Beyond the Collateral: Marketing Plan Template
Perhaps the first step to “earning” leadership is to just start doing it, and the best way to begin is to develop and distribute a formal, strategic marketing plan that is
- tied to the overall business strategies and objective
- actionable
- results focused
- designed to deliver measurable output.
This becomes the roadmap and focus for the entire department and firm to work against. Surprisingly, only 78% of respondents to the Beyond The Collateral: Unlocking Marketing’s Potential for Strategic Advantage study said that their firms develop and distribute a written Business Strategy Plan—this was true even among the largest firms—and far fewer develop a written Marketing Plan. Just 64% of respondents surveyed indicated that their firms have a written Marketing Plan. Additionally, some firms do not tie their Marketing Plans to the plans of other business units or the firm’s overall strategic business plan. This was primarily true of the largest firms, where units tend to be more siloed.
Another issue is that among those respondents who indicated that their firms have written Marketing Plans, a number also responded that their firms distribute the plans only within marketing, or in some cases not even among the whole marketing department, just senior management. In our opinion, those internal-only documents are more likely to be tactical tools intended to facilitate the annual performance-appraisal process than to provide any real strategic direction.
