mix comprises four elements; product, price, place, and promotion. It means that you have to conduct the market research of developing the product relevant to your target customer market and choosing the right channels to deliver the message to the customers. 

• Product:  it means devising the features of your product, it is packaging, warranties, service/support, quality, and branding. 
• Price:  it includes terms and conditions, how flexible you’re, payment period, commission, perceived value, discount, and the list price. 
• Place:  it comprises storage facility, transportation, outlet location, and distribution channels. 
• Promotion:  it means publicity of your brand and product/service, sales, public relations, and advertising channel. 

Implementation & Control 

After developing the marketing strategy and allocating the budget, it is time to implement your plan into action. Here you approach customers and convince them to buy your product. Next, you keep on marketing the product, organizing resources and people to keep things on track, and managing goals. If you keep on evaluating the goals on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, then it would help you to be focused. 

You should keep in mind that the strategic marketing planning process is dynamic and you have to evaluate the performance of your goals regularly. It helps you to see whether you’re achieving your goals or not in terms of website visitors, customer satisfaction, sales, revenue, and other metrics so that you could make adjustments accordingly. 

Example of Strategic Marketing Planning Process 

Here’s an example of the strategic marketing plan, and its various steps in the strategic marketing planning process are as follows; 

• Mission:   Apple has a mission of developing high-quality innovative products 
• Situation Analysis:  Apple gains a competitive edge with its commitment to comprehend the needs and wants of customers, promoting the culture of collaboration, and developing products that are relevant to its mission. 
• Marketing Strategy:  Apple has established the reputation of being the market leader by firstly launching new products in the market, and the brand depends on its loyal customers to try out its new offer. 
• Marketing Mix:  Apple provides a vast range of products for customers to choose from and the company follows a strict protocol for the distribution of its products
• Implementation & Control:  Apple offers the products/services in the same product line and they all complement each other. The company creates brand loyalty and the customers expect the same from the company. 

Conclusion: What is a Strategic Marketing Plan? 

After an in-depth study of what is a strategic marketing plan and the strategic marketing planning process, we’ve concluded that strategic marketing helps businesses to develop and achieve effective long terms goals. If you want to learn about the SMP, then follow and practice the abovementioned process. 

Ahsan Ali Shaw is an accomplished Business Writer, Analyst, and Public Speaker. Other than that, he’s a fun loving person.

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Strategic Marketing: Definition, Importance And Process

The channels and practices undertaken to ensure maximum sales while satisfying consumers sum up marketing as a concept. Marketing is…

The channels and practices undertaken to ensure maximum sales while satisfying consumers sum up marketing as a concept. Marketing is an essential aspect of doing business—in fact, it’s often called the backbone of business. Removing marketing from the equation automatically eliminates trade, and without trade, there’s no business. 

Given that every consumer has a different set of needs and preferences, it’s important to research, identify and study the type of consumers who have better chances of reacting favorably to a product. This exercise allows for building a marketing strategy unique to that product. This is strategic marketing . 

What Is Strategic Marketing?

Strategic marketing objectives  , process of strategic marketing, difference between strategic marketing and marketing strategy, important pointers for strategic marketing, importance of strategic marketing.

A growing number of organizations are now employing strategic marketing . It’s only natural, as strategic marketing presents them with the opportunity to outperform their competitors. Yet, there isn’t enough clarity as to what strategic marketing is. 

Under strategic marketing , organizations evaluate their positives (both present and potential) over their competition through the lens of their targeted consumers’ perception of them. Building on this allows organizations to provide better service and value to their consumers while creating an image that differs from their competitors. Successful application of strategic marketing into the marketing plan first requires answering these three questions:

• Where to compete: Determining markets suitable for competition
• How to compete: Determining the core element of an organization’s competitive advantage
• When to compete: Determining when and how to enter each suitable market

Understanding these tasks through research and analysis helps fulfill the role of strategic marketing. The role of strategic marketing is defined as determining what a business needs to be and become to consistently beat competitors by consistently delivering better value. After answering the questions mentioned above, you can advance to the next stage—the strategic marketing planning stage.

The strategic marketing objectives are fundamentals that give meaning to what the process of strategic marketing is known for. The strategic marketing objectives are as follows: 

• Drawing attention to what an organization is best known for
• Focused promotion for specific consumer groups
• All-around marketing using all available channels 

With these objectives in mind, the process of strategic marketing can be executed with a more tactical edge. 

