Marketing planning is the cornerstone of any successful business strategy. It's the roadmap that guides your marketing efforts, ensuring that every action you take aligns with your overall business goals and objectives.
By developing a comprehensive marketing plan, you can effectively allocate resources, measure your progress, and make data-driven decisions that drive growth and profitability. Whether you're a small startup or a large corporation, a well-crafted marketing plan is essential for achieving your goals.
Our recent research revealed that UK SME leaders consistently grapple with marketing planning. Many are uncertain about the ideal structure of a marketing plan and struggle to differentiate between effective and ineffective strategies.
This article sets out the fundamentals of good marketing planning - six things to do that will give you a head start on 2025.
- Discover expert insights, case studies and webinars in our dedicated planning hub: SME Planning Hub
1. Start with an audit
An effective marketing strategy starts with a clear understanding of where you are. There are three stages involved:
- First, review what has gone well in the past year and what hasn’t worked; look over the analytics that demonstrate Return On Investment.
- Second, establish where your brand is currently positioned. Where do you sit against your competitors? What are the market conditions and latest marketing trends?
- Third, conduct a SWOT analysis: what are your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats? What you can say about your product or service, and what expertise do you have access to in-house?
Reflection is important and you should allow a good amount of time for this step. It’s tempting to rush straight into planning practical activities, but without an idea of what needs doing and what’s likely to work, that activity may not accomplish anything useful.
For more on marketing theory and planning, read our blog post: Marketing Theory for Non-Marketers: Marketing Planning.
2. Be specific about what you want to achieve
Think about the next year. What are your goals? Be specific about the financial targets you want to hit, or the awards you want to win, or the market you want to enter but don’t neglect yourself. What do you want from the business personally?
The more concrete the goals, the easier it will be to set a plan to achieve them.
Read a real-life example of successful marketing goal setting in our interview: Marketing Plan Interview.
3. Make sure your marketing plan links to your business plan
Your marketing should enable you to hit your business objectives, so make sure they’re linked - not created and used in isolation. Cooperation between teams, at the C-level and all the way down, is the key to success here. If you have separate teams with separate plans, nothing will work.
4. Set the right marketing budget
There’s a lot to assigning a marketing budget, but the simple method is “budget for the costs of the activities that will drive what you want to achieve”.
How much should you spend on marketing? The golden figure, for B2B marketing, is 4-8% of your business’ income. B2C marketing often demands more - closer to 15% to launch a product or service, up to 20-25% during major branding initiatives. Work out your marketing cost as a percentage of sales as a starting point, and use the costs associated with your goals to confirm the final figure.
5. Make sure sales and marketing are aligned
If you have discrete sales and marketing teams, you also need a process to keep sales and marketing aligned. Get them into a joint meeting, brief them on your business goals, and document the process you want them to follow. If you want people singing from the same hymn sheet, you need to actually provide the sheet.
6. Plan to monitor progress on a frequent basis
Setting metrics and monitoring them is the key to ensuring marketing success. You have your goals; those set your lead metrics, which you’ll track to see how you’re progressing.
Which metrics should you be measuring? There are two marketing metrics you need to measure, no matter what strategic goals you’re working toward. Marketing as a percentage of sales sets your budget and tracks your costs. Cost per acquisition breaks that marketing spend down and shows how much each customer is worth, and what you had to spend to get them.
Digital analytics often lead businesses astray. Often, digital metrics show that activity is taking place, but confirm nothing about performance. The metrics you need to focus on are the ones directly tied to goals: the rest is just puff.
The bottom line, of course, is marketing ROI. If your marketing isn’t delivering return on investment, it’s a waste of time and money.
The role of AI in the planning process
AI is revolutionising the way businesses approach marketing planning. By harnessing the power of machine learning and predictive analytics, AI tools can analyse vast amounts of data to uncover valuable insights into customer behaviour, preferences, and market trends. This enables businesses to make more informed decisions, optimise their marketing strategies, and ultimately achieve better results.
For example, AI-powered tools can help businesses segment their target audience more precisely, personalise their marketing messages, and automate routine tasks such as social media posting and email campaigns.
Additionally, AI can assist in forecasting future trends, identifying potential risks, and optimising resource allocation. While AI cannot completely replace human creativity and strategic thinking, it can significantly enhance the marketing planning process, making it more efficient, data-driven, and effective.
Setting a solid plan is vital to future success. Make sure the fundamentals are covered and give your marketing planning the time it deserves
To establish where your business is and where it needs to be, take a Marketing 360 healthcheck today.
