Last week, I shared the five reasons your business needs an Integrated Marketing Plan. In summary, having one might just save your life.
But creating your own integrated marketing plan, especially if you’ve never done it before, can be a daunting undertaking. Sure, you could pay a consultant to help walk you through the process (a-hem… If you want to, holler). But I don’t want you to feel like that’s the only path forward.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to share my step-by-step process to creating an integrated marketing plan! It doesn’t matter whether you’re holding back because the dollars and cents don’t make sense, or you’re simply more of an “I can do it myself” business person (I hear you there!). Follow the steps outlined in these next few blog posts to create and execute an integrated marketing plan for your own business.
Here, in its simplest of forms, is my three-step process for creating an integrated marketing plan:
One: Review last year
Two: Make a plan for the year to come
Three: Finalize and Execute
Let me know how it goes!
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Just kidding. Obviously you expect me to dive a little deeper, and that’s just what I’m going to do.
Your integrated marketing plan, step one: Review last year
Reviewing last year is the jumping off point for creating your integrated marketing plan. How can you know where you want to go if you don’t have a clue how you’ve gotten where you are?
First of all, clear your calendar for an afternoon (or morning). Give yourself four hours, uninterrupted. Invite other members of your team that are involved in marketing execution as appropriate. Order in some breakfast (or lunch! Or cocktails!). Hold the time as sacred so you bang out this important foundation to your integrated marketing plan for next year.
If you aren’t regularly inspecting the performance of marketing activity, or if you have a very spread out organization in terms of marketing activities and channels, then this might take a bit longer than 4 hours.
Here’s the agenda for your 4 hour session!
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Start by making a comprehensive list of marketing channels (1 hour)
This shouldn’t take too long, but don’t skip it. You want to be sure you’ve got an extensive list of everywhere you’re actively promoting your product, service, brand, and culture.
Once you’ve made your list, think twice. You may have abandoned or untended marketing channels that you need to refresh. Try running a Google search for your business, and make note of where you pop up in the first two pages of results. You could be showing up on some platforms in less than ideal ways (e.g. unmonitored Yelp reviews, an out of date business listing on a local chamber of commerce website, etc.). A stale Twitter feed and negative Yelp reviews without response can be incredibly damaging for your business. Assess your digital footprint and make a note of where your business shows up.
Hey E, where should I keep my list when it’s done?
As you’re taking the time to create this inventory of marketing channels, it’s a good idea to create some level of transparency on who owns the channel and where you go to log in (and how!). Ideally all of this ends up in a Google document or a shared secure (read, password protected) file, complete with account owner email addresses and access details as appropriate. You may also consider getting your organization set up with 1password for this (and many other business reasons).
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Next, highlight the winners and losers from last year (2 hours)
Once you’ve made your list of marketing channels, it’s time to take a look at last year’s activity. Make note of what worked and what didn’t so that you’re able to capitalize on the winners and nix (or enhance) those losing campaigns.
Ask yourself (or the team):
What was the goal of this campaign/platform/advertising spend?
What is the indicator that goal was reached?
Did the goal get accomplished?
All of your marketing efforts should have a clearly defined ideal outcome and indicator for success. If you sent an email campaign to launch a new product, you should be able to see a corresponding sales number for that product. If you ran a social media challenge to increase the size of your email list, you should be able to see how many new subscribers were added to your email programming from that challenge. Ideally your goals were specific enough to be quantified as “met” or “exceeded”. Highlight the exceeded goals in green and the unmet goals in red.
Sometimes it isn’t so cut and dry. If you’re seeking increased engagement, the markers for that engagement can sometimes be challenging to track. If you ran some programming that, on review, didn’t have a very clear goal or indicator of success, don’t beat yourself up too much about it. Highlight those programs in a designated color (maybe grey… get it?) – you’ll come back to them during the next phase. Which brings me to…
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The final phase: Identify opportunities to optimize (1 hour)
Your target for new product sales were $10,000 and you generated $8500. How could you have closed that $1500 gap?
Your social media campaign target was an additional 5K subscribers, and you got over 10K. What do you think helped your campaign outperform your expectations?
Those bright green exceeded programs should be brought back for the year to come, as long as they are still relevant. If they aren’t, make a note of the reasons you believe these performed so well, and see where you can apply those tactics or unveil a similar offering in the year to come.
Did you have any glaringly red “unmet” programs or channels? Hopefully the answer is “no” so you can pour yourself a gin & tonic and relax for the rest of the day.
But maybe the answer is “yes” and you still want that g&t. I won’t judge.
Just because you didn’t meet a goal doesn’t mean that programming or channel needs to be thrown out for the year to come. What were some of the variables that impacted your performance? Are they within your control? Can you apply some of the winning elements from your GREEN programs and try again?
The stuff in the middle, or the grey-highlighted “fuzzy” programs where maybe your goal or tracking wasn’t as clear as it could have been, are all data points to assess in this light as well. Do you think your programming will perform better with an increase in cadence? An additional advertising investment? An adjustment to the landing page content or shopping cart experience? Learn from your winners and losers, make sure you have more clear goals and indicators in the year to come, and forge ahead!
Summin’ it up
At the end of this four hour stretch you should have a guiding document outlining all marketing channels, what worked and didn’t last year and why, and some prioritized actions based on this insight.
Next week we’ll take the outcomes of your yearly review and merge them with the year ahead to create a draft of your integrated marketing plan. Can you believe it? So simple!
Did reading this leave you feeling even more overwhelmed than before? Or would you just like to run through this process once with a seasoned pro (who totally adores doing it)?
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I offer quarterly editorial calendar planning services and would LOVE to help you hit the ground running in 2019. Hit me up, we’ll talk, we’ll make it happen.