Reader Note: This blog is the third and final installment in our Developing Strategic Marketing Plans series. Preceding blogs can be found here: The Value of Starting with Strategy
and Making the most of strategic planning: Why marketing workshops are critical to strategy development. Or you may watch an abbreviated video summary of our Developing Strategic Marketing Plans series here.
Many brands invest a significant amount of time and money to develop a strategic marketing plan, but then struggle with turning strategies into actions. This is due to a variety of factors. Some in-house marketing teams simply don’t have the bandwidth. A lean team may also lack the specializations required to execute certain plan elements, such as paid media buying or influencer program management. For these and many other reasons, it can be easy to fall short of achieving full return on the time and resources you invest in strategy development. That’s where an external partner can be invaluable. Partnering with an integrated marketing agency can assist brands in overcoming these pitfalls and improve the likelihood of achieving marketing success, which we discussed in a previous blog post about the value of starting with strategy.
COMMUNICATIONS FRAMEWORK
As mentioned in our previous blog about marketing workshops, the first course of action after developing your marketing strategy is to develop a communications framework. This framework is cultivated from new strategic objectives, and weaves together strategic development and implementation at a high-level to get organizational alignment.
Informed by audience/customer personas and prioritization, customer journeys, and marketing strategy, the communication framework clarifies how your brand should communicate with your priority audience and the content that will most effectively resonate with them to reach business objectives. At Rhea + Kaiser, we outline omni-channel metrics to obtain alignment and confirm key performance indicators between brand and agency.
Once approved, the communications framework becomes the foundation of a yearlong or multi-year action plan called the Marketing Communications Plan.
THE MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS PLAN
The Marketing Communications Plan is an exhaustive document that outlines communications strategies and the priority channels, messages and tactics that will help achieve them, including type, frequency and schedule of content deployment. Communications plans also include media recommendations, budget parameters, metrics, and tracking and analysis mechanisms by communication type, to the extent that it typically requires 2-3 months and several channel leads to complete all necessary research, integration, and action plan development.
Brand and agency then work together to finalize the communications plan for launch, with the understanding that a communications plan is meant to be a working document. During implementation, successful brands and their partners continue to review the plan and track execution on an ongoing basis to identify areas for improvement and optimization. If you put a marketing strategy and communications plan in place, an effective creative strategy* to keep you on the path to success will follow.
*Watch this video that defines creative strategy to learn how it’s different from brand strategy. This informative video was created by strategy educator Julian Cole, from the Strategy Finishing School (previously known as the Planning Dirty Academy). As part of its commitment to continued client service enhancement, the team at Rhea + Kaiser completes annual educational employee development courses, such as Strategy Finishing School certification.