Though each phase seems to perform differently, all are interdependent. This makes the strategic marketing approach a full-circle process. The findings and results of each phase in the strategic marketing process meet the goals set by the previous one until the objective in the planning phase is achieved. Let’s break down the process of strategic marketing into its separate phases: 

1. Planning

Planning is the first phase of the strategic marketing process. This phase is the most important because it lays down the groundwork for the subsequent phases. Here, identification and assessment are key. Goals, merits and shortcomings are identified while assets and liabilities are assessed. It’s divided into three steps:

• SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat. Using a SWOT analysis brings out an organization’s strengths, uncovers its weaknesses, identifies possible opportunities and reveals threats that may hinder progress.

This analysis proves beneficial in identifying the direction in which an industry is moving, understanding prevailing trends and gaining an approximate assumption of how well an organization might perform against competitors. A proper SWOT analysis becomes a major factor in developing a strategic marketing proposal for an organization.

• Marketing Mix

A marketing mix is a popular business model organizations use to formulate and pursue their marketing activities. It comprises four key factors, namely: product, price, place and promotion. These are also known as the 4Ps of marketing.

Here, it’s the next step in the planning phase. A marketing mix will help meet objectives brought to light in the strategic marketing proposal based on the SWOT analysis conducted. It aims to strengthen the organization on selling and brand fronts by focusing on its 4Ps.

Product will focus on what commodity or service is being planned for launch by the organization. It’ll involve research into the various aspects of the product, from its packaging to features and after-sales service, and work on developments on responses from focus groups.

Price focuses on the price point planned for the sale of the product. Based on research, factors such as flexibility, discount and anticipated value are to be taken into account.

Place focuses on the most advantageous channels of distribution (online, offline or telemarketing), key advertising locations for assuring maximum exposure and transit and storage.

Promotion is the process of identifying and implementing how the product will be advertised and introduced into the market.

• Setting Goals

Establishing achievable and measurable goals for a product boosts teamwork and efficiency in having them met and, therefore, is one of the best ways to achieve success for the product.

This phase helps in presenting management with a clear vision of the product’s current standing and the organization’s image. It’s a critical phase that ensures smooth progression.    

2. Implementation

As the name implies, this phase is where the strategic marketing proposal and all the data generated from the planning phase are implemented. Based on the data collected, it places a product’s launch into the planned market at a carefully determined price.

3. Evaluation

This phase can be seen as a review of the entire process. Based on the statistical data gathered from the sales in the second phase, the figures are evaluated with a plan to see if they live up to expectations. If yes, then the strategic marketing process has been successfully implemented. If the result is dissatisfactory, the plan needs to be worked on again.

With evaluation, this process completes a cycle. Another cycle of strategic marketing begins right after, and it is built upon the results of the preceding cycle.

The difference between strategic marketing and marketing strategy will help shed light on what sets them apart, so as to better understand how to best make use of each of these processes:

• Strategic marketing is aimed to have a lasting impact over a long time frame (three years), while a marketing strategy is effective over a shorter time frame (one year)
• Strategic marketing is built with the idea to steer an organization in the right direction, while a marketing strategy focuses on branding and publicizing the organization
• The strategic marketing process is concerned with personnel at a corporate level, while the marketing strategy process is concerned with personnel at the product manager level 

Strategic marketing, therefore, is very different from marketing strategy. While marketing strategy is formulated keeping the brand in focus, strategic marketing is a 360-degree approach to the organization’s entire marketing plan.

The following points must be kept in mind to ensure smooth execution of the strategic marketing process:

• A strategic marketing proposal must be built only after a thorough market analysis
• Avoid assumption of consumers’ needs and wants
• Product goal and plan objectives must be in accordance with consumer expectations
• SWOT analysis must be carefully cross-checked for any factual errors
• Budgeting issues due to fluctuating marketing activities can arise, so room for adjustments must be kept in mind

In addition to understanding the process, these pointers serve as helpful suggestions for better understanding and implementing the activities involved in strategic marketing. 

  Importance Of Strategic Marketing

The importance of strategic marketing can be seen in marketing plans. Plans built incorporating strategic marketing have proven integral to organizations when aiming for good reception on factors concerning product and brand name as well as retaining and gaining a growing consumer base and more. The ability of this process to refine organizational objectives sheds light on the importance of strategic marketing , Following are the ways that illustrate the importance of strategic marketing :

• By understanding where an organization stands in comparison to competitors and what trends prevail in the target market, strategic marketing smoothens the entry of an organization in a market. It ensures easy setting of its product’s sure-footing in the market.
• Data from strategic marketing plans give clarity on the current status of an organization’s resources. This helps in planning resource utilization better.
• Research and analysis conducted under strategic marketing provide important information on what updates are needed for a product to yield the highest profits with maximum customer satisfaction.
• Using strategic marketing, it becomes easy to identify and study groups that will have the most positive feedback on a product. This aids organizations by drawing their attention from a wide and varied spectrum of consumers to understanding a more narrowed down and suitable group of customers. Thus, organizations can work more efficiently on consumer engagement options.
• Strategic marketing maximizes sales targets by helping organizations determine and perform in areas they’re most suited to excel in. 

