HOW TO WRITE YOUR
MARKETING
PLAN

Marketing Plan - Key Points
• Review who you are targeting
• Clarify your value proposition
• Check your competitors
• Define your objectives
• Pick your promotional tools
• Execute on a quarterly rhythm
• Make progress each day, week, month and quarter
2

3 Phased Approach

3 Phases in Marketing Planning

Objectives

Agile

Actual vs. Planned

“Who” - Target buyers

Time-boxed

Objectives delivered

“What” - Value
Proposition

Targeted

Input to next period


“Who else” -Competitors
Monitoring


Route to market
Integration


“How” - Select activities
Repetition

“When” - Schedule
4

1. Preparation

1. Preparation

1.1 Objectives

1.2 “Who” - Target buyers

1.3 “What” - Value Proposition

1.4 “Who else” -Competitors

1.5 Route to market

1.6 “How” - Select activities

1.7 “When” - Schedule
6

1. Preparation
1.1 Set Objectives and Budget
•
You need to be clear about what want you want to achieve and
in what timeframe
•
First, understand your current capacity – what marketing
activities (email, online ads, PR...) can you carry out today, what
is your budget, what staff can work on this? What kind of results
are you currently achieving? This is called baselining
•
Next, choose clear, unambiguous and measurable objectives
•
Do you want to generate sales leads? Increase web traffic?
Acquire new partners or resellers? Increase conversion rates?
Increase social media followers?
•
Specify results (outputs) rather than activities (inputs)
•
And then set a budget – both money and people/time.
7

1. Preparation
1.1 Set Objectives and Budget
•
Make the objectives realistic and achievable – based on an
understanding of your current capacity rather than wishful
thinking or bravado
•
For example, if you want to generate 50% more sales leads from
your marketing activities you need to understand what effort and
cost is required to achieve that goal
•
If you don’t have the budget and resources to meet the
objectives then you will have to (a) increase your resources or (b)
adjust your objectives
•
Set 3 or 4 high-level annual objectives
•
Set more detailed quarterly objectives and monthly objectives
•
Agree what metrics you will monitor to check on your progress
against each objective
•
Hold yourself accountable for the objectives you set
•
OUTPUT: A set of clearly defined, achievable objectives
8

1. Preparation
1.2 “Who” – who are your target buyers
•
•
•
You have a finite marketing budget – time and money
The farther you spread it the thinner it gets – if you don’t focus your
marketing on specific targets then it will have less impact
In this step, you define who you will target with your product or service
 Where are they (countries, languages)
 What industry sectors?

What types of organisation? Size, location ...

Any specific target companies?

What are their typical roles or titles?

What are their key concerns/drivers/goals?

Where do they hang out online?

What sources of information do they use?

And don’t forget to market to your existing customers
•
OUTPUT: A clear definition of your target market sectors and the buyers
within those sectors
9

1. Preparation
1.3 “What” – your Value Proposition
•
•
•
•
•
What value does your product or service provide to customers?
You should be able to communicate this in a couple of sentences.
If you target different sectors you may need a different value proposition for each
sector
You can develop the value proposition by answering these questions
• What are you really good at?
• Why should a customer buy from you?
• What value does your product or service deliver?
• How will a customer benefit?
• How long does it take?
• What can you do better than your competitors?
• Can you quantify the benefits you deliver?
• Can you provide examples e.g. previous customers
• What about the obvious alternative (do nothing, manual or workaround)
• Is your value proposition sustainable (will it be true next year? In 3 years?)
OUTPUT: A clear statement of the value you deliver
10

1. Preparation
1.4 “Who Else” – your competitors
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Understand your 4 or 5 top competitors
Learn from competitors’ marketing campaigns
Position yourself in the mind of prospective customers by comparing yourself to
the leading competitors
Think about who to compare yourself with
Are you in a well-defined product or service category?
Who you think you compete with and who your buyers think you compete with
may be different so check this out - talk to buyers to understand who they view as
alternatives
Pick 4 or 5 of the competitors, get as much information as you can about them and
‘position’ yourself against them e.g.
• “We’re like X except our product is easier to use and produces 20% greater
cost reductions”
Don’t position yourself against competitors your target buyers won’t recognise
Don’t “rig” the competition by positioning only against obviously inferior
competitors
Don’t ridicule or badmouth your competition – it looks unprofessional and doesn’t
convince prospective customers
OUTPUT: Competitor positioning
11

