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Developing a strategic marketing plan

Step One
1. Identify the outcomes (KPOs) you require your marketing activities to deliver.
For example, are those marketing activities intended to grow the number of event participants, or the number of people buying subscriptions or memberships, or the value of sales, or the net margin that your activities generate, or anything else that you want as an outcome.
It’s OK to have multiple KPOs but remember that too many will be hard to achieve since maximising one KPO might be at the expense of another. For example, you can increase sales by lowering prices, but lowering prices may negatively impact net margin. It’s about ‘optimising’ KPOs rather than ‘maximising’ one or more of them.
Typically, organisations have three to five KPOs – there’s no right or wrong here – it’s about ‘meaningfulness’ and ‘achievability’.

Step Two
2. Decide on the period of this plan – is it a one-year plan, or three, five, seven, or ten-year plan?

Step Three
3. For each of the KPOs you have chosen, decide on the metric, or outcome, you want to achieve for the plan period you have designated.
For example, one of the KPOs might be the number of paying members (subscribers) you have achieved at the end of your 5-year planning period – and you want 3000 members. That becomes the metric for that KPO.
Do this for each KPO you have chosen.
All KPOs should enjoy the same planning period.
Note that Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are those measures you use to help you monitor how you’re tracking toward your KPOs. Remember that KPIs are enablers while KPOs represent the objective.

Step Four
4. Identify all the categories of buyers that relate to each of your products and services.

There may be a fair degree of overlap between different categories of ‘buyers’ who may wish to buy similar but slightly different products. They may engage with you for different reasons, and you need to understand those reasons because your pitch to them needs to resonate with their reason to buy or engage.
There are four fundamental qualities that a legitimate (for you) market segment possesses:
A. The segment is identifiable. You can identify members of the segment.
B. The segment is accessible. You can deliver your products and services to the segment, and you can communicate with them (otherwise you can’t pitch your value proposition.
C. The segment is stable. The segment “will still be around” long after you have invested to reach and supply it and recovered the benefits you seek.
D. The segment is sufficient. The segment is big enough to make it worth your time, effort and expense.

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