The whole idea of creating a marketing plan is to avoid certain pitfalls and to foresee caveats that might prevent you from achieving your goals: The better the structure, the more defined the concept, the more detailed every single item is, the better the chances are your plan will succeed.
And never forget one of the most important factors when creating your marketing plan: Your budget. Just because it's small, doesn't mean your plan cannot succeed. Not factoring it in will most likely make it fail.
Your vision is the overall purpose for your undertaking (After all, you have a reason to do all this, right?).
| A Verb (a purpose/fulfillment word) | + | a summarizing statement |
|---|---|---|
| To be | the number 1 wedding cake supplier in your city. | |
| To provide | ||
| To enable | ||
| To solve | ||
| To guarantee |
Be careful to pick the right purpose or fulfillment words.
For example, to be describes the completion of the process: you have done it. Don't use to become, since it describes the process of getting there. After all, it's a vision.
Don't confuse goals with objectives. Sometimes it can be hard to differentiate, but here's a reminder on how to tell them apart:
A goal is the What?, and an objective is the How?
Let's use the above example to dig a little deeper:
| A Verb (an action word) | + | a noun | + | a measurable metric | + | a timeframe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| To increase | sales of 3-tier wedding cakes | by 10% | by the end of the year | |||
| To achieve | ||||||
| To build | ||||||
| To acquire | ||||||
| To secure |
What is necessary to achieve your goal? How can you succeed? What steps do you need to take?
For example, if your goal was To increase sales of 3-tier wedding cakes by 10% by the end of the year how are you going to make it happen? (Chances are it won't happen by itself.)
| A Verb (an action word) | + | a noun | + | why | + | a timeframe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start | an advertising campaign | to build customer awareness | by the end of next month | |||
| Hire | new customer service reps | to handle the expected sales | before the campaign is launched | |||
| Create | ||||||
| Define |
Action Items contain your strategy. Some objective will require a lot of single steps, some will not.
Your objectives might also include more sub-objectives, which again will include action items.
If your objective is to Start an advertising campaign it should be pretty obvious that it involves quite a few action items, for example:
| A Verb (an action word) | + | a noun | + | why / how |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Select | the right channel | for your campaign (TV, Radio, Direct Mail, Online,...) | ||
| Call/Meet with | advertising agencies | to discuss and get quotes | ||
| Create | the online ad/the flyers/the commercial | according to your specs and research | ||
| Create | the landing page(s) | to provide further information |
If your objective is to Hire new customer service reps, again you already set the path for your action items, for example:
| A Verb (an action word) | + | a noun | + | why / how |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Create | ad for paper, internet job sites, etc | to find new employees | ||
| Schedule | interviews with candidates | to select the perfect prospects |
Some of your objectives or action items may directly depend on the successful completion of another, some may not.
Pretty obviously you cannot schedule interviews before potential employees have read the ad you placed in the paper.
Just because at one point it might look easier to jump ahead and tackle a new one before another one is completed, it's not always wise to do so. You might suddenly realize that you are missing a core component because it depended on the completion of another action.
Careful planning will prevent getting caught in an endless loop: where one cannot be completed without the result of the other.
