Marketing planning: The 5 steps to success
The right marketing planning can prove to be a challenge, especially in decentralized companies. While specialist literature advises allocating at least 3 to 5 percent of total turnover annually to marketing measures, there are significant deviations from this advice from sector to sector. However, as it is difficult, especially for local sales partners, to draw up a budget or marketing plan themselves, guidelines and guidelines from the central marketing department, in a marketing planner, and used as assistance.
It all starts with a plan
Central management should now be aware of what percentage of revenue they would like to allocate annually to marketing measures. After setting the budget and deducting the resulting personnel costs, the result is the annual marketing budget, which can then be used to create the product, content and marketing plan. Since calculating the budget is not enough to create a successful marketing plan, we have defined 5 steps in which resources should be distributed sensibly and the plan structured. Especially in decentralized companies, it is important to make budget and marketing planning available to the company's individual sales partners in a planner and to communicate transparently.
1. Define priorities and goals
Preparation is particularly important in order not to dwell on individual decisions and to pursue the overall goal. First of all, it is important to have a clear, strategic goal in mind that prevents budget from being spent on spontaneous actions without acting effectively. These overarching marketing goals can include, for example, improving our image or acquiring new customers. When planning goals, it is important to take a close look at past marketing campaigns and decide together with the management in which direction the company would like to develop in the future. In order to make these goals achievable and operationalize them, the year is divided into various marketing or advertising priorities, which should gradually lead to achieving the goals.
2. Appropriate measures and instruments
Individual strategic advertising measures are then defined, carefully selected and recorded in the marketing plan. By analysing and setting the objectives beforehand, it should no longer be too difficult to find out which instruments appear to be suitable. In line with the advertising focus, for example, mostly online measures and social media campaigns can be promising for a rather young market, while in other focal areas, a large poster campaign would be more effective. For strategic support for local partners, they can also rely directly on the marketing center's advertising advice. The analysis, planning, strategy and dissemination are therefore carried out by headquarters, but the final implementation should be supported by local partners.
3. Scope and prioritization
In addition to strategically defining priorities and content, prioritization should also take place. This means that it is decided which advertising measures are more important and which goals are in the foreground in the marketing plan. This should help to strategically distribute and weight the budget depending on the goal. In addition, it is also possible to determine to what extent and with what frequency individual measures should take place. The marketing plan therefore determines exactly how long a campaign should run and how important it is for the entire marketing and product. This serves as a strategic guideline to show partners in the company which content should be used with a higher priority.
4. Distribute budget
When the individual product represents the advertising focal points in the planner and the priority is clear, all you have to do in the marketing planning is to calculate what costs will arise. It is important to remember that in addition to production, there may be additional costs for design, distribution or travel expenses (for example at a trade fair). In addition, you should always set aside a certain “budget buffer” for unforeseeable costs. All these estimated marketing costs can be viewed in a marketing planner by all of the company's partners and used for strategic, local marketing campaigns.
5. Compare with the overall budget
In the end, all that remains is to compare it with the entire marketing budget set at the beginning of the marketing plan by adding up all calculated costs for the individual focal points. If a discrepancy is identified in this analysis, measures must be cancelled or expanded retrospectively in order not to exceed the budget. The individual marketing managers at the locations can now adapt the company's marketing planning to their own overall budget and adapt local marketing to their customers and the market.
In the aftermath: performance measurement for the next planning
After the first phase and the strategic implementation of the plan, it is important to evaluate the marketing plan strategy and measure success. Because only successful advertising materials help to achieve the strategic goals set out in marketing planning. In this way, it is possible to avoid using measures in the next year that do not provide any discernible benefits in the company's marketing.
The marketing planner in decentralized marketing
In order to make such budget and marketing planning also available to local partners, it is a good idea to use a marketing planner. Management has various options here to obtain such software:
Marketing planner provider
If it is only important for the company to disseminate the marketing plan, but the implementation of the strategy is regulated by the individual local partners themselves, simple marketing planner software can be used. This makes it possible to make marketing planning available online and share it with all partners by making recommendations for the individual advertising priorities and campaigns and providing them with a recommended budget. This planner helps local partners to set their own priorities and use the existing marketing budget wisely. The campaigns and selected advertising measures can be edited in the marketing planner and adapted to your own wishes. In this way, the marketing planner enables local partners to benefit from the planning of the headquarters, but still retain enough freedom to continue to design marketing locally and in line with the market and target group.
Marketing portal providers
However, if you not only want to share marketing planning, but also want to combine the complete management of local marketing on one platform, you can opt for a marketing portal. In a marketing portal, not only are the details of the marketing plan passed on to partners, they also offer the advantages of a web-to-print and web-to-publish system, as well as the integration of proprietary systems and databases. This means that the complete management of local marketing can be carried out via a single platform. With regard to the marketing plan, all functions of the above-mentioned providers are integrated and, through a holistic process of creating and ordering marketing measures, these systems can provide marketing support.