Ready Set WRITE!

The new year is upon us. At Plaid Swan we are writing annual marketing plans for our clients.
The development of these plans can seem overwhelming to your team when they imagine it added to their already busy workload, however, a solid plan that follows a standard format can move along at a steady clip.  Your plan should spell out the goals, strategies, and tactics to gain and/or maintain a competitive position as well as any results sought by the leadership of your organization.

Whether you write an annual plan, or a 3 year document, we recommend that you review it every quarter to ensure you are on task and your plan is up to date with new or changing goals.  Take the time to complete this process on a regular schedule. It will ensure all your internal teams are heading the same direction!

Benefits – The advantages of developing a formal written document include:

• Forces a thorough review of all factors impacting success.
  
• Encourages a long-range view; minimizes expedient decision-making.
  
• Stimulates thinking to make optimum use of company resources.
  
• Provides a market-driven foundation to build operating plans on.
  
• Serves as an ideal vehicle to achieve internal consensus and buy-in.
  
• Fosters coordination and unification of all efforts; maximizes efficiency and effectiveness.
  
• Enables team members to take action that is appropriate and in concert with organizational goals.
  
• Facilitates objective evaluation of past actions and results; fosters use of strengths, helps prevent repetition of past mistakes, and indicates where improvement is necessary.
  
• Clearly delineates goals, facilitates measurement, course correction, if indicated, and recognition of superior performance.

Characteristics – A good marketing plan is generally:

• Simple and easy to understand.
  
• Clear about responsibilities and desired results.
  
• Practical about goals to be attained and application of resources.
  
• Flexible and adaptable to changing conditions.
  
• Complete and comprehensive.

Major Elements – Most plans include the following components:

• Executive Summary: Write this first! It should serve a guide for assembling all of the other components.
  
• Situation Analysis: Summary of trends, issues and recent performance in the context of the macro-environment. Include a Market Analysis (market forecast, segmentation, customer information, and market needs analysis); a Competitive Analysis; a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats—look at regulators, distribution channel or selling dynamics, etc.); conclude with a summary of problems and opportunities, and the strategic alternatives to exploit them.
  
• Sales Forecast: At minimum, include sufficient detail to track sales month by month, and follow-up with a plan-v.-actual analysis. You may also want to include specific sales by product, by region or market segmentation, by channels, by manager responsibilities, and other elements.
  
• Marketing Objectives: The specific, attainable and measurable goals that flow from the opportunities, and the strategic alternatives to exploit them.
  
• Marketing Strategy: The “game plan” or marketing “logic” through which the objectives will be achieved, including: targets; if segmentation has been adopted as a strategy, positioning vis-à-vis customers and end users; the mix of elements; allocation of resources, etc.
  
• Implementation or Action Plan: Timing and details of specific action including an expense budget. Again, include enough detail to track expenses month by month and produce a follow-up plan-v.-actual analysis. Expand on this bare minimum content with specific sales tactics, programs, management responsibilities, promotion and other elements.
  
• Review: This section covers organizational impact, risks and contingencies, and pending issues. Be ready to support the plan to counterbalance such risks and concerns.

Happy writing!