Put simply, the strategic marketing process has an equal impact on the outward performances of an organization as much as it affects its interior functioning. This makes strategic marketing plans an important factor for the marketing schemes of organizations.

Understanding and using a strategic marketing process is an advisable and highly sought-after approach, but doing so effectively can prove to be a challenge. Harappa’s Create New Solutions pathway is designed with the tools to aid this pursuit so that eager business minds are conditioned to formulate the best strategic marketing plans for maximizing chances of success. Sign up today! 

Here’s how to make sure both you and your patients know what makes your practice special .

REBECCA ANWAR, PhD, AND JUDY CAPKO

Fam Pract Manag. 2001;8(10):39-43

For many physicians, marketing is simply a matter of putting an advertisement in the local newspaper, redecorating the waiting room or conducting a direct mailing to people in the community. But this is a haphazard approach that will accomplish little more for your practice than draining its marketing budget.

The key to successfully marketing your practice begins with developing a strategic marketing plan in which each activity is based on solid research and specific goals, and is implemented and carefully evaluated in a timely manner. The plan serves as a road map to help you achieve your marketing goals.

Why should you market your practice?

Some physicians still feel that marketing is at best unprofessional and at worst unethical. In fact, good marketing is no more than educating your patients and your community about your expertise and services, and there are a wide range of reasons for doing it, not all of which have a purely financial basis. However, if you do want to determine the value of each new patient to your practice, calculate the average of the revenue that 10 new patients generated during their first 12 months with you.

You might consider marketing your practice for any or all of the following reasons: to increase your income, expand your patient base, discourage competition, improve your practice image, promote current and new services, introduce new providers, enter a new marketplace or gain or retain market share. Whatever your motivation, make sure to get your staff involved right from the start. Share your reasons for marketing with them, and ask them for their ideas. If your staff is not involved early, it will be difficult to convince them to support the marketing plan and take on any additional work that comes with it.

The elements of a plan

There are nine major steps required to develop a well-crafted, strategic marketing plan: set your marketing goals, conduct a marketing audit, conduct market research, analyze the research, identify your target audience, determine a budget, develop specific marketing strategies, develop an implementation schedule for the strategies and create an evaluation process.

1. Set your marketing goals. Once you’ve decided to market your practice, you need to set realistic and measurable goals to achieve over the next 18 to 24 months. This time span allows you to plan activities around community events that are in line with your marketing goals. For example, you might help sponsor an annual walkathon for breast cancer or speak at your community’s annual health fair. Because of the rapid changes occurring in the health care environment, we don’t recommend planning specific activities more than two years in advance. One way to define your goals is to separate them into the following three categories: immediate, one to six months; short-term, six to 12 months; and long-term, 12 to 24 months. Here are some examples of measurable goals:

Increase the number of new patients seen in the practice by 5 percent within the first six months and 10 percent by the end of the first year.

Shift your patient mix by expanding the pediatric and adolescent patient base from 15 percent to 25 percent of total patient visits within 18 months.

Increase your gross revenue by 30 percent within 24 months.

Improve your practice’s image, which may be measured by “before” and “after” scores on a community survey or by reviews from focus group participants.

It’s important to share these goals with your staff members. They can tell you from their perspectives whether they believe the goals are reasonable. If you want your marketing plan to be successful, your staff needs to support your efforts to achieve the marketing goals.

Marketing can increase your income, introduce new providers or improve your practice image, among other things.

A strategic marketing plan requires you to define your practice in terms of what it does for patients.

Every goal, strategy and action in your marketing plan is subject to change as you evaluate your progress.

2. Conduct a marketing audit. A marketing audit is a review of all marketing activities that have occurred in your practice over the past three years. Be as thorough as possible, making sure to review every announcement, advertisement, phonebook ad, open house, brochure and seminar and evaluate whether it was successful.

3. Conduct market research. The purpose of market research is to draw a realistic picture of your practice, the community you practice in and your current position in that community. With this research, you can make fairly accurate projections about future growth in the community, identify competitive factors and explore nontraditional opportunities (such as offering patients nutritional counseling, smoking-cessation programs or massage therapy). Your research may even bring to light some problem areas in your practice as well as solutions you can implement right away. (See “ A guide to market research ” to find out what kind of information you need to gather and where to find it.)

