The following diagram illustrates the critical components of the marketing foundation and how that foundation provides the base for all of the marketing programs you may want to execute.

Marketing Plan Framework - 8 Step Process

Lay the Foundation

Before you can determine what your marketing strategy is, you need to understand your vision and goals. All marketing activities will be chosen based on whether they will achieve one or more of your goals. When you have a clear understanding about what you are trying to accomplish with your business, you can then determine how you will get there.

Now you need to look at the market and analyze whether the market you wish to serve wants what you can provide. You should sit back and think about your business and determine your focus. By evaluating your business from the perspective of client need, you will be able to focus your efforts on initiatives that are key to the success of your business.

Understanding your competition from both a business and marketing perspective helps you determine how you are different from them. Your marketing plan should emphasize how you are different so that you stand out from the crowd. This differentiation will be the basis of your core marketing message.

Identify Your Brand

Your brand is the image you wish to portray to the world and is one of your company’s most valuable assets. It communicates your corporate personality and shapes the internal and external clients’ perceptions of who you are as well as the expectations and promises you extend to your customers in terms of quality, service, reliability and trustworthiness. A strong brand helps the audience differentiate you from your competitors and can positively influence their purchasing decisions, directly impacting your profitability

Also, identify your personal brand. If you are an independent professional or partner in a service business, you are your brand.

Identify Your Marketing Strategy and Budget

The marketing strategy outlines your plan of action to achieve your marketing goals. It is how you take advantage of the various marketing activities to build awareness and educate your prospects. If one of your marketing goals is to double traffic to your web site, what activities will you use to drive more traffic to your web site and in what timeframe and with what budget? Think through each of your marketing goals and identify the key activities that will help you achieve success.

Create Your Sales Tools

Your sales tools are the last activity you should undertake before you launch your marketing campaigns. Until you know what types of marketing you will do, you don’t know what materials you will need to support them. Using the brand identity and messages developed earlier, combine them to create the sales tools that help you communicate with your target audience. A good first impression makes selling that much easier, and a consistent set of materials – Web site, brochures, newsletters, advertisements, business cards and other materials – with a strong identity and a compelling, powerful and enduring message, gets you noticed and remembered.

If you can do only one thing well because of budget or resource constraints, be sure your Web site is the best you can provide. It is most likely the first impression your prospect gets of your company, and how useful, informative, and simple it is to use will impact their decision to do business with you. I cannot stress this point enough – a bad Web site can ruin your entire marketing effort by turning away prospects before you even know they are there.

Build Upon the Foundation

Now you are ready to execute the plan. You have a roadmap for your business, a budget for your activities, and an understanding about how you will reach your prospects. By building your foundation first, all of your programs will be consistent, targeted, and more likely to succeed. You can be assured that no matter what type of programs you choose, you will consistently communicate your value to your prospects, raising your awareness, attracting ideal prospects, and increasing profitability.

Of course, you need to stay consistent with your brand identity and not do something that can hurt your image in the market. But you can step outside of your comfort zone and be different without conflicting with your brand. Being bold can help you cut through the clutter and stand out from your competition.

Some ideas to help you be different:

• Position your business differently – Take a look at how you are positioning yourself to your marketplace. You need to differentiate your business from your competition to get the attention of your prospects and customers. If all of your competitors say and do the same things, figure out what is unique to your business and present that difference in a way that gets attention. Effective differentiation can make your
  business the yardstick that all others are measured against.
• Look different – Your marketing materials – web site, brochures, business cards, and logo – should project your brand identity in a way that stands out from all the others. If you are going to advertise, be sure your ad is different from all the others in the publication. Don’t simply go black and white because of the cost. Try adding one color to the ad to make it stand out. If the publication offers four color advertising, make sure you create an ad that catches the eye. Don’t be a little afraid to create an ad that has a standout image with very crisp and very brief content.
• Try something different – If all your competitors are implementing the same marketing programs, try
  doing something else. If your competitor’s web site is purely informational, add some interactivity to yours. If no one is advertising, try doing some very targeted ads or try implementing some pay-per-click advertising. Look at your competition closely and see what you can do that they do not.
• Offer something different – Include a guarantee, a free consulting session, a year of support services
  or some options that your competitors cannot. Make it compelling so that it can not be overlooked.
• Say something different – When you talk with prospects, talk about what you do that no one else does. Don’t lead with the same messages everyone else talks about. Take the time to figure out your key differentiator and lead with that message in everything you do.

Figure out what you do that is different from your competition and communicate it clearly and throughout all of your materials. If you don’t know what that is, you may need help from some outside party to listen to you talk about your business and point out things you do best. Many times, business owners do not see the value in
some offerings because they seem “simple”, but it may be your key difference over your competition.

