Planning for a Marketing Activity

The content of these plans, policies and procedures will vary from business to business, but their purpose is the same: to provide you with the information you need to understand all aspects of the business’s marketing and communications activities. It is common for plans, policies and procedures to include information on the following topics as a minimum.

Strategic objectives: The aims and goals of the business

Branding: The recognisable traits specific to the business such as its communication style, colour schemes, logos, etc.

Messaging Desires: The message that the business hopes to send to consumers through its communications, elevator, pitch, taglines, etc.

Operational requirements: The day-to-day activities of the business.

Approved outcomes: What the business hopes to achieve through its strategy, including what success looks like.

Marketing plans, policies and procedures will also set out information on the business’s approved marketing foundations. Marketing foundations can be thought of as the strategic approach that a business takes in its marketing activities, including the way in which it will differentiate itself and how it will approach its marketing activities. These foundations are sometimes referred to as the pillars or Ps of marketing.

The Marketing Centre, in its online article, ‘The 7 Ps and the 4 Pillars: what is marketing anyway?’, breaks the marketing pillars down, and demonstrated how 'The 7 Ps model' aims to provide a comprehensive overview of marketing foundations by touching each element of the marketing process.³

The 7ps model
Product	The product that is being sold
Price	Does the price match the expected quality of the product from a consumer’ perspective
Promotion	The way in which you market your product
Place	Where is the best place to reach consumers for the product?
People	The people you employ to sell the product
Process	The way in which you sell the product, including your policies and processes
Physical Evidence	The product, or something for the consumer to receive, once they have bought the product

When working for a business, this information relevant to the particular business should be readily available to you. It is important to seek out these documents and read them so that you set off on the right foot. It is also important to remain abreast of any changes to these documents so that you can implement these changes into your marketing activities.

The benefits of having plans, policies and procedures are evident for both the business and worker. These benefits include having a streamlined approach in all communications with everything from colour schemes, taglines, branding and messaging. Both parties know what is expected and can draft content within pre-approved guidelines.

Business documents can include organisational charts that show any relative ranks and roles/positions of staff in the business. This aids in the ability to identify appropriate personnel in the business that is suitable for assigned tasks. Task allocation is your responsibility when planning and implementing the marketing activities.

Marketing Plan

In some cases, you may be required to write a marketing plan yourself. The marketing plan may be an overarching plan for all marketing activities or be category-specific. In either case, it will need to align with any existing business and marketing strategies. When developing a marketing plan, you will need to consult with all relevant subject-matter experts within the business. This will allow you to understand the specifications of products and services properly, and the way in which each product or service complements your business strategy and overall goals. To write a marketing plan you will need to cover the following topics. Some businesses will adapt their marketing plans from this format, but this is a good general framework to follow.

Mission

Your marketing plan will set out the mission of the business, and any category-specific mission. The category-specific mission will need to complement the overall business mission and provide a clear link as to how this will be achieved. For example, the overall business mission may be, “Keeping our industry safe”, and the category-specific mission may be, “Providing high-quality and appropriate PPE equipment for workers on building sites”.

Product/service offering

This is where information relating to the types of product or service offerings will be described. Depending on the volume of products and service offerings, this may be a good place to explain the different products and services at a highlight level, with an annexure or hyperlink to information setting out service standards and other product-specific information that may be housed elsewhere. The point of this section is to set out an appropriate level of information on the products and services that are offered, and how they tie into the overall mission. (This will be dependent on the business and the products and services being offered.)

Market

Here you will identify your target market and any insights you have available on it. Providing a clear picture of your market’s needs, preferences, behaviours, and spending habits will allow you to create a marketing plan that targets your preferred customers.

Strategies

Your marketing plan will need to include information on the types of marketing strategies you wish to pursue. This should take into account the type of marketing concept you have chosen for your product or service, and then in a way that complements your marketing concept, provides information on elements such as:

• the messaging of your content and how it will appeal to the needs of your target audience
• the timeliness of the content and how often content will be distributed
• the best channels to be used to distribute content in order to catch the attention of your target audience
• ways of tracking the success of content (this will tie into a line item in your goals and measures, discussed below).

