Mplans Blog

Super Bowl Ads start way before Sunday

Let the games begin.  One of Sunday's megadollar pitches has launched a PR spin tauting the sponsor's anonymity.  Well the actual ad on Sunday may not come with direct sales pitches but the ad is certainly meant to drive target customers to other channels where some sort of pitch most definately will take place.

This is an example of an evolved, integrated communication strategy.  The thirty second spot aired to hundreds of millions of viewers is not a stand alone message.  It is a "marker".  It allows for viewers to follow its enticements back to friendlier confines where a more thorough marketing campaign can be executed.  Consumers segment themselves based on their own interests.  This allows the next level of communication to assume a higher level of involvement.  For marketers, the, "Heart Attack" approach serves as a great example of how to maximize your investments over many different mediums.

This Sunday, watch for how many of the ads try to bring the viewers online.  And if you follow them online, look for the numerous ways that they will try to engage you.

Location, Location, Location

How can you locate your business in the right place?  A recent paper presented at the US Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurs Conference describes one up-and-coming technique.  By utilizing mapping tools offered by the US Census, an analytically drive entrepreneur can utilize the convergence of data and geographic mapping techniques to highlight opportune areas.

This is a nice way to communicate your offering and your geographic reasoning to prospective investors.  It will work best for established industries (i.e. restaurants and retail fronts) that depend on location convenience. 

Marketing Planning Vs. Business Planning

What is the difference between a marketing plan and a business plan?  The most common distinction between the two is that a marketing plan is a subset of a larger existing business plan.  This is theoretically true but there is another, more practical, distinction.  Business plans are most commonly used to start new ventures.  (As a business planning proponent, I don't think that they are utilized enough, but the reality is that they have been pigeon-holed as documents that are created to organize a start up or solicit funding.)  Marketing plans, on the other hand, are generally used by existing businesses that are interested in growth. 

The scope of the marketing plan is almost as big as an entire business plan except in two important areas. First, a business plan details the capabilities of the leadership group.  By doing so, role accountability and equity-relationships are defined.  If the plan is meant to solicit finances, this will be one of the most scrutinized sections.  On the other hand, marketing plans rarely detail the capabilities and backgrounds of the principal marketing managers.  Why?  It is probably because there is a false sense that anyone can implement a marketing plan.

The second major distinction between a marketing and business plan is the temporal perspective.  Business plans are encouraged to include exit strategies.  This forces the stakeholders to set financial objectives that can be measured and valued.  Marketing plans do not generally include an ending.  Brands and relationships are developed with perpetual values and not meant for dissolution.

Before someone begins to create a business or  marketing  plan they need to consider the purpose of their plan.  Typically, a business plan would better serve a new venture and a marketing plan would better serve an existing company interested in growth.

Business Planning Debate

I am so happy to see a conversation questioning the value of business planning.  There is no doubt that the plan has hijacked the planning process and created differing opinions to the relevance of traditional written business plans.  As with any good debate, there is truth on both sides of the argument. 

1. Written business plans will not always help increase the successful performance of a firm. 
2. Planning is always valuable.

Unfortunately, there still seems to be an obsession with planning for the purpose of securing capital.  Roughly six million businesses were started last year and a little over four thousand received venture capital (.0007).  Yet we continue to educate students on how to complete plans for the purpose of this type of evaluation. 

It is time for us to stop preaching a single ubiquitous business planning approach and construct business planning tools that are specifically designed for the  myriad of different users that exist.

Mobile Marketing for Small Businesses

A very popular new medium is mobile marketing.  Now, small businesses can get into the swing of things.  The prices are affordable enough to give it a shot and the technology behind it is easy to use.  Like all marketing tools, it will not work for everyone.  You need to be sure that you understand your consumers and create value through these campaigns.  But it is a novel medium and should get you noticed!

Here's how it works.  A mobile marketing company (like mobivity) will sell you a number of text message responses for a monthly fee.  (500 messages for $79 per month)  You provide your consumers with an incentive to input your keyword (Free Lunch) to a text number (i.e. 75558).  They will immediately get a text message response from you sent to their phone.  You can plan contests and other interactive promotions to generate responses.  Once they have responded to you, you can continue to send them blanket or personalized messages.