1. Preparation
1.5 Route-to-market
•
•
•
•
•
Your route-to-market is a description of the path you choose to promote and sell
your product to your end customers
You can picture your ‘route-to-market’ as a diagram with you on the left and your
potential customers on the right
In this step you evaluate the most effective route for your business – this could be
direct sales by a sales team, online sales, a reseller partner, a retailer or some other
route
Select the best route(s) based on effectiveness, cost and potential for growth
OUTPUT: Preferred route-to-market
Reseller / partner
Online sales
Your
Company
Direct sales team
Other route
Target Customers
12

1. Preparation
1.6 “How” – Select promotional activities
•
•
•
•
At this stage you know what you are selling, who you are selling to and who you are
competing against.
Now select the promotional tools for your marketing campaigns
These can include but are not limited to:
1. Your website
2. Search engine optimization (SEO)
3. Online pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
4. Social media marketing
5. Email marketing
6. PR
7. Seminars
8. Online display and banner advertising
9. Direct mail
10. Press advertising
11. Tradeshows
We recommend focusing on digital marketing (your website, PPC, email, social media
etc.) because people now start most purchase processes with an online search
13

1. Preparation
1.6 “How” – Select promotional activities
•
Website
•
Revise your website to ensure it appeals to the customers you are trying to target
(“Who”) and clearly articulates your value proposition (“What”)
Have prominent “calls to action” to encourage visitor registrations or sales
PR
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads can drive traffic and online awareness in a short timeframe
Test some PPC ads and bring any traffic to specifically designed ‘landing pages’ on
your site
•
Pay-per-click
•
•
Keep up a regular stream of news releases – new contracts, new customers, new
products
Target the media your customers read – “fish where the fish are”
•
•
Email
Marketing
•
•
Use email to interact with visitors who register on your site, establishing a regular
rhythm of communication
Deliver value and useful information with every email – special offers, downloads,
white papers, industry analysis
Stay in touch with your existing customers with an email newsletter
14

1. Preparation
1.6 “How” – Select promotional activities
•
•
•
Use a blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube to promote your business
Generate content that is valuable and interesting to your target buyers
Use social networks to share the content and bring people back to your website to
learn more
Seminars
•
•
Invite-only business breakfasts and lunchtime seminars are really effective
Success depends on topic, speaker and venue, a good invite list and good
organisation
Online
Display
Advertising
•
•
•
Test display ads on websites and properties where your target audiences visit
Have a compelling offer and clear call to action
Bring any resulting traffic to specific areas on your site
•
SEO helps ensure you come top of the search results for your chosen terms and
phrases
SEO should be a key element of your marketing plan
Decide if you can DIY or if you need professional help then allocate resources to SEO
Social Media
Search
Engine
Optimization
•
•
15

1. Preparation
1.6 “How” – Select promotional activities
Direct Mail
Press
Advertising
•
•
Experiment with Direct Mail in combination with online marketing
E.g. a hardcopy invite sent out in parallel to an email invite for a seminar or event
•
In our opinion it is less targeted, less measurable and less effective than online
promotion
However, it can be worth testing for particular businesses and products
Consider testing ads in very focused press e.g. an industry trade magazine
Include a clear call to action in all your press ads e.g. “Contact us now for X%
discount”
•
•
•
•
Tradeshows
•
•
Tradeshow effectiveness varies a lot depending on the industry, product category
and particular tradeshow
Can also be expensive – before committing try to compare cost/benefit with your
other marketing activities
Choose your shows carefully then work hard to produce results, using your website
and email to promote your presence and following up with leads within 24 hours of
the show
16

2. Execution

2. Execution

Agile

Time-boxed

Targeted

Monitoring

Integration

Repetition
18

2. Execution
•
Time-boxed – break your overall annual plan into quarters; execute quarter by quarter
and adjust your plan as required
•
Execute daily, weekly, monthly – make progress each day
•
Take the actions identified in the previous (e.g. for Content marketing, Social Media etc.)
•
Write down these actions as “user stories” – see next page
•
Cluster user stories into themes if that makes sense
•
Allocate an indication of effort to each user story – H, M or L
•
Allocate an indication of value – H, M, L
•
Sort by value and effort – highest value, least effort first
•
Sort again by MosCoW – Must, Should and Would
•
Pick top user stories for execution this quarter and put them in “Backlog”
•
All other stories go into “Icebox”
•
Sketch out rough schedule using graphical quarterly plan (see next pages)
19

