Most people wouldn't embark on a long road trip without some pre-trip planning and a map to guide them. Executing random marketing tactics without a plan is just like setting off on that journey without a map. You'll experience a lot of dead ends, delays and unnecessary miles−and maybe never reach your final destination.
Investing the time to create a marketing plan will:
- Help you achieve long-term goals - planning ahead forces you to think about your long-term business goals so that you can align your marketing goals to achieve them. A long-term marketing goal may be to launch your product into a new vertical market, increase the number of channel partners by 25%, increase sales in a region by 10% or reduce customer churn by 5%. All of these goals require strategies to be developed, out of which a series of tactics will flow. Without careful planning, the execution of tactics over multiple quarters may never result in the realization of your marketing and business goals.
- Force you to set priorities - you may have many goals you would like to achieve but only so many resources available. Planning helps you prioritize your goals so you can set realistic objectives with the resources you have at hand.
- Keep you on track - having a clearly defined set of prioritized goals and a set of tactics designed to achieve them, you can avoid engaging in random tactics that don't support your end game.
- Give your programs time to work - many marketing tactics, especially 'pull' tactics that draw buyers in, need time to work. PR, search engine marketing and social networking are all examples of tactics that take time to fully mature and yield their best results. Your marketing plan will clearly spell out the timeline for each tactic.
Creating your marketing plan doesn't need to be a painful process, but it does require a deep understanding of your target audience and market, plus a way to measure results. We recommend that you take some time to do some upfront planning−it's the only way to arrive at your destination ahead of the competition.
