Marketing Planning
A clear plan.
A smarter way forward.
A thoughtful marketing plan brings your business, your audience and your goals into focus—so you know where you’re going and what to do next.
A clear plan.
Why plan?
Good marketing isn’t a collection of tactics. It’s a series of decisions working toward the same goal.
A practical roadmap
A good marketing plan keeps the big picture visible.
A marketing plan helps guide your strategy, measure progress, identify what’s working and adjust what isn’t.
It should be revisited regularly—typically once a year—to update your situation analysis, refine your goals, introduce new strategies and remove approaches that are no longer effective.
Most importantly, it helps keep your marketing focused on the customers you want to reach and the opportunities that matter most.
The four essentials
What goes into the plan?
01
Situation Analysis
A clear picture of where your organization stands today: history, growth, products and services, customers, sales performance, market position, competition, past marketing efforts, research, strengths and weaknesses.
02
Marketing Objectives
Clear goals based on your current performance, opportunities and future direction. Objectives give the rest of your plan something specific to work toward.
03
Marketing Strategy
Selecting your target markets, defining how you want to be positioned and determining the most effective marketing mix for each audience.
04
Tactics
The specific actions that bring the strategy to life—from campaigns and content to advertising, outreach, website work and ongoing communications.
Step by step
From goal to action.
A useful marketing plan doesn’t need to be unnecessarily complicated. We move through five practical stages to determine where you want to go, how to get there and what to do next.
01
Determine your objectives and goals
If you don’t have a goal, how do you know what to do? We start by defining what you actually want the marketing effort to accomplish.
02
Strategize and draft a budget
Once the goal is clear, we determine the best way to get there within your budget and look for the strongest balance between cost and potential return.
03
Develop the marketing plan
Using your goals and budget as the foundation, Creative Marketing & Design develops a practical plan of action designed to reach those goals successfully and efficiently.
04
Execute the plan
We can also help turn the plan into finished work. From web design and graphics to campaigns and communications, CM&D can support the pieces needed to put your strategy into action.
05
Evaluate and refine
The final step is to evaluate the results, identify what worked and discuss changes, additions and opportunities for the future.
Strategy + execution
A plan is more useful when you have someone who can help bring it to life.
CM&D can help with the strategy and the work that follows—from web development and design to campaigns, communications and ongoing marketing support.
Strategy
Know where you’re going.
Creative
Make the message connect.
Follow-through
Turn the plan into action.
Let’s get started
Ready for a clearer way forward?
Tell us a little about your organization, your goals and where you need help. We can start building a marketing strategy from there.