Without a marketing plan, it is almost impossible to achieve your sales goals.
Not having a marketing plan is like going into battle without a strategy.
Fortunately, there are many ways that you can market your business today. Regardless of which platforms you decide to promote your business on, you need a plan to guide your actions. With this, you can achieve the desired results.
In this blog post, I will show you six types of marketing plans that you need to create for your business.
Types of marketing plans.
Next, we’ll talk about the most popular marketing platforms, why your business needs them and how to create a plan for them.
With over3.356 billion users, it’s a no-brainer to do social media marketing. Additionally, users are looking for interactions with brands on social media, which can help you better connect with your audience.
Over time, you can provide value to followers, build trust, and have some of them review your products or services. In addition, through monitoring, you will discover opportunities to respond to customer complaints and find potential customers.
But with the sheer size of social media comes a lot of noise too. You need a social media plan to cut the noise and achieve your goals. To create an effective plan, you must consider the following elements:
- Social media goals.
- Frequency of publication on social networks.
- Social media calendar.
- Content creation and curation, including necessary images.
- Collaboration system with team members.
- Engagement strategy with your audience.
- An established system to measure the ROI of social media.
Of course, you need tools that can help you put your plans into action. For social media management,Loomlyis a good choice (actually the one we use) as it covers all major social media and has numerous features (such as scheduling tools, monitoring, social media analytics), while Canva is great for creating images for your social media updates.
2. Email marketing plan
Did you know that YouTube functions as its own search engine? This means you can (and should!) optimize content just as you would on Google. Optimizingyour videos will increase your rank, viewing time, and general organic search. You can also hire the bestvideo seo expertsthat will fully optimize your videosand your videos position to grow your Dailymotion channel faster with more subscribers and watchers.
In addition to this, people check their email inboxes repeatedly throughout the day.
For example, 59.4% of Americans check their emails at least four to six times a day. Therefore, contacting people by email can be a very effective strategy for your business, regardless of your audience.
Perhaps one of the reasons that most marketers and businesses use emails is because of its high return on investment (ROI). For example, a survey of B2B marketers found that email is their top source of leads and produces leads with the highest ROI.
Main B2B lead generation channels
With emails, you can send messages to your audience to nurture your potential customers and take them further through your sales funnel until they become customers.
However, personalization is vital for results email marketing. You should send messages to each subscriber based on how they interact with your messages and your interests.
For example, personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to open than non-personalized ones.
Personalization increases open rates
To create an email marketing plan, you must have the following elements:
- Nurture with emails for different purposes.
- Frequency of sending emails.
- Subject line.
- Products to sell by email.
- The email service provider you will use.
A simple email service provider that you can use is Mailerlite . in fact it is the one that I use personally since it gives you the advantage of having up to 1000 free subscribers, with automation, form popups, etc. It allows you to personalize your emails based on the actions and interests of your subscribers, send email transmissions, and verify their analytics.
3. Search engine marketing plan (SEM)
When people need to find information or a product to buy, they use search engines.
Does your website appear when they are looking for the service you provide?
With search engine marketing or SEM (SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING), you can get traffic when people use keywords relevant to your business.
Consequently, it is easier to convert such targeted traffic to leads and customers. Search engine marketing is divided into two main groups:
For SEO, you will have to wait a long time (three to 12 months) to start seeing a considerable amount of organic traffic. Meanwhile, with PPC ads, you will start to get results in no time.
Some items to include in your search engine marketing plan are:
- Write down keywords really relevant to your product / service.
- Keyword intent (for example, informational, transactional, etc.).
- Website optimization activities.
- Keyword research steps and tools to use.
With SEM, you need to do research to find the keywords your potential customers are using and create valuable content to target them. Some tools that you can use for this are SEMrush and Ahrefs.
4. Content marketing plan.
Content marketing is one of the best ways to generate leads for your products or services. But creating content is more than just posting posts. You must add value and solve the problems of your audience, become an expert in your field.
The content will help you show your expertise to your audience and nurture leads at every stage of your sales funnel.
For example, the DemandGen Report revealed that 47% of shoppers will view an average of three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.
On another note, 35% of B2B marketers who have a content marketing strategy tracked their ROI effectively, compared to the overall average of 21%.
B2B marketing follows ROI success
So what should you have in your content marketing plan?
- Content marketing objectives.
- Platform you will use.
- Content frequency.
- Content size.
- Content marketing calendar.
- Content promotion tactics.
- Tools to create and promote content.
5. Advertising plan for payment methods
If you need fast results, you must pay to get exposure for your business. Another advantage you get with paid advertising is that you can target the people who are likely to buy your products.
Platforms like Google and Facebook offer extensive targeting options that help you reach the right people. Some platforms for paid advertising are:
- Paid search
- Paid social
- Influence Marketing
- TV
- Radio
- Billboards
While running a startup or small business, you only need to focus on a few paid platforms. For your paid advertising plan, you must include:
- Paid advertising platforms
- Advertising budget
- Target audiences
- Target keywords
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Ideal buyer’s favorite social media channels
With the right paid advertising plan, you can get a healthy ROI on your spending. You can get these results without the wait associated with other marketing platforms.
6. Conversion optimization plan
What is the main objective of your website and your marketing efforts? To get qualified leads and convert them into customers. In other words:it’s about conversions.
But no website or landing page is perfect when it comes to conversions. This means that there is always room for improvement. This is why you should always experiment with different elements of your website and landing pages to improve your conversion rates.
Some elements of your website to optimize are:
- Design
- The Copy website
- Presence or absence of visuals
- Location of elements on the page.
- CTA
- Loading speed
To get the most out of your optimizations and A / B tests, you should test only one item at a time and let your tests run for a reasonable period of time. This will give you more accurate results.
In your conversion optimization plan, you should have details such as:
- Elements to optimize on your website.
- How to track results.
- Tools to use for conversion optimization.
One tool that helps with conversion optimization is HotJar.You can view heat maps and video recordings to see how your visitors use your website, as well as perform A / B testing.
Conclusion
Creating marketing plans will help you focus on the right activities that will deliver results for your business. Results like more leads and revenue.
With that said, it’s vital to include a strategy for tracking results in all of your marketing plans. Thus, you will understand if your actions lead to results and how good these results are.
Use this list of marketing plans as a guide to create your own marketing plans today.
