BRIGHT AND BREEZY
MARKETING PLANS are an essential part of business organisation but there is a temptation to include all of the bright and breezy campaign ideas without the reality – the limitations – of the budget. The plan must set strategies for achieving a return on investment. The words have to be backed by numbers and if financial projections are fictitious rather than factual your plan will fail.
However, compiling marketing plans is far too complex a subject to be addressed in a brief blog such as this one. A legion of advice and endless instructions are out there. Rather, let’s take a look at the executive summary, a short and digestible snapshot of the plan.
The executive summary might include no more than a couple of sentences on each of how the products or services can take advantage of opportunities and overcome obstacles, the funding required, the marketplace, competitors, how you are different and how the business operation can cope with whatever is recommended. It might run to a few pages.
COMPELLING
Of course, the summary must be compelling. If your target readers don’t go along with this element of the plan there is no chance that the entire scheme will be adopted. It will be filed away for future trashing. But there are a handful of pointers, some “do this” and “don’t do that” recommendations that can give the summary a fighting chance.
Above all, it should be clear. Focused on what the business is about and how the enterprise can adopt and adapt marketing policy. You are setting out to provide direction, which must be real rather than idealistic.
Good summaries are positive and expressed forcefully. This is no time to be in any way passive: never mind “may” and “might”. Demonstrate that you believe firmly in what you are planning to achieve.
JARGON
Avoid jargon. Industries have buzz words and acronyms that are fine when you are in the know but you are going to be selling to the wider world. Your plan is telling people the time, not how the watch works.
It can also be useful to write an executive summary of the executive summary. Your colleagues are busy and that affects their attention spans. A couple of critical-content paragraphs ahead of the full executive summary can grab attention and lead your audience towards reading further.
As they read on they should be able to recognise with ease that you have covered the who, what, where, how and how much. You will have plotted an innovative and interactive way forward in line with available resources.
You’ll have built the five traditional marketing pillars, forming the workable base for product, place, price, promotion and people. Beyond that, the plan will be refreshingly pioneering. They won’t be able to manage without you.
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