How to Make a Marketing Strategy Plan that Works?

If there’s one thing that can help you compete with your competitors, some of whom are business tycoons out there, it’s marketing.

It’s important to remember, that only the right kind of marketing, directed towards the right audience actually works. Therefore making marketing strategies even more important, regardless of how long you’ve been in the game.

One of the most important things to remember when planning a marketing strategy is that you must think like a buyer, and build your strategy around them. Of course, this requires essential marketing elements and steps that can’t be skipped –that’s exactly what we’ll discuss today!

From discussing a step-by-step marketing strategy to including real-life examples supporting our tips, we’ve created the ultimate guide for a marketing strategy plan. If you want to stand out, rather than fitting in, keep reading!

What is a Marketing Strategy Plan?

Many people mix up “marketing strategy” and “marketing plan,” but they’re different. 

A marketing plan lists out specific actions for a campaign, while a marketing strategy is a big picture, like who the business is targeting and why its products are special.

Usually, when making a marketing plan, you look at the strategy first. The strategy sets the goals, and the plan figures out how to reach them. Without a good strategy, plans might not work well.

For instance, think of an online store trying to get more customers. At first, it tries a referral program, but it doesn’t really work. If they had a solid marketing strategy, they might have realized they needed to attract a different type of customer. 

Then, their plan might focus on things like making helpful blog posts and showing up more in online searches.

A smart strategy makes it easier to come up with a good plan.

How to Develop a Marketing Strategy Plan?

1. State Your Business’s Mission:

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to state your mission. Although this mission is specific to your marketing department, it should align with your business’s main mission statement.

Our experience says, you want to be specific, but not overly detailed. You have plenty of space left in this marketing plan to elaborate on how you’ll acquire new customers and accomplish this mission.

For example, if your business’s mission is “to make booking travel a delightful experience,” your marketing strategy plan might be “to attract an audience of travelers, educate them on the tourism industry, and convert them into users of our booking platform.”

2. Determine the KPIs Mission.

Every effective marketing plan outlines how the department will track its mission’s progress. To do this, you need to decide on your key performance indicators (KPIs).

KPIs are specific metrics that measure various elements of a marketing campaign. These units help you establish short-term goals within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.

Using our earlier example of a marketing mission, if part of the mission is “to attract an audience of travelers,” we might track website visits using organic page views. In this case, “organic page views” is one KPI, and we can monitor our number of page views over time.

Additionally, ensure that your current reporting software supports the KPIs you need. Some tools can only measure a set of predefined metrics, which can create challenges for certain marketing campaigns.

3. Identify Your Buyer Personas:

A buyer persona is a description of who you want to attract. This can include age, gender, location, family size, and job title. Each buyer persona should directly reflect your business’s current and potential customers. All business leaders must agree on their buyer personas.

4. Describe Your Content Initiatives and Strategies:

Making a marketing strategy plan isn’t that hard, here you’ll outline the main points of your marketing and content strategy. Given the plethora of content types and channels available today, you must choose wisely and explain how you’ll use your content and channels in this section of your marketing plan.

When writing this section, stipulate the following:

• The types of content you want to create. These might include blog posts, YouTube videos, infographics, and ebooks.
• How much content do you want to create? People typically describe content volume in daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly intervals. This depends on my workflow and short-term goals for my content.
• The goals (and KPIs) you want to use to track each type. KPIs can include organic traffic, social media traffic, email traffic, and referral traffic. Your goals should also include which pages you want to drive that traffic to, such as product pages, blog pages, or landing pages.
• The channels on which you want to distribute my content. Popular channels include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
• Any paid advertising that will take place on these channels.

5. Clearly Define Your Plan’s Omissions:

A marketing plan explains the marketing team’s focus. It also explains what the marketing team will not focus on.

If there are other aspects of your business that you aren’t addressing in this particular plan, include them in this section. These omissions help to justify your mission, buyer personas, KPIs, and content. You can’t please everyone in a single marketing campaign, and if your team isn’t responsible for something, you need to make it known.

From our experience, this section is particularly important for stakeholders to understand why certain decisions were made.

6. Define Your Marketing Budget:

Whether it’s freelance fees, sponsorships, or a new full-time marketing hire, use these costs to develop a marketing budget and outline each expense in this section of your marketing plan.

7. Identify Your Competition:

Part of marketing is understanding whom you’re competing against. Research the key players in your industry and consider profiling each one.

