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How to write a marketing plan in just six steps

by | Jul 18, 2018 | Advice & Tips

How to write a marketing plan in just six steps

A well-defined marketing plan will help you grow your business. The right plan needs to be thorough, strategic, flexible and yet simple enough that it won’t start collecting dust the day after you finish writing it. It’s easy to find marketing plan templates on the internet. But they’re typically incomplete. That’s how costly mistakes get made. I’ve got a smarter six-step shortcut you can start using today: Strategically Aimed Marketing, or SAM 6®.

Watch out! There went another lead!

It’s common for even experienced marketers to make mistakes when writing a marketing plan. They may miss critical audience details. They don’t make effective use of the promotional channels. They forget to build in ways to ensure their key messages are consistently on point. And each time a message misses its mark, leads and sales are lost. That can really hurt your bottom line. What you need is a consistent process your whole team can rally around.

SAM 6 helps ensure critical details don’t get missed. This process is based on solid marketing concepts and principles combined with strategies and tactics Media Relations Agency has refined over the last 30 years. “The CEO’s Guide to Marketing” is a best-selling, award-winning step-by-step book that will walk you through this process in easy-to-understand detail.

More leads and higher sales  

The SAM 6 process ensures that your creative deliverables are on point every time. It’s also practical and it’s simple to adjust for such variables as new products, market changes and trending promotional channels. I won’t kid you: Each step takes thoughtful consideration. But everyone who has implemented it in their business has told us they’re grateful for the resulting plan.  

The six steps are:

  1.       Gain competence in marketing concepts and principles. This ensures everyone is speaking the same language and has a working knowledge of marketing. This is an essential starting point for creating a great marketing plan.
  2.       Fill in code sheets. Code sheets are a means of gathering and documenting important information about your company and the products it promotes. Code sheets can also be made for specific offers. Code sheets help direct and control your creative staff.
  3.       Select appropriate promotional mix channels. The promotional mix channels you choose to employ depend on many variables including your message, the market and your resources.
  4.       Schedule your promotions on a calendar. This ensures that you’re delivering a constant and maximum flow of on-point promotional messages.
  5.       Develop a control template for your creative team. Your control template provides the guidelines for your writers, designers and other creative staff to follow. The control template enables these imaginative professionals to create attention-getting content without losing site of the marketing necessities.
  6.       Engage your creative team. You need to assemble the right people for the job, and then let these creative souls work their magic within the parameters you created.

If this sounds unlike any other instructions for writing a marketing plan, you’re right. But rest assured, SAM 6 accounts for all marketing elements. Nothing is missed. Marketers throughout the country have read the book, reviewed the process and given it a 5-star rating.

Start writing your best-ever marketing plan by reading “The CEO’s Guide to Marketing” and registering for free access to the SAM 6 tools. We also offer on-site and virtual SAM 6 training. And of course, we apply SAM 6 for each of our clients. Is it any wonder most of our clients have been with us anywhere from five to 25 years?

We’re happy to talk with you about each of these alternatives. Call us at 952-697-5220 or complete this form.

 

Written by Lonny Kocina

Written by Lonny Kocina

Lonny Kocina is the CEO and Founder of Media Relations Agency which has been in business for nearly 35 years. During that time, Kocina also founded and sold two other businesses: Mid America Events and Expos, and Checkerboard Internet Services. Prior to that, Lonny worked as a marketing director for Investment Rarities Inc., a company with sales over 4 billion dollars. Kocina has also been a long time member of Vistage International which is a CEO peer mentoring organization. He was also a volunteer marketing mentor for Junior Achievement and the Carlson School of Business. For fun he has taught Principles of Marketing at the college level, and his recent book, the “CEO’s Guide to Marketing” is an Axiom Business Book silver medal winner as well as an Amazon bestseller. Lonny likes to kid that his third grade teacher may have summed him up best with a note sent home on his report card. “Lonny is a daydreamer and he’s getting worse each day. He complains of a stomach ache a lot and I don’t think he likes school much either.”

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