We’ve official entered Q4, and for many companies, that means it’s time to create an Annual Marketing Plan. What do you want to accomplish for your company on the marketing front in 2022? No one expected the ramifications of COVID-19 would last this far into 2021, with trade shows and other in-person events being cancelled or going virtual and a good majority of people still working from home. Next year may be different, but it may mean more of the same. By planning carefully—and having a flexible Annual Plan—you’ll be ready to tackle all the uncertainty that 2022 will may bring.
Although many marketers are still working out the kinks from all the changes 2020 and 2021 brought forth, one thing always stands true when building an annual plan: It prompts marketing teams to focus on supporting the company’s business goals through marketing activities, including Positioning and Messaging, Content Marketing, Media and Analysts Relations, and Social Media.
Building a plan starts with some of the elements you may most easily find in your corporate Positioning and Messaging document or have gathered from your internal teams. If you haven’t gone through a Positioning and Messaging exercise recently, it might be time to stop and tackle that before building an Annual Plan. Positioning and Messaging is an integral foundation for any marketing plan.
Ready to get started? There are 11 specific strategic business elements that every Annual Plan includes. These are:
- An Executive Summary. This will act as an introduction to your overall plan and will be written last but placed first. The audience is the CEO, CFO, and other C-level executives who eventually need to sign off on your plan. It should provide a high-level overview of your goals and broadly how you plan to achieve them. Keep in mind that your company’s overall business plan may also include some short-term pivots as executives keep an eye on particular markets and the supply chain issues because of COVID-19.
- A Situation Analysis. What does the industry and specific customer market look like for the coming year? What changes do you expect? How does your company play into the overall market? Some companies may consider doing a full SWOT analysis to assess their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in light of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, and determine what that means for their business.
- Your Audience. The more detail you provide here, the more of a roadmap you are building for the team to follow throughout the year. If your audience is large enterprises, for example, what vertical markets are your key targets? What titles are you targeting at those types of companies, for example, is purchasing your product a decision that department managers make? The IT group? Does the CEO eventually sign off on purchases from companies such as yours? Defining your specific audience is critical as it will shape your go-to-market strategy.
- Your Lines of Business. Which lines of business (divisions, departments, etc.) will you be focusing on in the coming year? Which new products and which existing products will be central to your company’s business goals? Ask yourself: “If I had $100, how would I divide it up over the various products and services I offer?”
- Your Differentiators. What do you do that is unique in the market? Why should and why do people buy from your company and not the competition? This should have been a key part of your Positioning and Messaging exercise and should include proof points that support your claims.
- Your Sales Strategy. How will you sell these products? Work with the sales team on these key channels, as it will help you drill down specifically into the Influencers that support that market.
- Mediums for Your Message. What are the methods you will use during the year to execute your plan? These may include advertising, SEO, website, collateral, trade shows (or more likely virtual events), webinars, content marketing, public relations and other efforts.
- Your Campaigns. Creating campaigns at a higher level helps you easily plug in specific assets to the campaign later on. This step includes identifying and defining the marketing campaigns you will run, and as part of those, a campaign and content map that defines a campaign, target audience, positioning (value statement) that supports the campaign, specific timeframe for the campaign, goals (such as number of expected leads, number of conversions or other metrics, for each of those) and the content involved.
- Budget / Financial Projection. How much is everything you want to do going to cost and how do you make cuts, if the budget you receive is lower than expected? What results do you expect to deliver based on the budget you do receive?
- Measurement. How will you measure your results through the year? How many sales leads came from which activity? How many customers came from each activity? How are you going to measure the success of each marketing and business goal? Not only will measuring results from every activity tell you what you are doing right (so you can do more of it), it will also tell you what’s not working (so you can stop, make adjustments, and divert budget to things that are working better). It also gives you a solid idea of what you should be budgeting for the following year.
- Summary. Tell the approvers of your Annual Marketing Plan how you plan to reach the goals you’ve established. This is shorter than the executive summary found at the beginning – just one slide to hit the high points again. Areas to consider as part of your Annual Marketing Plan also include several other elements that are specific to your business. These include partnerships, referral programs, user conferences and so forth. These would be delivered before the summary.
Because of the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic and a continuously shifting timeline, we highly recommend drawing up three-month plans to deal with the tactics that your annual strategies are built upon, as well as mini-plans that will guide the tactics of new opportunities as they arise. By having this plan in place and making sure all activities map back specifically to your business goals, you’ll be sure to deliver the results your team needs to find success.
Want to learn more about how to create a Strategic Annual Marketing Plan? Contact Calysto today.