How to build a foolproof marketing plan

It is very common to see entrepreneurs who know the power of digital marketing and want to put actions into practice as soon as possible. However, without good planning behind these actions, it is very difficult for the results to really appear.

A well-structured marketing plan creates the ideal conditions to maximize results in the market. In this article, you will see how to put together a foolproof marketing plan.

The importance of knowing your company

Before we start structuring a marketing plan, we need to make sure that we know the company in depth. After all, all marketing actions must accurately reflect the characteristics of your business – valuing its positive aspects for the consumer.

For this, rescue some basic concepts of your company: mission, vision, and values. If you still don’t have these concepts clear, let’s help you define them:

• Mission:  it is the reason why the company was created and its fundamental purpose;
• Vision:  represents the organization’s long-term goals;
• Values:  form the company’s code of conduct, guiding all its actions in the market.

All these characteristics will be highlighted by your marketing plan so that your customer can see all the attributes of your business. The better the perception created in relation to your brand, the better the sales results can be.

What is a marketing plan?

The marketing plan is the document in which all marketing actions are planned through the analysis of the aspects that influence the company’s presence in the market. For this, several fundamental information is considered: market positioning, competition, customer analysis, trends, product/service attributes, forms of communication, and internal forces of the company, among others.

In addition to containing general marketing strategies, it is important that a marketing plan contains objective goals for the short term. If one of your company’s goals is to generate more leads, then some of the goals might be to produce rich materials, build landing pages, and expand your digital presence on social media.

To better understand the concept of a marketing plan, just think about a travel plan. Your overall goal may be to take a trip to Italy. For this, it is necessary to create small goals: buy tickets, create the travel itinerary, renew your passport, and pack your bags, among other actions.

Why should your marketing be strategically planned?

Imagine a company that posts frequently on its social networks but gets few likes and almost no engagement. Or another business that posts weekly on its blog but receives very few visitors and fails to generate leads. Why does this happen?

The problem may be precisely in the strategic planning of the marketing actions of these companies. When actions are not planned to achieve a specific objective and all aspects that influence the success of these actions are not considered, it becomes more difficult to achieve good performance.

Among the main benefits of planning marketing strategically are:

• Optimization of the use of resources;
• Organization of a team with the ability to lead the company to its goals;
• The clarity in the actions that must be developed;
• Cohesion between all the actions carried out by the organization in the market;
• Broadening the view on the market, competitors, and customers;
• Positive impact on sales results.

5 steps to good marketing planning

Now that you better understand the importance of marketing planning, it’s time to learn how to put together an effective marketing plan for your business. For that, you can follow the following steps:

1. Analyze your market

The first step to making a good marketing plan is to evaluate the scenario in which your company is inserted. Surely a restaurant has the need to elaborate actions very different from a business consulting company, right?

However, even companies that explore similar activities need to understand their market positioning. An elegant restaurant that attracts upper-middle-class couples must develop very different strategies than a fast food chain focused on young people.

That’s why it’s so important to carefully analyze your market to assess what your company’s positioning will be and what opportunities can be taken advantage of. All your marketing actions will be guided by these settings.

2. Know your customer

Your entire marketing plan must be developed with the customer at the other end of the communication in mind. What does this audience expect from your company? What are your wants, expectations, needs, and objections? The more accurate the information you gather, the more accurate the actions taken can be.

3. Draw up an action plan

Now that you know how you want to position yourself in the market and know your customer, it’s time to identify your goals and outline actions to achieve them. This is the time to create actions, campaigns, and activities that can be put into practice to bring your company’s message to the public and boost sales results.

A company that wants to increase the visibility of its brand and build a reputation in the market can include actions such as the production of content on the business blog, guest posts with other related blogs, actions with digital influencers, and the creation of videos with tips for consumers, among others.

4. Set deadlines and control the budget

To optimize the actions carried out by your company’s marketing, it is very important to define deadlines for execution and strict control over the available budget. Plan all actions considering the spending limit on marketing actions.

5. Track the results

Finally, be sure to monitor the results achieved with the planned actions. Measuring the performance obtained is very important to designing future actions – valuing the positive points and improving the actions that did not give the expected result.

Invest in your marketing department

Despite all the importance of the marketing plan, the success of your company’s marketing is not only conditioned by good planning. It is essential that you put all the strategies outlined into practice properly, isn’t it?

For this, you need to have a well-structured marketing department and a trained team. Check out some tips to invest correctly in the marketing department:

• Identify which professionals are needed to put the planned actions into practice;
• Define what characteristics are sought in hired professionals;
• Conduct frequent training to update the team;
• Make it clear what the objectives pursued by the marketing department;
• Structure internal processes so that everyone knows exactly what their role is;
• Follow the development of activities to find points for improvement.