Download How to Write a Marketing Plan

How to Write a Marketing Plan
A simple,
effective
strategy for
libraries.
“What gets us into trouble is not what we
don’t know. It’s what we know for sure
that just ain’t so.”
– Mark Twain
What is marketing?
Marketing is the management process by which goods and
services move from concept to the customer. It includes the
coordination of four elements called the 4 Ps of marketing:
• identifying and developing a PRODUCT
• determining its PRICE (the value of anything exchanged)
• getting the product to the customer’s PLACE
• developing and implementing a PROMOTION strategy
(often called marketing communications)
Four Ps | Four Cs
Product
Concept
Place
Channel
Price
Cost
Promotion
Communication
The Four Ps are variables controlled by the organization.
Regardless of the forces at play in the market, these Four
Ps are under your control. Together, they are referred to as
the MARKETING MIX.
You’ll apply the marketing mix to every goal you set.
Uncontrollable Variables
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State of the economy
Legislative Actions (budgeting)
Changes in the competitive landscape
Unemployment
Technology Changes
Operational Costs
List is practically endless
What is Marketing?
Inputs
• materials
acquisition
• mineral
extracting
Outputs
Products ready to
be delivered to
customers and
stores
Everything but manufacturing.
What are a library’s products?
– Information sources that do not circulate
– Products that circulate: books, CDs, DVDs,
magazines, pamphlets
– Services and programs you offer
– Room rentals
– Community events
– Any others?
What role does price play?
• Fees for service (copying, printing, etc.)
• Fines for late returns
Is the concept of price important to you? Do you talk
about it in meetings? How often do you talk about
income or revenue? Are you focused on making
money? Likely to be a tiny percentage of your
operating budget.
What about distribution or place?
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One location or main with branches?
Do you do community outreach?
Bookmobile?
Speakers bureau?
Inter-library loan?
Kiosks?
Is promotion important?
How you promote your
products and services
will be the guts of your
marketing plan.
Promotion is likely to be the most important variable of your
marketing mix because it is the most easily controlled.
Promotion Elements
Each of the following is a sub-set of promotion.
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Advertising
Public Relations
Personal Selling
Sales Promotion
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Print Collateral
Direct Marketing
Event Marketing
Online Advertising
These elements constitute “traditional marketing.”
Today, more and more organizations are
adopting “inbound marketing” strategies.
Inbound Marketing
• A strategy developed in response to changes in
buyer behavior – how people shop and buy products
and services
• Leverages the power of Google search
• Is focused on getting found online and maximizing
the ROI of your website
• Positions your website as your marketing hub
(More on Inbound Marketing later.)
Terms are not interchangeable
“Great idea! How will we market that?”
“Great idea! How will we advertise that?”
“Great idea! How will we promote that?”
Why now?
Why do you need a marketing plan now?
What has changed in the last 20 years or so?
Why are all nonprofits suddenly buying into
marketing as a necessary business function?
Answer: Economics
• Marketing has its roots in economics
• The first marketing classes had to do with
distribution problems of dairy farmers
• Economics is the mother science of marketing
What is economics?
• Social science that analyzes and describes the
consequences of choices made concerning scarce
productive resources. Economics is the study of
how individuals and societies choose to employ
those resources: what goods and services will be
produced, how they will be produced, and how
they will be distributed among the members of
society.
Economic UTILITY
The VALUE producers and marketers add to raw
materials when they make them into a product and offer
them for sale to the public.
There are five types of utility. Organizations are paid
according the the extent of the economic utility their
products or services provide.
FORM UTILITY
Involves changing RAW MATERIALS or
PUTTING PARTS TOGETHER to make
them more useful.
RAW MATERIALS:
When you cut down a tree and use the
lumber to create pencils, paper, furniture,
etc., the tree now becomes more valuable to
the customer.
TIME UTILITY
Time utility is having a product available at a certain
time of the year or at a convenient time of the day. Value
is added when marketers make them available at the
right time.
What are some products that sell better during certain
hours of the day? Days or months of the year?
PLACE UTILITY
This involves placing a product where a customer can
purchase it. Businesses study consumer shopping habits
to determine the most convenient and efficient locations
to sell products.
POSSESSION UTILITY
The exchange of a product for some monetary
value is possession utility.
Purchasing the product has given it added value.
What are some ways you can purchase a
product?
INFORMATION UTILITY
This involves communication with the customer.
Sales people, displays, packaging and labeling,
advertising, sales brochures…
Anything used to encourage sales gives the product
added value.
Do you provide economic utility?
If you provide economic utility, you have
something to market!