Goals and measures

In order to understand what success looks like, and whether your marketing activities are successful, it is important to create meaningful goals and measures for your business. Your marketing plan should set out clear information on your goals and measures, ensuring that the goals complement the mission of the business, and that they can be tracked in a tangible way. This Learner Guide provides further detail on developing goals and measures in the sections below.

Budget

Your marketing plan should set out the budget for your marketing activities. This is critical in ensuring the success of your marketing activities and your overall marketing strategy. You will need to consider both capital and operational expenditure and any ongoing and miscellaneous costs that will be required to create new marketing activities, as well as maintain existing activities.

Competitors

It may be appropriate to identify who your competitors are and any similarities and differences in their offerings. This may help you to find a competitive edge, and help you to identify gaps and trends in your market.

Timeframes and accountabilities

Critical to the success of any marketing plan is ensuring ownership of activities to be completed. The best way to have people take responsibility for completing activities is to clearly assign accountability and a deadline to them. Having clear goals and measures in place to accompany the activity will help to set the accountable owner up for success. When executing a marketing activity and allocating tasks to staff members and timeframes, it is essential to monitor their progress to ensure they are tracking in line with any deadlines. Good monitoring methods that help in staying on track may include:

• Checking in on staff to receive an update on the progress of task/s implemented
• Address any areas such as an evaluation, review or approval, in a timely fashion in order for staff to continue and complete their allocated tasks
• Monitoring the performance of the implemented tasks will allow time for making any sudden pauses, updates or enhancements to the task before finalising them.

Research Plans, Policies and Procedures

It is important to familiarise yourself with the business and marketing plans, policies and procedures. It will assist in understanding how to work within your parameters and provide insight on things to consider when planning and implementing marketing activities.

Action Plan

The purpose of the action plan is to keep a record of all marketing activities underway, and their progress. It is important to note that the action plan is not the sole source of information relating to marketing activity. The action plan highlights the most important information relating to the activity, while a detailed strategy or plan sitting behind the action plan contains the more detailed information.

Marketing Strategy vs Action Plan

A marketing strategy sets out the overall vision and mission of the marketing team. It has a long-term view and sets out the desired outcomes for any branding, messaging and campaign material. An action plan is an overview of the activities underway and their status. The activities in the action plan complement the desired outcomes of the marketing strategy. Often, the action plan will be an attachment to the marketing strategy.

An example of an action plan is below. Each business will have a variation of this format, but it is good practice to ensure the key elements, as follows, are included.

Action	Example: Provide building workers with sachets of sunscreen during site visits. Sachet design will contain our key messages, hotline number, and a link to our website.
Stategic fit	Example: Aligns to our strategy of ‘Keeping our industry safe
Resources	Example: Sunscreen sachet supplier. Graphic designer, Field staff to deliver sachets.
Timeframes	Example: Production to take place from July with product ready for distribution by October.
Budget	Example: $10,000 (forecasted in next FY marketing budget).
Accountability	Example: Mary Smith, Communications Team
Status	Example: On track
Update	Example: 20 May: Graphics designed and proofed. 21 May: Tender drafted for sunscreen supplier. To be issued before 30 May.

Action

The action column sets out the marketing activity. This should be kept brief, with further information on the activity housed in a separate document such as a marketing strategy or plan.

Strategic fit

The strategic fit column allows you to link the marketing activity to the strategic goals of the business. This should be easy to do. If not, you may wish to reconsider if the marketing activity is a good fit for the business.

Resources

The resources column allows you to list the resources you will require to execute the marketing activity. This will include people, equipment and money. Identifying your resources will help to determine project timelines and budgets.

When identifying resources, take into account that marketing activities are seldom the responsibility of the marketing team alone, and may require input from other areas of the business, or external resources. Therefore, consider who the subject-matter experts are, the persons who are key for approval processes, and any technical experts you will require (for example, a graphic designer to create posters, or a lawyer to check technical legal information) and include them in your resource list. Note that you may prefer to keep a comprehensive list of resources in your database or other digital system, with only key resources listed in your action report.

Timeframes

The timeframes column is where you can set out your basic timelines for the marketing activity. Usually, you would state key timeframes here, and have a more detailed blueprint in your marketing strategy or plan.

