Marketing Strategy
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 5:57 am
Step-by-step guide: Marketing Plan
By Ester Ribas , September 3
Designing a Marketing Plan is essential for creating a marketing strategy or campaign . This plan will be the roadmap for the entire campaign to be carried out in order for it to be a success. However, many companies forget certain essential steps when creating their marketing strategy. That is why, today we are going to show you a step-by-step guide of all the factors that come into play within a marketing plan. Don't miss our step-by-step guide!
Step-by-step guide: Marketing plan for the B2B sector
Step 1. Define your goals
What do you want to achieve with your marketing strategy or campaign? Defining objectives is very important; without this step, the rest of the marketing plan would be meaningless.
One mistake that many companies make is to set more than one main objective. This is not recommended, as it is not realistic. If it is already difficult to achieve one objective, imagine, for example, five.
For this reason, it is important to establish a main objective, a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) by which the success or failure of the entire strategy will be measured . Therefore, the entire marketing strategy will revolve around this main objective.
If you don't know what your main goal is, you can find it by considering SMART goals . We explain it in more detail below.
SMART Goals
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely, that is, everything that an objective must have to be classified as a KPI: specific, measurable, reasonable, relevant and timely.
In order to be considered a main objective, an objective cannot simply be “increasing sales”, but it must be more specific and can be measured in detail to ensure that the campaign works as expected.
For example, a SMART goal could be: I want to go from having 2 leads per month to having 4 and increase sales by 20% with Inbound Marketing strategies in a period of 6 months .
If you set a quantitative goal, that is, you set an exact number of what you want to achieve, it will be easier for you to stay on track and fight to achieve that number without going down parallel paths.
On the other hand, secondary objectives are no less important than the main objective, but they are those that will be related to it. For example:
Main objective : I want to go from having 2 leads per month to having 4 and increase sales by 20% with Inbound Marketing strategies in a period of 6 months .
Secondary objective : 2 of the 4 increased leads must become customers.
Once you have all the objectives established, it is time to move on to step 2.
Step 2: SWOT Analysis
It is important that before planning the marketing strategy that you want to carry out with all its actions, you analyze your company to know if the objectives set are realistic or not and if you will be able to assume them .
To do this, it is important to do a SWOT analysis of your company, that is, analyze your weaknesses, threats, strengths and opportunities.
Weaknesses
When we talk about weaknesses, we are referring to the weaknesses that your company has compared to the competition. These could be: high prices, the company's situation, a product that needs improvement, etc.
Once your weaknesses have been detected, it is time to solve them.
Threats
What threats does your company face? Economic, environmental, from competitors' products, etc. Take advantage of these threats to differentiate your company. Turn them into something positive.
Strengths
Every company stands out for something, whether it's its working methodology, values, mission or products. Analyze what makes your company stand out and take advantage of it to promote it in your marketing strategy.
Opportunities
Look at your environment and look for the opportunities it offers you . Partnerships, collaborations, trends… everything around you can be an opportunity to focus your marketing campaign.
Do you have your SWOT done yet? Then, let's move on to step 3.
Step 3: Buyer Persona
Defining the Buyer Persona or ideal client is important to determine who we are targeting and how we should target them. The Marketing Plan will revolve around this Buyer Persona.
A definition of Buyer Persona could be; physical people who serve to determine your ideal client or client profile that your company would need .
By defining this Buyer Persona, you will know who you are addressing and how you should address this customer. Talking to an end customer selling perfume is not the same as talking to a company that you want to sell an ERP. The style and tone will never be the same.
Do you know your Buyer Persona perfectly? Well, you're ready to move on to the background part.
Step 4: Background
Background is a general analysis of the company's situation, that is, what happened before starting marketing, what is happening now, after making some changes, and what happened after the changes.
By having some perspective on the different situations that the company has gone through, it will be much easier for you to focus your new marketing plan and know what strategies to implement and how to focus them.
Step 5: Competitor Analysis
Do you want to succeed with your marketing strategies? Don't forget about india telegram data your competition. It's not a bad idea to "spy" on them to get ideas and see what they are doing and how they are doing it.
Being clear about your competition's moves can be a plus not only for competing with them, but also for carrying out actions to differentiate yourself.
There are several tools that will help you perform a competitor analysis, such as Google Analytics or Semrush (the most well-known).
Google Analytics allows you to have an overview of visits to a website over specific periods of time , as well as which social networks work best for it and what type of customers it has (age, geographic location, sex).
On the other hand, Semrush is a tool that works very well, especially for finding the keywords that your competition ranks for and thus being able to create your content marketing strategy . It can also give you the same information as Google Analytics.