To find what you have to market,
you must start with your business
plan or strategic plan.
Elements of a Business Plan
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Executive Summary
A Competitive Analysis
Mission, Vision, Values and Goals
A Finance Plan
A Marketing Plan
A Production Plan
A Facilities Plan
A Human Resources Plan
The Marketing Plan
• Is that portion of the business plan that lays out the
direction for the organization’s marketing strategy.
• A written statement of marketing objectives and
strategies to support broader goals.
• Explains who is responsible for managing
activities and provides a timeline for their
completion.
Cascading Plans
• Start with your business plan or a recent strategic
plan. Your marketing plan must support the goals
established with the strategic plan.
• Develop a marketing plan in the context of the
larger, more encompassing strategic plan or
business plan.
• Develop a strategy for each marketing mix
variable that comes into play for each objective.
Marketing Plan Outline
Eight Steps to Making a Meaningful
Marketing Plan
I. The Executive Summary
• Outlines the who, what, where, when, how and
why of the marketing plan.
• Appears first but is written last.
• No need to be longer than a page.
• Describe how the plan was created. Name
committee members or contributors and describe
that process for strategy development.
• Involve others – the plan should not be the product
of one person working along.
II. Library Description
• The section should describe the library’s role in
the community, its history, emerging trends,
products and services offered and its strategic
objectives.
• Keep this simple. Can be done in a few paragraphs
or one page unless you’re in crisis management
mode.
• Creates a context for the plan for those who may
not be familiar with your library.
III. Mission and Goals
• Mission, Vision and Values can be lifted from the
strategic plan.
• Using SMART goals, describe what the library’s
objectives are for the coming year.
• We will develop marketing mix strategies and
tactics to achieve each goal.
IV. Core Competencies
• What do we do exceptionally well?
• What makes us better than our competition?
• What kind of relationships do we foster with
our service?
• What word or phrase do we own?
V. Situation Analysis
• It is helpful (but not required) to do a SWOT
analysis of your library’s marketing capabilities to
better understand your situation.
• Some nonprofits pull together a marketing
committee consisting of non-staff members with
specific marketing expertise.
• Determine market research needs if you have them.
VI. Strategy Development
• Identify your target market: Who are we trying to
reach? Be as specific as possible.
• Message development: What do we want our
target market to know? Get your best writer to
craft an effective message.
• Media selection: How do we get our message out?
• Budget allocation: How much can I spend?
(Your marketing budget reflects your library’s
commitment to marketing. What does your budget say?)
How this Process Works
1. Write out a statement of your first goal.
2. Write down how each element of the marketing mix
can be used to achieve the goal.
– Do we need to make changes to our PRODUCT
offerings to achieve this goal?
– Do we need to develop a new PRICE strategy?
– Is achieving this goal dependent upon changes in
how or where we deliver our service? (PLACE)
– What PROMOTION strategy can we devise to
achieve this goal?
VII. Implementation
• Identify tactics
• Assign tasks
• Establish a timeline
• Execute the plan
• Set progress points
• Measure progress
• Make needed changes
• Quantify results
VIII. Evaluation
• Did you accomplish your objective?
– If not, why not?
• Were there any unintended consequences?
• What did we do that worked?
• What would we do differently next time?
• What did we learn?
Example of Goal / Strategy
/ Tactics
Goal: We will increase the number of library card
holders by 6% by Oct. 1, 2014
Strategy: We will develop a “Get a Card Today”
promotion campaign and fully implement it in Q2,
2014.
Tactic #1: Create posters for display in library for
display by February 1.
Goal / Strategy / Tactics
Tactic #2: Launch campaign with press releases to
local newspaper, chamber groups and other civic
organizations by Feb. 15.
Tactic #3: Create newspaper ads for placement as
remnant space by March 1.
Tactic #4: Write a PSA and meet with local radio
station for airing by March 20.
Marketing Challenges
The marketing industry is going through a
rapid change from traditional methods to
inbound marketing methods.
What is Traditional Marketing?
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Radio
Television
Newspapers
Magazines
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Direct Mail
Trade Shows
Telemarketing
Billboards, etc.
The traditional marketing playbook is broken.
It’s increasingly difficult to get a good ROI
Using these methods. Why are they
less effective than they used to be?
People are tired of being
marketed to!
• Consumers are using technology to thwart
unwanted marketing messages that are an
interruption to their day
• “Interruption marketing” is unwelcome in today’s
busy world.
• Average person exposed to thousands of branding
messages a day
• Look at the ways consumers are blocking out our
messages:
Do Not Call Lists
In a country of 310 million
people, we have 200
million phone numbers on
the ‘do not call’ list.
