How to Create an Annual Marketing Plan That Will Grow Your Business

By in Leading Your Market,

How organized are your marketing efforts? Do you take the time each year to map out a cohesive strategy for the upcoming year? Will next year be business as usual and simply repeat the efforts done in previous years without regard to the success of these strategies? Are you simply going to read a few blogs highlighting current marketing trends and implement the key talking points you find in them?

Your marketing efforts are critical to the success of your business. They are the primary way to connect with your audience, grow your brand and establish yourself as a trusted industry leader. However, these things don’t happen on their own. It takes a well planned, cohesive marketing strategy to ensure your precious resources – both financial and manpower – are used wisely and maximize the return on your investment.

executive team conducting annual marketing planningWe’re firmly in the fourth quarter of the year, and this is the time to conduct annual planning. While it’s important to invest the time in an annual plan that addresses your overall business goals, you also need to create a specific annual marketing plan that will help you achieve these overarching business initiatives. Ideally, this plan should be finalized and ready to go at the start of January so that you can hit the ground running next year. In order for that to happen, you need to begin your annual marketing planning now.

At Webolutions, our purpose is To Empower Passionate People to Thrive. This drives everything we do for our clients, and it has compelled us to go beyond simply providing marketing services. In order to ensure our efforts generate the best possible results for our clients, we actively engage them in an annual planning process each year which helps them crystalize their goals for their marketing efforts. This plan then forms the blueprint for our ongoing recommendations as the year progresses.

In order to better understand what is involved in annual marketing planning, we recommend reading the following article from HubSpot:

5 Steps to Create an Outstanding Marketing Plan

Key Takeaways from this Article

This article breaks down the process of creating your annual marketing plan into three parts:

While there is significant overlap between the components of these parts, it’s beneficial to examine each one separately.

Outlining Your Marketing Plan

woman conducting annual marketing planning meetingThe more granular you get in your marketing plan outline, the easier it will be to create and implement this plan. In addition, having a strong outline will provide important guidance regarding the metrics you should use to assess the success of your efforts.

Your marketing plan outline should include the following elements:

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Since 1994, we've helped literally thousands of businesses locally and nationwide to achieve their business goals. From Annual Planning to Differentiating Brand Development and from Enterprise Website Design and Development to Business Performance Intelligence Systems, we're here to help you thrive. Connect with Webolutions, Denver's leading digital marketing agency, for your free consultation with one of our experts.

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Creating Your Marketing Plan

management team conducting annual marketing planningThis article outlines a 5-step process to creating your annual marketing plan:

Creating Your Marketing Plan Timeline

Since this is an annual plan, you need to establish a timeline for implementing the different components of this plan. This allows your team to understand all appropriate deadlines for the projects, campaigns and events associated with your marketing plan. If you prefer greater granularity, you can break up this timeline on a quarterly basis.

When creating deadlines for the components of your marketing plan, make sure to:

As you work through the tasks in your plan, track the time it takes to complete them. This will allow you to compare the actual time to your time estimates to determine how accurate your estimates are. If necessary, you may need to adjust some of your upcoming deadlines to reflect the actual amount of time these tasks have taken to complete.

Use Pre-Existing Templates to Organize Your Efforts

The article also provides several marketing plan templates you can use as you work through this three-stage process. Using one of these templates may help you stay organized and ensure you don’t skip an important step in the process.

Additional Resources to Help You Understand How to Conduct Annual Marketing Planning

annual marketing planningWe recommend the following articles to further expand your knowledge of how to conduct your annual marketing planning. Many of the tips you’ll find in these articles are similar to the takeaways from the HubSpot article, but when taken together, they can help give you a deeper insight into how to approach this process.

Putting this Information into Practice

Creating an annual marketing plan can be a daunting process. The key to navigating this process is to take it step by step. By working through all the components listed above in sequential order, you’ll compile the data necessary to understand your goals. This will then help you identify the right tactics to include in your plan.

Let Webolutions Help

At Webolutions, we provide comprehensive strategic marketing services to help your business grow and thrive. We leverage our exclusive Intrinsic Multiplier™ Approach when working with our clients on annual planning. This unique approach leads you on a collaborative journey to identify what is special about your company. As part of this journey, we will work through the components of the marketing plan outline to understand your specific goals and the best way to position you as an industry leader.

Based on these goals, we’ll recommend a tactical strategy to best use your resources in order to convey your brand story, generate more leads, and grow your client/customer base. We’ll also set up Real-Time Performance Intelligence Dashboards which provide up-to-date data regarding the performance of your marketing efforts in an organized, visual, easy to understand format. This data will help us make any adjustments as needed over the course of the year to more effectively achieve your goals.

Webolutions is a full-spectrum management consulting and strategic growth implementation company. We help businesses across the country identify and effectively bring their unique story to life, allowing them to scale faster, smarter, and easier.

Areas of expertise:

To speak with one of our experts about how we can help you implement a successful annual planning rhythm for your company of at least $5 million in annual sales, call us at 303-300-2640 and request a Free Annual Planning Consultation. During this 60-minute introduction, we’ll help you start outlining your plan. You can also email any questions to [email protected].

FREE Annual Planning Consultation with a Webolutions Expert

Since 1994, we've helped literally thousands of businesses locally and nationwide to achieve their business goals. From Annual Planning to Differentiating Brand Development and from Enterprise Website Design and Development to Business Performance Intelligence Systems, we're here to help you thrive. Connect with Webolutions, Denver's leading digital marketing agency, for your free consultation with one of our experts.

I'm Ready

About Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency

Webolutions Digital Marketing, Branding & Web Design Company. We are a full-spectrum business consulting and strategic growth implementation company. As a leading marketing agency since 1994, we help businesses across the country identify and effectively bring their unique story to life throughout all communications and experiences, allowing them to grow and scale faster, smarter, and easier. Our streamlined, data-driven solutions have helped thousands of clients gain a competitive edge in their industry, enabling them and their teams to thrive.

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