How Complex Should a Marketing Plan Be?

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To get to the heart of the question in the title I guess we first need to agree that a marketing plan is an important small business tool.

I think it’s essential and here’s why. Creating a marketing strategy that really allows you to build marketing momentum and then surrounding that strategy with the right tactics to amplify it requires some time, energy, thinking, research and a dash of luck.

The best thing a marketing plan – or should I say it more correctly – a marketing planning process can do is force you to sit and ask yourself hard questions, questions you may not have a ready answer to, questions you never thought to think about.

The plan itself is secondary quite often, the planning process is where the headway actually gets made.

With that in mind, and back to my original question, the plan then should be simple as possible, but not too simple. (to quote Albert Einstein)

In terms of the actual document that you might use to inform and direct your annual, as well as day to day, marketing activity, a one page plan might suffice. However, getting to one page, likely will involve a process that may take several weeks or months and a draft plan of many pages and sections.

It’s a bit like carving I suppose. The finished piece will be a simple expression of a process that took a great deal of effort, but that’s how the beauty in the stone is found.

And that planning process and subsequent plan should lead you to a brilliant understanding of:

Who makes an ideal customer for your business
You core message of differentiation and brand
The necessary education based marketing materials
Your multi pronged lead generation plan
Your non-selling lead conversion system
Your plan to harness the Internet and technology
Your weekly and monthly marketing calendar and budget
Your plan to measure, adjust and update the plan.

Look for more on this in the coming months as I release a marketing planning software tool based on Duct Tape Marketing in conjunction with the great folks as Palo Alto Software.

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Posted by: John Jantsch on Jun 18, 08 | 7:07 am
Category: Marketing Plans | Tags: , marketing plan, palo alto software

Comments

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Dan

"The plan itself is secondary quite often, the planning process is where the headway actually gets made." - I truly agree with this. The same goes for an overall business plan. You may create this large document in the process of creating a business/marketing plan. And that plan may NEVER get read by anyone. But, the real benefit is in the process of developing that plan. The experience and knowledge gained is immeasurable. At the same time, I think it's important to reduce the document(s) to 1 to 3 reviewable pages that you can use to motivate and measure your success.

JudyAnn Lorenz

Perhaps under the motivation idea, we need a schedule for bringing the plan before the eyes and minds of the 'doers', so they don't become used to a certain pattern, sliding off into same old, same old.

John Jantsch

@JudyAnn - yes I agree that should be a part of the plan and maybe the first part!

LindaBusiness

This is so timely for me! I just finished a plan for my home-based business and have begun implementing it. However, judging by your list above, I can now tweak it for efficiency. I'm looking forward to the new tool you mentioned. Would it be useful for someone like me who has a direct marketing business?

The Small Business Social Netw

The two biggest mistakes I see businesses make are not making a plan or not reviewing weekly metrics. Whether it is week 1 or week 104, you have to review your marketing expenditures and conversions.

Keith Brando
http://sta.rtup.biz
"The Facebook of Small Business"

Keith Bossey

John, a wonderfully simple and effective post. I'd propose having an even simpler version of the plan for day to day reference. With less people to do the work these days, staffers are often self-managed. Having a cheat sheet to refer to, that spells out the overall goals for the year, makes it easy for everyone to stay on track. If it fits with the plan, do it. If not, ask.

John Jantsch

@Keith - a list of annual goals would be also be a brilliant way to measure and keep the plan alive. You would need to update the goals each year and update the plan as well.

Marketing Integrity

Yes, creating and reviewing your organizational goals yearly is a brilliant planning and assessment process.

The challenge with marketing plans is that most businesses will in concept agree with the process, but they tend to be so excited and motivated in the beginning of a business or product launch that they always want to rush over this process and get in motion with more tangible things. If you can keep them focused on writing and sticking to a good strategic MAP (Marketing Action Plan) then the results generally play out much better.

Chris

One of the hardest things I've found is writing for many people and accurately explaining things that are universally true to most industries. As far as how that is reflected in your article above, I believe by keeping things simple, you can answer those complex questions. Well done.

One thing I would add, is to keep in mind the user's new media experience. Many times, small businesses can have a killer idea, and ways to promote it, but fall short on making adjustments when users change. Can the marketing plan still interact with consumers without getting in the way? Obviously, there aren't all the answers out there, but just something to keep in mind as well.

JP

Marketing Integrity: You hit the nail on the head. An annual review of biz goals is perfect for keeping folks on track. If the plan maps to those goals, focus is easier to maintain and success is easier to achieve.
This was #1 in my recent list of 5 Guiding Principles for Marketers.

http://diablogue.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/5-gui...

John Jantsch: I like that you said: "Who makes an ideal customer for your business" rather than "Define your target audience(s)." Indeed, I see the "groundswell" as a major catalyst for big changes down the road in our lexicon of marketing. :)

Susan

I think that too many people make a marketing plan and then hide it in their desk drawer. As an account manager for an agency, we're often given only the bits and snippets that a client considers relevant to us, when in reality we can help them make their marketing plan work better when we have insight into their true goals and how they plan to accomplish it.

After you've put that much work into a document, share it with anyone and everyone who plays into your marketing process!

Ty

I find it helpful to share the marketing calendar with my team in Google docs. That way everyone has access to it, and we can all review it simultaneously during meetings and chart our progress.

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