2. Execution
Identify “user stories”, cluster into “themes”
Preparation
Draft Buyer
personas IT
Security
Draft Buyer
personas
eLearning
Draft Buyer
personas
Network
Manager
Content
Content
Audit
Content Gap
List
Content
production
schedule
Create
mobile
infographic
Create
eCommerce
video
Create case
study
Social
Identify
influencers
Legal & Prof
Services
Optimize
social media
profiles
‘Reach out’
to
influencers
Set up
weekly post
Identify tools
schedule
to automate
posting &
monitoring
Email
Build email
list
Build email
list
Design
Newsletter
Capture
emails from
Blog
subscription
20

2. Execution
Schedule your actions using a simple graphical calendar
Wk1
1
Wk2
Wk3
Wk4
Wk5
Wk6
Wk7
Wk8
Wk 9
Wk10
Wk11
Wk 12
Activity 1
2
Activity 2
3
Activity 3
4
Activity 4
5
Activity 5
6
Activity 6
7
8
Activity 7
Activity 8
9
Activity 9
10 Activity 10
21
21

2. Execution
Additional Notes On Execution
•
Integration – don’t execute an activity in isolation – integrate your promotional actions to
create ‘multi-touch’ campaigns so your target audiences are more likely to become aware
of you from multiple sources; for example coordinate email campaigns in parallel with
social media, pay-per-click ads and PR
•
Consistency and repetition – it’s a marathon not a sprint, so ensure you have regular
waves of promotional activities targeting your audiences
•
Targeting – keep your marketing activities focused on your target customers;
reduce/avoid generalised “brand building” if you can’t accurately measure the results
22

3. Review

3. Review

Actual vs. Planned

Objectives delivered

Input to next period
24

3. Review
Monitoring and reporting
• Hold yourself accountable for your objectives – track your progress
• Have weekly, monthly and quarterly checkpoints where you assess progress against your
objectives – what is working, what isn’t working; what you should do more of, what you
should reduce
Measuring
• Pick your key objectives and identify some simple measurements to track your progress
• Examples include web traffic, number of leads generated, lead sources, click-throughrates, email response rates, ranking for selected keywords
• Automate the tracking of metrics
• Use tools like Google analytics to graphically monitor progress
Input into next planning period
• What conclusions can you draw from the period just completed?
• How does this affect the objectives you pick for the new period?
25

About Motarme

About Motarme
Motarme is an easy-to-use Marketing Automation system. Motarme is specifically
designed to help business-to-business (B2B) companies in the technology, engineering
and industrial sectors generate sales leads online. The system automates lead capture,
lead scoring, landing page creation, email lead nurturing and reporting.
In addition to our web-based Marketing Automation product we provide consulting, web
marketing and lead generation services. Our customers include Siemens, Mergon Group,
SF Engineering and mid-size and early stage technology companies.
Web: www.Motarme.com.

About Motarme
“Motarme delivered real,
measurable results in a short
timeframe – sales and contacts from
our target audience at Tier 1
companies.”
Caolan Bushell
Business Development Manager
Mergon Group
“Generating leads online is now a
central part of our sales strategy.”
Barry Rooney
Chief Operations Officer
Siemens ITSS
“ We have seen for ourselves how a solid
strategy has helped to drive traffic to our
site and generate sales leads.”
Joe Lynch
General Manager
IMEC Technologies

Execution
Preparation
Our Approach
1
Who to target – Ideal Customer Profile (Personas)
2
What is a Lead? - Definition
3
What Are We Selling – Value Proposition
4
Outbound Tactics
5
Process
Capture
Profile
Inbound Tactics
Score
Nurture
Sales
Ready

The RoI of Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation can convert an additional 20% to 30% of
Leads to Revenue – Forrester Research
Reduces cost per lead by up to 80% (average single lead cost
c.US$100) – Forrester Research, MarketingSherpa
11% reduction in dropped leads combined with 1%
improvement in conversion ratio = 136% increase in Gross
Profit - CSO Insights
+
+
20% - 30%


80%
80%


136%
136%

Thank You
Motarme Marketing Automation
T: +353 1 969 5029
M: +353 86 383 8981
W: www.motarme.com
Twitter: @motarme