All great marketing departments and teams should have a marketing plan and know it intimately. We teach this through our 3-day Brand and Marketing Masterclass with Progressive Success and it’s something I feel very strongly about.
What is surprising is how often when I ask for a copy of a marketing plan, I hear “Oh we have one, but haven’t updated it in years. We just know it!”. This is not good enough – it should be an evolving document that is regularly reviewed and revised with the needs of the business.
Why is having a current marketing plan that is disseminated and known by your entire marketing team and other teams within your organisation critical and how does this have anything to do with your corporate analytics?
For the simple reason: Without one, how does the marketing team actually know what they should be doing. More importantly, how can success be measured?
The key to marketing success is to merge a marketing plan with a measurement plan into a unified plan.
Key measurement elements of a marketing plan
The first step in developing or validating a marketing plan is ensuring the marketing department’s mission statement aligns with the corporate mission statement. This is where many marketing teams make their first mistake. If the two don’t align properly, then how can the marketing department effectively obtain corporate buy-in and ensure their marketing efforts are effective in helping the organisation meet its overall goals?
Once the marketing department has validated its mission statement, it needs to define specific objectives. Then, it is time to merge these elements with a measurement plan that defines specific marketing tactics that can be planned, budgeted for, approved, executed and measured.
Clearly define these tactics. Examples can be:
- More posts (paid and non-paid) on specific social apps
- More engagement on social media sites
- Creation of branded ads
Perhaps the most difficult task in this process is that of defining the appropriate Key Performance Indicators to measure how these tactics measure up.
Some KPI examples might be:
- Increase in branded organic search traffic
- Overall increase in organic search traffic
- Increased activity/engagement on corporate social media accounts including click-throughs on posts
- Increase click-through rates on branded ads
- Increase in online sales by specific channels (organic search, branded campaigns, social accounts, etc.)
When defining your KPI keep in mind the following four factors that make up a useful KPI:
- Must utilise obtainable data
- Must relate directly to the marketing objective
- Must be easily reportable and understandable by the target audience
- Must be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely)
With the KPIs in place, ensure your analytics account is configured correctly. Ensure that you can accurately – without too much effort – report on the identified KPIs. Have all the required channels been defined? Don’t just rely on default channels from your analytics tool. Make sure the marketing activities to support the marketing department’s mission statement are realistic and approved.
Marketing measurement plans are typically in a layout grid format. Do a quick search and you’ll discover many suggested layouts.
With a merged marketing measurement plan in place, the next task is to align your corporate analytics to capture appropriate data and making it reportable becomes an easier task, as well as getting buy-in from other departments.
What about custom channels? Do you need to segregate paid social, from non-paid social (your team’s participating on social sites on your own posts), from public sharing of your content? Yes, these are three unique social channels that should be tracked and reported on, if your company is utilising these channels as part of their marketing plan.
You can create custom analytic reports that demonstrate how effective various marketing efforts are in support of not only the marketing department’s mission statement but also the corporate mission statement. This allows you to easily evaluate and adjust objectively to demonstrate just how successful these efforts are.
Remember that marketing mission statements are a living and breathing thing. The world of online marketing is constantly changing as are the tools that help execute marketing plans and those that measure results. Plan on reviewing the mission statement at a minimum annually and possibly quarterly or semi-annually if appropriate for the organisation. Don’t forget to get analytics audited by an independent auditor on a regular basis to ensure the data being collected is as accurate as possible, and that all data that should be collected is reported.
