Planning Framework & Promotional Strategy

There are seven steps for the basic structure for marketing plan, campaign and/or creative brief. As the core elements, they can be adapted and enhanced to fit most forms of marketing. 

1. Define your marketing goals.

The key here is to align your marketing goals with your overall business objectives. Understand marketing doesn’t exist by itself in a vacuum. To be effective, make your goals as specific and concrete as possible. This will help you focus as well as to measure the results.

2. Identify your audience.

Create a fully realized composite of your target market. This requires developing a marketing persona and a social media persona so that you can tailor your marketing to meet the needs of your audience. Traditionally here are the three main attributes to define your audience.

3. Create the offer.

Describe the specifics of your product and/or service. This goes beyond the basic offering and encompasses related information, branding and pricing that sets your offering apart from competitors and near substitutes. Use the following questions organized around the traditional four P’s of marketing to help develop your offering.

4. Develop your creative.

Broadly defined, creative relates to how your product/service is presented to prospects, customers and the public. It encompasses five distinct components.

·        Branding. How your organization’s branding is incorporated into your content, advertising, social media or other promotional piece? How is your brand positioned in the market place? (Here’s help for developing your brand.)

·        Product benefits. How does your offering meet your prospects’ needs?

·        Media platform. Since media-format specifics influence creative presentation, you must consider where the promotion is going to be distributed or shared. At a minimum, consider owned media, social media and third party media.

·        Call-to-action. How does your promotion overcome customer inertia and close the deal?

·        Response channels. How do customers purchase the product? Options include online, mobile retail, phone, mail, and fax.

5. Choose your channel (aka medium and/or format).

A combination of distribution and promotion are needed to ensure that your content or promotion reaches its maximum potential audience in a format that they find easy-to-consume including text, photographs, video, audio or PDFs. The media used should be aligned with your business goals to reach the appropriate target audience. (Here’s an outline and chart of these media types.)

Ex: Owned media, Third party media, Social media, etc.

6. Test your marketing.

Continually test various aspects of your marketing to maximize your results. Think holistically across the entire marketing process in terms of the four moments of truth. You need to keep optimizing your process to improve the bottom line. Further, run tests more than once to ensure results aren’t flukes and understand that factors may change over time. For example, promotions wear out over time. Start by testing on the areas that have the largest impact on your sales process.

·        Target market. Are there other customers who are interested in your product/service?

·        Offer. Can you change the pricing of your product or its presentation?

·        Creative. Is your content, advertising or communications connecting with your target audience? Check the text, images, call-to-action and other elements.

·        Media. Are you using the appropriate channel to communicate with your prospect? Are you employing a content format that’s easy-to-consume?

·        Devices. Are your marketing communications available on the type of devices your audience prefers? Think computer, smartphone, tablet and/or offline.

7. Determine your success metrics

You must assess your results to determine your marketing’s effectiveness in achieving your intended goals. To this end, it’s helpful if your goals are specific and measurable.

Understand that each of these seven elements must be adapted to your specific goals to ensure that you’re focused on accomplishing your business objectives.

Are there any other attributes or suggestions you’d add to this list? If so, what would you add and why would you add it?