If you are going to spend money on marketing, you should be sure that you do what you can to tastefully and effectively get your target’s attention.

Before we talk about brand, be sure you read the Cultivate Market Perception article on positioning. To build your brand, you need to have your positioning nailed because you need to know who you are before you can get to where you want to be. By understanding your positioning, you can ensure that your brand is unique, defensible, credible, and motivating.

This article will explore the idea of branding in greater detail, and give you a framework to help think about what you want your brand to stand for.

What’s a good brand worth?

BusinessWeek, in conjunction with Interbrand, recently looked at the value of some of the largest brands in the world. This annual ranking – which studies financial forecasts, brand strength, and the role of the brand in the business model – found over 100 companies whose brand was valued at over a billion dollars. Yes, that is billion with a ‘b’. Companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s derive the majority of their value based on the equity of their brand. According to the BusinessWeek/Interbrand analysis, more than 80% of McDonald’s $30B+ market cap is attributed to the value of their brand. 
Clearly good brands provide tremendous value for companies like these, but I’m willing to bet that most of you have companies far smaller than McDonald’s. But that should not stop you from developing a strong brand for your business. In the book, “Brand Warfare”, David D’Alessandro makes a point that consumers need good brands as much as good brands need consumers. For the consumer a good brand:

• Saves time
• Projects the right message
• Provides an identity

This is true regardless of size. For many small businesses their brand stands for unique products, fair prices and excellent service. For example, I bought flowers for my wife’s last birthday at Lavender Fields Flowers and Gifts, a florist I had not done business with before. The bouquet was stunning and drew comments from everyone in her office. Now, whenever I need flowers (like the morning of my anniversary when I forget to get something), I know this brand is a safe bet and projects a great identity.

What does your brand stand for?

In “The Myth of Excellence”, Frederick Crawford’s book on why great companies never try to be the best at everything, Crawford breaks every business transaction into five attributes – Price, Service, Access, Experience and Product. He makes the case that no one company can be excellent at all five, and in fact will fail if they try. According to Crawford, companies should align resources and efforts to dominate on one attribute, differentiate on a second, and reach market acceptance on the others. While most of his examples are large companies – Wal-Mart, which dominates on
price and differentiates on the breadth of products; or Starbucks, which dominates on the experience of a fresh latte and differentiates on customer access – many of the principles apply for much smaller companies as well. 

The following exercise is interesting to try, either by yourself or with outside help. Take the following five attributes and evaluate your company on whether you want to
dominate, differentiate or compete:

• Price – Overall cost of the product or service along with pricing model. Note that customers often care more about fair and honest pricing then they do about lowest price. Be sure to consider special pricing models or payment terms that might be an element of how you differentiate.
• Product – Quality, depth and breadth of product(s) offered.
• Service – How customers feel about a company after a transaction.
• Experience – How customers feel about themselves as a result of a transaction.
• Access – Ease with which a customer can interact with the company. For a retail company this may mean physical location and store layout, while for a service provider, this may mean ease of reaching the provider
  and scheduling appointments.

Using this as a framework for discussion provides interesting insight on what you want your brand to stand for. For example a small company making hand made gift solutions will most likely focus first on the quality and uniqueness of the product, and
secondarily on customer service. A health spa offering a wide variety of services wants customer experience to always come first, and may secondarily focus on the breadth of offerings in order to be a one-stop shop for customers.

During this process, do not ignore or dismiss the voice in the back of your head – or across the table – that disagrees. There very well could be gaps between what you want your brand to stand for and what others actually think it does.

Watch out for those gaps

Understanding your own desires for your brand is a big step, but certainly not the last one in your journey. Once you’ve focused on the key elements of what you want your brand to mean, look at any gaps between reality and your desires. If, for example, you want your brand to be associated with unique high quality products, but you produce a commodity, you probably need to go back to square one. On the other hand, if excellent service with a unique all-inclusive pricing model is the key aspect of your brand, yet customer complaints are on the rise, it is time to focus internally and fix the underlying source of the complaints.

What comes next?

Assuming you’ve gotten this far – and by no means is this an easy process to go through – you need to ensure that your marketing messages, collateral and programs are consistent with your branding efforts.

‘How do I do that?’ you might ask. Good question, and one we’ll tackle in a future article.

What most people don’t realize is that the marketing function really hasn’t changed. We still need to understand what the market wants or needs and whether it is aligned with what you have to offer. It is then the role of marketing to build awareness and generate demand.

