Here's a simple marketing strategy planning template to help you implement strategies and tactics for reaching buyers directly. I believe it's essential to shift out of the marketer's comfort zone of preaching about products and services and the template helps people to do just that.
Originally published in 2010, the template was created with my friends at Bluewire Media, an Australia marketing strategy and training firm. They had been working on a similar strategy template and shared their draft with me. Our ideas were so similar that we collaborated to create this. We have continually updated the template and it is now in the 12th edition.
Since then, in various iterations, it has been downloaded or printed more than a million times. It’s totally free with no registration required.
Implementing marketing fundamentals
When I hear people tell me that they struggle with marketing fundamentals I point then to this template. It’s both a visual for the fundamentals of marketing as well as a starting point for creating your own marketing strategy.
Most of the implementation challenges that people describe to me involve the shift from focusing on products and services to the more effective approach of focusing on buyer personas and information that helps solve buyers’ problems.
A secondary challenge people share is the shift in emphasis from offline marketing techniques and programs (such as direct mail, trade shows, and advertising) to reaching buyers on the web, via social media, and through chatbots.
For example, if you were to say to me, “I want to start a YouTube channel,” I would point you to the template and have you start asking the following questions:
- Who are you trying to reach with the YouTube channel?
- Is a YouTube channel the best tool? Or might another form of content be better?
- What problems can you help solve for your buyers?
- What value do you bring as creator of this content?
- What search terms are people entering to find you? (This will help you name the channel and to title individual videos.)
- How will you integrate the YouTube channel with your website and social networking?
- What sort of person are you, and what is your company's personality?
- What do you want people to do next—visit your site, buy, donate, subscribe?
The marketing strategy planning template is built on the basic principle of understanding buyers and publishing information on the web especially for them drives action.
This approach becomes clear as you look at the diagram page on the strategy template. It points out that when you publish valuable information (videos, blogs, X feeds, e-books, and so on), you are creating the sorts of links that search engine algorithms love. Thus, your content surfaces when buyers are looking for help solving their problems!
It also reminds you that the information people find will drive them to action and help you achieve your goals. Moreover, you can monitor your own effectiveness: You can measure how many people follow you on X, sign up for your email newsletter, or download a white paper. You can also measure how your marketing strategies are helping your organization reach its most important goals, such as new sales and revenue growth.