Try setting up a free account (25 messages per month) with a provider like mobivity and give it shot.

Implementing Your Marketing Plan

Most marketing professionals face two common obstacles to implementing a strategic marketing plan. First, they must explain marketing planning.  There is a lot of ambiguity around the subject and before they can ever begin to implement the plan they will eventually create, they must educate their colleagues on the subject.  Secondly, they have to face cultural barriers.  Marketing planning and its implementation requires company-wide buy in.  Planning requires new levels of communicating, collecting information and reporting.

If you are asked to create a marketing plan, begin by doing some homework.  Go to the library or on-line and search for evidence that marketing planning works. (There are plenty of academic articles that site industry specific examples of improved performance correlated to formal marketing planning.)  This will get your colleagues and managers attention.    Next, be prepared to outline the marketing planning process.  This is different for different organizations but usually includes the following:

1. A situational analysis (Where are you now?)
2. A strategic development (Where do you want to go?)
3. An implementation schedule (How are you going to get there?)
4. A control system (How do you know if it is working?)

Inside each of these general topics/questions there are countless numbers of specific marketing topics and tools created to help you achieve your goals.  As the marketing leader, you must investigate which topics and corresponding tools suit your needs.  This will vary depending on your industry, competition, geography, size, capabilities and goals.  Choose only what has meaning for you.  If you bring in too much to the plan you are going to devalue your end result.

Assuming that you convince your company to invest time and money in the marketing planning process, there is still a lot of hard work needed to be done.  The cultural push-back to planning is almost universal.  It requires people to change the way they have operated in the past and trust in investments that do not have immediate returns.  Some of this is going to take cheer leading.  Some of this is going to take incentivizing and measuring performance.  Planning allows you to create controls.  Consider putting measurements in place that can be reported on monthly or quarterly.  Too often, the entire value of marketing planning is assumed to appear directly on the bottom line at the end of the year.  (And, eventually it should!)  The reality is that the planning process will include some successes and some failures and unless you attempt to partition out what is working and what is not, you will not be successful in achieving buy in.

Introducing marketing planning is not easy.  Be prepared by doing homework upfront and then be prepared to continue to to work on the process.  Planning is a continuous investment that requires learning and support.

E-mail marketing webinar

It is very important to always keep looking for current best practices.  This e-mail marketing webinar is a great example of an online educational opportunity.  Marketer's can maximize their returns by educating themselves about what others are doing.  If your business has an e-mail marketing capability, this offering (or one like it) is a great investment.  More than likely, you will pick up some new ideas.  If nothing else you can confirm that you are up to date and not missing out on new trends.

Of course, be careful not to overextend yourself.  If your company doesn't have a history with e-mail marketing or the long term resources to support one, this isn't for you.  Whatever your primary marketing channels are (e-mail, advertising, direct selling, etc.) be sure to look for training webinars like this to keep you current.

Do I Need a Written (Formal) Marketing Plan?

That depends.  The answer is probably yes.  Almost all companies, even sole proprietorships of existing companies, could benefit from crystallizing their thoughts through the writing process.  Writing is cognitively demanding.  Good writing reflects good thinking. The precision that writing a plan takes will help marketers focus on the the details.  As this article mentions, few companies utilize the full potential of marketing planning.  That sounds like a competitive opportunity to me.

Google's Newspaper Ad Program

Small business owners are "empowered" like never before.  Thanks to technology there are new and exciting mediums for communicating with consumers.  The problem is trying to invest wisely.  The proliferation of online solutions competing with traditional advertising hubs has made it even more difficult to assertain the best bang for your buck.  The result: marketers have more homework than ever before. 

If at all possible, look for new solutions with distinct measurability that can be run concurrently.  Use unique URL's, landing pages or promotional codes that can be traced to different marketing campaigns.  That will allow you to analyze the media buy and learn quickly.