Q&A: How to Build A Strategic Marketing Plan

Creating a successful marketing plan is like building a house. It takes a lot of preparation. You research neighborhoods. You choose a floor plan. You may even vet contractors and approve a schedule — all before any ground is broken. The point is: It’s a big investment, so you do your homework because you want it to serve you well.

So, how do you create that solid foundation for a marketing plan that gets results? For insight, we turned to Anthologic. A Des Moines-based marketing and technology agency currently marking 25 years in business, Anthologic has developed a four-step strategic planning process that helps companies create a roadmap for their marketing decisions.

We talked about the strategic planning process with Tiffany Hamil, Anthologic Director of Account Service. Hamil and Anthologic Chief Solutions Officer Jeff Regenold presented “The Power of Strategic Marketing: From Insights to Impact” at the 2024 ABI Taking Care of Business Conference in Davenport.

How is strategic marketing planning different from a marketing plan?

Strategic planning is a process. It’s the upfront work you do to get key stakeholders on the same page about your business objectives, your audiences, your competitors and your brand. Your marketing plan is the product of this process. Everything in your plan should ladder up to the strategy. At Anthologic, our defined strategic planning process and flow consists of four steps:

1. Discover + Define
2. Strategize + Plan
3. Create + Activate
4. Measure + Optimize

To be effective and deliver to goals, we believe in being disciplined in following this phased approach. As you plan your marketing strategy, try to keep it audience-focused, data-driven, specific and measurable, and flexible enough to pivot if needed. It should not be a short-term fix, based on gut reactions, tactically driven or set in stone.

When is the best time to do strategic planning?

Many businesses conduct their strategic marketing planning annually, in preparation for the coming year. There are other
times when it might make sense to review your marketing strategy, such as when:
• You’re launching a new brand or product
• You haven’t reviewed your brand or position in a while
• Your industry or competitive landscape has changed
• Your customer growth and retention are stagnant or falling
• You see an opportunity to expand or pivot within your channel or industry

Strategic planning is scalable and flexible for any industry, business size or initiative, and you can lead it yourself or get outside support from a strategic partner.

You call Step 1 of the process “Discover + Define.” How should a company get started?

Begin by auditing what you know and researching what you don’t. Mapping out your business objectives, competitive landscape, audience and brand differentiators will help you understand where your opportunities are. Activities and audits in this step include:

• Business goals: One-, three- and five-year roadmap
• Brand review: Mission, vision, values and positioning
• Industry landscape: Top competitors and core messaging
• Audiences, influencers and purchase process: Research, interviews and surveys with customers, prospects and internal sales team
• Current marketing plan: What’s working well/what needs to be adjusted?
• Marketing goals: Where do you need to move the needle, and how will you measure it?
• Based on the information you gather, potential outputs could include:
• A SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
• Audience personas and journeys: Map out their pain points, goals and motivators 
• Buyer profile and buyer insight: What makes your ideal customer take action and buy?
• Competitive positioning: Is your brand clearly differentiated from the competition?
• Brand positioning: Your brand essence, positioning statement, value proposition and reasons to believe
• Key messages: Helps focus creative development in Step 3

Step 2 of the approach is Strategize + Plan. What’s involved in this phase?

This is where the rubber meets the road. We take what we’ve learned in Step 1 and build out the framework to maximize engagement. At this point in the process, we:
• Review marketing goals, constraints and commitments
• Create audience and channel strategies
• Recommend marketing tactics that support strategies
• Set timing, budgets and performance metrics

The output from this step is a marketing communications playbook, including detailed strategies by audience and channel, as well as media and content calendars with high-level tactics, budgets and timing. We also create a holistic customer experience map including all audience touchpoints to see how all the efforts connect to maximize engagement.

At this stage, you might consider implementing a marketing automation system to help streamline and optimize parts of the customer journey. This could include lead nurturing and conversion, as well as segmenting audiences for highly targeted and personalized email campaigns.

Create + Activate is Step 3. What gets created and activated here?

All the insights and planning from Steps 1 and 2 are used to inform your creative and bring your brand to life. Based on what you know and have learned, it may be time to create new materials or update existing pieces. This could include:
• Internal communications
• Collateral materials
• Sales tools
• Paid/earned/owned media campaigns
• Social media strategy
• Influencer marketing opportunities
• Digital, direct or content marketing
• Trade show/conference support

Brand guidelines are another consideration at this stage. To build brand recognition and loyalty, consistency is key. From color palettes and typefaces to your unique voice and tone, brand guidelines help keep your team aligned. If you don’t have established brand guidelines (or it’s been a while since they were created), this is the perfect time to create or update them. We also recommend taking professional photography of your products, your facilities and your employees. This will help capture who you are and further differentiate your brand from others in the market.

How do you Measure + Optimize in Step 4?

After launching a marketing plan, we recommend analyzing how it’s working on a monthly or quarterly basis — because strategic marketing planning is an ongoing cycle. For some partners, we use a dashboard that pulls in data from multiple marketing activities so we can evaluate how they’re performing, both individually and together. We report those insights to our clients, along with recommendations to optimize based on their business goals.

Why is strategic marketing planning worth the investment?

Strategic planning can require a significant effort — but here’s how it can pay off:
• New industry learning. Better understand industry trends, your competitors and your audience.
• A differentiated message. Strengthen your brand positioning with a fresh creative approach and messages.
• Proactive vs. reactive. Stay ahead of the competition, operate efficiently and improve ROI.
• Clear marketing priorities. Focus your efforts with a documented SWOT analysis.
• A playbook for success. Create a plan that serves your goals and connects in new, powerful ways.

Overall, strategic planning is a proactive way to set your business up for the future with marketing that solves your business problems and helps you reach your goals while increasing your return on investment. We believe it’s a powerful tool to unlock growth.

Tiffany Hamil is the Director of Account Service at Anthologic. She can be reached at tiffanyh@anthologic.com. Download a one-page strategic planning reference from
Anthologic at bit.ly/Anthologic-Strategy.