Why and When to Review Your Marketing Plan
Join us in a city near you at Entrepreneur’s Accelerate Your Business event
series kicking off Feb 23. View cities and dates »
In The Marketing Plan Handbook, author Robert W. Bly explains how you can
develop big-picture marketing plans for pennies on the dollar with his 12-step
marketing plan. In this edited excerpt, Bly explains why you must review your
marketing plan on a regular basis and what you should be looking for.
Despite the wisdom and many benefits of creating a rock-solid marketing
plan, virtually all marketing plans contains the same flaw: They're written to
cover a year-long period, but in inevitably, circumstances change, sometimes
dramatically, during those 12 months. And many of those changes are significant
enough to render some or all of your beautifully crafted plan incorrect or
obsolete.
Therefore, it's exceedingly common to alter the plan, or at least a number
of its tactics, to adjust midstream based on current market conditions and the
results of implemented tactics to date. Says CPA and financial planner James
Lange, “All good plans need to be modified and adjusted due to changing
circumstances.”
No plan is perfect. No matter how solid your assumptions are and how
thorough you are in putting together your plan, expect to make adjustments as
you learn more. Reviewing your plan on a regular basis is so critical to your
success that you should schedule review dates.
Before you review it, though, decide exactly what you’ll review, how you’ll
approach troubleshooting, and what you’ll do when things don’t quite go
according to plan. Once you make any needed adjustments, it’s time to do it all
again.
There are two major signals that it’s time to rethink and revisit your
marketing plan. The first is when you launch one or more campaigns based on
your stated core value proposition -- promoting your new or flagship product --
and those promotions start bombing.
You test some emails or postcards, and the results are terrible. Time to
change the market plan? Not quite yet. Instead, rework the copy and design.
Test different formats, offers, pricing, lists, and media. If these tests begin
yielding positive results, crisis averted. On the other hand, if test after
test produces little or no sales, you know your plan -- or one or more of its
major assumptions -- is flawed at the core. Time to gather in the conference
room and rethink strategy, approach, and messaging.
So it's a growing stream of failed promotions that’s the first sign your
marketing plan may need retooling. The second signals that the marketing plan
may require adjustment is sudden and worse unexpected changes in conditions --
changes in the market, the competitive landscape, technology, and any other
factors affecting your business. For a stock market newsletter publisher, for
instance, a market shift from bearish to bullish may render the marketing plan
written only a few months ago ineffective or even obsolete.
How often should you stop and review your plan’s progress? The frequency
with which you should evaluate your progress and make corrections in your sales
and marketing depends on your business. In my copywriting business, for
instance, my jobs are typically two to four weeks in duration. So my cash flow
may be uneven. Therefore, I look at my month-to-date and year-to-date gross
sales at the end of every month to see whether I'm on track. I also check on a
weekly basis the number of active jobs and pending jobs, for which I keep two
separate lists.
On the other hand, in my internet marketing business, where I sell products
instead of services, each sale is made in a minute online. So I look at a
one-week sales report that tells me, among other things, my revenues for the
week. I look at this twice a week: once at the end of the week to see how well
I did, and once in the middle to see whether I'm on track to make my weekly
sales goal. I also check my sales revenues daily, again to see if each day I've
earned the average dollar amount needed to achieve my weekly and annual revenue
goal.
How should you approach troubleshooting your plan? Begin with the data you
set up as benchmarks. If you see significant variances, dig deeper and ask
yourself a few basic questions:
Is the recession affecting your business?
Are you getting fewer leads and new business opportunities than normal?
Are your sales up, down, or flat?
Has the dollar value of your average order declined?
Do sales take longer to close?
Are customers seeking concessions on pricing and terms?
Which marketing activities seem to be working well?
Which marketing activities have seen results fall off lately?
Can I trace new clients or increases in sales to specific sources or
actions?
Are my actions generating the expected revenues? Or are they costing more
than they’re bringing in?
Which actions have been most fruitful?
Which actions have been least productive in terms of generating sales and
clients?
Has anything been a disaster?
Are there any tactics or actions that have completely fallen flat?
Are there significant changes in my industry or marketplace affecting my
business?
Which of my services is generating the most revenue?
Which is generating the least? Why?
Should I replace a tactic that isn't working with another tactic or action
now? Next year? Why?
What do I need to do more of?
Are my refund rates steady or increasing?
Pinpoint which elements of your strategy aren't working by looking at the
numbers:
Are you getting the new clients you wanted?
Are you increasing your retention rate as you desired?
Are you getting the referrals you anticipated?
Are those converting to new sales?
Look at each piece of your strategy to try and pinpoint what’s falling
short of your goals. Is your competition more successful than you expected?
Why? What are they doing that you can learn from?
