I have created dozens of marketing strategy or campaign plans for sustainable start-ups as a marketing leader, adviser or just to pitch for work. It can take me a few days to a few weeks to put it together depending on the scope, context, resources and my industry knowledge.
However, the marketing plan structure always looks pretty much like this.
Market dynamics
Trends, forces and regulation – super important in the sustainability world as legislation constantly evolves.
TAM / SAM / SOM over 3 years – what is the total addressable market and what revenue target your business aims for in that context.
Competitors benchmark
A good old company SWOT
This may sound like going back to business school 121, but it’s one of the classics that never age. Great to get a reality check on where the business sits in its environment.
Target audience
List your Target accounts criteria and some examples.
User personas and journeys are essential tools to ground your plans in solid insight. They need to be documented through desktop and qualitative user research (one to one interviews with real people representing your audience). They should not be limited to buyer persona, you should also have end user persona - for the actual users of your product since they might be different from the buyer – but also for influencers and investors.
User research can seem like a loss of time and resources, however it is invaluable to make sure you are marketing the right thing and then to market it right. User research will help you create solutions that people actually need and position them with messages that resonate with users goals, challenges and where they are in the buying journey.
Value proposition(s)
Articulating a good value proposition is also an underrated art of marketing ninjas. I like to start by blending this with a workshop where I get the leadership team to align on their WHY - HOW - WHAT and then adapt the HOW and WHAT into value propositions for each persona.
I like to use very basic tools to help get to a comprehensive internal Value Proposition statement, which will then be wordsmithed into more customer facing versions and taglines. For instance, “We help X do Y by doing Z”. This slideshare article has a few great tools you can use.
Marketing plan / Campaigns goals and KPIs
In this section, I like to state goals in a qualitative manner (Educating buyers, raising brand awareness, generating MQLs, supporting the next fundraising round…) and adding some quantitative KPIs
Marketing tactics
This is where you can explain at a high-level which tactics you will be using – content marketing, PR, Account based marketing, paid ads, events…
Key messages
Derived from your user research and value propositions, these will be the 4 or 5 key points you will hammer in the head of your audiences. They need to be structured as themes and backed up by detailed proof points / reasons to believe.
Plans & timelines
Though not all your marketing activities will fall within campaigns, most of it should. It's worth highlighting marketing activities falling outside of campaigns as a separate set of activities and having one recap slide for each of your separate campaigns.
Structuring campaigns around buyers’ journeys helps make sure you target people at the relevant stage and have content adapted to each stage, while leveraging the right touchpoints for your audience.
Another important point is that you need content suited to different buyers influencing the buying journey.
Laying your marketing or campaign plan as a Gant is a good way to visually present its activities, timelines and how things are intertwined.
Resources (People & Budget)
Present the human and financial resources you need to implement your plan.
A summary slide can be a good starting point. However, I like to go into the details by putting together a detailed spreadsheet which lays out quarterly pipeline targets, marketing activities and detailed targets (broken down in Leads, MQLs, SQLs), budget per activity and owner/provider.
This helps calculate whether the marketing investment you have in mind will deliver the desired marketing generated pipeline.
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