Conducting market research is often the most time-consuming step in this process. However, it’s also one of the most important steps. It’s from this research that you’re able to find out what your practice does best and what you need to work on, what the needs of your community are, who your practice should be targeting and how you should go about it.

4. Analyze the research. Next, you need to analyze the raw data you collect and summarize it into meaningful findings that will be the foundation for determining which marketing strategies make the most sense and will get the best results for your practice The research will identify the wants and needs of your current and potential patients and will help you to define your target audience (for more on target audiences, see step 5, below). This is also a good time to look back at the goals you’ve chosen. Based on your research findings, you may need to modify some of your goals.

A strategic marketing plan requires that your practice be defined in terms of what it does for patients. The research analysis will reveal your practice’s strategic advantages. After looking closely at your own practice as well as your competitors’, you can ask yourself some key questions: What are the similarities and differences between your practice and your competitors’? What sets your practice apart from your competition? Is your location more desirable than your competitors’? Do you offer a broader scope of services than the competition? Is there a service you provide that no one else in the community currently offers? Your competitive edge may lie in your style of practice, the range of services you offer, the ease of making an appointment or the way you and your staff communicate with patients.

A GUIDE TO MARKET RESEARCH

To gather the kind of information you need to develop a strategic marketing plan for your practice, you need to conduct market research on your practice, your competition and your community. You can’t rely on intuition, judgment and experience; your practice needs hard data. Although it will take some time to gather this information, a number of resources are available that can make the process easier for you.

Your practice

Much of the information you need about your own practice can be found through discussions with staff members and other physicians, or by reviewing your patient records. You can also find out about your practice and whether it’s meeting the needs of your current patients by asking them to fill out a patient survey about the practice. Here are some of the questions you need answered about your practice:

What is the background and history of your practice? Has it been in the current community for a long time?

What are your practice’s strengths and weaknesses? Are there problems with scheduling, cancellations, staff turnover or reimbursement management?

Who are your current patients in terms of their age, sex, ethnic origin, type of insurance coverage, chief complaints and where they live?

What are the services provided by your practice? Who needs these services? Are these needs changing?

How is your practice perceived by your patients?

Your competition

You need to find out who your competitors are and what they have to offer. Check with your county or state medical society and your local hospital to find out how many other family physicians, nurse practitioners and general internists are in your service area, how long they’ve practiced in that location and how many have moved into your area over the past five years.

Once you’ve determined who your competitors are, you need to assess them. This information may be a little harder to come by, but you can try to gather as much information as you can by simply asking other physicians, listening to your patients, friends and neighbors when they talk about their physicians and keeping your eye out for competitors’ advertisements. To assess your competition, you need to ask the following questions:

What are your competitors’ target audiences and niche markets?

Why do certain patients or groups of patients particularly like or dislike your competitors?

How are your competitors viewed within the community?

What marketing activities have your competitors tried?

Your community

In addition to gathering information about your practice and your competitors’ practices, you need to learn as much as you can about the people in your community. You can find answers to the following questions by contacting your local Chamber of Commerce, your state vital statistics department or the U.S. Census Bureau ( www.census.gov ). Census data is available for every state, county, city, ZIP code, neighborhood, etc.:

How many people live in your service area? Is the population expected to grow or shrink? What are the demographic characteristics of the population in your area?

How is your practice perceived in the community? Are you known in the community?

Who are your potential patients? Are their wants and needs being met elsewhere in the community? If not, how can your practice meet those needs?

5. Identify a target audience. With the help of your market research analysis, you should be able to identify your practice’s “target audience,” which is the specific group of patients to which you’d like to direct your marketing efforts. Your target audience might include patients of a certain age, gender, location, payer type or language/ethnicity and patients with certain clinical needs. Keep in mind that your target audience should not only be the patients you want to attract but also the people who can influence and provide exposure to that segment of the population. For example, if you wish to treat patients with arthritis, you might want to get involved in the local and regional Arthritis Foundation and explore senior organizations in the community. If you want to treat young athletes, you might consider giving talks on sports safety and first-aid tips to coaches and athletes at the local high schools, colleges and YMCAs. The key to marketing lies in targeting the audience that your practice can serve better than your competition – and communicating this to that group.

6. Determine a budget. Before you can decide what specific marketing strategies you want to implement to achieve your goals, you need to examine your financial information and come up with a marketing budget. Marketing budgets vary by the type of market a practice is in, the age of a practice and whether the practice has marketed before. There’s no standard for how much a practice should spend. However, in our experience, practices in open markets have spent 3 percent to 5 percent of their annual gross incomes on marketing. If your practice is new, in a highly competitive market or has never been marketed before, or if you intend to roll out an ambitious new program or service, you can expect to spend 10 percent or more of your annual gross income the first year you implement the plan.

