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Welcome to the The Marketing Source e-newsletter! Our goal is to provide
you with real-world marketing tips.If you have any ideas for articles,
please send them along.
Resolve Yourself to Plan Your Marketing & Communications: Part II
If you followed our advice last month, you should by
now have a pretty good start on developing (or re-
visiting) your communications and marketing goals
and understanding your target audiences. If not, you
still have time to make 2008 a banner year for
marketing and communication.
Quick recap: Start your marketing and
communications planning process with what you
know, your organization's goals. Once you
have those goals in hand, establish marketing and
communications goals that directly support those
broader business goals. And your marketing goals
should be SMART - Specific, Measurable, Actionable,
Realistic and Time bound. Last month, we also
covered target audiences - you'll have the best
success if you
understand who you are trying to reach and what you
can do for them.
What's next? Roll up your sleeves and put on
your thinking cap. It's time to get busy figuring out what
you
need to say to your target audiences, and where, how
and when you are going to say it.
Messages aren't the specific words you use,
but the ideas you want to communicate to your target
audience. Think about what you do for your customers
or clients, what you want people to know about you
and what problems you solve for people. Come up
with a list of three to five key points, then use them
over and over again in your materials, advertising,
press releases, presentations and web site -
anywhere you communicate with your target
audiences.
Examples:
- You save time by ordering online and we
guarantee delivery within 48 hours
- Joining our organization can save you time, money
and hassle
Channels and Tools You know who you want
to talk to and the messages you want to send. Now
figure out how you can get best deliver your
messages. Channels can be groups of people or
organizations that can help communicate your
messages. Tools are the actual materials you use.
Think back to your target audiences. Will they respond
better to e-newsletters or advertising? Is there a
conference or meeting where you can reach larger
groups of people? Do you have a newsworthy story
that would interest the media? The goal here is to
develop a list of channels and tools you can use with
each of your target audiences.
Examples:
- Channels: News media, opinion leaders,
conferences
- Tools: Website, media kit, advertising
Strategies allow you to accomplish your
goals. For each goal, you will likely have three to
seven broad strategies.
Examples:
- Use direct mail campaign to communicate to all
previous conference attendeesConduct customer/client survey to measure
satisfaction and identify potential new products and
services
- Revise web site to update information and allow
online transactions
Tactics are the specific tasks that need to
be done to implement your strategies. For each
strategy, you should have several tactics. Tactics
should include every major step you need to take to
accomplish a strategy.
Examples:
- Set up brainstorming meeting with web developer
and department headsCreate list of changes to be made to web siteCollect testimonials and photos to use on site
- Get timeline and budget from web developer
Timeline by Tactic is the key to actually accomplishing all
the goals, strategies and tactics you set out. Every
tactic should have a deadline - and someone who's
responsible for it. Without this step, you have list of
things to do, but no priorities and no accountability.
And that's sure to leave you with lots of undone tasks
by the end of the year!
Examples:
- Conference mailer due at printer by October 3,
2008 - Responsibility: Marketing DirectorDraft copy of annual report by February 1 -
Responsibility: Copywriter
- Update media contact list by July 31 -
Responsibility: Public Relations Coordinator
Evaluation is at the bottom of this list, but it
may be the most important thing you'll do! Build in
some tools to measure how well your strategies
worked. Whenever
possible, build a call to action into your materials -
ask people to call, buy, log on or email so you can
track responses. But don't get hung up on the idea
that you have to measure every single thing you do.
Instead, set some key benchmarks and begin tracking
them over time.
Examples:
- Number of phone or online inquiries Number of hits to your web site
- Amount of press coverage (Even better: the quality
of press coverage)
Whew! It takes some work to put together a
plan, but
not as much work as drifting aimlessly from project to
project and ending the year wondering what, if
anything, you've accomplished.
Need more
help? We work with organizations and companies of
all shapes and sizes to develop actionable plans. Contact us to find out more!
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