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Strategic Marketing Planning

I was recently commissioned to write, develop and deliver a marketing fundamentals training course for a worldwide software vendors channel partners. An initiative that I leapt at, for a couple of reasons, a vendor investing time, money and resource in their channel, I want to be a part of that, and a vendor investing in the marketing skills of their channel partners, I definitely want to be a part of that program.

A couple of courses into the schedule and I am amazed at how many channel sales / marketing people that I have talked to recently who do not have a marketing plan in their business, or at least a plan that is written down and agreed with management. I would hazard a guess that most business leaders / owners would not dream of not creating a business plan or a sales plan, so why not have at least a very basic marketing plan. Furthermore I discovered through a few carefully guided questions, if the partners do say that they have a plan it is very organic in the sense of it is understood but not written down so they can change it regularly. I would call that more tactical than strategic.

Planning is crucial to the success of any business or even marketing activity or endeavour. It is also a part of the course where I have been most surprised, in the sense that I thought it was a given that in order to justify spending budget as a marketing department you would need to create a plan, with at the very least targets and ROI objectives.  This plan with marketing goals would then need to be presented and approved by management before any spending commenced.

With this in mind I just wanted to reinforce the need for Strategic Marketing Planning and one of the best ways that I have summed it recently is with the aid of The Direct Marketing Guide © 1998, published back in 1998 by the recently rebranded The Institute of Direct Marketing www.theidm.com

The nine major benefits of a good strategic marketing plan

•          Forces three dimensional thinking

•          Allows specialists to perceive inter-functional relationships otherwise missed

•          Generates an extraordinary enthusiasm that improves tactical creativity

•          Allows resources to impact on the most profitable potential

•          Creates benchmarks for future decisions

•          Improves staff quality – control and deadline performance

•          Elicits improved vendor performance

•          Enables faster roll-outs of successful programmes and faster shut off failures

•          Saves top and middle management time and stress during implementation stage

Once you have digested the first part and then come to write the plan please use these six simple steps.

The six qualities of a good strategic marketing plan

•          Easy to understand

•          Precise but detailed, to avoid confusion

•          Adaptable to change

•          Realistic in application

•          Covers all significant market factors

•          Clearly identifies responsibilities

If you work in a channel partner and have influence in the marketing function for your business please remember these simple words; planning prevents, poor performance.