5 CRITICAL STEPS TO DEVELOPING A MARKETING PLAN

marketing goals

Here are five marketing planning process steps that can be followed. 

 Step 1: Document Your Business Goals and Budget

When dealing with the tactics and execution of a marketing plan, your marketing team should ask the leadership team to define their business goals for the next 1-3 years. Your goals should be externally focused, internally focused, and it could even be a mix of both.

When it comes to the development of these goals (at the business level or otherwise), write them in the “SMART” format that ensures accountability. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound and represents business goals such as:

o   Increase product line revenue by 30 percent to $2 million in the next 12 months

o   Double revenue through distributors in the next two years

o   Increase profitability from 25 to 30 percent by the end of the year

While you are setting business goals, be sure to also set a marketing budget for the year. A good rule of thumb for setting a marketing budget is 6-to-12% of gross revenue with higher spending in the early phases as you establish your marketing plan foundation. 

Step 2: Conduct A SWOT Analysis

When it comes to planning marketing, you want marketing that provides a consistent flow of high-quality leads to help fuel new sales opportunities and drive growth. You want your marketing plan technical target audiences and customers to be happy to hear from you and not dread it. And you have a limited budget and tight bandwidth.

The way to achieve all of this is to use a smart marketing approach that builds a marketing strategy and execution plan aligned to your business goals and starts with a SWOT of your current marketing program. Document strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in terms of your competitive position, target markets, target audiences, current positioning/messaging, the maturity of your offerings, channel partners, etc.

Step 3: Identify Your Target Personas

You probably know the profile of your most valuable prospects and the sales process your company uses to convert them from leads to opportunities to customers. However, as your company grows, you won’t know each prospect’s unique situation, and one message won’t work for all. You’ll need to customize your plan marketing approach by creating plan marketing buyer personas.

Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers based on demographic data, online behavior, and your educated speculation about personal histories, motivations, and concerns. For example, you may define one of your personas as VP of Engineering Vince, a business executive who cares most about cost and long-term support. A second persona could be Engineer Elliot, an engineering manager or senior staff engineer who is an expert in your technology area and wants to do a deep dive into the technical capabilities of your product or how you deliver a service. Elliot greatly influences Vince, but Vince makes the final marketing planning decisions. Vince and Elliot have very different marketing development concerns.

Here’s an example of a buyer persona to help give you an idea of how to develop your personas. 

The first step in creating your buyer personas is to brainstorm who they could be. Once you have your full list, identify the ones who have similar needs or roles and consider merging them. From here, prioritize your list of personas by considering their impact on the final purchase decision, their relationship to your company, and the size of the audience persona group. Once you’ve finished brainstorming, create your actual personas.

CREATE BUYER PERSONAS

Step 4: Develop Your Marketing Goals

Armed with your business strategy, areas of greatest opportunity, and defined persons, you are now ready to create your marketing goals. Goal setting is critical to aligning your marketing development organization, narrowing your focus, and setting your overall marketing strategy.

Documenting your goals ensures your team is aligned around your top marketing priorities and what you expect to achieve through your marketing efforts. Your goals can be externally focused, internally focused, or perhaps a mix of both.

Write your goals in the SMART marketing planning format that helps ensure accountability. SMART stands for:

·   Specific

·   Measurable

·   Attainable

·   Realistic

·   Time-Bound

For example, your SMART marketing plan goal could be to “15% increase in the number of qualified leads passed to sales in the military market by Q4 2021”. Develop at least three, and no more than five, steps in marketing planning process goals. 

Step 5: Build Your Activity Plan

Now that you’ve created your marketing strategy planning process goals and have a budget, you are ready to develop your activity plan. The most effective way to approach turning your marketing strategy into an execution plan is by using a marketing development campaign structure. You can think of planning marketing campaigns as buckets of activities focused on a common theme or goal.

With limited time and budget, a campaign approach gives you the big picture before you get into the weeds of which new video you will produce, which white paper you will write and promote, etc. 

Planning marketing campaigns can run the gamut in scope. They can be anything from a major product launch to building thought leadership in a particular segment to increasing web traffic and leads. Here are two examples of marketing campaigns and their stated marketing plan goals and KPIs:

Campaign—Lead generation and conversion

·   Description—Through content and partner co-marketing, attract quality leads that convert to opportunities

·   KPI 1—Increase leads by 35 percent to 210 per month

·   KPI 2—Increase lead opportunity conversion from 6 to 8 percent

Campaign—Partner marketing

·   Description—Develop and implement a channel co-marketing program

·   KPI 1—Publish at least one lead-generating piece of co-branded content per quarter

·   KPI 2—Generate 100 net new leads through co-marketing activities

Strategy is an evolution and something that takes a great deal of time to develop. However, mapping out a clear, strategic direction will ensure a cohesive marketing plan that maps to your personas through campaigns and is time-bound and budget-driven.

