Formulating a marketing plan is vital to the success of any business. Whether your business is a start up enterprise with the aim to secure funding from shareholders and to generate their first clients, or your business is an established corporation that aims to keep it’s agility, stay ahead of competitors and to continue its expansion, an effective marketing plan is important to achieve these goals. In this article, we will explore why marketing planning is vital to the successful operation of all businesses, and why marketing planning should be an aspect of focus for all leaders and managers.
Successful marketing actions all start as being part of a detailed strategic marketing plan. This strategic plan takes into account the position the business holds within its sector, and how it can best utilise its resources and the correct marketing channels in order to generate the maximum level of leads and return on investment. This is ultimately more important for a smaller start up business, as these businesses cannot afford to waste their resources. They need to carefully plan their marketing campaigns in order to be successful and to generate the small business the results it needs to be able to be successful early on and to meet its ambitious growth plans.
Effective marketing planning helps you to develop a better understanding of your audience, and you gain important insights into their habits, preferences and how they digest information. By studying your audience’s preferences, you can tailor your marketing strategy to reach your audience more effectively. For example, just some of the information you can learn about your audiences are what devices they use to view your website, what pages of the website they view the most, what the most common average age range is for your audience, what countries they reside in, and what their job titles are. By utilising this information, you can plan what marketing mediums are the most effective ones to utilise to reach this audience. You can also tailor your marketing communications to speak to appeal to this audience more directly.
Our Directors Development Programme – Strategic Marketing for Non Marketing Directors module teaches delegates a wide range of techniques and tools that are essential for effective strategic marketing. Our programme also teaches delegates how they can develop the critical thinking skills needed to build an effective marketing strategy, and they will also learn an understanding of how an effective leadership team influences strategic marketing approaches.
In order for marketing planning to be successful, the marketing plans need to be implemented effectively. After spending time in meetings and strategising with the team, the marketing strategy needs to be divided into actions between the team and implemented and the results of the actions need to be tracked in order to judge if they were a success and to track the leads, revenue and return on investment that the actions generate for the business.
Our Strategic Marketing for Non Marketing Directors programme focuses on the importance of planning in marketing. Effective marketing planning is an essential attribute for a successful workplace.
At In Professional Development, strategic planning is a soft skill within the workplace that we cover on many of our other professional training courses. To find out more about our courses, visit our Courses page, and click on the relevant course. Alternatively, or if you’d like more information before booking, email us at enquiries@inpd.co.uk, send us a message using the form on our Contact page, or call us on 0161 826 3139. We look forward to hearing from you and advising you on the right course for you.