If marketing isn’t your forte, but you know and understand the importance of marketing, we have put together the critical elements of a strategic marketing plan for you.
This article is a checklist you can work your way down, a point-by-point strategy outline of what it takes to put a strategic marketing plan in place.
- Situational Analysis
The 3C’s
Company
Get introspective - look at your product or project objectively:
Conduct a SWOT analysis. Unpack and lay bare your vulnerabilities and unique features
Develop a positioning statement through critical thinking that guides your Mission, Vision, and industry positioning.
Analyze your company’s strategy: use the McKinsey 7S Framework, BCG Matrix, the McKinsey GE Matrix, and other strategic tools.
Align your general business strategy with your marketing strategy to avoid conflicts, inefficiencies, and program ineffectiveness
Customers
Define your market: their demographics, geographical locations, psychographics, and buyer behavior
Define your audience’s needs and how they can improve their buying/funding behaviors.
Look into the total addressable market, the serviceable available market, and the serviceable obtainable market.
Identify all customer segments and determine which are accessible and profitable.
Developer B2B and B2C customer personas. You may frequently need to undertake primary and secondary market research and take the guesswork out of decisions.
Competition
Conduct competitive research - direct and indirect analysis:
Feature-by-feature comparison.
Pricing
Positioning, branding
Customers
Distribution channels
Your competitive advantages and disadvantages.
Using Porter’s 5 Forcesanalysis can prove helpful at this point. This helps to determine the attractiveness of a market segments based on the power of vendors, customers, substitutes, and new market entrants.
Marketing Strategy
Brand Development and Management
Define your brand promise and essence along with the values or principles that underpin it
Outline your brand personality, tone of voice, and visual language
Put in place a positioning statement for your brand that clearly states your unique selling proposition. This statement communicates who you are, what you offer to which market, and your differentiators.
Establish your brand architecture, guidelines, and trademarks from Pantone’s to logo usage. Having set design standards ensures brand consistency and recognisability.
Develop the branded experience and customer journey of your brand including all customer touch points.
Marketing Objectives
Once you have analyzed the market, your firm, and the competition, you need to set clear marketing objectives:
Expanded market share
Increased sales
Greater brand awareness
To beat the competition
First-to-market
Product launch
Defend your current market
Market-diversification
Or other more specific purposes depending on your business
Those objectives have to be reached by developing SMART goals - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. How do you intend to achieve these goals?
Go-to-market Strategy
Reaching the market, you have defined with your brand message and positioning should include
Market segmentation: global, national, regional, or local? SMEs or Enterprises or both?
Marketing Mix:
This includes the 8Ps: pricing, promotion, product, place, packaging, people, processes, and for internet firms physical evidence. The promotional component falls firmly within the marketing domain, and this is where most marketing and advertising agencies deliver and execute services:
website design and development
social media management
content marketing
public relations and public affairs
SEO/SEM
digital advertising and email campaigns
event marketing and trade shows
online webinars
sponsorships and endorsements
contests.
Campaign creative thematics and tactics
A specific time frame to reach desired goals
Lead and sales management and an after-sales plan -- Ensure that you keep the entire customer journey in mind. This will increase loyalty and customer lifetime value.
Financials & Marketing Budget, KPIs
Conduct a break-even analysis along with hi/low scenarios for profitability
Forecast your sales as well as your expenses for three years out
Link expenses to SMART objectives
Return on Marketing Objective (ROMI) and other KPIs/Metrics (reach, impressions, CPA, CPL, CPS, CLV)
Controls, Project Timeline, and Risks.
Assign roles and responsibilities to people within your organization to ensure accountability
Set a timeline and include a Gantt Chart
Outline specific costs and budgets
Set up risk management protocols for all potentialities, for example:
insufficient capital raised
recession
supply-chain disruption
prolonged Covid-19 pandemic
competitor tactics
reputational risk
At AmaZix, we help blockchain companies develop powerful, actionable strategic marketing plans. For some companies, hiring a full-time VP of Marketing and the team is required. Getting your marketing right is critical to your firm’s success. Contact us today for assistance.