Keep in mind that not every competitor will pose the same challenges to your business. For example, while one competitor might rank highly on search engines for keywords you want your website to rank for, another might have a strong presence on a social network where you plan to launch an account.

8. Outline Your Plan’s Contributors and their Responsibilities:

With your marketing plan fully fleshed out, it’s time to explain who’s doing what. We don’t recommend delving too deeply into employees’ day-to-day projects but outlining which teams and team leaders are responsible for specific content types, channels, KPIs, and more.

Now that you know why you need to build an effective marketing plan, it’s time to get to work. Let’s look at some examples to be familiar with what we’re working with.

Top Marketing Strategy Plan Examples:

Looking at appropriate examples is also one of the most important steps in making a marketing strategy plan for your brand. We’ve listed 3 top examples, have a look!

1. Louisville Tourism:

In our opinion, this marketing plan is a masterclass for companies in the tourism industry. It’s a comprehensive game plan that covers key strategies for events, tourism programs, meetings, and conventions.

It also divides its target market into growth and seed categories to allow for more focused strategies. 

For example, the plan recognizes Millennials in Chicago, Atlanta, and Nashville as the core of its growth market, whereas people in Boston, Austin, and New York represent seed markets where potential growth opportunities exist. Then, the plan outlines objectives and tactics for reaching each market.

Why This Marketing Strategy Plan Works:

• The plan starts with a letter from the President & CEO of the company, who sets the stage by providing a high-level preview of the incoming developments for Louisville’s tourism industry.
• The focus on Louisville as “Bourbon City” effectively leverages its unique cultural and culinary attributes to present a strong brand.
• It incorporates a variety of data points from Google Analytics, Arrivalist, and visitor profiles to define their target audience with a data-informed approach.

2. Wright County Economic Development:

Wright County Economic Development’s plan caught our attention due to its simplicity, making it an excellent inspiration for those who want to outline their plan broadly without frills or filler.

It includes essential information such as marketing partners, goals, initiatives, and costs. The sections are easy to scan and contain plenty of information for those who want to dive into the details. 

Most importantly, it includes a detailed breakdown of projected costs per marketing initiative — critical information for upper-level managers and other stakeholders.

Why This Marketing Strategy Plan Works:

• Begins with a quick paragraph stating why the recommended changes are important
• Uses clear graphics and bullet points to emphasize key points
• Includes specific budget data to support decision-making.

3. Visit Billings:

Visit Billing’s comprehensive marketing plan is similar to Cabarrus County’s, as it follows a magazine format. With sections dedicated to each planned strategy, it provides a wealth of information and depth for internal stakeholders and potential investors.

We especially appreciate the content strategy section, which details the organization’s past efforts and current objectives for each content platform.

At the end, it includes strategic goals and budgets — a smart move to imitate if your primary audience doesn’t need this information highlighted at the beginning.

Why This Marketing Strategy Plan Works:

• It includes a section on the buyer journey, which offers clarity on the reasoning behind marketing plan decisions.
• The design features call-outs for special topics that could impact the marketing audience, such as safety concerns or “staycations.”
• Clear headings make it easy to scan this comprehensive report and note sections a reader may want to revisit for more detail.

FAQ: How to Make a Marketing Strategy Plan that Works?

How to make a marketing plan template?

Outline key sections: mission, KPIs, buyer personas, content strategy, omissions, budget, and competition. Use clear headings and structured sections to ensure comprehensive coverage and easy navigation.

What are the 7 steps in a marketing plan?

• Define mission.
• Set KPIs.
• Identify buyer personas.
• Outline content strategies.
• Specify omissions.
• Establish budget.
• Analyze competition.

How to promote an existing brand?

Utilize social media, engage in content marketing, leverage influencer partnerships, run targeted advertising campaigns, offer promotions or discounts, host events, and maintain consistent brand messaging.

Conclusion:

Creating an effective marketing strategy plan is crucial for standing out in a competitive market. By clearly defining your mission, setting measurable KPIs, understanding your buyer personas, and outlining a detailed content strategy, you can ensure your marketing efforts are targeted and impactful. 

Additionally, identifying your competition and setting a realistic budget will help align your strategies with your business goals. Remember, a well-structured marketing strategy plan not only guides your actions but also communicates your vision to stakeholders. 

For businesses seeking professional guidance, Zoringa Ventures offers expert insights and tailored marketing strategies to help you achieve your objectives.