Strategic Marketing Planning for 2017: How Strong Is Your Plan?
Once again, it’s budget season. Try to contain your excitement…
While establishing budgets is a critical step, we believe that a more powerful way to look at it is “strategic planning season” – especially for companies that want to grow by 10-20% or more.
Budgeting vs. Strategic Planning
Strategic planning season is where budgets are driven by your goals for 2017. Sales and marketing goals often include:
- Revenues: overall, per country, per service, per channel partner, and per account
- New Client Acquisition: average selling price per engagement, number of new engagements, close rate
- Client Retention: retention percentage, growth of each account
- Lead Generation: combination of inbound (web, content marketing and SEO), and outbound marketing efforts (campaigns, events, PR, etc.)
The most effective strategic marketing plan gives you clarity on how to achieve these goals, how much those efforts will cost (internal time and external costs) and the expected ROI.
If you focus on budgeting first, the temptation is to think about doing the same thing next year as this year with some incremental increases. This likely will lead to incremental results and not serious growth.
Strategic Marketing Planning for 2017
If you see wisdom in this, how would you describe your strategic marketing planning process for 2017?
- Strong: incorporates client and partner feedback, has actionable and measurable goals, is reviewed by all stakeholders, and approved by senior management
- Good: has actionable and measurable goals, is reviewed by all stakeholders, and approved by senior management
- Needs Improvement: has goals and is approved by senior management
- Weak: doesn’t exist or has been discussed with senior management but has not been documented
The Path Forward
If you believe your strategic marketing planning process is strong, you may be interested in our marketing audit service that provides an objective 3rd party analysis on the effectiveness of current and past marketing activities, an evaluation of your goals and what is planned and identification of potential gaps.
If you believe your strategic marketing planning process isn’t strong, let us know if you’re open to exploring how we can help you become more strategic and achieve more of your goals for 2017.
