Experienced marketers know that a goal without a plan is only a wish. Behind each successful marketing strategy stands a robust one-year marketing plan. While it may seem that a plan can't stay effective in the ever-changing marketing landscape, without one, achieving a high ROI can be problematic.
A well-built annual marketing plan can help determine your marketing budget, work on brand consistency, attract new customers, and much more. Making adjustments to this plan is easier and less expensive than rebuilding the entire strategy mid-year.
Let's take a closer look at the key reasons why you need a 12-month marketing plan:
A Better Plan
An effective marketing campaign begins with setting goals and identifying KPIs. Whether you are taking advantage of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Based) goals or PACT (Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, Trackable) goals, you need a plan to bring them to life.
While you can have a huge variety of tried-and-tested marketing tactics, implementing them without a blueprint can be complicated. You could end up spending too much time and money on one goal while losing focus on others.
An annual marketing plan can give you a better understanding of what you can or can't do with the available resources. In return, this allows you to choose the most effective marketing tactics that don't just help achieve marketing and business goals but also stay within your budget.
Improved Consistency and Frequency
Brand consistency can increase revenue by 23%. That raises the ROI of an annual marketing plan significantly.
A robust brand strategy is key to attracting the target audience and staying ahead of the competition. It can appeal to new audiences by demonstrating value alignment. However, it's nearly impossible to implement without an annual marketing plan
Branding and consistency can't be ignored. When you are implementing brand awareness and brand development strategies, you need to keep your colors, logos, and voice consistent. Otherwise, you risk confusing the customer and failing to leave a lasting impression.
A long-term marketing strategy allows you to bring together different brand assets and ensure their alignment with each other. Otherwise, it's easy to miss an element and eventually confuse the consumer, or worse, lose their trust.
Higher ROI
The return on investment (ROI) of your marketing strategy is an important indicator of its success. To understand whether you can improve your ROI next year, you need a comprehensive one-year marketing plan.
The ROI of your marketing tactics depends on:
- Initial budget
- Type of marketing tactics
- Economic situation
- Industry
- Competition
While you can't influence the economic situation or the competition's strategy, you can adjust your budget and marketing tactics. Having a clear picture of the upcoming marketing campaign can help you see what can be done to increase the ROI.
By focusing on the most effective and budget-friendly marketing approaches, you can stay ahead of the competition and enjoy a higher ROI. With the economic recession around the corner, a high ROI is especially important for staying afloat.
Engaged Customers
Engaged customers are loyal customers. If you manage to maintain excellent customer engagement, you:
- Improve brand experience
- Increase customer trust
- Boost customer experience
- Drive customers down the sales funnel faster
- Increase revenue
- Grow customer relationships
- Distinguish your business from the competition
By creating a comprehensive marketing plan, you can implement a consistent set of tactics that take customers through the buying process faster and easier. Meanwhile, you can come up with efficient strategies to keep customers engaged longer and improve retention rates.
Engaged customers don't just keep buying. They turn into brand ambassadors and recommend your company to their friends and families.
Competitive Advantage
The looming recession makes competitive advantage more important than ever. As more and more businesses focus on customer retention instead of spending a big chunk of their budget on lead generation, you have an opportunity to stand out from the crowd.
By building a marketing plan with all the possible challenges in mind, you can identify opportunities before the competition does. A proactive approach to marketing tactics gives you a competitive advantage and allows your company to capture a new market share.
Leveraging a Comprehensive One-Year Marketing Plan
A comprehensive one-year marketing strategy isn't just a way to save time and money for your business. It's an opportunity to increase revenue, stay ahead of the competition, and position your company as an industry leader.
By planning ahead, you are taking a proactive approach to marketing and creating a solid roadmap that turns into a driving force behind your team's success.
While possible, designing an effective 12-months marketing campaign without professional assistance can be time-consuming and complicated. That's where our marketing experts at Mid-West Family Springfield, MO come in.
To learn how we can help your company create an effective annual campaign, please contact us today!
