It is important to plan your direct marketing
plan sample
By:
Jennifer Beever,
(Marketing Consultant)
www.newincite.com
All? Do all
your marketing activities convey different messages and project
different images? Do your marketing efforts get poor results?
Marketing planning is important for a number of reasons. First, it
allows you to create and implement marketing programs that are
strategic in nature and intentionally tied back to your business
objectives. Second, marketing planning results in a documented
marketing approach that is easier to communicate to your employees and
helps ensure that marketing is a company-wide function. Third, a
marketing plan allows you to manage to a budget and better negotiate
with outside providers. Fourth, a direct
marketing plan sample helps you stay on
track when day-to-day firefighting threatens to derail your intent.
Marketing plans help tie your actions back to strategic business
objectives. Should we advertise our new product or spend more on
our web site? Are we investing too much of our marketing budget in low
margin products or services? How are we going to achieve our revenue
goals? A marketing plan helps you answer these questions and more.
For example, if your sales or business plan calls for 25% growth or
$20 million in revenue next year, you need to chart an aggressive
course to get there. If you know your lead conversion rates, you can
back into the number of leads that are required to generate the $20
million in sales. Such an increase in revenues may require a
significant increase in leads that can only come from direct response
marketing such as direct mail, email, or advertising.
Marketing plans help you communicate marketing to your entire
company. Great companies make marketing a function of the entire
organization. They make sure that each employee not only understands
their marketing strategy, but they own it. A clear marketing plan
gives your organization their marching orders so there is no
confusion.
By sharing business objectives and marketing strategy and tactics with
employees, you expand your marketing reach exponentially. Rather than
having a handful of sales people selling, you can get your entire
company telling your story. In many cases this pays off tremendously.
Your customer service representatives know where the company is headed
and can use their relationship with customers to convey the right
messages. Other employees can sell too.
A direct marketing plan sample
helps you manage expenses and negotiate better deals. When you conduct your marketing in a piecemeal approach,
you are not in a powerful negotiating position. Most marketing service
providers, whether an ad agency or a service firm, will be much more
interested in and do a better job on an entire marketing program
rather than independent projects.
Moreover, anyone that you ask to bid
on an integrated marketing plan should give you a price break based on
the amount of business. Your marketing plan can become a contract for
partnership between your company and the service provider. A service
provider who truly understands your objectives and indeed "owns" them
will provide much more value-add for your company.
Direct marketing plan samples help you stay on track and manage to objectives.
The biggest compliant I hear from business owners is that they get
distracted by day-to-day activities and don't take enough time to
conduct planned marketing activities. Most companies are in reactive
mode, resulting in an inability to grow in a significant, strategic
manner. Don't let this happen to you. Your marketing plan must include
regularly scheduled meetings. If you don't have a marketing staff,
schedule the meetings with your marketing services partner. These
meetings should be at least once a month on a tactical level: did
we get the ad produced? Is the web site update done? Did the mailer go
out? You should also include quarterly meetings to do strategic
analysis of your marketing: has the marketplace changed? Are we
getting results per our objectives?
Effective direct marketing plan samples are based on thorough research and strategic
analysis of your marketplace and on resulting strategic objectives. If
you haven't done strategic analysis and business planning, your
marketing plan could fail. In addition, marketing plans must be based
on clearly stated vision, mission, and goals for your company. If you
don't have a clear vision, your marketing plan could take you in a
direction different from your intent and will most certainly fail. The
more time you spend on marketing planning and managing to your plan
will result in greater growth, lower marketing expenditure, and a more
proactive, healthier work environment.
