starting with the end in mind - from marketing strategy to planning

Written By Stefania Perrone

It always pays to start with the end in mind.

This holds true when developing your marketing strategy. Diving straight into tactics without a strategy is like trying to get somewhere with no idea where you’re going and no map to get there. On the flip side, a strategy is nothing more than a nice hypothetical if it doesn’t consider the practical and tactical follow through.

This is the end-to-end process I use to take our thoughts from inception to execution at HERE&NOW. There are different approaches and marketing strategies can include different elements, but these are the points I find are the most important to set marketing campaigns up for success. It also ensures marketing activity is tying back to business objectives and not existing in silo.

Before diving in, a quick recap on the definitions of strategy & planning.

Marketing strategy

A marketing strategy is an outline of how a business will use marketing to achieve its business goals. It brings together an understanding of your brand, market, customers and competitors and translates this understanding into an actionable roadmap of marketing tactics to help you achieve your goals. A marketing strategy needs to have clear marketing goals, which relate back to your business goals. Think of this as the ‘why’ behind why you’re doing what you’re doing. A marketing strategy sets a mid-long term direction for a business, but should be reviewed on a yearly basis to make sure it’s relevant.

Marketing plan

I find it useful to think of a marketing strategy as your ‘why’ and a marketing plan as your ‘how’.
A marketing plan breaks down your strategy into smaller, actionable steps with clear deliverables, timelines and objectives set against each of your chosen marketing tactics.

For example - if as a B2B business you’ve identified that your target customers are highly active on LinkedIn, you might choose to be more active on this channel (a strategy). From there, you might develop a plan to post on LinkedIn under a personal and business profile three times a week, and aim for 1 quality conversation with a prospect a week (a plan).

While there are slightly different approaches, a well rounded marketing strategy will reference:

  • Goals

    • Business goals

    • Marketing goals

  • Position

    • Brand

      • image (tone / perception)

      • values

    • Unique value propositions

    • Unique selling propositions

  • Customer

    • Target market

    • Sentiment - pain points, buying triggers and motivations

    • Ideal customer profile

  • Market

    • Context, trends and seasonality

    • Competitor landscape

    • SWOT analysis

  • Business Alignment

    • Required sales, service and marketing team alignment

    • Feedback and reporting process

  • Marketing Plan

    • Marketing channel selection

      • Budget allocation

    • Marketing roadmap

    • Marketing KPIs

Let’s break these down in turn.

1. goals

I always think of marketing strategy as a translation of a business problem into a marketing opportunity. Once you’re clear on business goals, marketing direction will flow naturally from there.

For example - if my business goal was to grow 20% year on year, then I would need an increase of sales qualified leads to help support new business growth. So my business goal = 20% year on year growth, and my marketing goal could be 50 sales qualified leads generated per month that could be attributed to marketing activity, to support business growth.

2. position

This is an exercise in branding more than marketing per se, but the two are deeply interconnected. If you don’t know how you want existing and potential customers to think, feel and say about your business, and indeed you yourself don’t know the answer either - then you have a brand problem my friend. Having a fully documented and cohesive brand strategy is the best case, but if you don’t, you can proceed with a marketing strategy so long as you are able to articulate:

  • How you want your brand to be perceived. If your business was a person, what would its personality be? How would it write, talk and speak?

  • Your brand values - what you stand for as a business

  • The things that make you different. Your secret sauce. Your zest. Your je ne sais quoi. You get the point - the thing that makes people do business with you over someone else. In marketing speak this translates into

    • unique value proposition - the value that your product/service provides to customers

    • unique selling proposition - the distinct differences between your product/service vs your competitors

3. customers

It’s important to know who you are before drilling down into who you’re trying to reach. And it’s important to know who you’re trying to reach, so you can figure out where to reach them, and what to say to them so they take notice. Your customers (the people you pay you) are the lifeblood of your business. I don’t believe that the customer is always right, but I believe that understanding the customer is always right. This benefits you on all fronts - from the first marketing message your customers see, to your first new business conversation, through to delivering an excellent product/service. Again, this step can be a whole other chunky piece of work, but you can move forward with just a few critical pieces documented:

Target market

  • You need to break down your total pool of customers into a smaller pool that you want to go after - your target market. Narrowing in on a portion of a total market allows you to get specific with your messaging and your offering so that it will resonate with potential buyers. You can’t be all things to all people. Ways that you can determine your target market, with examples:

    • industry (you might only target lawyers)

    • business size (you might only target law firms with 50 - 100 staff)

    • geography (you might only work with law firms in Sydney)

    • product / service offering (you might only work with commercial lawyers)

You can have more than one target market for your different products or services, but the more you throw into the mix, the harder it will be for you to get better at servicing that market. When putting together a marketing strategy you should focus on one target market, and review your target when you review your marketing strategy (annually or bi-annually) to make sure you’re adapting to any market changes.