Case Study: Knowles Precision Devices

Back in 2018, Knowles Precision Devices was under new marketing leadership and faced the opportunity to grab market share in a few key markets as they evolved. To meet these business goals, Knowles decided to implement an inbound marketing approach. The content was the heart of their approach, and they looked to TREW to plan, develop and execute their content marketing strategy from the ground up.

We started with a full marketing plan, establishing buyer personas, marketing goals, specific marketing plan campaigns, and overall marketing strategy that the content plan would roll up and support. We then developed a detailed content plan that focused on four primary content themes targeted to the established personas at various stages of their buyer’s journey.

HOW TO ESTABLISH LEAD GENERATION STRATEGIES

lead generation strategies

Our audience no longer wants their attention bought — they want it earned.

This means lead generation strategies need to be revamped across the industry to better meet the needs of target markets.

The first step in this evolution is to create compelling content, and the second is to use that content to convert visitors into leads with lead generation strategies. Of course, this is easier said than done.

Learn how to run more impactful, measurable marketing campaigns.

To highlight the importance of a powerful lead generation strategy, we are going to backtrack a little bit first. Are you familiar with the analogy of the professor who presented his class with the challenge of trying to fit rocks, pebbles, sand, and water into a jar as efficiently as possible?

By prioritizing the biggest items and placing them in the jar first, he was able to optimize the amount of space used. Your business should take the mindset of a similar lead when implementing today’s lead generation strategies into your Google inbound marketing strategy.

The Lead Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand of Inbound Lead Generation Marketing

Like the professor who challenged his class to neatly fit rocks, pebbles, and sand into a jar, your inbound marketing strategy consists of rocks, pebbles, and sand. Here’s what I mean by this.

What are the large rocks that are the most essential to your inbound lead generation plan? What are the pebbles that serve as secondary, supportive tools for your business? What small stuff or distractions are the “sand” of your business? Most businesses would argue that their lead customers are their “rocks.”

While it is indisputable to say that customers are essential to any business, I want you to instead think of them as the water that was used to finally fill the jar. The water was poured in only after everything else was firmly compacted in the jar. Your business can benefit from taking this same mindset in your inbound leads marketing strategy.

The 4 L’s of a Lead Generation Process Strategy

Your content is your rocks. Compelling content plays a huge role in generating leads. This includes the tools used to generate traffic, such as your blog, SEO, PPC, and social platforms.

Approximately 96% of business-to-business customers want content from industry thought leads leaders to inform the leads buying decisions. Creating compelling content is your key to establishing yourself as that go-to, educational leader in your industry.

You know what they say: you can catch a lot of flies with honey, but you can catch more honey being fly. Try that cliche in a bar and it might end with a drink thrown in your face, but adapting that mindset in your inbound marketing strategy could not only improve lead generation marketing rates but also increase the number of qualified content marketing lead generation process your business leads.

This article will focus primarily on the step that comes after your rocks are in place -– your pebbles, or the best practices for generating leads using your content. You will quickly understand how companies that are hopping aboard the Google content train are generating 67% more leads per month than those who don’t.

1. Lead Capture

Odds are that about half of your visitors will never return to your site if you do not adequately capture some bit of information from them. A working email address is the best thing a marketer can ask for here, but visitors are not always willing to give this kind of personal information up. Call-to-action button lead generation tools like “Sign up here” have practically become synonymous with “We are going to spam you,” which is why marketers need to find new ways to obtain this information.

Nicholas Kusmich, a Strategic Marketing Consultant and Facebook Ads Specialist, suggests a new rule of thumb for obtaining visitors’ online lead generation information. Kusmich suggests 2 golden rules be taken into account:

  1. We must give before we ask.
  2. Every step of the marketing process (advertisements and promotions) must be valuable in and of itself.

Kusmich goes more in-depth with these concepts in his article, “2 Golden Rules for The New Era of Marketing,” but for now let’s focus on that first rule on lead generation strategies.

Can you believe there was once a time, many years ago, when the opt-in email box was practically a funnel luxury? It meant all the effective lead generation information you wanted would be delivered right to the comfort of your home. “What a time to be alive,” we all thought. That day is now long gone. We now find ourselves fending off content marketing information from all angles.

Somewhere between installing pop-up blockers and dumping our spam folders, we made an oath to never “Sign up here” again. It is time marketers start gradually breaking down those walls that potential marketing buyers have put up, by using new, mutually-beneficial opt-in methods to acquire their email and information. The best marketing method for this technique of “giving before we ask” includes using magnet leads for increase.

