How do you manage your marketing plans?

Question

As someone who considers themselves more of a developer than marketer, I find it hard sometimes to get organized and stick to a marketing plan and instead go find a new feature to build.  Any tips for managing and sticking to a marketing plan?

André J · Accepted Answer

Old school: Atom + Github. Will transition VSCode and GitHub when I upgrade my MacBook next week ishh.

Answer

Hey, Managing a marketing plan involves numerous steps, including the creation of the plan, implementation, monitoring progress, and adjusting the plan based on results or changing conditions. Here's a detailed approach to managing a marketing plan: 1. Setting Goals and Objectives: Every marketing plan should begin with setting clear and measurable goals. These should align with the overall business objectives and might include increasing brand awareness, growing market share, increasing sales, or improving customer retention. 2. Market Research: Understanding your market is key. This involves identifying your target customers, understanding their needs and wants, and knowing how your product or service meets those needs. You should also research your competitors and understand their strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. 3. Establishing a Budget: Determine how much you're able to spend on your marketing activities. This should include all costs related to marketing, such as advertising, public relations, promotional materials, events, and any other related expenses. 4. Developing Marketing Strategies: Based on your goals and market research, you should develop marketing strategies that align with your target audience's preferences and behavior. This could include a combination of traditional and digital marketing channels, like social media marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertising (PPC), events, print media, etc. 5. Creating a Timeline: Set a timeline for each of your marketing activities. This should include start and end dates, as well as any important milestones. This timeline should be flexible enough to allow for adjustments as necessary. 6. Implementing the Plan: With your strategies in place and a timeline set, it's time to implement your plan. This involves coordinating with different teams, vendors, or agencies to ensure that each aspect of the plan is executed as intended. 7. Monitoring and Measuring: Use tools like Google Analytics for digital campaigns, CRM systems for sales tracking, and customer surveys for brand awareness and perception. Monitoring progress regularly can help identify what's working and what's not. 8. Adjusting the Plan: Based on the results you're seeing, you may need to adjust your plan. This could involve changing your strategies, revising your timeline, or even reallocating your budget. Be open to making changes as necessary to improve your results. 9. Reporting: Regular reporting is crucial to keep all stakeholders informed about the progress toward the goals. Reports should be clear, and concise, and focus on key metrics that indicate the performance of the marketing plan. Remember, a good marketing plan is flexible and is continually optimized based on results and changing market conditions. What works today may not work tomorrow, so always be prepared to adjust and adapt your plan as necessary.

Kavita · Answer

As a developer myself with poor marketing discipline, I can relate to this a lot. I've started giving myself a fixed number of marketing experiments I need to run every week, and allocating Marketing days and Product days. On Marketing days, I make sure I am setting up and running those experiments and I'm not allowed to do any feature building then. That has helped - so far anyways!

Carmela Padasas · Answer

I manage my marketing plans as a SaaS social media marketer by these categories:

1. Repetitive (Social Media Content, engagements, Sending DMs)
2. tasks can be outsourced (running ads, SEO, affiliate marketing)
3. Priorities (SOP, market/user research, testing campaigns)

How do you manage your marketing plans?

Replies