Sentiment
Again - in a perfect world this can (and should) be a standalone research process whereby you’re researching and speaking to existing and prospective customers to get a handle from them on their buying triggers, motivations, pain points, and the problems your product/service is solving. This shouldn’t be a static conversation - it should be baked in as part of your business processes, and everyone in the business should be responsible for getting customer feedback.

For the purposes of a marketing strategy, it’s good to have a handle on these points and have them written down so you can translate them into marketing messages and campaign angles.

Ideal Customer Profile development (ICP)

It’s important to have this documented so you have a north star to hold your marketing efforts against, as well as to help further drill down into your target market. It’s what it says on the tin - a documentation of your perfect customer.


You can take this further by developing full customer personas, which are a fictitious portrayal of a segment of your target audience. Both ICP & persona development help you get to the heart of understanding what your prospective (and existing) customers need, want and care about.

4. market

It’s all well and good to have a product/service and know who you want to speak to - but it’s important to zoom out further and put it in market context. One of the first things I’ll dig into when kicking off a strategy is put my client’s business in market context. The questions I’ll ask myself, client and then research to validate:

  • Has the category been growing or declining in popularity?

  • Are more or less people searching for this product or service?

  • Is there any seasonality to be mindful of?

  • Is there a clear need / opportunity in market for this product/service, or does demand need to be created?

  • What is the way business is typically done in this category?

  • What are the alternatives to this product/service? This applies on both a solution level and a business level (i.e. competitors)

  • What are the macro factors affecting the category and/or purchase of this product/service?

Asking these questions helps frame marketing strategy, and also ensures that any strategy is grounded in reality and taking the bigger picture into account.

These points are best documented via a SWOT analysis & a competitor research document, which are both critical in a considered marketing strategy.

5. business alignment

This isn’t included in most marketing strategies but in my opinion a critical piece to make sure that marketing activity isn’t existing in silo and can be tied back to real world outcomes.

Sales, service & marketing team alignment means that all teams are unified in direction. It’s also an opportunity to provide feedback on the direction as each team will have different and valid perspectives to bring to the table. Questions to guide discussion during this stage:

  • What is being promoted in market that the sales and service teams should be aware of? Consistency across business messaging is key

  • How are any new business leads being tracked and passed on to the sales team?

  • Will the sales team be able to handle an influx of new enquiries? How many do they need to help reach business targets?

  • How will we report on marketing activity impact?

  • How will we close the loop on the quality of marketing leads? How will it be documented, tracked and communicated back to the marketing team?

6. marketing plan

Lastly we arrive at taking everything we now know about our business, brand, customers and market, and distil it into a marketing plan. A marketing plan includes your:

  • chosen channels - where you’ll reach your target audience

  • chosen tactics - how you’ll reach your target audience

  • resourcing allocation - how much effort will go into your chosen tactics

  • media budget allocation - how much spend will go into your chosen tactics

  • KPIs against marketing channels - how you’ll measure the success of your marketing tactics

  • roadmap - deliverables, workflow and accountabilities against each tactic to make sure things get done

  • timelines - check-in points to know how you’re tracking against your objectives

It’s no easy feat bringing a marketing strategy to life, but putting the time and thinking in upfront will save you the angst of wondering why things aren’t working if you do it the other way around and put the cart before the horse.

If you’re interested in learning more about how I put together marketing strategies for my B2B clients feel free to reach out to me HERE, or via stef@thehereandnow.com.au. I’m always happy to chat!

STEFANIA PERRONE

Founder | HERE&NOW

Hello! I’m Stef. I’ve been in marketing for the last 12+ years, starting in journalism, then hopskipping to PR, then media planning and buying, before moving to performance digital for six years. My last foray was in the world of brand and creative before I started HERE&NOW. I’ve dipped a toe into it all, and it’s on purpose. I bring this breadth of experience and perspective to my client engagements today, and like to think of myself as a well-rounded operator.

I love working with B2B businesses as I think it’s the most difficult form of marketing, and if you know me you know I bloody love a challenge. I love bringing value to the businesses I work with and making a real impact to their bottom lines.

Connect on LinkedIn >