2019 Marketing Planning Guide

Transcription

1 2019 Marketing Planning Guide As the end of 2018 is beginning to approach, many businesses are starting to look ahead and plan for What marketing initiatives will you use during the coming year? This guide will help you consider which strategies and tactics to invest in as you plan your goals, budget and timeline. Step 1: Review 2018 Before you can figure out where you re going, you need to take a look at where you are now and where you ve been. What were your goals from this past year? Did you achieve them? Also, think about the marketing strategies you used over the last 12 months. How did they work out? If you didn t have specific goals for this year, now is a great time to begin collecting some baseline data: Set up a Google Analytics account so you can measure your website traffic. Export and review analytics from your social media accounts so you have data saved showing your engagement, followers, click-through rates, etc.

2 Check your e-newsletter s open rates and click-through rates to make note of where they are now. By having the above analytics available, you ll be able to establish realistic goals and measure progress as 2019 begins. Step 2: Establish New Goals After you ve established how 2018 went, it s time to look ahead to What goals do you want to achieve? Make sure that you set goals that are SMART: Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Timely It s much better to have a few realistic, clear goals than a vague idea like, I want more customers. Instead, set goals like: 50 new Facebook fans 25% more website traffic 5 new sales a month Once you have SMART goals established, you can figure out how you ll achieve them. Step 3: Review Your Budget Of course, your budget is always an important factor to determining your marketing strategy. When wondering how much of your annual gross revenue should go towards your marketing, a good rule of thumb is about 10 percent. But establishing a realistic budget takes more than just knowing you plan to use about 10 percent of your annual gross revenue. How much of it will you spend on social media, blogging or marketing? What about advertising are you factoring in how much various social platforms charge for ads? You might want to consider other content marketing tactics like creating infographics or guest blogging, too. Here are several popular tactics you may want to consider building into your overall budget: 1. Social Media Advertising 2. Organic Social Media Marketing 3. Blogging for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

3 4. Marketing 5. Infographic Creation and Promotion 6. Guest Blogging As you consider which tactics you want to use and how much of your marketing budget to allocate towards each item, consider your goals and your timeline. How soon do you expect to see results? For example, blogging is a slow and steady approach that takes time. If you consistently write and publish posts following SEO best practices, you ll likely start to see your internet traffic increase significantly over the next months, but it s not an overnight strategy. If you want faster results, on the other hand, you can run a social media advertising campaign. But consider that your visibility will be directly tied to how much you can invest in the ad spend, or the actual ad views. If you decide to spend $100 per day, you re going to see very different results than if you set the cap at $20 per day. At Three Girls, we recommend a multi-pronged approach to spending your marketing budget. Even with limited funds, you can see positive results from your marketing efforts by strategically choosing the areas you want to focus on and being consistent with them. For example, if your budget doesn t allow for all the tactics above, consider starting with just two or three of them. Ideally, over time, your company s revenue will grow, which means your marketing budget will increase as well. Of course, you can have all the marketing ideas in the world, but the price can add up. How can you reduce the overall cost of your strategy? First of all, remember you ll get out of it what you put into it! If you slash the marketing budget completely, you won t see any results in your business growth. But you also need to be realistic about spending funds you have, so review your goals. What do you want to accomplish in the coming year? What are priorities for your business? With your goals in mind, scale back your plans to focus on the highest priorities first. Also, remember you don t need to jump into every tactic with full force. Once you select the activities that will help you reach your goals, lay out a plan that will keep you within your marketing budget while still pursuing your objectives. Here are six examples of ways to scale back your strategy: 1. Invest in the one or two social media platforms your audience uses most. For the top platform, publish one update a day. For the secondary

