3 Tips for Effective Planning

BY TIFFANIE HONEYMAN

Annual marketing planning is a must for new and experienced business owners. And with the explosion of “martech” (marketing technology), planning is almost paralyzing. But these three steps can ensure an effective plan for next year.

Track Performance

This might sound obvious, but many companies are not tracking their marketing performance. A lot of time can be saved during annual marketing planning if someone has been tracking the results along the way.

What should be tracked?

• Total spend-to-sales ratio: Looking at the historical marketing investment correlation to sales allows planning ahead for marketing costs. The objective is to find the most cost-effective marketing mix that brings in the most sales — know which channels have the greatest impact.

• Acquisition versus retention investment: Allocate and monitor the cost and tactics used to keep customers versus acquire them.

• Total reach by channel: Not all channels have an equally sized audience. Be sure vendors are providing audience sizes for the actual target audience, not a general number or age group.

• Cost-per-thousand (CPM) by channel: After determining how many people can be reached, find out how much it will cost to reach them. A CPM model allows a comparison of costs across all channels.

• Cost-per-conversion per channel: Divide the total spend for each channel by the total conversions for each channel. Multiple conversions (goals) can be set up in Google Analytics, so be sure to look at each one.

• Creative messaging: When measuring creative messaging, do it before the launch of the full campaign. Once it’s been determined which content (headline, images, etc.) resonates the most, use it in the campaign and compare one campaign against another.

• Web audience and content consumption: Google makes it easy to see where visitors come into a website, what their interests are, the volume and where they are spending their time before they convert (or exit without converting). This info is used to optimize sites for future visitors.

Set Goals

Once a baseline is established, set some goals. This is the most important part of marketing. Once the goals are set, forecast.

Establish Accountability

A marketing director should be mandating performance reports or hiring someone to do it. The reports need to show sales trends by category, as well as the performance by channel. Marketing plans are not “set it and forget it” — they are in a constant state of optimization.

Last, an accountant should be relied upon to help break out marketing in a chart of accounts, to tie marketing investments to the return by product or service. PB

Tiffanie Honeyman Founder and CEO, OpGo Marketing Fargo 701.630.1324 tiffanie.honeyman@opgomarketing.com