What has changed is how marketing is being done. Traditional marketing that consisted of a controlled, crafted (read: sanitized) message and “pushed” out to the channel is no longer the best or only way to reach your constituents. This push model is no longer tolerated by many and not adapting your marketing to the new media model can tarnish a company’s brand. These new channels of communication require us to rethink how we deliver our message to our audiences.

But I can’t really say that traditional marketing is dead and gone as direct mail, email campaigns and advertisements on different media (magazines, newspapers and television) still work and supplement the online activities for B2B.

But online marketing has expanded to include social media tools that enable mutual conversation between companies. Marketing is no longer “campaign” driven – It is a long term project that ties together all the activities that helps the prospect learn who we are and how we can help them solve a problem/challenge.

A timely article published this week in Advertising Age, talks about the biggest challenges Marketers face with Social Networks. In the article, Michael Bush cautions marketers to learn the culture of social networks before you charge in. I made the same point in my previous post about watch, listen and learn, much in the same way you would enter a party with people you never met before.

“Any marketer worth its salt is going to spend a good deal of time studying the dynamics, rules and language of any social network before attempting to establish a presence there.”

What I have learned in my travels through social media is the biggest change is the need to think about marketing in new ways. Good marketers will suck up all the knowledge they can on the topic, figure out how to proceed and then put their plan into action – which is no different from what good marketers have done for years.

However, those who try to force the square peg (traditional marketing techniques) into a round hole (new media marketing), will not succeed. As stated in the article:

Most marketers think they can simply take their mainstream advertising efforts and activate them on these networks under the assumption that they will flourish.

Social networks are about connections and communication that builds the pathways to new, fruitful relationships. New media are the new tools of marketing that have made marketing conversations with your prospects and customers much easier and effective.

I’d love to hear from others on their views on how social media has affected them in their careers.

Your brand is meant to be a reflection of your company, not just a projection of what you want it to be. It should communicate clearly and create credibility, provoking feelings about your company that makes your target market want to do business with you. Your brand should be developed through consistent use of your message throughout everything you do and say and then living up to the message you project.

Your brand is important and you should spend time and marketing dollars on ensuring you develop it correctly. Doing it right from the beginning is the best option, but rebranding can be done successfully. I have personally rebranded two software companies, but both times, the names didn’t change and the rebranding was done while the company was small and before any major milestones were established.

When should you change your brand?

There are times that justify some change, although in most cases change still should be minimal. Consider updating your brand if your brand is:

• Associated with a negative feeling
• Weak, poor quality or non-existent
• Out of sync with your identity

In these cases, your brand is not benefiting your business. It is inconsistent, ambiguous, or projects something you don’t want to be associated with. Develop a strategy to update your brand and then focus some marketing efforts to help build awareness around your brand. Remember that your brand is developed through an entire customer experience and needs to be reinforced consistently through your Web site, sales tools, promotional items, customer service, word-of-mouth and other aspects of doing business with you. Use the new brand as an opportunity to develop new client relationships while re-connecting with your current clients.

Take small steps

When changing your brand, take small steps to enable you to transition from the old to the new. Refresh the design by keeping key elements that still work and eliminating those that don’t. Keep your name or alter it only slightly. The key is to update your look without losing its recognition by those who have bought into it.

Giving your image a subtle facelift does get people to notice that something is different and may stop to look at what you have to offer. Note the subtle changes to the logos to the right. Adding dimension updates the look without changing it drastically. A little evolution of your look may be beneficial before you embark on a new marketing campaign. The majority of the time, however, you should resist changing your brand at all as there is value in your name and image. Like all things in marketing, just because you’ve gotten bored with your look or message, doesn’t mean your customer or prospect has.

• Analyze what happened in 2007. What types of marketing did you do? How much did they cost? Did they result in new business for you? If so, how much? Did you get a return on investment of at least 2 to 1? If not, figure out why or stop doing that activity and try something else.
• Review your goals. Did you achieve what you set out to do over the past year? If not, why? Were they too lofty or not really relevant to what you were trying to accomplish with your business? Were your goals are S.M.A.R.T. goals – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely?
• Evaluate your target market to be sure they are the most lucrative market you can go after. Is there a better Ideal Client for your business? Do you offer something unique that appeals to a more focused audience? Are you targeting a market that is too wide which results in your messages being watered down to the point where no one is hearing the value you offer?
• Review your core message for clarity and appeal. When someone asks you what you do, do you answer with a title? Does your message get a response like “really, tell me more?” or “I know someone who would benefit from that”?