Caller ID
Abandonment of land lines
We mute TV spots or use DVRs
We no longer sit
through commercials.
Whoever has the
remote is in charge!
The incredible growth in the number of channels
available has resulted in audience fragmentation and
lends itself to channel surfing during commercials.
Radio Competition
What else do we do in the
car or at work instead of
listen to the radio?
• CDs
• Sirius XM
• iTunes
• Public Broadcasting
• Streaming Internet
• Spotify
• Phone calls
• Texting
Trade Shows
• No longer a good source
of B2B leads
• Mainly attended by
vendors and sales people
• Travel expenses have
eroded their effectiveness
Email Marketing
• Spam filters
• Legal issues
• Poor open and click
through rates (CTRs)
• Inbox clutter
The First 50 Years
The Next 50 Years
Inbound Marketing
• Driven by changes in consumer behavior,
not by marketers
• Average knowledge worker does 20-25
Google searches each day
• The blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook,
LinkedIn and YouTube are replacing
traditional media
Implications
• Inbound marketing strategies have to be part of
your toolkit when promoting your library
• Inbound Marketing is centered around the concept
of attracting visitors to your website, converting
some of them into leads, and turning leads into
patrons or library users.
• Extremely cost-effective form of marketing!
• Everything on the Internet is trackable! This is a
huge advantage over traditional marketing.
Inbound Marketing Components
• Search Engine
Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Link-building
• Analytics
(These are important but cannot be
covered today. We’ll focus our
attention on the next column.)
• Content creation
• Blogging
• Social Media
integration
• Promotion via
Twitter
• Email marketing
The new reality
• >2,000,000,000 searches a month
• A quarter of the searches are unique
• People are searching for YOUR programs and
services right in your own back yard
How it Works
• Think like a publisher
• The Internet is the largest publishing platform in
human history – use it!
• Create remarkable content!
• Push it out into the Internet using your blog,
Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
• Tweet the heck out of it to improve your
PageRank
Write a blog post
• Adds a page to your website forever
• Tweet your blog post to your followers
• Some will re-Tweet to their followers, creating
links to your website
• Google interprets inbound links as authority
• Your website rises in SERPs
• Post should be 400 to 600 words
• Add a photo and be sure you include ALT tags
The Call to Action (CTA)
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End every blog post with a CTA
Provide a link to additional content
Offer a free download of premium content
Encourage some type of action
– See us today for a library card application.
– Call today to register for the seminar.
Why Blogging Matters
• More web pages means more authority
• Blogging 3x a week adds 156 pages of content to
your site, bulking it up
• Don’t forget deep linking within your site
• Your content will spread throughout the Internet
as people share the link to your blog post
• Each page pays dividends for months and years
• Think of it like compounding interest
Tie Inbound Marketing to Strategy
• Create an inbound marketing campaign to
support your strategy
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Write several blog posts with different angles
Tweet the heck out of each one
Push your content out through other channels
Get guest bloggers to write for you
Goal / Strategy / Tactics
(Going back to our original goal, here is how you would add the
elements of inbound marketing.)
Goal: We will increase the number of library card
holders by 6% by Oct. 1, 2014
Strategy #1: We will develop a “Get a Card Today”
promotion campaign and fully implement it in Q2,
2014.
Tactic #1: Create posters for display in library for
display by February 1.
Goal / Strategy / Tactics
Tactic #2: Launch campaign with press releases to
local newspaper, chamber groups and other civic
organizations by Feb. 15.
Tactic #3: Create newspaper ads for placement as
remnant space by March 1.
Tactic #4: Write a PSA and meet with local radio
station for airing by March 20.
Goal / Strategy / Tactics
Goal: We will increase the number of library card
holders by 6% by Oct. 1, 2014
Strategy #2: Develop an Inbound Marketing Plan to
achieve this goal.
Tactic #1: Write a series of blog posts using the
blogging editorial calendar
Tactic #2: Push this content onto multiple platforms
Tactic #3: Schedule Tweets throughout each week
Example of a blog
post on the website.
(The same blog post put on a Facebook page.)
(Sample tweet promoting a blog post using bit.ly URL shortener.)
This is a data
visualization of the
Internet. The
brightest lights are
the biggest websites
at the hub of many
links. You want
your site to linked
to many others,
rather than just
being off by itself.
Google puts a
premium on
websites with
LOTS of content
and frequent
updates.
Rules? What rules?
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You don’t need no stinking rules!
Let staffers Tweet away
Ask for guest bloggers from time to time
Be spontaneous!
