Drafting a highly effective marketing plan is one of the first essential tasks of an agency owner. You must define your mission, audience, and tools for reaching your audience—the more detailed and specific your marketing plan, the more effective.
Steps An Effective Marketing Plan
While your brand is unique, you need to follow steps to cover all the bases. The more detailed and throughout, the easier it will be to track, evaluate, and re-assess to ensure effectiveness.
An effective marketing plan should answer the following questions:
- Who are you?
- What are your goals?
- Who are your clients?
- What do they want?
- How will you connect?
- What is the right tone, language, and style?
- Is your strategy working?
Define Your Brand
Your brand is different from your business. Your brand separates you from the competition and personalizes the experience for your clients.
Marketing is all about defining your brand and communicating your mission, vision, values, and culture to your target audience.
Define Your Goals
You can measure success in many ways. Clearly define the goals of each marketing campaign, whether it’s about creating more awareness, engagement, or signing more clients.
While the ultimate goal is to grow and reach new clients, there are many small successes to keep track of and celebrate along the way. Your marketing plan should address both long-term and short-term goals.
Define Your Clients
The more intune you are with your brand and clients, the more impactful the marketing plan. Write a client profile to define your ideal client, determine how to best reach them, and connect with your brand message.
Define Marketing Strategy
The marketing strategy will determine how you will achieve your marketing plan. What channels do your audience frequent? What is the best tone and language to communicate? What solutions are they looking for? How can you address their questions and concerns? How can you position yourself as the right choice and meet their expectations?
Once you’ve defined the “how,” it’s time to choose the “who.” Who is the best person or people on our team, and what resources do they need to achieve their goals?
Many agencies choose to look for a third-party partner when it comes to marketing. While this is an added cost, the return on your investment is much greater than trying to run a marketing campaign without experience.
A marketing strategy should address the above questions to be the most effective.
Join AAI To Grow Your Independent Agency
AAI-affiliated agents are independent but not alone. You can run your agency any way you see fit while getting continuous training and support from industry experts and executives, including access to state-of-the-art technology and the latest tools to keep your agency relevant, efficient, and competitive.
To learn more, get in touch