How to create an annual Marketing Plan

In today’s blog, I am going to explain what you should have and what you can do to create the perfect marketing plan.

Create a situation analysis

Before you start mapping out your marketing plan, you need to create a situation analysis. You need to know your current situation. What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? You should already know who your current market is and how you compare to your competitors. Creating a competitor analysis should help you with this.

Think about how their products are better than yours whilst also looking at the gaps in their marketing approach. What are they missing? What can you offer that’ll give you a competitive advantage? Have a look at what sets you apart from your competitors.

Define your target audience

When you have a better understanding of the market and your companies current situation, you now need to know who our target audience is. If you have already created buyer personas, then you might also to have a look to see if they have changed at all.

If you dont, you need to create one. Your buyer persona should include demographic information such as age, gender, and income. However, it will also include psychographic information, such as pain points and goals. Do they have any problems that your product can fix?

When you have found this out, it will make it easier for you to define your goals.

Create smart goals

When you know your current situation and know your audience, you can start defining your SMART Goals. SMART stands for, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This means that all of your goals should be specific and include a time frame for when you want to accomplish these goals.

For example, your goal could be to increase your social media reach on Facebook by 15% within three months. It all depends on your overall marketing goals. This goal is specific, measurable and time-bound.
Take a look at your tactics.

Now you need to figure out what tactics you will have to use to achieve your goals, whilst also using the right channels and action items to focus on. Let’s use the example from before. If your goals are to increase your social media reach on Facebook by 15% within three months, you might want to create a giveaway, responding to every comment and to post on Facebook regularly.

Create your budget

Before you start implementing your ideas that you have created, you need to have and know your budget. For example, you might do some social media advertising, but if you dont have a budget for that, you might not be able to achieve your goal.

So no matter what your marketing you are going to do your need to create budgets for it.