2. Generating Lead Magnets

Lead magnet means that a successful client lifecycle requires optimizing the process for converting Google visitors into leads. Unfortunately, a hole exists between the leads’ email traffic generation phase and the lead

generation phase that often results in one-time clients who neglect your attempts to capture their email marketing information and never hear from you again.

You can seal up that hole with Magnet leads. Magnet leads are tools that provide and create value for your visitors in exchange for their contact information. Businesses use magnet leads such as email opt-ins, email subscription tactics, and social media follows to fish for some sign of interest from their site’s email lead generation content visitors.

The goal of this is to receive permission from visitors to follow up. Some examples of magnet leads include free:

  • Training video series
  • Free trial
  • Webinars
  • ebooks
  • White papers
  • A set of bonus tips
  • An interview with an expert on a relevant topic

These free-of-charge educational tools will confide your visitors in your offering, allowing you to both obtain their email addresses and educate them on your funnel business.

3. Landing Page Conversion Effective Lead Generation Techniques

Another huge asset to your business when trying to convert visitors into leads is landing pages. This can be any page that someone lands on after clicking on an advertisement or other online marketing elements. It is also important to note that it exists separately from your company’s Google leads website and typically is used as a tool for a single nurturing marketing lead generation strategies campaign.

A free, basic course on creating these successfully can be found on thelandingpagecourse.com. You can also learn lots of landing page tips and best practices from HubSpot’s existing blog posts on landing pages. We will go over some of the basics of effective landing page content design right now, but definitely check out those email marketing resources later on for a more in-depth breakdown of the offer of different product components involved.

These serve the dual purpose of capturing leads and warming up potential customers. Both of these are essential stepping-stones before moving a customer further down your sales funnel. Additionally, there are two types of these generation strategies:

This plan is used to capture a user/company’s information in exchange for something. This relates back to the marketing concept discussed earlier, of “giving before we ask.”

Click-throughs are used to attract prospects to the specific product or service that you are trying to sell. The goal is to educate your prospects so they find enough information that they proceed to make a purchase.

These have one call-to-action in mind. Instead of overwhelming visitors with information regarding your business and all the product and services you offer, it is essential that you narrow the focus down to one specific goal in mind. Be sure to cut out any excess free lead generation information that isn’t essential to the campaign, and be sure to include only one form or call-to-action link for them to utilize.

The most important element of your landing page is that it delivers the best promise that your business lead gen email ad source made. If your ad says “Get 50% off computers here,” you need to reassure the visitor as soon as possible on your landing page that you will deliver those keywords.

One way to do this is to make the call-to-action on your ad source the headline on your business product offer landing page. Another way is to make sure to create the font, coloring, and images used in your ad that are duplicated on your landing page leads to some degree. 

4. Lead Generation Strategies Scoring

Scoring leads is a component of marketing automation software that helps prioritize your business leads according to their levels of engagement strategies with your inbound marketing content and ultimately helps you figure out who is ready to buy. It can also help you identify what they are interested in if business tactics are set up correctly.

This technique is used to quantify interactions that prospects have with your content leads by generating assigning points for different types of engagement. An example of the different types of engagements and their point values you may find might look like this:

  • Download an ebook – Add 5 points
  • Watch a product overview video – Add 7 points
  • Job role, not a good match – Deduct 10 points
  • Fill out the opt-in form – Add 7 points
  • Unsubscribe from a list – Deduct 7 points

Surprisingly enough, 79% of B2B marketers have not established lead scoring strategies. Scoring leads provides your company with real-time feedback on how responsive your business leads are to your marketing efforts. It can also indicate people who are ready to buy from you but haven’t yet been in contact with your business as well as keywords.

This point-based approach to recognizing and analyzing a company’s hottest leads will save your business time and money when reaching your target credit market and capitalizing on business sales opportunities and reviews. With your hottest business leads, gen identified, your email marketing business can communicate with these leads confidently knowing that they are already aware of and interested in your business leads.

Lead Gen Strategies Conclusion

Lead generation plays a role in every business’s marketing lead generation strategy b2b. Think about how many business sites you have visited since the dawn of the internet that you will never return to again. Not only did those businesses fail to find you’re well attention at that given time, but they failed to reconnect with you in the future.

This is a result of neglecting the lesson discussed in the jar analogy –– prioritizing the different elements of your best marketing strategy so that a foundation is in place for you to create an efficient and effective approach around.

With your content in place, your business can begin using lead magnets, find lead capture, effective marketing landing page lead gen design, and lead scoring to optimize lead generation rates and create an overall better-performing inbound marketing strategy.

If you desire help to create a lead generation strategy for your optimization organization, contact Mach 1 Design or email us at [email protected]