Once you have this base information, work on your core message to grab the attention of your Ideal Client. Develop your 2008 marketing goals and the activities that will help you achieve them. Spend some time now putting your roadmap to success in place. Knowing what you want to do and how you will get there will help you make marketing easier to do more consistently.

Check out more articles on developing a marketing plan at the Vista Consulting Marketing Information area.

Masterful Marketing™ covers the important areas needed to make marketing work for your business. This service is structured in 8 sessions held via telephone, each providing practical advice and actionable activities. The sessions are scheduled over 8 weeks to make it easy for folks to apply what they’ve learned to their business and see the results. The program combines information, support and feedback to keep you going in the right direction.

We cover the following topics:

• Identifying your Ideal Client
• Uncovering your unique differentiator
• Writing your core marketing message
• Defining your vision and goals
• Selecting your marketing strategy and tactics
• Creating your brand image
• Developing your marketing materials
• Mapping out the marketing activities and budget

What you get:

• Eight (8) 90 minute tele-advisory sessions scheduled over 8 weeks to help you plan and market your business.
• The Masterful Marketing™ workbook with explanations, examples and room to work on your plan.
• Recordings of your sessions so you can participate actively and review the important information discussed later.
• A private web page to access all your program materials, tele-advisory audio recordings, plus a variety of downloadable tools, worksheets and exercises for developing your plan.
• Personalized feedback on your marketing materials with advice on how to make them more effective at reaching your Ideal Client.
• Copy of “Create the Business Breakthrough You Want: Secrets and Strategies by the World’s Greatest Mentors”.
• Unlimited email access to me throughout the program for questions on anything pertaining to marketing your business. You also get limited phone and IM access to give you a way to quickly resolve issues that keep you from moving forward.

Services range from private one-to-one mentoring to tele-clinics. If you are interested in finding out more about this program, contact me or visit the Masterful Marketing Web site and request an application for the program.

Knowing what you want your business to be in the long run (5 year vision is a good target) helps you keep an eye on the direction you sometimes get forced to take in order to make money. John Jantsch has an interesting post about What’s the picture of your business when it’s done? that keeping an eye on your vision. Is everything you are doing in your business helping you move toward your vision?

But once you have your vision, knowing what you want to achieve in the next 12 months helps you focus your marketing effort.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is your revenue goal for the year?
• How do you want your business to look at the end of the year?
• How many new clients you need?
• How many current clients you need to sell more to?
• What new services or products do you need to offer to achieve your business goals?

For example, you have a service that you sell for $1000. If you want to make $60,000 from this service in new business in 2008, you need 60 new clients over the year. Now break it into months and you need to close 5 new clients a month. Now your marketing plan can focus on getting you 5 clients or more a month, right?

Now let’s determine what will that take. How many prospects do you need to have in order to close 5 new clients a month? 10? 20? 50? Look at your history – for every 10 prospects, how many do you close? If you are not closing many, take a look at your:

• Target market – are you trying to sell to everyone and anyone? Have you selected your target and focused on your ideal client?
• Marketing messages – are you not communicating your value appropriately?
• Marketing strategy – are you wasting money on inconsistent activities that are not focused on your ideal client? If you know your ideal client, you should be able to figure out how to reach them with what marketing activities.

From this effort, you should be able to come up with what you need to do and how much it will cost. Lay it all out in a spread sheet in at least a quarterly format (revenue goals, marketing activities with associated marketing budget by quarter), and there you have it – a simple marketing plan.

Now do the same thing with revenue from current clients. What is your strategy to upsell current clients?

By breaking your marketing planning process into smaller pieces, you have a more manageable marketing task ahead of you. Even if the plan is simple, it will help you focus your efforts and know what it really is going to take to achieve your goals.

Choosing an ideal client allows you to target a more lucrative audience and develop messages with greater precision. The clarity you achieve in your messages about what you offer makes other businesses even outside of your ideal target more likely to call you, giving you the choice of whether you want to work with them or not. If you narrowly define your market, your messages are clear, your offerings are precise, and your marketing efforts are more effective, even to those not within your primary target market.

You will also find that ideal clients take less time, resources and energy to satisfy because they value what you have to offer.

Drew’s Marketing Minute has a great post about helping an IT Services company refine their target market. The thought process he uses to help them refine their target is a good exercise for every business owner to go through.

Once you define your ideal client profile, you can be more selective and weed out those clients and prospects that don’t fit the profile. The more focused you are, the more you will attract and retain those ideal clients that can help your business thrive.

Your marketing will reflect these changes as well. You may need to refresh your brand, increase the quality of your materials and develop marketing activities that project a size bigger than you really are in order to support your new thinking. Evaluate your marketing and see if it sends the right message to your prospects.