A large part of many organisational marketing initiatives is to communicate the right messages to the right people, at the right places at the right time. We understand how difficult this can be so we’ve compiled our very own Marketing Communications Plan (Marcomms for short) Plan for you.
Background Research
This will include details about your organisations: strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities.
This should also include any issues surrounding: politics, economics, social, technological, legal and environmental issues which are prevalent.
You can also include details of your competitors.
Marketing Objectives
Your general marketing objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable realistic and timely, or SMART for short.
Budget and all things finance
This is your budget for the campaign – do you need to consider a contingency budget?
Target Market
This section should include who your product is aimed at. Is there more than one target market?
Target Audience
Marketing Communications Plan for you to use!
These section should include your target market and the target audience (who you will be aiming the communications to i.e. parents, teachers or partners etc.)
Communications Objectives
What do you want the specific campaign to achieve? These should also very SMART.
Communications Strategy & Tactics
This section should include any platforms you will be using, whether that be TV, print, digital media etc.
This section should also state whether you will be communicating directly to the consumer or to manufacturers (or both).
Timing & Schedule
Your campaigns won’t last forever, so it’s important to know how long the campaign will last for. Will they run throughout or will there be breaks in between?
Development of Campaign
This is where you list the details of the development of your campaign alongside how you will be testing these to make sure they are effective throughout. This is also known as pre-testing.
Evaluation & Measuring Campaign Success
Every campaign needs to be measured against the objectives to allow for optimum ROI (Return on Investment). There’s no point launching a campaign for the sake of it if you don’t know why you’re doing it or how you will measure it post-campaign.
We hope you have found this useful and please note, this marketing communications plan is a basic example and is suitable for the average small and medium sized enterprise (or SME). More complex campaigns will be require a more comprehensive campaign plan.