At the time of year when many businesses are ramping up to implement new strategies in pursuit of their New Year’s goals, it’s important to outline a well thought out marketing plan to ensure the right tools are being utilized.

Managing and measuring your marketing initiatives is vital to achieving your goals and objectives while maximizing your marketing budget's impact and opportunities. Developing an annual marketing plan will help drive the success of both your efforts and spend.

Whether you have prepared an annual marketing plan for many years, or are about to build your first, here are three considerations to help you determine the right resources and marketing mix to achieve the highest ROI.

Characteristics of a Strong Annual Marketing Plan

• Your marketing plan should clearly outline your goals while also defining the strategies you will apply to achieve them.

• Each goal and strategy should have a budget allocation and a way to track actual spend so you can shift funds from one strategy to another as needed.

• The best marketing plans are as flexible as they are precise. Precision keeps your plans on track, and flexibility allows you to adapt to unexpected opportunities and changing conditions.

Begin by Reviewing Last Year’s Marketing Performance

When you begin building your annual marketing plan, you will first want to evaluate how last year’s marketing plan (or marketing efforts if you did not have a formal plan) performed. These results will indicate what worked – and what did not – and should guide your marketing strategy for the next year.  Here are five suggestions for your planning process for the new year:

• After reviewing the performance analytics for the prior year, determine which marketing activities were effective.

• As much as possible, describe why activities were or were not effective. Use this information to cut ineffective initiatives and reallocate resources and budget spend to effective strategies in the new year.

• In review of last year, did you meet your marketing goals?  What were the key components that contributed to the success?  What were the biggest challenges to meeting the objectives?

• What changed last year that should influence next year’s plan? Has your customer/client, organization, mandate, team, technology, etc. changed?

• Were you able to stay within budget last year? What areas of last year’s budget do you want to invest more in for the coming year, and what areas do you need to reduce? 

Identify the Essential Components of Your Annual Marketing Plan

An effective marketing plan clearly presents your business’ marketing goals, strategies, and tactics. Include in your plan all the components that are part of your marketing plan so that you can measure the performance of your tactics against your overall strategy. In the end, you will have an integrated marketing plan.

Although each business will employ marketing components specific to them, here are nine common components to consider:

• Advertising – Banner Ads, Google Ad Words, Social Media Ads, Conference Sponsorships

• Branding –Brand Development, Messaging, Graphics, Photography

• Collateral – Pitchbooks, Factsheets, Tear Sheets, Annual Reports

• Content – Blog Posts, Webinars, Podcasts, Whitepapers

• Direct Marketing – Email Marketing Campaigns, Targeted Emails, Targeted Campaigns

• Press Releases & Public Relations

• Social Media - Posting, Articles, Paid Content

• Technology – CRM, Email Marketing Tools, Social Listening Tools

• Website – Design, Development, SEO 

Effective marketing is essential to long term success and growth. As you embark on the initiatives and vision you’ve set for your business in 2021, incorporate your annual marketing plan to help you stay committed to your goals and getting the best return on your marketing investment.

Reach out to a member of our team to understand our strategic approach to developing an effective and realistic marketing plan.