How to: Research your way to a successful marketing plan image

Research your way to a successful marketing plan

Tis the season for developing next year’s marketing plan.

Some marketers view planning as an opportunity to chart out fresh strategies and tactics to generate success in the year ahead. Others are overwhelmed by the thought of it and don’t know where to begin.

There is so much pressure on marketers today to deliver results that creating a marketing plan can seem daunting. In my career, I have seen annual marketing plans range from 10 pages to 250 – it all varies according to the needs of the organisation. Ultimately, you want to develop a plan that is useful and manageable, not something overly complicated. Taking a thoughtful approach, leaning on your own data and research can help.

Start with evaluation

Before you plot out objectives, key messages, audiences, timelines and budgets, you need to know how your current marketing initiatives are performing. This is your opportunity to take inventory, reflect on what you accomplished, and use what you learned to shape your 2017 plans. Ask questions like:

  • What results did you achieve? Were results better than the year before?
  • Which events did you sponsor or attend? Did the events generate quality leads? What was the cost per lead?
  • What current collateral or assets do you have available? Is the information helpful to your current customer base and is it generating leads?
  • What is your best opportunity source?
  • What was the total ROI for your efforts?
  • Are the tools you have supporting your efforts?

Going into planning with a data-driven mindset helps you focus and determine tactics more easily. For example, research shows that on average, B2B marketers allocate nearly 30% of their total marketing budgets to content marketing – but what if the content isn’t bringing in leads? If the data shows an initiative did not perform well, you can course correct or strategically cut it from your plan. Conversely, if something is working really well, this information helps justify further investment.

Document your sales and marketing processes

Another important part of the evaluation process is determining where the majority of prospects are dropping out of the funnel. Going through the exercise of mapping out your sales and marketing processes and defining service sevel agreements will help you identify inefficiencies. Moreover, it will help you determine if there are key pieces of collateral or sales enablement tools missing that should be developed in the year ahead.

Get input from key stakeholders

Getting feedback from key stakeholders also can help you fine-tune future marketing efforts.

Product management and sales, for example, can assist you in defining key components of the marketing plan such as goals, messages and target audience. If you make sure they are part of the planning process and their voice is heard, they are more likely to support the 2017 plan you put it in place.

Spy on your competition

Beyond evaluating your marketing performance, channel your inner spy to get a sense of what the last year was like for your competitors. Explore and ask:

  • What changed on their websites?
  • Are they positioning things differently?
  • Are they selling new products?
  • Do they have new pricing?
  • What kind of press did they get?

You can take it a step further and run an SEO audit of keywords to compare your rankings to theirs.

While researching competitors might seem extensive, it really takes minimal effort. Ultimately, it helps you easily identify what you need to incorporate into your marketing plan to differentiate your organisation.

Rely on research

Evaluating marketing performance, plotting out processes, talking with others in your organisation and keeping an eye on the marketplace sets your future marketing plan up for success. Your research essentially gives you the information you need to easily identify target audiences, develop objectives, key messages and a timeline that will spur positive results. So instead of cringing when planning season begins, relax in knowing the information you gather will lead to a meaningful marketing plan.

Related content

Access full article

Propolis logo white

B2B strategies. B2B skills.
B2B growth.

Propolis helps B2B marketers confidently build the right strategies and skills to drive growth and prove their impact.