Three Important Factors in Successful Marketing Plans

As the year comes to a close and marketing plans for 2015 are being drafted, there are a few things you may want to consider and deem important for the year ahead. Each of the practices below should shape any and all marketing initiatives that you plan to implement. The more emphasis you place on ensuring these areas have been addressed, the more successful your overall marketing plan will be.

Marketing Plan Factor One: Concept

The concept is the core of the marketing plan’s success. If you don’t have a strong concept for each of your marketing campaigns, there’s really nothing for people to latch on to. It’s very important to think through each initiative and consider how it will connect with the audience. Hiring a professional design firm or creative firm, such as Nice Branding Agency, is a good idea, even if your budget is tight. Getting the concept right ultimately leads to success. If you get the concept wrong, all the dollars you've budgeted for marketing might just go to waste. If outsourcing is out of the question, gather a few creative employees and hold a brainstorming session. Bouncing ideas around a group typically leads to some seriously striking stuff.

Marketing Plan Factor Two: Execution

A great marketing plan is done to guide you in your marketing activities— and it just feels good. It’s nice to know you have a plan and you’re gonna have a meeting about that plan… and a meeting about that meeting. However, the REAL key to success is not the ability to draft and finalize the plan, but instead lies in the ability to execute the plan; working each activity to its fullest potential. Can that ad hit people not only in print, but on social media, through an email blast, or other touchpoints? Carry out the plan to its fullest extent and don’t stop short, or you may not get the results you’re after.

Marketing Plan Factor Three: Flexibility

In the paragraph above, Nice Branding Agency advises you to carry out the plan, so please don’t confuse that with what we are about to suggest. Another key factor to successful marketing plans is flexibility when necessary. Flexibility in marketing plans allows you, and encourages you, to adapt or modify as necessary to achieve a more successful marketing outcome. Consider that you sent out three direct mail postcards the first three months of the year and included a coupon that was undeniably valuable. Come July, you still had not received any of those postcards back that turned into a new client or customer. You have another direct mail campaign scheduled to the same mailing list, with the same promotion and the same artwork, but in quarter four. Between July and September, you better put your thinking cap back on and figure out why those postcards didn’t come back to you and what adjustments you need to make. Is it the target? Is it the promotion? Is it the art? Is it the avenue? Once you have those answers, you should be able to reroute your original plan to be, hopefully, more impactful for the second go round. Overall, measure when possible, test when not possible, and adjust as necessary.

If you’re stuck in the developmental phase of your marketing plan for 2015, let Nice Branding offer some guidance and assistance. We’ve developed multiple ways to market various businesses and implement tactics to measure results and gain insightful feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Our creativity… that part comes standard. Contact Nice Branding Agency today before time runs out!