Marketing

Do you have a strategy and a plan?

Recently I was having a conversation with a small business owner about their organization’s marketing strategy. I was shown a copy of the report and was not surprised to find many tactical items within the strategy. It contained topics like where to place ads, value proposition, competition pricing, etc. Having worked for more than seven years with SMEs, I do not find this surprising at all. It is not uncommon to find such mix-ups.

Let us start with the basics. What is marketing? Marketing is about getting the word out – be it your product or service. It is about developing a perception in the minds of your consumers. Your operations must be geared to reinforce that perception, but thats another story. Marketing is also about persuading your target market to buy your service. So how are you going to go about doing this task? You need to have a strategy AND a plan.The strategy document is based on your business goals and objectives.

Corporate vision, mission and goals drive the marketing strategy. You can either differentiate your products or services (smaller volume but high-margin sales) or follow a cost-leadership (large volume low-margin sales) strategy. You can choose to horizontally integrate (sell your products and services to different markets – either geographic or vertical markets), vertically integrate (develop and sell products across the value chain) or diversify (develop and sell unrelated products and services) for growth. Your decision on what strategy to follow will be based on your assessment of the macro-environment, your resources and how you want to position your organization in the long term, among other things. Tactics, in turn, will depend on the strategy you choose.

The marketing strategy document includes a definition of your business, the macro-environment your organization operates in, identification of your target segment/s, product and/or service offered to each segment, your closest competitors, and your positioning statement. Your strategy document will contain pricing, promotion and product or service delivery channels. It will also contain standards or benchmarks against which progress is to be measured. The marketing strategy serves as a foundation for your marketing plan. It defines your organization’s goals and objectives.

Marketing plan, on the other hand, is a document that outlines specific action plans that you are going to undertake to achieve your objectives. You would want an annual marketing plan in addition to a multi-year plan (typically a three year time frame). It includes specific details on your sales and distribution plans, advertising plans and product or service value proposition. It outlines where your organization is now and where you want to go – and how to get there. When you go grocery shopping do you just pick up whatever fancies you on the shelf? Or do you shop from a list? Expecting to implement a strategy (grocery shopping) without a plan (check-list) will lead to waste of time, increased expenses (you realize that you already have paper towels to last you for months after the purchase) and not meeting your objective (you forgot the salt. Are you eagerly looking forward to your next meal now?). The more you plan and gather information about your needs before hand, the faster and easier your shopping experience is going to be.

You can think of the marketing strategy as setting of goals and the marketing plan as the means of achieving the goals. At the very least, your marketing plan will contain current situation analysis, opportunities, objectives (from the strategy document), specific action plans and financial forecast. As mentioned earlier, the first step in writing a plan is to create specific objectives. For instance, your objective may be to generate 100 leads for the sales department each month. Or your objective may be to generate 2000 hits more each month on your website. Of course, you can set more than one goal – you may want to generate 100 more leads and get those 2000 hits on your website. A word of caution here: whatever your objective is, ensure it is achievable and realistic. This is important to ensure that you marketing department remains motivated. Get your marketing department to set higher targets after they meet each goal. It is a good idea to write down all the activities you will have to perform to reach your stated goals. If you are going to advertise, you need to spell it out: are they are going to be web ads, print ads or television ads, identify the specific organization that will host your ads, including costs. These activities will be a part of your marketing plan. Similarly, if you are planning a direct mail campaign to achieve your objectives, you need to decide if it going to be email or regular mail. For each, you need to design the layout and write content – and costs! Again, these are part of your marketing plan.

One final point. If you are like the rest of us, you are working on a limited budget for marketing. You would want to maximize returns on your marketing dollar. Whatever your budget, it is a good idea to prioritize your marketing activities. You can also break down your activities by month or by quarter. Once you have started implementing the activities you need to do three things – measure, measure and measure. If you have not included a means to track the success of your activities, you are wasting your resources. If you cannot measure, you cannot make informed decisions on future marketing activities that further your objectives. But, that topic is for another article.

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