Budget

The budget column allows you to set out the total costs required for the marketing activity. Again, depending on the business, you may have already had to pitch for this money when the budget was developed, or you may have a pool of money to draw from. Many times, you will use your own judgement on how much you feel is necessary to spend on a campaign, as long as it fits within the budget and you can justify why.

Accountability

The accountability column allows you to assign responsibility for the marketing activity. The person listed is the person who holds primary accountability for the successful completion of the activity. This person is also the primary contact for updates or queries. There is usually a whole team of people assisting with the marketing activity, but it is not usually necessary to list them all in your action plan. It is your responsibility, however, to coordinate tasks with the correct person to help contribute to the marketing activity. Often, you may need to step in to assist staff members allocated to tasks by being proactive. This may include ways to:

• support them in completing tasks, for example, freeing up time from other responsibilities
• Sharing of workload, for example, helping to analyse advertising performance
• Providing specific expertise/support, for example, referring the staff member to appropriate sources, people and contacts.

Status

The status column is used to show how the activity is progressing, compared to its planned outcomes. This column will need to be reviewed and updated regularly. This column is useful when the action plan is used as a reporting document for people who need to know basic information about the activity. The colour-coded indicator provides information about the status of the project at a glance. Status indicators will vary from business to business, but may include, or be a variation of, the following:

	To be approved
	On track
	Requires close management
	Behind schedule
	Completed

Presenting status information in the above way, with colour-coded dots, This system is known as RAG (Red, Amber, Green), or a traffic light system. RAG, is a popular project management tool used in PRINCE2 and other project management methodologies. (Note, that while there are formal project methodologies such as PRINCE2, which project management experts use, formal training in these systems is not necessarily required to effectively manage and undertake marketing activities. However, if you are looking to expand your marketing activity knowledge, gaining an understanding of the concepts used in project management methodologies may be beneficial to comprehensively manage and track your marketing activities). This system is known as RAG (Red, Amber, Green), or a traffic light system.

Update

The update column allows you to insert relevant and timely information relating to the progress of the activity. Usually this information is kept concise, with more detailed information kept in a separate report, which may be produced as required.

Usually, your action plan will require approval from your manager and others. This is to ensure the marketing activities fit within the scope of the business’s desired outcomes and budget. This also ensures there are no surprises for anyone later, and gains buy-in from those who have power to make decisions.

Your action plan, along with your marketing strategy and other detailed plans, will be handy to refer to regularly throughout the implementation of your marketing activity; both for reporting purposes (for example: providing updates to your line manager, executive staff or board members, or even to track your successes against your goals and measures), and to ensure the activity is progressing as proposed.

There is a range of other information that may be recorded against your marketing activity that is not included in your action plan. For businesses using a database or other digital platforms, the information may be stored in different fields, with selected fields being able to be extracted for reporting purposes. This is useful when keeping track of your marketing activities, as it allows you to insert detailed information and records while only providing the information required for reporting purposes. Some examples of other types of information that may be kept about your marketing activity may include:

• Goals: Clearly articulating a goal ensures that everyone involved in the activity, and those who are responsible for approval, are working towards the same outcome.
• Measures: This allows you to define what success will look like and how you will calculate that success in a tangible way.
• Due dates: This is important for scheduling activities and dependencies, and ensuring activities stay on track.
• Project planning including individual tasks and dates: Recording information at this level will ensure that no steps are overlooked in the execution of this activity.
• Detailed updates on progress and next steps: Recording this information will ensure everyone involved in the activity understands where it is up to, who is currently undertaking what work, and how to keep the activity moving.
• Contact information for suppliers: This information is critical so you have a record of those you are working with readily available and may also be useful to refer to in future activities.

Develop a Marketing Activity Action Plan

It is essential to integrate all the information from a number of sources to develop a well-informed action plan. An action plan must be prepared using the workplace documentation templates and be completed with:

• suitable grammar
• clear and concise language
• well-structured sentences
• logical language and information
• professional language, including industry terms where appropriate

The general steps in developing a marketing activity action plan involves the following steps.

1. Research the marketing practices of the business or competitors
2. Determine the information based on their marketing strategies/practices
3. Consider what strategy could be working well- which seems most successful?
4. Ensure the marketing strategy suits your project and then you can begin to develop your action plan for your marketing activities.