Some of the initial marketing activities can be expensive. For example, it can cost more than $5,000 to have a corporate image package (i.e., logo, stationery and collateral pieces) developed by a professional and as much as $10,000 if you add a brochure. On the other hand, some of the best marketing activities cost practically nothing. For example, to build your referral network, you might try meeting with new physicians in your community and sending follow-up/thankyou notes to referring physicians. Big or small, these are all worthwhile investments that will give the community a positive image of your practice.

7. Develop marketing strategies. With your budget in place, you can begin to define specific marketing strategies that will address your goals, reach your target audience and build your patient base. Remember to focus your strategies on the elements of your practice that can be used to create a special value in the minds of patients and referral sources. Each strategy should be related to a specific goal and should be made up of numerous actions. For example, one strategy related to the goal of increasing patient satisfaction might be to make the office more patient friendly. The actions required for that strategy might include the following:

Provide patient satisfaction training sessions to staff;

Develop a patient self-scheduling system within the practice Web site to eliminate the need to telephone the office for an appointment;

Improve the reception-room decor;

Provide name tags for staff;

Require staff to introduce themselves to each new patient;

Conduct post-encounter telephone interviews with new patients within three days of their appointments.

[Watch for an upcoming article in FPM about specific, cost-effective marketing actions you can try in your practice.]

8. Develop an implementation schedule. An implementation schedule is a time-line that shows which marketing actions will be done when and by whom. The schedule should also include the cost of each marketing action and how it fits into the budget estimates for the 24-month period. When creating the schedule, carefully consider how the activities will affect the current practice operations and whether there are sufficient resources (such as staff, time and money) to accomplish the necessary tasks. In some cases, it may be necessary to whittle down the list or postpone some activities. In other cases, it might be best to go ahead with full implementation of your plan. If you want to fully implement the plan but don’t quite have the staffing resources, you might consider bringing in a consultant to coordinate the marketing activities and/or adding a part-time staff member to handle the majority of the marketing tasks. The implementation schedule will also give you a basis on which to monitor the progress of your marketing plan.

9. Create an evaluation process. The value of a marketing plan is its effectiveness, which requires deliberate and timely implementation and monitoring and evaluation of results. It’s important to measure your results against the standards you set in establishing your goals. Review your plan periodically (we recommend quarterly) by comparing your progress with the implementation schedule. There are several ways you can measure the results of your progress: patient survey scores, referral sources, increased income, increased new patients and decreased complaints.

If at any time you find your progress does not measure up to your expectations, you need to determine why. Perhaps the advertisement about a new service you are marketing has not attracted new patients. If the ad campaign has been carried out as directed without results, dump the campaign and try other actions. Perhaps you’ll want to try giving a series of seminars specifically targeted to the group you want to attract or developing a new segment on your Web site for patients that describes the benefits of the new service. You may even find that if each physician in the practice talks about the new service with his or her patients as merely informational conversation, favorable results will follow. In other words, the actions – and even the strategies and goals – in the marketing plan are not written in stone. By regularly monitoring and evaluating each action, you can always change and try new approaches.

As good as you make it

A good marketing plan outlines realistic marketing goals, strategies and actions based on sound information and research about your practice and your community. But the plan is only as good as your commitment to implementing it, dedicating sufficient resources to the endeavor, involving your staff and communicating openly with them. The marketing plan should not merely be written, reviewed and put away on a shelf. Instead, your practice marketing plan should be an evolving blueprint that guides your efforts and monitors your success. Marketing works when the dedication is there. It’s up to you!

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What Is Growth Marketing? Examples of Effective Growth Marketing Strategies.

Many startups and early-stage tech companies rely on growth marketing strategies to scale up and engage their user bases.

Growth marketing is a blurry term that’s difficult to precisely define — it’s sometimes referred to as growth hacking — but basically, it’s the data-driven, often-experimental practice of finding and repeating scalable ways to acquire, engage and retain more users of your product or service.

Forming a growth marketing strategy is key for many businesses that want to launch themselves into the stratosphere of success.

More on Growth Marketing Metrics What Is AARRR?

What Is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing uses data from marketing campaigns to inform experimental adjustments to the marketing strategy in an effort to drive business growth. The goal is to better target the right customers, build stronger relationships with them and ultimately turn them into loyal buyers of a company’s products or services.

Growth Marketing Definition

Growth marketing is finding and repeating ways to acquire, engage and retain more users of your product or service through the use of data insights and experimentation.

