Strategic Marketing Plans

Ask somebody what a marketing plan is, and they often think of things like advertising blocking charts, event schedules, and new product introductions.

But a strategic marketing plan is really more like a business plan.

It doesn’t cover corporate and operational items such as production, HR, legal and finance. Instead, it drills down into business strategy, sales and marketing in much more detail than a business plan. To use a football analogy, everybody knows you can’t win without scoring. Your strategic marketing plan is like the playbook for the offensive squad. Your defensive squad – HR, finance and legal — might be the best in your industry, but they can’t win without help from sales and marketing.

We’ll help you develop a strategic marketing plan by guiding you through:

Setting Goals

• Articulating and agreeing on business goals
• Using VCP calculations
• Creating vision, mission and values statements

Researching Your Market

• Developing an overview of the external business climate that considers political, economic, social and technological factors (PEST analysis)
• Researching the background and trends in your industry
• Performing a competitive scan to see how your direct competitors and substitutes stack up

Setting a Market Focus

• Sizing and segmenting your market, and targeting specific segments to determine your addressable market
• Defining buyer behaviour to see how your customers think about buying and using the types of products and services that you offer

Product Pricing & Distribution

• Drafting a pricing strategy to set targets and estimate sales units and revenue
• Examining distribution to figure out who will sell your products, how much it will cost, and how you can manage it

Packaging & Promotion

• Defining key messages
• Selecting advertising and promotional activities to reach your target market
• Considering factors that impact your packaging design

Out of this comes a comprehensive marketing strategy combined with a go-to-market action plan that you can use to both work from, and, measure your progress against. Your strategic marketing plan will be presented in a professional format that meets the recommendations of the American Marketing Association and shows your banker, partners, and employees that you mean business!