By Ester Ribas , September 3
Designing a Marketing Plan is essential for creating a marketing strategy or campaign . This plan will be the roadmap for the entire campaign to be carried out in order for it to be a success. However, many companies forget certain essential steps when creating their marketing strategy. That is why, today we are going to show you a step-by-step guide of all the factors that come into play within a marketing plan. Don't miss our step-by-step guide!
Step-by-step guide: Marketing plan for the B2B sector
Step 1. Define your goals
What do you want to achieve with your marketing strategy or campaign? Defining objectives is very important; without this step, the rest of the marketing plan would be meaningless.
One mistake that many companies make is to set more than one main objective. This is not recommended, as it is not realistic. If it is already difficult to achieve one objective, imagine, for example, five.
For this reason, it is important to establish a main objective, a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) by which the success or failure of the entire strategy will be measured . Therefore, the entire marketing strategy will revolve around this main objective.
If you don't know what your main goal is, you can find it by considering SMART goals . We explain it in more detail below.
SMART Goals
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely, that is, everything that an objective must have to be classified as a KPI: specific, measurable, reasonable, relevant and timely.
In order to be considered a main objective, an objective cannot simply be “increasing sales”, but it must be more specific and can be measured in detail to ensure that the campaign works as expected.
For example, a SMART goal could be: I want to go from having 2 leads per month to having 4 and increase sales by 20% with Inbound Marketing strategies in a period of 6 months .
If you set a quantitative goal, that is, you set an exact number of what you want to achieve, it will be easier for you to stay on track and fight to achieve that number without going down parallel paths.
On the other hand, secondary objectives are no less important than the main objective, but they are those that will be related to it. For example:
Main objective : I want to go from having 2 leads per month to having 4 and increase sales by 20% with Inbound Marketing strategies in a period of 6 months .
Secondary objective : 2 of the 4 increased leads must become customers.
Once you have all the objectives established, it is time to move on to step 2.
Step 2: SWOT Analysis
It is important that before planning the marketing strategy that you want to carry out with all its actions, you analyze your company to know if the objectives set are realistic or not and if you will be able to assume them .
To do this, it is important to do a SWOT analysis of your company, that is, analyze your weaknesses, threats, strengths and opportunities.
Weaknesses
When we talk about weaknesses, we are referring to the weaknesses that your company has compared to the competition. These could be: high prices, the company's situation, a product that needs improvement, etc.
Once your weaknesses have been detected, it is time to solve them.
Threats
What threats does your company face? Economic, environmental, from competitors' products, etc. Take advantage of these threats to differentiate your company. Turn them into something positive.
Strengths
Every company stands out for something, whether it's its working methodology, values, mission or products. Analyze what makes your company stand out and take advantage of it to promote it in your marketing strategy.
Opportunities
Look at your environment and look for the opportunities it offers you . Partnerships, collaborations, trends… everything around you can be an opportunity to focus your marketing campaign.
Do you have your SWOT done yet? Then, let's move on to step 3.
Step 3: Buyer Persona
Defining the Buyer Persona or ideal client is important to determine who we are targeting and how we should target them. The Marketing Plan will revolve around this Buyer Persona.
A definition of Buyer Persona could be; physical people who serve to determine your ideal client or client profile that your company would need .
By defining this Buyer Persona, you will know who you are addressing and how you should address this customer. Talking to an end customer selling perfume is not the same as talking to a company that you want to sell an ERP. The style and tone will never be the same.
Do you know your Buyer Persona perfectly? Well, you're ready to move on to the background part.
Step 4: Background
Background is a general analysis of the company's situation, that is, what happened before starting marketing, what is happening now, after making some changes, and what happened after the changes.
By having some perspective on the different situations that the company has gone through, it will be much easier for you to focus your new marketing plan and know what strategies to implement and how to focus them.
Step 5: Competitor Analysis
Do you want to succeed with your marketing strategies? Don't forget about india telegram data your competition. It's not a bad idea to "spy" on them to get ideas and see what they are doing and how they are doing it.
Being clear about your competition's moves can be a plus not only for competing with them, but also for carrying out actions to differentiate yourself.
There are several tools that will help you perform a competitor analysis, such as Google Analytics or Semrush (the most well-known).
Google Analytics allows you to have an overview of visits to a website over specific periods of time , as well as which social networks work best for it and what type of customers it has (age, geographic location, sex).
On the other hand, Semrush is a tool that works very well, especially for finding the keywords that your competition ranks for and thus being able to create your content marketing strategy . It can also give you the same information as Google Analytics.