The traditional way of developing a marketing plan is to start with an objective and then gather external and internal information. Once that is done, evaluate the information and identify the best strategy and tactics to achieve the objectives. But the problem is, often you lose track, include elements that are not critical and experience information overload. I’ve found a better way of planning through an outcomes-focused approach. Watch this video to learn more about a more efficient way of planning.
Hi, everyone.
There are so many different ways to develop plans. And traditionally to develop marketing plans, it's made simple or easier because more or less you follow a template that guides you along and pretty much helps you understand what kind of information you need to gather. And it goes something like this.
First, an external review, so looking at everything outside of your business. So you look at things like regulatory impact, legal impact, economic conditions. You look at social trends, consumer trends, technological trends.
Then you conduct a SWOT analysis on your main competitors. So that's the strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Then you do an internal review, so everything inside the business, and you look at things like you do a product review. So what products, product lines, product bundles, which one performed well, which one didn't perform well?
And you do a sales review which is similar to the product review, but looking at the monetary value.
Then you do an internal SWOT analysis.
Then you do, then you have a look at the business objectives and you devise your marketing objectives from that.
And you look at your target market. So who are they? What do they look like? Where can you find them?
And usually you conduct a database analysis from your database to have a better understanding of who your current customers are.
Then once you've got all your information, you can develop the strategy to meet the objectives.
And you expand this out so that you can identify the tactics after each of the strategies.
And then finally you develop the marketing budget and timeline that will go with these strategies.
Phew!
But the problem that I found with this is it became a bit of an information overload. And somewhere along the line, you kind of lose track. But in the last 10 years, I've come across an approach, a method that has helped me to keep focus on what really matters.
Well, it's an outcomes approach. So you start with the outcome, and then you work backwards. So for example, you visualize an outcome. And it could be "we have 300 customers that comes into our store two times a week".
Then you ask yourself, "what do we need in order to have 300 customers coming into our stores two times a week?"
"Well, we'll need to give them exceptional customer experience every single time. So that's easy ordering, easy buying, great food, great venue, great customer service".
"We need to capture customer behavioural information like when they buy, what they buy in store, online, catering orders, even table bookings".
"We need to send them personalized communications regularly"
And for each of these points go further.
So "what do we need in order to be able to send them personalized and regular communications?"
"Well, we'll need everything to be integrated. So all the sources of customer information needs to be integrated, so information from the POS, information from e-commerce, information from the loyalty platform, from the booking and catering platforms".
"We'll need everything to be integrated into a central customer database".
"We need to set up different communications that is only sent out if certain data sets, conditions are met, such as their birthdays'.
So it becomes sort of a mind map. But this approach is so simple, that you can use it and apply it for all sorts of planning situations.
Like, you can use it to plan your retail staff's career, or your menu planning or your brand repositioning.
So the possibilities is really endless.
I just love the simplicity of this approach, where you stay laser focused on the outcome and just focus on what needs to be done to get to that outcome.