By Claudia Perez Riva | September 2024
My dear readers, owners of small and medium-sized businesses, today I bring you a highly interesting topic related to the execution of a marketing plan.
Many of you may be in the process of creating this important strategic document and might be wondering how to execute it once it’s completed.
In today’s post, I will focus on two basic steps in the execution of the plan: organizing tactics by category and budget.
Tactics and Categories
For the proper execution of a marketing plan, it is important, first and foremost, to organize tactics by category. The categories to use can range from promotion, advertising, digital marketing, public relations, sales, and promotions.
For example, if we were part of the marketing team for the prestigious cruise company “Royal Caribbean International” and were launching a new itinerary or destination to the market, one of the categories to use for the execution of the plan could be digital marketing.
The tactics to be employed as part of this category could include: SEO (Search Engine Optimization, applied to my company and the new destination), content marketing (for instance, blogs about traveler experiences and local residents), and social media work, prioritizing platforms that generate the most visibility and interaction with my audience.
Let’s imagine that our team wants to use another marketing category to promote Royal Caribbean’s new destination. This new category could be sales and promotions. In this case, the following tactics would be defined and grouped under this category: promotions or special package deals for the new tourist destination, referral programs for customers who recommend the destination, and cross-selling, which could include local excursions or gastronomic experiences offered by the cruise to enhance the customer’s stay and make the program more attractive.
Budget: Challenge, Limitation, Investment, or Strategic Resource
We now reach our second step in the execution of the plan: the budget. This is an interesting topic because the budget is a fundamental tool that can be seen as a challenge, a limitation, or an investment, but in any case, it is the strategic resource for successfully carrying out our marketing campaign. My dear readers, the most important thing
is to keep in mind how we are going to allocate resources for each of the tactics, in a way that allows us to better track their ROI.
Let’s return once again to the example that has accompanied us throughout today’s post. Let’s sail with “Royal Caribbean” once more.
Imagine that, this time, our team received a budget of $30,000 for the launch of the new tourist destination, which would be our marketing budget. The next step would be to distribute that budget by category and then by tactic, assigning more resources to the strategic priorities we have.
For example, we might consider allocating a total of $15,000 solely to the digital marketing category we identified earlier, based on the relevance and reach that social media has for “Royal Caribbean”. The amount would be distributed according to the tactics that work best for the cruise company. A sample distribution might be: SEO ($7,000), Social media ads ($5,000), and Email marketing ($3,000).
It is important to keep in mind, my dear readers, two fundamental things: calculating our ROI and making necessary adjustments. These two elements are closely connected, as it’s crucial to analyze if the budget allocated for each tactic is delivering the planned results. If not, we would need to adjust our plan. For example, if the budget allocated to tactics like cross-selling or referral programs is not generating the expected results, we could reduce it and assign more to the social media ad campaign for Royal Caribbean’s wonderful new tourist destination.
With this, my dear readers, we have reached the end of this post. Although we have not exhausted today’s topic, as there are other steps within the execution of a marketing plan, our time is limited. Before I say goodbye, and as a summary, I would like to highlight three key points:
The first is that organizing marketing by categories is a step that allows us to better visualize and focus on the execution of our marketing plan. The second conclusion is that we should view the budget as a flexible and essential tool that enables us to achieve our goals. Proper allocation of resources is crucial, based on the metrics and results provided by ROI. Lastly, my dear readers, I believe it’s important to emphasize that all components and steps of the plan are linked holistically, and the execution process should be seen as an integrated whole made up of interconnected and adjustable parts.
So, are you ready to start executing your marketing plan?