How to Create a Marketing Plan (The Guide to Predictable Growth)

Today we are going to talk about how you can create a step-by-step marketing plan. It's a step-by-step guide also on creating predictable growth. So by the way, if you're interested in marketing, don't forget to subscribe to this channel, hit the little bell button to get notified, and we're gonna give you some goodies, all right? So in terms of creating a step-by-step marketing plan that actually works, the methodology I recommend is this book that's called Traction. So this is called The Entrepreneur's Operating System, and you might be thinking, well, you know, that's great for entrepreneurs, but I'm a marketer. It's totally fine, like it's a system that works. If it works for entrepreneurs, it probably works for marketers too. You're looking to work off of a system to make it predictable, and then you're following that system every single week, every single quarter, and it makes your life a lot easier. So the Traction System, okay, the book is by Gino Wickman, it's really good because every single week with my teams, we have these meetings and it all follows a certain format, right? It's like going to the gym. You go to the gym, maybe one day you're doing arms, one day you're doing chest, one day you're doing legs, right? And one day you're just doing cardio. But you have a system that you're following and you're being consistent with it. What happens is when you start to fall off of it, your results start to get worse, right? It's the same thing that happens with business too. So you gotta have some system that you can follow, whether it's Traction, there's another one called Scaling Up. Scaling Up is one that you can also follow as well. And what is really cool too is that every 90 days, there's a cadence where you say, okay, we're gonna do an offsite. The offsite is, let's talk through these issues, let's talk through some new initiatives that we have going on, let's talk through vision. And the offsite, sometimes it is gonna take the entire day, sometimes it might take 2 days, but then you're planning for the next quarter. And at the end of each year, you do the offsite and you're planning, you're doing annual planning for the next year. You do this for your business, you do this for your marketing team too. That's the first step, that's how you can decide where you wanna go. You set these goals for yourself every 90 days, 'cause 90 days is a good cadence to follow. 90 days just goes by really quickly. The other thing I'm gonna say too is if you're looking to build out a marketing plan and you're working with people remotely, You gotta have some type of collaboration with people, 'cause you're not in an office, you're not saying, hey, what do you think about this? You're not having that ability to collaborate quickly, but when you're doing video, video takes it one step further, right? Which is why I always recommend using some form of video chat too. So whether it's Zoom or Skype, you can even use Slack video chat too if you're paying for it. It seems like a really basic thing to recommend, but video chat is when we work from home, everybody, we do a Brady Bunch style, right? Yeah! And it's really important that we all are showing our faces, 'cause we're all bought in. Because if one person or two people decide decide not to show their faces, then everyone decides they can do that. You know, we're starting to, you know, send a negative message that we can make exceptions, right? If you start to make exceptions for one person, you start to make exceptions for everyone. So this is more like a cultural thing, but it does flow over into how great work is being done. So keep that in mind. Now, the other thing I'm going to say too is when you do these meetings, ask yourself these questions. All right, so what worked really well last quarter? What can we do better? What should we start, stop, keep doing? There's just a couple questions that I ask myself. Also, what are the things that we should double down on? If they're working already, why not just double down on it? I think one of the mistakes around marketing is you're trying so many things 'cause there's new tactics coming out all the time. You gotta like kinda shield off all the other noise that's coming in and just focus on what's working for you and double down on it. That's one of the biggest mistakes I see people making. The other thing is you have to know your numbers too. If you start setting a bunch of metrics all over the place, you say, oh, you know, we want our ROI to be this, we want marketing qualified leads here, we want social media engagement, we want all the, like there's 10,000 metrics. Yeah. From an executive level, you might only need 3 or 4 metrics, that's it. But with other teams, they might have their own kind of submetrics, but just keep in mind, it can start to get really messy if you add too many metrics, it starts to get really confusing, okay? Now, the other thing I'm gonna say too is think about what you can steal from other people. So there's a couple apps that you can use for that, right? So you can see how your competitors are bidding, what kind of ads they're using, using software like Adbeat, that's A-D-B-E-A-T. Adbeat will allow you to see how long an ad has been running, whether it's on Google Display, whether it's on YouTube, Also, you can see roughly how much they're spending over time, what the trend looks like. You can also use SEMrush. You can also use Ahrefs too, to kinda see how they're doing from an SEO or SEM perspective. Both SEMrush and Ahrefs, they're competitors, but I love both tools. And the other tool that you can use is called Nacho Analytics, okay? So Nacho Analytics, like nacho cheese, actually gives you the ability to take a peek at your competitors' Google Analytics. Don't ask me how, like, I don't really know how, but I did actually have that guy on the Growth Everywhere podcast, so check that one out. Growth Everywhere, Nacho Analytics. But first audit yourself, then take a look at what competitors are doing. Maybe take in some new tactics, maybe, you know, 5 or 10% of the time you're trying new tactics, new strategies on the marketing side. But I think more importantly than anything is if you actually have a cadence that you're following. Every single week you're meeting, every single quarter you're meeting, you're planning annually, that way you're gonna get going. 'Cause if you don't do that, everything's gonna fall apart, and it's gonna become really unorganized, and people, when people start coming into work and they don't know what they're fighting for, and it just feels like they're just coming into work, then you know you have a problem. And you can feel that within. When you can feel that, you know there's a problem. So, I recommend traction, I recommend scaling up, having that sense of methodology, that's gonna keep you sane. And if you are a marketer, I would recommend peer groups too, or an entrepreneur, or any kind of ambitious person, you gotta have a peer group too, because these people will keep you sane, they're dealing with similar problems to you, and they can share gold nuggets of wisdom that you wouldn't get anywhere else, 'cause otherwise you're gonna be operating in a box, okay? So, That's all I got for you. Leave a comment, let me know what you plan to do in terms of building that indestructible marketing plan that is gonna last a lifetime. And, uh, don't forget to watch the next video as well, and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.