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Table of Contents:
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DEVELOPING
MARKETING PLANS [PART 5]:
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Listen
to the Podcast Here: |
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total
running time: 17:00 -- Download the MP3 here |
In
our final installment of creating effective, quality
marketing plans, we will discuss budgeting,
the marketing mix, your message and creating a media or
advertising plan.
You’ll
recall in part 1 of this series we learned an
effective, quality marketing plan
is part
strategy,
part compass,
and part road-map
and must encompass the present, the near future and the
long term.
We learned that
conducting a market
potential feasibility analysis is
like a COMPASS,
it orients us as to the direction we want to travel,
identifying for us our market – the “true north”.
We also
learned that we needed a ROAD-MAP,
to understand our environment and that we used 3 tools, a
PEST analysis, Porters 5 Forces analysis and a Positioning
Grid to gain insight into obstacles, competition and the
topography of an industry.
We
then learned how to take an inventory using the
“SWOTS” analysis and establish a “destination” using
both the extrapolated method where we compound current
performance and a reverse engineered method where we
select a destination and back into our current status.
In
our last lesson, we began to plot our course, and
determine a conceptual strategy that fulfills our corporate
philosophy for reaching our target market.
In
this final lesson we begin to shift away from the
conceptual and into the practical application.
The
Marketing Budget
Before embarking on your journey of traveling from point A
to point B, you will have several transportation options,
and choosing one that fits within your means will help you
get to where you’re going much
faster than a mismatch.
Lets
say your destination is 200 miles north of you.
Depending on how much time you have, the topography
of the land, the transportation system, and your budget,
you will choose a means of transportation suitable to
reaching your destination. Keep in mind; the destination
is where you’ve said your company will be by next year.
Therefore,
while you can charter a private jet, it will be among the
fastest and most costly means. However, riding a bicycle
or even walking may be viable means reaching your
destination within as little as 3-4 days at a fraction of
the cost.
Now,
if you’ve chosen the private jet, but cannot afford it,
and your racing against someone else who has the means to
walk, guess who reaches the destination first?
While you expending time and energy to raise the
capital for the chartered flight, your competitor is closing
in on your intended destination.
And while flying seems the best option, it carries added
risks and problems that can scare
investors away,
not to mention their questioning your decision for the
highest and optimal use of their resources.
Better
to make measurable progress than to be stubborn and
idealistic.
Your
marketing budget will determine the type of marketing strategy you execute; the types of
media you use to communicate with your prospects and
customers and the breadth of your campaigns.
Your budget will also dictate the depth or
complexity of your initiatives.
Fail to operate within your budget, and
you’ll have bigger problems,
I guarantee it!
Where
does this budget come from?
I can hear many small business owners barking,
“we can’t afford to market!”, to which I must reply,
“You can’t afford NOT to!”.
Defining a marketing budget starts with discipline. Are you disciplined in dedicating a percentage of your sales
every month toward executing marketing initiatives?
This
is where a strong financial picture of your business is
essential. Based
on this picture you should have an idea of the following:
- Your
profit margin
excluding fixed costs & overhead – basically how
much profit does one customer generate, this should be
expressed as a fixed dollar amount average and a
percentage.
- The
volume of sales needed to break
even, covering your overhead and fixed
expenses – basically how many customers do you need?
- What
is the lifetime value
in terms of revenues and in terms of profits of a
newly acquired customer?
With
this information, you can comfortably choose a percentage
of your revenues as your marketing budget.
If you are a start-up, then you will need to do
more research, modeling and benchmarking against other
similar businesses to help you determine how much capital
you will require to achieve your marketing related
milestones.
The
Marketing MIX – WHAT, WHOM, HOW
Each
strategy, campaign or initiative you develop must
carefully blend 3 primary factors to achieve optimal ROI
performance; 1. Your MESSAGE,
2. Your MARKET
and 3. Your MEDIUM.
This is basically, WHAT you say, to WHOM
you say it, and via what channel or HOW you deliver
it.
If
you have been following this series, then by now you
should have a very clear picture of your TARGET MARKET,
their lifecycle and life events. This will factor into
your message, and the mediums you choose to communicate
through.
Success
is determined by delivering the right message to the right
person at the right time.
Remember that traditional marketing efforts focus on
generating interest, sales efforts focus on closing a sale
– thus, in addition to your marketing strategy, you will
also want to develop a sales strategy.
The
Message
There are many resources that discuss the importance of
crafting a sound, clear, customer driven message. In your marketing plan, you will want to detail what is the ESSENCE
of your message, how will the message be refined and or
elaborated on. In
an effective marketing plan, its ok to be conceptual and
theoretical about your message; it is understood that it
will evolve under actual implementation and testing.
The
Medium
This
portion of your marketing plan details what methods or
channels you will use to DISTRIBUTE and
carry your message to your customers and prospects.
It’s important to choose a marketing medium that
gives you the highest return on your marketing dollar (ROMD).
This means that you want to choose the medium that
delivers the most
customers for the lowest possible cost.
Your
marketing plan details the mediums you will test, what
measures you will use to track success, and the primary
objective of each of your campaigns.
The
Marketing MIX – Reach,
Frequency and Continuity
- Reach
- the unduplicated proportion of an audience that is
exposed to an advertising message. In shorthand, reach
is the number of customers and prospective customers
who will see and/or hear the advertising message each
month.
- Frequency
- the number of times that advertising is seen and/or
heard by customers and prospective customers during a
given period.
- Continuity
- the number of weeks or period during the year in
which you advertise.
Each
of these three aspects of a media plan has a cost
attached. The more customers you want to reach with your
advertisement, the more it will cost. Or, you can reach
fewer people, but reach them more often, which also costs
more money.
The
key to any successful advertising plan is careful,
deliberate and controlled testing. Once you
have tweaked your campaigns for optimal performance, then
you can commit to a full scale spend.
Your
homework for this fifth and final installment of creating
an effective marketing plan, you will develop your marketing
budget and milestones; and create a conceptual
marketing mix and advertising strategy for testing
purposes.
Outsourcing
your Marketing Plan:
As
you can see over the 5 installments, an effective
marketing plan can take a significant amount of time and
resources. So just how
much does a marketing plan like the one above cost?
Much
would depend on the industry the business is in as
some industries are more complex and convoluted adding to
the amount of expertise required and to the level of
complexity of the strategy. In addition, another
significant determining factor is the availability of
historical information about companies performing the
industry, in either case of too much or not enough data,
added time may be needed to assimilate the information to
the marketing plan as appropriate.
Lastly,
I highly advise against asking a professional service
provider for a “quote” to produce a marketing plan, as
often the case, it is very difficult to gauge the
complexity of the industry and the availability of data
until one gets knee-deep into the project.
Therefore,
I recommend retaining a professional and being prepared to
augment their services with a small team of college
interns who can do much of the heavy research related
grunt work. Using this technique, I’ve seen plans
produced for as little as $2,000 but have also seen them
run as much as $20,000.
Do
you have questions, comments or feedback specifically
related to developing marketing plans? I encourage
you to send all responses to me at
and
I'll do my best to answer any questions you may have.
PLEASE:
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Up-Coming
Topics For Discussion:
-
Marketing
Plans (part 5)
-
eMail
Marketing
-
Creating
Joint Ventures and Alliances
-
Using
the Web for List Building
-
Creating
a Funding Strategy
-
Managing
and Evaluating Ideas
Want to
suggest a topic, ask a question or offer a comment?
Please send your input to me at
To your
success,
Allan
Sabo
Chief Success Advisor
ALTI Success Strategies
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