4 platform, publish three or four updates a week. 2. Run a social media ad campaign on one platform. Reduce your budget per ad as you do A/B testing, then once you know which factors resonate best with your target, increase your budget and just run one ad at a time. 3. Start a blog on your website and commit to writing one new post a month. As you get more practice blogging, increase your frequency. Make sure you share your articles on any social media channels you re managing. 4. Instead of worrying about distributing an e-newsletter every week, scale it back to once a month. You can also save time developing new articles by sharing your blog posts plus, that cross-promotes your content. 5. If you choose to create and share infographics, start small with a goal of one new graphic per quarter, or even every six months. Then spend the time in between graphics promoting it in your social channels, blog, e-newsletter or through social media ads (as your budget allows). 6. Make your guest blogging tactic a slow and steady approach. Instead of trying to get guest posts picked up everywhere at once, target one website at a time. Take a couple of weeks to research and write the post, then another couple of weeks to submit it and follow up as needed. Then the next month, move onto a new guest blogging opportunity. Another factor to keep in mind is that you or your staff may not be the most efficient when it comes to managing these various marketing tactics. It may be more cost-effective to outsource some or all of the work to an agency like Three Girls Media that can do it expertly and efficiently, thereby reducing your overall marketing budget. Tip: Consider Outsourcing It s important to consider logistics when it comes to your marketing budget. Will you put in the time to execute the tactics yourself, hire an employee, outsource the work to a firm like Three Girls, or some combination of the three? 1. Doing It Yourself If funds are tight, there s a strong pull to take on your company s marketing yourself. Still, before you put in the time and energy to figure out what you re doing and how to do it, consider how much your time is worth. Do you realistically have time in your schedule to commit to executing marketing activities and managing them well? Content marketing is an effective strategy, but consistency and quality are two important factors you may not be able to deliver if you re stretched too thin. 2. Hiring an Employee A lot of companies want to keep their marketing in-house as it allows for their team to really get to know the business intimately. Depending on internal communication practices, it can be easier to keep everyone informed, too.

5 While this can produce positive results, if you re considering the impact it will have on your budget you need to think beyond payroll. How much will it cost to train a team member, and for them to keep up with industry trends and best practices? What about employment benefits, fees and insurance costs? Remember you d also be responsible to pay out unemployment should their position at your company change. 3. Outsourcing to a Marketing Firm While working with an external firm can have its challenges, especially in regards to keeping them informed about your business initiatives, events and products/services, it comes with its benefits too. They likely have experience working with all sorts of companies, meaning they may have ideas and approaches they ve seen work time and again that they could apply to your business. Also, many agencies like Three Girls Media encourage ongoing learning for their staff, which means they re staying up-to-date regarding content marketing best practices and trends they can apply to your organization. It s important you take the time to research a content marketing agency that s the best fit for your brand. Ask them questions to clarify what exactly they ll provide, what your responsibilities would be and how your ongoing relationship will work. 4. Combining the Options It s not uncommon for companies to develop some sort of hybrid approach based on their marketing budget and available staff. For example, you may have a marketing manager on-staff at your business, but want to invest in more content marketing than they can manage on their own; by outsourcing some of the work to an outside firm, your manager can oversee progress and answer questions about the brand while still having time to oversee other marketing initiatives. Step 4: Brainstorm Strategies To Achieve Your Goals This is the time you ll come up with specific ways you ll achieve your goals. For each goal, write down a couple of strategies you think will get you there (see below for a few suggestions). For example, if one of your goals is to increase website traffic, you might want to include blogging regularly in your marketing plan. Or, if you want to see a certain amount of growth in your Facebook page, consider running a Facebook ad campaign. In addition to thinking about strategies you think might work, take the time to do some research and write down ideas you want to try. Look at industry trends and strategies experts are predicting to be important in the coming year.

6 Step 5: Write Out A Marketing Plan Once you ve written down your ideas, it s time to turn your thoughts into an actual plan. I suggest doing this by writing each month of the year on a piece of paper and then listing the strategies you plan to employ during the month underneath it. This helps you visually see how many different marketing activities you re committing to take on each month. Of course, some strategies (such as blogging or social media) are ongoing, but some (such as pitching the media or running Facebook ads) can be done a couple of specific times during the year. This way you can plan extra activities in your marketing plan for the months you know tend to be a little slower. Once you ve drafted your plan, type it out month-by-month so it s clear for you to see which activities you need to do when. Step 6: Put It Into Action This is probably one of the most important steps! Your marketing plan is useless if you don t follow it. Yes, things may come up over the course of the year that take over, but make sure you stay on track with the strategies you put in place so that you can tell if you re successful by the end of the year. Actually write down which activities to do and when you plan to do them in your calendar or planner. Give yourself deadlines and stick to them! Step 7: Review Progress Each month, go through your various points of data collection to take a quick look at how your business is performing. Check your Google Analytics, e-newsletter open and click through rates, and social media data. If you see your e-newsletter isn t getting many opens, maybe try a different approach to the subject lines, or if you see a certain blog post getting a lot of traffic or clicks, consider writing a follow-up to it. Also make a note to evaluate your plan toward the end of June. At that point you can do a full review of your marketing plan to see what s working well and what isn t. It may be a good time to shift focus from one area that isn t performing well to an area that is, or to try a new content strategy altogether instead. Contact Us For Help! Have questions? Three Girls Media is here to help! Give us a call at or us at Info@ThreeGirlsMedia.com. ###