When developing your action plan for your marketing activity as a task in the workplace you may need to include the name of the business you have researched, together with a piece about your understanding of its marketing practices, and how your product would complement its brand.

In order to ensure the success of your marketing activity, it is essential to understand what your end goal is, and how you will measure it. Note that your end goal should always complement the strategy of the business.

Where possible, goals should be SMART. That is, they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. When developing SMART goals, consider whether they meet the test below:

Where possible, use data metrics and baseline information. In order to make your goals and measures tangible, it is a good idea to use baseline information and data metrics. Baseline information is the information you will use as your starting point. It is information from a specific point in time that will be compared against future results to show how far the business has come in achieving its goals. Data metrics is the information you keep on how you are progressing with a certain activity, and is the information that will allow you to compare how far you have come since your baseline. For example, if your goal is to deliver 20,000 sachets of sunscreen to building sites, your data metrics might include logging the amount of sachets of sunscreen you have delivered each day. This information can be compared on a day-by-day basis against your baseline to see how you are progressing, what your average delivery rate is, and how many you have left to deliver, compared to your deadline.

See the following example of a goal and measure is below:

Strategy	Example: Spread awareness of our business to building workers in ways that are practical, useful and interactive.
Goal	Example: Provide 20,000 sachets of sunscreen to building workers during site visits. Sachet design will contain our key messages, hotline number, and a link to our website.
Measure	Example: 30% increase in calls to our hotline or visits to our website compared to the same time last year.

If your goals are not being met, there will usually be a clear indication of where the problem is. Sometimes this problem will be simple to fix, and in other cases may require you to revisit your strategy, goals and measures, and adjust them in line with the business’s capabilities. This could mean that you insert an extra action into your activity plan, such as providing training to employees, or, you adjust the outcomes of your goals. Some potential causes for not meeting goals may be:

Potential causes	Solutions
Unrealistic goals	All goals should have a logical basis; milestones to track progress can help determine of closer to achieving or overestimated and needed to be adjusted.
Lack of manpower	Particular tasks may be outsourced to freelancers
Lack of knowledge or experience in staff	Staff training and professional development sessions can be set to skill up staff
Miscommunication around goals, specifications or timeframes	All plans need to be in writing in a collaboration software accessible by all staff for transparency purposes and they are to be signed off by the relevant authority. A less predictable issue that may occur, is the misinterpretation of goals, specifics or timeframes that are incorrectly communicated. Additionally,  communicating information via emails using incorrect contact details can also cause issues. Both of these unpredictable issues can be resolved by monitoring any emailed communications, ensuring all details are correct, better yet, errors can be caught on time if you are CC'd into all emailed communications.
Poor budget management	To avoid overspend, there needs procurement processes in place, as well as financial delegation limits based on hierarchy and proportional to budgets

Having a clear understanding of what works and what doesn't work can foresee the direction of any upcoming marketing activities implemented in the business. There should be a close monitoring of its' success ensuring that the desired goals for the project are being met or at least exceeding the business expectations.

Now it’s your turn

Gain experience in a real-life setting using Linkedin. As Australia’s main business to business (B2B) social media platform, out of approximately twelve million working professionals, ten million are Linkedin members in Australia, making it a must for any Australian professional.⁴ Please complete the steps below:

Create your personal Linkedin account if you have not yet

• Create a LinkedIn page for a fictional company
• Create a LinkedIn advertising account
• In "campaign manager", create your first campaign for the fictional company
• Learn how conversion tracking works so you measure the impact of advertising.
• Learn about the different types of ads available on LinkedIn
• See the recommendation for ads
• Learn about the pricing of ads

After having implemented an action plan with marketing activities, monitored and reviewed the success, a marketing review report must be prepared. This report will reflect on items such as:

• Budget performance
• Impacting factors (positive or negative), for example, a high number of viral (unpaid traffic) that lead to a higher than planned revenue, low number of leads, staffing absences causing a delay in connecting with interested clients.
• Suggestions for procedural changes. These can include changes in the way tasks are performed, such as, having automated emails, or having other team members involved in checking the set-up of an ad accurately reflects the plan. (Having a second pair of eyes).

This report is to be developed and shared with relevant personnel, furthermore informing any upcoming marketing activity projects of the business.