Growth marketing can take many forms and incorporate various tactics, such as launching paid advertising campaigns, experimenting with viral video stunts or producing search-engine-optimized content , all in the hopes to capture, grow and retain a customer base.

It’s also worth noting that business growth isn’t strictly placed in the domain of marketing either. In fact, growth marketers often collaborate with product and engineering teams to design and build ways to drive up the company’s North Star metrics.

To get an expert’s perspective on growth marketing, we spoke to Matt Bilotti, product lead, growth and lifecycle at Drift ; Rita Cidre, global head of integrated marketing at Qualtrics ; and Shane Pittson, vice president of growth at quip . Their responses, from a 2020 interview with Built In, have been edited for length and clarity.

Traditional Marketing Vs. Growth Marketing

Bilotti: Growth marketing is finding repeatable and scalable campaigns or processes that drive a marketing outcome. Traditional marketing is a little bit more of a one-off, like a webinar or going to an event or sponsoring something. You get this influx of leads and then you’ve got to go do the thing again.

  Pittson: The essence of a growth marketing path is one that’s more akin to direct response marketing — something that’s very close to the analytics and the near-term effects and results. Traditional marketing still encompasses that discipline and that focus but also tends to think about very long-term effects of marketing, like brand positioning and brand sentiment, and thinking about how that might play out over the course of years.

Related Reading What Does a Growth Hacker Do in Marketing?

Benefits of Growth Marketing

Growth driven by data and testing.

Bilotti: The most successful growth marketers or marketing teams are technical; they have engineering chops. Either there is an engineer on the team or the growth marketer actually can code stuff on their own, because that enables this whole other level of testing and building new funnels for lead generation or developing systems to make even more out of the existing funnel.

Targeting the Right Customers

Cidre: The type of marketing that growth marketers do is directly tied to the bottom line of the business. It’s not just about attracting new customers or acquiring new people into your database. It’s about making sure that you’re acquiring the right customers into your marketing program and then that you have the right experiences for those customers aligned to various stages of the funnel, and ultimately converting those customers into paying customers.

Improving Conversion Rates

Cidre: In a previous role, the team worked on landing page optimization . That was an incredibly impactful project. It drove millions of dollars in revenue, and it all came out of a funnel analysis, realizing that we definitely had enough traffic, we just had really terrible conversion rates for that traffic. And so we focused super heavily on the middle of the funnel, and we saw the benefit of that at the bottom line.

Retaining Customers

Pittson: Focusing on the customers you have is something that can easily be overlooked. Thinking about growth, not just in terms of acquisition but also in terms of retention and community is really important. One of the things that we prioritized early on was that we weren’t just selling a product, we were selling a broader experience.

Measurable Success

Bilotti: What’s important is that you have to go into each of those projects or campaigns with a hypothesis: “We believe, if we make this change on the website, it can result in this many more signups per month.” You set the win condition at the beginning, and you set that based on historical data and perceived potential. Then you can actually just know if the thing works based on if it fulfilled what you believed.

Cidre: If you are a growth marketer for a startup and your boss tells you, “We need to make $100,000 in revenue,” you can take that $100,000 and use very simple math to back out from that number into “How many customers would I need to have?” OK, let’s say I need to have a hundred customers, assuming a $1,000 price point. Out of those 100 customers, assuming a 2 percent conversion rate from the site, how many pageviews would I need on my site in order to get 100 customers?

Pittson: Having multiple points of reference is really critical. Very early on, we were looking at last-click attribution through Google Analytics, looking at native reporting from the platforms or the partners that we were testing with, and then post-purchase surveys directly from our customers. If we only had one of those points of reference, then the channels and the tactics that we would have prioritized would have been very different. Having multiple lenses to view your performance through helps to construct a clearer picture of what’s working and what’s not.

Examples of Growth Marketing Strategies From Experts

Getting started with growth marketing as a startup .

For startups, a successful growth marketing strategy begins with a clear outline of the marketing funnel, which illustrates the stages of a customer’s journey from initially becoming aware of the brand to ultimately converting into a paying customer. A startup needs to be able to assess that journey to understand where they’re losing the largest number of prospective customers. Doing so can help the organization identify current challenges and build an informed growth marketing strategy to overcome those hurdles while still spending the marketing budget effectively and efficiently.

Bilotti: Measure the funnel and then zero-in on where the biggest drop off in the funnel is. Maybe you get X visitors with Y people clicking on the sign-up button, and then this many people see the form, and then this many people complete the form. You have to map all that out, and then once you map it out, you find the biggest drop-off and try to understand why those people are dropping off.

