Over the course of the last few months, I’ve had the opportunity to review a number of marketing plans. In many instances, the plans fell into one of two categories. One group involved brief documents containing short lists of tactics for the coming year along with a budget and calendar. The second group consisted of an extensive set of PowerPoint presentations chocked full of charts and tables about market statistics and product roadmaps, etc.
In the first group, while the tactics were well defined, they were not anchored to any specific strategies or objectives. Someone reading the plan for the first time would have trouble understanding why the organization is embarking on these efforts and what outcomes are intended. The second group contains an enormous amount of information about the market, company, customers, competitors and a set of strategies and tactics. However, in this group, it is difficult to connect all the dots between the information, the plan and the outcomes. While it may seem that the two categories have little in common, the one common link is their inability to tell their company story. A good marketing plan is in essence the “Cliff Notes” version of the company story explaining current status, how it got there, and what if anything needs to be addressed and if so, by whom, how, with what and when. A good marketing plan has all the elements of a well-told story.
A good story grabs our attention, captures our imagination and draws us to the characters–both the heroes and villains–and to the situation at hand. A marketing plan should do the same. While a marketing plan doesn’t need to be a novel, it does need to provide a context, define the situation, clarify the objectives and measures of success, and establish the strategies and tactics for achieving outcomes. A marketing plan must provide a setting and context, just as a story does.
Once we have established the context, we can very quickly provide the information about the organization’s successes and challenges, its market, position, competition and customer information. As with all stories it needs to be clear how the situation came to be and what challenges and obstacles must be overcome. Opportunities also need to be presented. Once the situation and the objectives are clear it’s time to explain what must be done for the story to end “happily ever after.” It seems that most good stories contain at least one and sometimes both elements – something that must be overcome and/or something that must be acquired – the elusive quest and the slaying of the dragon. A well-crafted marketing plan lays out the same information whether there are any dragons to defeat or quests to complete.
Once we understand the primary plot, the remainder of the story, that is your plan, must outline the challenges and the quest; define what it will take to succeed and win; identify which competitors to overcome and which dragons must be slain; and identify the strategies and tactics to deploy by whom, when, and at what cost. As with every story, there needs to be some detail about the players, their skills and flaws, and an outline of the tactics to be deployed – perhaps its developing a new product or service to pursue a new market and fill a portfolio gap, perhaps its establishing a new channel relationship. Keep the tables and charts of your market, along with customer and competitive information, as they are illustrations for your story. Just understand they are not the story.
VisionEdge Marketing, Inc, is a leading data-driven metrics-based strategic and product marketing firm located in Austin, Texas. The company specializes in consulting and learning services that help organizations use data to make fact based decisions to address market, customer, and product opportunities and to improve and measure marketing performance. For more information, go to www.visionedgemarketing.com.
About Nathan Kaiser
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