The Effective Marketer

Effective Marketer Principle 3: Develop Action Plans

Now that you have identified the most important thing to be done now and making sure it will contribute to the company’s goals (see previous post), is time to develop action plans. Marketers are used to creating marketing plans, including advertising campaigns, trade show schedules, etc. Many marketers I know have calendars posted on the walls marking important dates, deadlines, events, and so forth. Spreadsheets abound, and ideas flow. A great marketing plan is created! Or is it?

The action plan in Peter Drucker’s “8 Principles” article involves thinking not only about what to do, but also the expected results.

Action plan checklist:

–          Desired results

–          Probable restraints

–          Future revisions

–          Check-in Points

–          Implications for how the marketer will spend his time

I need to stress the first bullet, “desired results”. It is very important to make sure your marketing activities are results-oriented. There’s a whole discussion around marketing ROI that we should have at a later date, I think most of you are already developing plans with specific goals in mind be it lead generation, web traffic, referrals, and even sales. Right?

 The last bullet, on how you will spend your time, involves thinking deep into the planning and really being realistic as to what you (and your team) can accomplish as well as what may happen as a result of implementing the plan in relation to your available time.  In some cases you may have to do some market research prior to changing the product packaging, or contact your customers as a result of new customer service website login options. The important thing is not to forget that the plan you devise may impact other areas (and require more actions) not originally thought. This bullet also reminds you that you need to dedicate time to your plan. Yes, we are all very busy in endless meetings and such but unless you spend time towards the activities you outlined in your plan you won’t be making any progress and you won’t be effective. As you plan your day/week/month, make sure that you are spending time on activities related to your original action plan. Keep asking yourself “what needs to be done NOW?”.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 10:17 pm and is filed under Marketing Planning, Marketing Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.