Cidre: The first step would be understanding what the top of your funnel looks like right now, if you have a lot of people who are coming to your website and demonstrating interest in your products. And then, a step down, do you have a lot of people clicking through on your website or a lot of people who have shown interest in Facebook ads for your product that you could consider a middle-of-the-funnel pool? Finally, how many customers do you have at the bottom of the funnel? Are you finding that it’s a business with a one-time purchase or is it a renewal business where it’s important for you to focus on the bottom of the funnel to ensure that people are renewing their subscriptions?

Do a funnel assessment to understand the health of the funnel and understand where the challenges and the opportunities lie. If you have a ton of funding, growth marketers have seen a lot of success with Facebook ads or paid search. If you don’t have a lot of money to spend, you’re probably going to rely heavily on earned and owned channels.

More on Growth Experiments 12 Successful Growth Hacking Strategies You Should Know

Using A/B Testing to Optimize a Sign-Up Page

A/B testing is an experimental methodology that randomly divides users into two groups and shows each of those groups one of two variations of an interface, such as an online sign-up page. The strategy is used to test how those variations affect user behavior and determine what kinds of changes should be implemented as part of a successful growth marketing strategy.

Bilotti: Drift is a chat widget that you put on websites, and at the bottom it says, “Powered by Drift.” And so we get a lot of people who click on that and it would just take you to Drift.com with all the info to sign up.

We realized that if you were clicking on that, you were clicking on it because you’ve already semi-experienced the widget and you’re clicking on it because you want to know more about that exact experience — probably because you want to put it on your website too. And so on the page that people would arrive, we A/B tested the homepage versus a completely stripped out version of the website where there was no header, or footer. All there was was a headline of what the thing was that you could sign up for and then the sign-up button. And we saw a threefold increase in the conversion rate, because it enabled us to help the lead not get lost in the website but instead help them on the path that they already wanted to go down.

Experimenting With New Marketing Channels

Growth marketing can sometimes lead teams down the path of experimenting with new marketing channels , such as audio advertising or trying out campaigns on emerging social media platforms. The process of testing the effectiveness of using new channels requires thorough preparation in the form of research and purposeful strategizing.

Pittson: Both of quip’s founders are designers, and so we were under the impression that a lot of our traction and success was related to the visual draw of the product, and so we were hesitant to use our test-budget in this channel (audio advertising) that had no visual element. But we were really careful in terms of selecting partners and thinking about how to articulate some of those more visual elements of the product in that “audio theater of the mind.” We started really small and consistently tested specific shows using different offer codes. And it was working, and we continued to grow that and ultimately became one of the larger advertisers in the space.

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How One Marketing Team Made AI Part of Its Daily Work

• Michelle Taite

Nine out of ten marketers agree: Organizations must increase their use of AI if they want to stay competitive.

In today’s always-on environment, AI tools can help marketers optimize and personalize their campaigns quickly and efficiently. But AI alone won’t yield meaningful campaigns. Impact-driving work requires both human ingenuity and machine speed — a combination marketers can’t fully embrace without daily practice. This article discusses how one team experimented with used AI to complement their creative marketers on various tasks, and how it resulted in their most impactful campaign to date.

A marketer’s job is never done. Marketing leaders increasingly recognize that their teams need more support to square consumers’ around-the-clock expectations with the bandwidth of human marketers. According to a survey conducted by Forrester, nearly nine out of ten marketers believe their organization must increase its use of AI to stay competitive, especially as resources remain flat or decrease. Yet only half of marketers feel that they have adequately adopted AI, a discrepancy that isn’t necessarily surprising.

• Michelle Taite is the CMO of Mailchimp at Intuit. She is responsible for the business’s end-to-end brand, acquisition, performance, product, and lifecycle marketing activities globally. Previously, Michelle was the VP of Global Marketing for QuickBooks at Intuit, and she has also held roles at Unilever and New Balance. Michelle currently serves on the Association of National Advertisers Global CMO Growth Council and was named one of Insider’s Most Innovative CMOs in 2023.

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Reinvent yourself every 7 years: a career change strategy.

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The secret to a successful career is to reinvent yourself every seven years.

The notion of starting anew or reimagining oneself has been a thread woven into human history’s fabric. From the philosophical musings on the Allegory of the Cave to modern-day pop culture icons known to radically alter their personas, the theme of self-reinvention remains compelling.

But what if the concept was not just an abstract, recurring pattern in our narratives but a methodological approach to living a fulfilling life? Reinventing yourself every seven years yields benefits to accelerate your career.

Through this process, skills are mastered , and one has the ability to expand one’s potential multiples. On the surface, this philosophy sounds straightforward. It is intricate and delicate at its core, making a person analyze their actions and habits and step beyond their comfort zone. A fresh start offers a revitalized perspective, the chance to rectify past mistakes, and, most importantly, the opportunity to grow. Just as the body’s cell regenerates itself every seven years, so can you.

