FEATURED ARTICLE — December 12th, 2018

How to Build a Marketing Plan

By Drew Hendricks

Building a marketing plan may seem like a daunting task.  But you don’t need a team of MBA’s and files full of complex analytics to plan a successful marketing campaign. 

With six simple steps you can build a marketing plan – from simple to complex – that fits your business’s specific needs.

Before we dig into the steps to build your marketing plan, let’s first chat about why marketing plans are important.

Your business needs a marketing plan

In short, marketing plans help businesses identify their customers and tailor their marketing efforts for maximum effect.

It’s hard to focus everyone’s efforts toward a common goal without a plan.  This is true for pretty much every aspect of business, not just in marketing.  The steps involved in developing a marketing plan, as well as the plan itself, allow your business to set some clear goals, along with some hard due dates and fixed budgets.  Without a plan your teams’ effort would be scattered, it would be hard to keep track of your budget, and even more difficult to track results.

Check out these six steps you can follow to build a marketing plan for your company.

Step 1 – Analyze your current situation

Before diving head first into a new marketing strategy, it’s important to take a close look at your current marketing efforts.  There’s a good chance your present marketing plan isn’t working as well as you’d like, otherwise you wouldn’t be interested in planning a killer new strategy.  Or maybe you don’t really have any set marketing processes in place.

In either case, take a step back and check out the whole picture.  What is your current marketing strategy?  How are you targeting prospective customers?  Which channels are... Read More