The main reasons to have a marketing plan in place regardless of the size of your business are, in no particular order, as follows:

• Align marketing priorities with the overall business plan – an opportunity to re-visit whether marketing strategies are still applicable given any possible shifts in business vision. Quite often kicking off marketing planning highlights a gap in communication around overall business vision.
• Shared understanding across the business to ensure everyone is on board and moving in the same direction and communication is flowing…involvement from people performing different roles in the business will help provide balanced perspectives, create new ideas as people bounce thoughts off each other and allow everyone to feel some ownership for marketing success. Even if it is just you in your business, you can try putting on your different hats to consider marketing from different angles, such as how your customer service approach impacts the customer journey and what initiatives you need to work on to improve customer experience
• Taking the time to look at the bigger picture on a regular basis will help you keep your finger on the pulse and adapt as changes happen in the marketplace, economy or even your own circumstances (such as more or less time and resources to invest in your marketing)
• A more structured approach helps you be more prepared for speculative approaches from organisations and agencies who want some of your marketing budget. To be on the front foot and proactive about what channels you advertise in (or even if you do) and who the main target audiences are puts you in a stronger position when you are approached by media companies. The same applies to donations and sponsorship
• Helps establish measurement in meeting your objectives and obtain feedback on the return of investment of your marketing efforts – KPIs can be established for many aspects of your marketing plan and for those that are harder to measure, you can agree how you will know you’ve achieved success (e.g. anecdotal positive feedback)
• A plan keeps you accountable for making constant progress with your marketing by consistently tracking your activity and providing the chance for scheduled ‘check-ins’. A marketing planning process is a cyclical, iterative one and once you have a formula for this that works, you can easily get into the rhythm of ‘plan, execute, analyse and repeat’

If you need some guidance with the marketing planning process, get in touch to discuss options for marketing planning. These include opportunities to be hands-on and coached through the process or to have a lot of the leg-work done for you. Packages start from $2495+GST, however we are also happy to tailor a solution to suit you.