At the end of May we were commissioned to work with a client in the built environment to develop and deliver a marketing plan to support its growth ambitions. It got us thinking about:
- how you develop your marketing initiatives;
- how aligned it is to your vision, values, purpose and strategy;
- what you have considered whilst developing the plan; and
- how well it is implemented and measured.
Some of us may think about marketing as a stand-alone activity, however, as with everything in business, it needs to strongly align with the organisational strategy to be most effective. Here’s our take on what you might consider when developing your marketing plan.
Where to start when developing a marketing plan?
Well, we all have to start somewhere and understanding the company’s growth ambitions is a great place. Why? Because if you don’t understand what the business is trying to achieve over the next 1, 2 or 3 years, how can you create a cohesive plan and measure progress?
When you’re developing the marketing strategy, you have to consider the overall strategic plan, the vision for growth, and your values. Hopefully your business has a robust strategy in which it has considered the following areas (this is a not an exhaustive list, but acts as an overview):
- Clients: current and potential. Which are most profitable, who are the top 10 clients you would like to work with, but don’t? Which clients may no longer fit with your strategy.
- Services: Which are most profitable? Are they fit for purpose? How might they change to be relevant in the future? Are there other services that you want to incorporate and grow?
- Sectors: Do the sectors within which you work have potential for growth? Are there other sectors that have more growth? Do you have the expertise to work in other sectors?
- Geography: Are you working within your preferred geographic region? How might this impact the business or change within the next 1-3 years?
- Projects: Are they all profitable? How do you make profit? How do you deal effectively with project creep? Who has the authority, accountability and responsibility for the decision-making on projects? How clear is this?
- People: How do your people need to develop in order to be more effective in contributing to the overall strategic, business development and marketing plans? How will you close the gap?
- Resources: What are the key resources (human, technological, systems, financial) that are required to run the business? What might you need in the future to help you achieve the required growth? What are the future trends you should consider? What is the cost?
- Relationships: Where are the key relationships in your business (apart from talent and clients). Consider funding, accounting, legal etc.
- Revenue, expenses and profits: How well do you know your numbers? Do people have the appropriate levels of authority, accountability and responsibility to make decisions. Where are the risks in the business? How are you going achieve even more growth?
Now get more specific
Let’s start with VALUES.
Why do we think about values in the plan? Where possible it’s great to create marketing messages the align with and use language to reflect your company values. Of course, it’s no good having a set of values, if these aren’t lived and breathed by everyone in the business …
What CHANNELS are you going to use to get your message out to your target audience?
Think of all of the different ways you can promote your business. Social media, e-mailshots, industry events, corporate events, website, blogs, meetings with clients and other stakeholders, PR, and advertising. What is going to be most effective for your business? And how are you going to measure the marketing impact for each?
Involve others
If you want your teams to deliver and implement the plan, why not get them involved in the process? The more input and understanding your people have about the business, the direction of travel, and why marketing plays an important part, the more motivated they are likely to be in executing the plan.
Who has the RESPONSIBILITY for delivering the plan?
Okay, we might think that it’s the marketing person, whether this is an employee or someone who works freelance for you? This is where marketing can simply drift if we do things ad-hoc. Like business development, identifying roles and responsibilities for marketing is key to your activity being effective.
People naturally talk about their work and company, when they do this, they are ‘marketing’ the company – hopefully they’re saying great things! Identifying appropriate people within the team responsible for certain activities is important.
- Who might attend industry events? Do they understand their remit? What is required of them? Do they have the appropriate skills? And how are they going to follow-up?
- How can you make the most out of social media? Think about opportunities on projects, site visits, attending events. How do you get your people on board with this?
- How effective, responsive and efficient are your processes for responding to enquiries. Who has responsibility for what?
- There’s a fine line between marketing and business development, and the line gets blurred when building your network. When we meet clients or potential clients, or people who can potentially refer us for new business, there is an element of marketing.
- How do you make the most out of networking or client meetings? Building and strengthening relationships is crucial, but it is also important for you and your team to be present and listen to what’s being said, so that you can understand where there may be opportunities to work together.
- How would you rate the overall knowledge and understanding your people have of what’s happening in the business and the services you deliver, so that they can have the desired conversations? You’ll be surprised how many people don’t know what’s happening in other parts of the company. If this is the case, you need to find mechanisms to bridge the gap.
What about the budget?
Attracting new opportunities and business takes time, energy and money, so a budget is required. You firstly need to factor in the costs of the individuals who will implement the marketing plan, then you need to:
- Identify and work out how much budget you need for attending industry events.
- Consider what corporate events you’d like to host and how many people you’d like to invite. Venue, refreshments, etc.
- What systems do you need to make things happen?
- Will you be using a PR person?
- What’s the opportunity cost of people attending networking and industry events?
- And don’t forget the travel costs.
It’s surprising how all of these things add up, so try and be as realistic as possible and set the budget for the year.
Also consider who has the authority to spend and any limits.
The Output
At the end of the process, the OUTPUT should be a fully thought-through, live plan that includes daily activities, which can be accessed by everyone involved so that they can understand the activities planned, and their contribution and responsibilities in delivering the plan.
How do you know whether your plan has been effective?
Finally, it’s not good enough just to have a plan. We now need to implement it and measure progress. Here’s just a few ideas:
- Website: is your brochure in the sky. It has to differentiate you from the competition and needs to be kept updated and proactively generate leads. Monitoring traffic, bounce rates, number of enquiries generated and for what services.
- From networking or industry events: keep a log of the names of individuals you have met, follow-up and put them on your CRM. You need to keep in regular contact with them, e.g. newsletter. You can measure the types of conversations, referrals, invitations to tender for or price work, or projects delivered (direct or indirect) that have come of this.
- E-mail marketing: hopefully you’re using a system that provides analytics. Review the percentage of open and click rates. What articles appear to be gaining traction. What response does it generate.
- Social media: this is about understanding levels of engagement. Again, review the analytics to see what resonates most with people.
- Weekly progress meetings: used to review and track marketing and business development initiatives and related enquiries, as well as sharing of information about projects and clients.
If you need support in defining your strategic or marketing plan, let us know, we’d be happy to share our thoughts. Book a call.
