So, what's typically included?
Market Research: Research is the foundation of any good plan. It doesn't have to be a long process or cost a fortune, either. But, to position your business or product correctly, you'll need a fundamental awareness of your target market — as well as the segmentation, demographical and psychographic analysis of your prospective audience — and the context of your business.
Positioning: In addition to identifying and understanding your target market, you'll need to understand the current view of your brand, product or program and then identify your opportunities. This will be the backdrop to your messaging and the communications plan for how you want to be perceived.
Competitive Analysis: If you don't already know your competitors, you should. Differentiating your business from the competition is key to your success. Not everyone will want what you have to offer, and that's OK. The key is to connect deeply with the right customer and carve out a unique space in the market.
Core Marketing Strategies: Strategies are a combination of "why" and "how" you'll be successful and the backbone of your marketing plan. And, they can act as a filter, helping you to determine which tactics are essential to your success.
Budget: Monthly budgets for your resources — both effort and expenses — are essentials to determining the right-fit tactics in your plan. What resources in time and employees can you dedicate? How much should you spend in agency fees to help quickly amplify or shore up gaps in internal resources? How much should we spend on specific tactics? These are some of the questions we'll answer together, and it helps to start with an overall budget line item.
Tactical Plan: We'll identify the right marketing channels, tactics, and application of our combined team's efforts, picking the tools and coordinating the efforts of team members to get the most from each.
Metrics: Each tactic should have at least one goal and success metric. We'll use data to analyze the effectiveness of channels and tactics so that we can identify underperforming tactics and recalibrate efforts, or shift budgets to higher-performing tactics or explore new spaces to extend your efforts.
What are the outcomes?
An understanding of your target market and their wants and needs, and current perceptions of your brand.
A fundamental understanding of your key competitors and how you can differentiate your product and/or business.
A strategy or set of strategies that define why and how we'll connect with your target audience(s).
A month-to-month budget for resources — time and expenses — across all participants that can be spent on our plan.
A tactical plan that can be high-level or detailed depending on the project, which will help us coordinate our budget and activities.
Success metrics and a plan for how we'll gather and share data throughout the engagement.
No two situations are the same
All of our solutions are customized for your specific business case. We start with proven frameworks, not cookie-cutter solutions, and build the right plan for you.
