Recently, on ASAE’s Collaborate Community, someone asked for examples of other associations’ marketing plans. The things is, marketing plans are less about taking some other organization’s plan and swapping your acronym for theirs and more about answering some key questions:
- What do you know about your audiences? Who are they, who are the key decision makers, what and how and when do they buy, etc.? (Capture EVERYTHING you know and always look to be adding.)
- What are you trying to market to them? Make sure you’re clear about your program, product, or service and can describe it in benefits to your audience, not in features you offer.
- What are your goals? Remember, they should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely).
- Do you have any competition? If so, what do you know about them?
- What assets do you have at your disposal (website, email, direct mail, social media, in person events, etc.), and how do you plan to use them? This is the place where you set your strategies and match tactics to them.
- What’s your budget? Don’t forget to think about staff time as well as money.
- How will you know you’ve been successful? What will you be tracking and monitoring, and how will you do it and report on it, and to whom, and on what interval?