You can schedule Tweets in advance
Try to Tweet at least 10x a day
10 things you should do when you
get back to the library
1. Set up a Twitter account
– The name of the account should match your
domain name
– Link to Twitter from your main page and from
your Twitter account to your home page
10 things you should do when
you get back to the library
2. Set up a simple Facebook business page
– This is known as a fan page
– You’ll need to administer this off your personal
page
– Add a description of your library, a photo and
link back to your website
– This is easy to do. Just follow directions.
10 things you should do when
you get back to the library
3. Kick off a blog and start blogging
– Add Blog to your navigation menu
– You can use a free hosting tool like Wordpress but
DO NOT use their domain name
– create a subdomain if necessary to make sure you get
the SEO authority (Example: blog.yourlibrary.org)
– ask several staffers to create one blog post a week
10 things you should do when
you get back to the library
4. Write your first blog article and post it
– Shorten the URL using bit.ly
– Tweet to your follower(s) throughout the day
– Post link to the blog on your Facebook page
– Post link to the blog on LinkedIn
10 things you should do when
you get back to the library
5. Set up Google Alerts for your library
– Set an alert up for your library
– Set one up for industry alerts
– Anyone can do this, but the marketing person
should monitor this. Why? Because marketing is
always responsible for brand management.
10 things you should do when
you get back to the library
6. Find three competitors to track
– Read their blogs
– Follow them through Google Alerts
– Follow them on Twitter
– You will learn from these competitors!
10 things you should do when
you get back to the library
7. Find relevant Twitter users
– Search by topic, location, or subject using
hashtags (#) and start following people
– Do not mass follow numbers of people
– Follow back followers you think make sense
10 things you should do when
you get back to the library
8. Find bloggers who write about your topic area
– Subscribe to their feed and read them regularly
– Leave valuable comments
NO spam
NO fluff or self promotion!
Remember, you’re building
relationships here, not selling!
10 things you should do when
you get back to the library
9. Start re-tweeting good articles
– Helps people expand their Internet presence
– Behavior is noticed
– Attracts followers
Social media is social, so be social.
(Can you handle these deep thoughts?)
10 things you should do when
you get back to the library
10. Make a list of the top people in your industry
– Convert into a blog post: “14 library rock stars I’d
like to have coffee with”
– List them, write a couple sentences about why, link
to their profile pages or website
– This helps others and increases the chances that
they will visit your blog
– A similar post can talk about books, music,
speakers, etc. – just about anything!
How to Hire a Marketer
Traits you want your marketing staff
person to have in today’s changing
marketing environment.
D.A.R.C.
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Hire Digital Citizens
With Analytical Skills
Who have some web Reach
And can Create Content
Hire Digital Citizens
• Digital Citizens were born web savvy or got
very familiar with the web. They speak web
fluently.
• Digital Tourists were born analog and not
too familiar with the web. They speak web
with an accent.
• NEVER assume recent college grads are
digital citizens. They aren’t.
Questions and “Show me!”
Ask your applicants to bring their laptop to the interview. Sit side by side
rather than across the desk. Most applicants will claim to be web
savvy. Test them with these questions and ask them to show you .
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What RSS reader do you use? Can I see it?
What blogs do you read? Can you show me?
Do you have a blog?
How many Twitter followers do you have?
When did you last update your Facebook or
LinkedIn profile?
Hire Analytical Skills
• Should be very familiar with Excel or a
statistical software package
• Should know Google Analytics and how to
use the tool
• Should understand keyword strategies
involving long-tail keyword research
Hire for Web Reach
• How many LinkedIn connections do you have?
• How many Twitter followers do you have? Do
you talk about our industry on your Twitter
account?
• How often do you post to Facebook?
• Do you have a blog?
(True digital citizens will be part of online communities. Look at their
bookmarks and how organized their desktop is. Don’t be afraid of
gamers, unless they exhibit psychopathic behaviors. )
Hire Content Creators
• Your candidate should have GREAT writing skills
• Be great if they could shoot and post a video on
YouTube
• Have they ever done a podcast or screencast?
• They should be comfortable with blogging on a
fixed schedule. (2x a week minimum)
Hiring Tips
• You probably won’t find someone with all of
these traits, but look for them anyway. Make sure
your candidate has either the coursework or
experience to swim in the waters of online
marketing.
• Being able to take a selfie and post it on Instagram
doesn’t qualify you as a digital citizen.
Thank you!
John Murphy
The Murphy Agency, Inc.
10 W. Streetsboro St., Suite 205
Hudson, OH 44236
330-342-1255
www.themurphyagency.com