A marketing strategy describes how a business will accomplish a particular mission or goal. This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software you might use to execute on your mission and track its success. via GIPHY
A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It is the framework from which all your marketing strategies are created, and helps you connect each strategy back to a larger marketing operation and business goal. The different types of marketing plans could consist of paid marketing, social media marketing, campaigns designated over a certain set of time, new product or service marketing, and more.
The scope of your marketing plan varies depending on its purpose or the type of organization it’s for. You could create a marketing plan that provides an overview of a company’s entire marketing strategy or simply focus on the specific channel or strategy.
How to create a marketing plan:
Step 1: Identify your goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) by developing quantitative, attainable goals. KPIs are individual metrics that measure the various elements of a marketing campaign. They help you establish short-term goals within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.
To set out these goals is to figure out where your organization is struggling the most. Avoid outlining vague goals like “Get more followers,” or “Increase rendition rate” Instead clarify the percentage you want to increase them by. As a rule of thumb, be as specific as possible. Set goals that include real numbers like; impacting website traffic, conversions, and customer success.
Step 2: Identify your audience to decide who you should be targeting and how to segment them. This may not seem extremely important, but the value of knowing and understanding your market will lead you to your ideal customers and personalize the experience.
Once you have that baseline, your ideal customers can help you understand their goals, biggest problems, and how your business can solve customer problems.
Step 3: Identify your messaging and your calls to action (CTAs). Decide what you are trying to communicate to your customers and what action you would like them to take. Examples would be to download content, watch, view, or submit information. Throughout your marketing strategy, you might be striving to attract industry professionals to enroll in a membership and one way of doing that is through your learning courses. Once your messaging attracts truly engaged learners to take your courses, you have access to promote the additional value of your membership.
Step 4: Identify your channels for communicating your messages. It’s important to think about what resources you have available to you. Some channels may already be in motion that you can use to your advantage. Depending on the length or goal of your message you could then decide on which channel best fits for that content.
Step 5: Plan your communications schedule without over-communicating. Strategically think about the timing for all types of communications. The timing of your social media campaign should be different from your direct mail and email marketing, and so on. via GIPHY
After completing these steps you can now take action on your marketing plan. By reviewing or being introduced to what a marketing plan is, you can now strategize your market entry, identify your marketing strategies, and integrate your marketing methods for maximum efficiency.
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