Our team recently kicked off a webinar series, titled "Q & A with A & J." We wanted this series to be different from most webinar series. A lot of times, a webinar is just one-sided where you're being talked at, instead of talked to. So we created an interactive Q & A session where those who attended would be able to openly ask marketing experts questions and get straight (and free) answers.
For our first webinar in this series, we decided to take on the topic, "How to Align Your Marketing Plan with Your Strategic Plan." To do this, we invited guest panelist, Jay Hidalgo of Jay Hidalgo Business & Leadership Coaching to help us out.
If you're currently thinking to yourself, "I wish I could have attended this webinar!" well, you're in luck! Take a look at the webinar recording below to learn how to align your marketing plan with your strategic business plan and why it's important to do so in the first place.
Free Resources that were Mentioned in the Webinar:
Don't have time to watch the webinar? No problem! Keep scrolling to check out the webinar recap below.
Before we jump into how you can align your marketing plan with your strategic plan, you must first understand why this step is such an important part of your business.
Let's start off with an analogy. I want you to first think of your marking right now as your promotion and your branding. And in this analogy, your promotion and branding are like the landscape around the outside of your house. From the exterior, this is really appealing. Your marketing draws people in and it makes them think, "Wow, this is going to be amazing! I really want to work with this company." If we're following along with this analogy, they will essentially want to "step inside of your house."
But what sometimes happens though is that once you get inside the house, things don't look as nice as how they did from the exterior – the marketing promotion and the messaging that is.
With marketing, it's important to remember that there are 4 P's. So besides the first P of "Promotion," there is also "Product," "Price," and "Place." This includes things like "What were you going to sell," "How much were you going to sell it for," and "Where were you going to go to market with it." Marketing is not just about your exterior – the promotion.
Now, some would argue that as the market has changed and the buyer's journey has evolved, that they've added even more to the marketing mix. Now our P's have gone from 4 to 7, adding on "People," "Process," and "Proof."
So to set the stage, expand your mind, think beyond your logo, think beyond your next adverting campaign, and start to think about everything else that is actually inside of marketing – Because once people come in that door, having a mess is not what they want to see.
So, let's move on with the analogy and talk about the strategic plan as it relates to building a solid "marketing house." Within a house, you have your foundation, your plumbing, your electrical, your countertops and hardware, your rooms, and your landscapes. And with those things, you would want someone who is working on or building your house to understand how each one of those pieces work together.
In the same way, the overall business strategy takes into account all of these different areas of a marketing house which includes your:
Just like it is virtually impossible to do your electrical or plumbing in your house without having a blueprint, it's almost impossible for your marketing organization to do what they need to do without being involved in a larger strategy for the organization.
So, how do you effectively create a strategy plan? There are nine ways:
If you take these nine principles and you bring your marketing discipline underneath the overarching banner of the strategic plan, you are going to have success.
Moving back into our house analogy, the real estate agent is like the marketer that helps present the company. But if you present something that is a mess internally, who actually wins? Your marketing team needs to understand where the organization is headed. And to do this, you need to align your marketing goals directly with the overall company goals.
Now that we've established why your marketing and strategy plan need to be aligned, let's dive into how you can align your marketing plan with your strategic plan.
At 1 Bold Step, we like to use a "Marketing House" model (go figure!). Below you'll see an example of our house. You can follow along with this example by clicking here to download our marketing house template for free!
When we first get together with our clients we like to go through this house with them to help them align their marketing plan with their strategic plan. During this, we go through 5 stages of the marketing house. They include:
Thinking through each one of these steps will guide you in how to talk and interact with people. At a very high level, you could give this marketing house/plan to anyone in the organization and they would understand where the company is going, how marketing is aligning with the overall goal, and what they're going to do to get their job done. No longer is your marketing plan a 50-page document that sits on the shelf and never gets used. It's now simple, visual, flexible, and easy-to-understand.
Take a look at this example of what to write in each of the house sections below in order to align your marketing with your strategic plan:
Start aligning your marketing plan with your strategic plan today!
Click here to download our free "Marketing House Template"
After you've created your marketing house, it's time to put it to work. Here are 4 tips on how:
If these elements are brought intentionally into the organization, you are going to see success with aligning your marketing plan with your strategic plan.
Listen to some of the other advice that was offered by clicking here to watch the entire webinar or view the webinar below.
If you're ready to align your marketing plan with your strategic plan, try taking these two easy next steps:
If you have any questions about these two documents, please click here to reach out to us and we'd be happy to help! For more great tips, click here to subscribe to our blog.