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How to Create an Easy-to-Follow Marketing Strategy

2022 is just around the corner and if you have not already started planning your marketing strategy for the upcoming year, now is the time. When you are resource and budget limited like a lot of small and medium sized businesses at present, creating a marketing strategy and budget might seem out of the question. That being said, a roadmap highlighting key goals and strategies can guide your company to overall growth and success in the New Year. 

This article is going to explore how to create a simple, yet effective marketing strategy and budget that won’t exhaust valuable resources - time and money. 

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy is a document that explains how a company plans to drive awareness, conversions, and loyalty in the coming year. Typically, a company will have a marketing strategy that was put into place when the company first started. While this is a good place to start, environments, circumstances, and times change, requiring new strategies and tactics. 

Creating an annual marketing strategy helps you create a roadmap for the year ahead. It provides your team with a foundation from which to build. An annual marketing plan includes your goals for the year, selected marketing channels, budget, and more. 

How to create a yearly marketing plan? 

You don’t need to spend a ton of time or resources creating a yearly marketing plan. It does not need to be complex, instead focus on your overall marketing goals and tactics. 

Sit down at the end of the year and think about what you would like to accomplish with your marketing strategy. 

Define the following: 

  • The overall vision for your marketing 

  • Selected channels (Social media, PPC, blog content, etc.) 

  • 2-3 buyer personas

  • Marketing goals at each stage of your pipeline (awareness, consideration, purchase, loyalty) 

  • Budget overview 

  • Monthly calendar of what you would like to accomplish (campaigns, monthly focus. etc.) 

These are the basics of every actionable marketing plan. Defining your channels and your marketing goals are at the very heart of your plan. From there, you can use that information to guide your tactics. 

Here is a condensed sample of what your marketing plan could look like. 

CHANNEL SELECTION

  • Social Media:

    • LinkedIn

    • Facebook

  • Blog

  • Email

    • Monthly promotions

    • Monthly newsletters

    • Personalized lead nurturing

    • Customer journey mapping

  • Website & Landing pages

  • Advertising

    • PPC

      • Google

      • LinkedIn


GOALS

  1. Increase awareness 

  2. Increase website traffic by 25% to drive organic conversions

  3. Improve social media presence & grow social channels by 20%

  4. Increase video production

    1. 1 video per month 

  5. Establish more consistent campaigns

    1. 1 campaign per quarter

PIPELINE STRATEGIES 

Awareness

  • Use social media, content, outreach, and PPC to drive traffic to increase awareness

  • Video production

  • Outreach to influencers

  • Content (blog posts) 

Consideration

  • Develop a more consistent case study template & calendar for publication

  • Better strategy for increasing reviews & sharing those reviews across our channel selection (websites, social media, email marketing) 

  • Review lead nurturing strategies & content 

Purchase

  • Follow up emails pushing upsell items 

  • Requesting reviews

Loyalty 

  • Quarterly promotions

PROJECT BREAKDOWN

January 

  • Launch New Year promotion

    • Email 

    • Social media 

    • PPC advertising

  • 3x blog posts

  • Monthly newsletter

    • Clients

    • Past clients

    • Leads


How to execute and stay on track with your marketing plan

Once you have established your marketing plan, it can be hard to stay on track. Having a monthly project breakdown will help you determine what needs to be done each month. The trick is to not make it too complicated and to stick within your resource allocation. For example, if you are a small business with a 1 or 2 person marketing team, there is only so much you can accomplish. Be ambitious, but always go for quality over quantity. 

If one of your goals is to create more content, create a monthly content calendar with draft due dates, publication dates, and more. Scheduling social media is another effective way to make sure you are posting consistently across your social media channels. 

Whether you are a team of one or a team with multiple people, create a to-do list, stay accountable, and check in on progress regularly. 

How GreenRope can help

As a GreenRope user, you have access to several tools to help you execute your annual marketing plan. 

Calendar: Use the CRM calendar to manage your email marketing schedule, webinars, events, specific deadlines, and more. 

Project Management: Use the project manager to track progress on projects and tasks. For example, you can create a Case Studies project and assign different tasks to those responsible for writing and creating the case studies. Set deadlines, add checklists, track time spent on different tasks, and more. 

Here are other tools you might implement in your marketing strategy: 

Customer journey mapping: Journeys are a powerful tool allowing you to create personalized paths for your leads and customers based on logic, action, delays, and so on. Use CRM data to customize each path and determine what happens next in the customer journey. 

Workflows: Workflows are important for defining internal processes. For example, tie your sales and marketing together by triggering a sales follow up when a lead opens or clicks on a marketing email. 

Email EasyBuilder: The drag-and-drop email builder lets you create custom email templates for any occasion. 

Campaign Optimizer: Use the campaign optimizer to test out your emails and send the best performing email to your target audience. 

Landing pages & A/B testing:  Design custom landing pages with opt-in forms to drive new leads and increase conversions for your marketing campaigns. Use the A/B testing feature to test each of your landing pages and find out which delivers the best results. 

Planning for your marketing doesn’t need to be a complicated overhaul year after year. Many businesses are strapped for resources - time and money - and creating a complex plan just isn’t in the books. That’s ok. Having a roadmap in place, along with the right tools to help you along that journey will help you execute actionable strategies that move the business forward. 

 

Alessandra Gyben Blog Bio


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