Many smaller agencies want to become more involved in developing marketing plans for their clients, but may not be quite up to speed with planning terminology. Here is a simple way of differentiating the levels of marketing planning.
Level 1: Strategic Marketing Planning is the long-term, “big picture” marketing strategy. It encompasses mission and vision, brand positioning and long-term financial goals.
Level II: Marketing Planning covers the goals and objectives determined from the long-term strategy. This portion of the planning process details “how we get there.”
Level III: The Marketing Communications Plan includes the actual tactics used to achieve the stated goals and objectives and measure results; in short, it is the execution portion of the planning process.
Most smaller agencies are operating at the marketing communications level. To grow your agency beyond Level III, which is essentially the vendor level, you need to move into Level I or at least Level II planning services. At these levels, agencies become advisors, guiding clients to achieve their goals. Also at these levels, agencies become partners, not vendors. Remember, in clients’ eyes, vendors are a dime a dozen, and are easily replaced. Partners or advisors hold greater value and trust, have access to more sensitive and critical client information, and are therefore far more difficult to replace. At best, strategic agencies are deemed so valuable, the notion of replacing them seldom arises.
Napoleon Hill in his classic book, Think And Grow Rich, said: “The starting point of ALL achievement is the adoption of a definite major purpose and a specific plan for its attainment.” More and more smaller companies have finally embraced planning as essential to growing their business in our very competitive, increasingly global marketplace.
Agencies that fail to supply planning services or capabilities will soon find their days numbered, and their status as vendors guaranteed.
Here are some more detailed definitions:
Strategic Marketing Planning determines the managerial and operational activities required to create and sustain effective, efficient marketing strategies, including identifying and evaluating opportunities; analyzing markets and selecting target markets; developing a positioning strategy; preparing and executing the market plan; and controlling and evaluating results. The strategic marketing plan is typically reviewed and updated annually.
Marketing Planning defines the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods, services and people to create exchanges that will satisfy individual and organizational goals. Marketing planning can be long-term, but generally focuses on shorter-term objectives and defined actions. Marketing planning may cover six months, three months or even a single campaign, but is always conceived synchronously with the larger, longer-term strategic marketing plan.
The Marketing Communications Plan delivers coordinated promotional messages through one or more channels or tactics (e.g., print, TV, radio, outdoor, digital, search, social, etc,) with the aim of communicating with a market or audience of consumers, end users or other external parties; includes managing the message consistency across all channels. Marketing communications is primarily concerned with demand generation and product/service positioning. It is “the means by which suppliers of goods, services, values and/or ideas represent themselves to their target audience with the goal of stimulating dialog leading to better commercial or other relationships.”
