Tips for a Strong, Resilient 2015 Marketing Plan

No doubt, you have already mapped out your marketing plan for 2015. But on the off chance that you have not, here are some important, high-level tips that align with a successful rollout for the coming year.

Know Your Customers

Create conversations that your customers want to hear. Understand who you’re talking to, what their needs, lifestyle, and motivations are. You’ll then be able to construct more relevant content strategies and marketing efforts.

Make Your Money Count with Smart Content and Media

The days of free reach are diminishing. If you don’t pay to play, your followers very likely won’t see anything you’re doing in the social realm. Determine which digital properties are performing best for you. Build budgets and relationships around content placement, sponsorship opportunities, syndication services, and content recommendation platforms. Cater more to educational content, informational videos and whitepapers that speak to your audience.

Understand Mobile and Use It

Everyone wants a positive digital experience, whether business or consumer. The challenge is to fit the preferences and needs of your target audience.

Your challenge is to create these digital experiences to fit the preferences and needs of your audience. By 2020, mobile is predicted to carry 1 in 5 sales resulting from data collected from wearable devices. Power up your social media channels with micro-content or build a slide deck to entice viewers to want to know more.

Marketing Automation Tools are a Game Changer

Marketing automation systems combine traditional marketing activities like CRM, email marketing, content management, search engine optimization, lead scoring and analytics into holistic tools to help boost response by delivering relevant and timely messages to prospects. Real time becomes real.

Quality Content Rules the Day

It can be a pain point to content marketers: producing high quality content to keep pipeline flowing. Many managers try to produce their own content, adding to their already heavy juggling act. The obvious solution is to find experienced content writers or subject matter experts who know the topics and know how to create quality content.

Finally, to help you get started on your marketing plan, in case you haven’t already, follow these helpful guidelines. Bolstering your marketing efforts is a major collaborative effort and it’s important to include all the players, as well as the needed actions.

• • Gather smart, detailed input from external and internal resources.

• • Align with how you sell and how you go to market.

• • Shape these strategies by your customer’s priorities.

• • Collect feedback from the market, your team, sales partners and business stakeholder; also from your current or prospective tech and media providers; partners.

• • Bringing in your key stakeholders early in the process will help you get buy-in when it comes to funding.

• • Plot the market conditions ahead by getting up close with your target customers.

• • Seek out what the business/company goals are for 2015 and beyond.

• • Be proactive ask what the main topics and company priorities are in the year ahead.

• • Sit down with the sales leaders. They know who the valuable customers and prospects are.

• • Sit down with your tech team, the CIO or your marketing technologist.

• • Assess your marketing talent and needs: Your people are the most valuable asset and often the biggest line item on the budget.

• Get your core or prospective vendors to the table: Your current and future partners are invaluable resources with which to check the market’s pulse.