How To Write An Marketing Strategy

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Jordan McCoy
3 years ago
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1 Writing an strategy A quick guide to planning your campaign

2 Contents Introduction Setting objectives Identifying your target audiences Planning your content Setting a frequency Evaluating success

3 Introduction So, you ve decided to use marketing to grow your organisation. Great news. One of the first, and most important things, you need to do is write your strategy. A written-down-in-stone strategy will ensure your marketing efforts are helping you achieve your business objectives. It doesn t have to be long; just simple, easy to follow and achievable. This handy guide will give you all the basics to get your marketing strategy in place. We have used the fictional company Plane Coffee to demonstrate how to establish a workable marketing strategy. For more information about your strategy, please contact the little green plane team at info@littlegreenplane.com or call

It doesn t have to be long; just simple, easy to follow and achievable. This handy guide will give you all the basics to get your email marketing strategy in place.

4 Setting objectives Your marketing objectives should be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and to a time. They should also tie into your business objectives. For example: Plane Coffee s business objectives over the next six months: Generate an additional 1,000 a month from the introduction of new product, Gingerbread Latte To make 500 in revenue by marketing Plane Coffee as a meeting venue Increase website traffic by 20% marketing objectives over the next six months: To obtain 50 voucher downloads for Gingerbread Latte per month using To sell ten new 50 slurp & chirp meeting packages to business and community groups via To increase the number of e-newsletter sign-ups by 60 (ten a month) 02

revenue by marketing Plane Coffee as a meeting venue Increase website traffic by 20% Email marketing objectives over the next six months: To obtain 50 voucher downloads for Gingerbread

5 Identifying your target audiences Key to the success of your marketing strategy is dividing your recipients up into target audiences. Depending on the type of your organisation and your objectives, these audiences could include current customers, former customers, prospective customers, suppliers, volunteers, partners, employees and industry leaders. The more precise you can be, the better. That way, you can really tailor your campaigns. The more tailored you can be, the better the results. Plane Coffee s target audiences (for its objectives listed overleaf) can be broken down into: Current clients Former clients Prospective clients Local business groups Local community groups 03

volunteers, partners, employees and industry leaders. The more precise you can be, the better. That way, you can really tailor your campaigns.

6 Planning your content Now you have your audiences, you will need to plan the content that you are going to send them in order to meet your objectives. Are you going to send general e-newsletters, event e-shots, product-specific campaigns or surveys? Whatever you send, make sure it is relevant to your audience. Although it is tempting to send out one to one big list, your open and click-through rates may suffer. So plan your content wisely. To meet Plane Coffee s objectives, we have decided on the following content: Meeting offer to business and community groups General e-newsletter for subscribers with latest products, existing products and news 04

Although it is tempting to send out one email to one big list, your open and click-through rates may suffer. So plan your content wisely.

7 Setting a frequency With your marketing objectives, audiences and content now in place, you now need to create a timetable. Choose your frequency carefully as once you ve decided on it, you ll need to stick to it! For Plane Coffee, we have decided to send: A weekly voucher (Gingerbread Latte to appear 1 in 4) A monthly meeting offer to business and community groups A quarterly e-newsletter to all subscribers 05

Choose your frequency carefully as once you ve decided on it, you ll need to stick to it!

8 The timetable would look like this: January Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Meeting (G. Latte) E-newsletter February Meeting (G. Latte) March Meeting (G. Latte) April Meeting E-newsletter (G. Latte) May Meeting (G. Latte) June Meeting E-newsletter (G. Latte) 06

9 Evaluating success You can evaluate success by looking at the reports of each campaign and benchmarking your original objectives as you go. For example: By campaign Number of opens Number of click-throughs Number of bounces Number of complaints/unsubscribes Number of opens vs clicks Link popularity Geographical opens Forward to a Friend numbers By objectives Total number of hits to the website over the six months campaign Number of vouchers downloaded (and subsequently used in-store) Number of meeting booking enquiry forms completed (and subsequently booked) Number of new subscribers obtained month-on-month 07

popularity Geographical opens Forward to a Friend numbers By objectives Total number of hits to the website over the six months campaign Number of

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