What Does It Mean To Reinvent My Life?

Reinvention is about becoming a better version of yourself. This comes with introspection—taking a hard look at who you are and who you want to be. Reflect on your values, your strengths and those things you wish to improve. Self-awareness is the bedrock of personal development.

Identify the aspects of your life that need improvement. Is it an unfulfilling job? A toxic relationship? A sedentary lifestyle? By pinpointing the problem areas, you can tailor your reinvention to address them directly.

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Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, 7 steps towards reinvention and personal growth.

The seven-year cycle—often referred to as the seven-year itch—is not just a cliche but a scientifically recognized period of significant change in our lives.

The first step is always the hardest. You’re confronted with the thought of change, which can be overwhelming. Begin with defining your goals. Where do you want to be in seven years? What steps can you take to get there? Visualize your endgame, then work backward to set achievable objectives.

Reflect On Your Past Seven Years

Has the last seven-year stretch been rewarding or riddled with regrets? Take note of your accomplishments and the areas you wish to have done better. This exercise is about learning from your past, not dwelling on it.

Develop An Action Plan

Create an action plan to drive success. This could be based on milestones in your career, relationships or personal development. List what you would like to achieve and set realistic time frames. Planning gives you a sense of direction and control, which is crucial when on the cusp of major change.

Dealing with any type of change requires a plan. The success of reinventing yourself every seven is ... [+] based on a detailed action plan.

Learn New Skills And Knowledge

Lifelong learning is more than just a buzzword—it’s a testament to your commitment to growth. Whether through formal education, online courses, or self-study, continuously acquiring new skills is paramount to staying competitive and engaged with life.

Build Positive Habits

The goal isn’t merely to change but to improve your life. Positive habits are the building blocks of reinvention, stabilizing your day-to-day life while you work on broader changes. Exercise regularly, cultivate a productive morning routine, or hone your professional skills.

Cultivate New Experiences

Breaking out of your comfort zone is key to personal reinvention. Travel, network or pick up a new hobby. New experiences introduce fresh perspectives and can often lead to unexpected opportunities.

• Explore Different Cultures: Travel to places you’ve never been before, both locally and internationally, to immerse yourself in new cultures. This can broaden your worldview and enhance empathy towards people from diverse backgrounds.
• Take Up a New Hobby: Whether it’s learning a musical instrument, painting or gardening, engaging in a new hobby can stimulate your creativity and fuel your passion.
• Volunteer: Offering your time to a cause you care about contributes to the community and exposes you to new people and perspectives.
• Challenge Yourself Physically: Take on physical challenges that push your limits, such as marathons, hiking or yoga retreats, to discover new strengths and endurance levels.
• Experiment with New Foods: Trying cuisines from different cultures can be an adventure in itself, opening up a world of flavors and culinary practices.

Adapt To The New World

The world changes drastically every seven years, and adapting is vital. Be it technological shifts, societal movements or even personal preferences, being adaptable ensures that you do not become irrelevant in a rapidly transforming landscape.

• Stay Tech-Savvy: Regularly update your skills in new technologies. Participate in workshops, webinars and online courses to stay abreast of emerging tech trends.
• Cultivate Flexibility in Thinking: Encourage cognitive flexibility by challenging your beliefs and being open to alternative viewpoints. Engage in creative activities and critical thinking exercises.
• Enhance Digital Literacy: Understand the basics of digital security, privacy and the ethical use of technology. Navigating the digital world safely and wisely is crucial.
• Embrace Change: View change as an opportunity for growth. Adopt a growth mindset that welcomes challenges and learns from failures.
• Network Broadly: Build a diverse network across various industries and cultures. This exposes you to different perspectives and opportunities that can be crucial in a shifting world.
• Practice Mindfulness: Develop resilience and stress management skills through mindfulness practices. This helps maintain mental and emotional health amidst change.
• Stay Informed: Keep up with global and local news to understand the economic, political, and social factors that drive change. This awareness can guide your decisions and actions.

Reflect On Your Achievements

As you approach the end of each seven years, it’s time once again to take stock of your most recent achievements. Celebrate your successes, and take pride in the distance you’ve traveled. This is the fuel for the next stretch of reinvention.

By regularly assessing your life and committing to a cycle of renewal, you create a self-sustaining engine of personal and professional improvement. It is an approach that demands courage, hard work and a willingness to confront discomfort. But as those who have embraced reinvention and witnessed the powerful changes it can bring will tell you, the rewards are immeasurable.

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