A large number of New Zealand small businesses fail to maximise their marketing budgets due to poorly executed marketing implementations. Answer this: are you likely to get to your destination without a clearly delineated roadmap? It makes sense that if you have serious ambitions for your business then operating without a well defined sales-building plan, is likely to lead you to results that are lower than your full potential. In all the years that Ive been involved in business, Ive seen a lot of marketing plans. Unfortunately many of these plans had some significant faults. Heres a short list of the most common problems I find when looking at marketing plans as they relate to small to medium sized businesses: Common Marketing Plan Problems      Poorly conceived positioning strategy   Too academic with lots of jargon   Too long and containing irrelevant data   Lacking creative insights   Not very inspirational   Lacking in specific tactical tools   Not enough implementation guidelines   Too expensive to implement   Too much generic information   Lacking practical solutions     If you would like to achieve a higher return on your marketing budget then please read on.

After reading one too many ineffective marketing plans I decided to sit down with a couple of expert colleagues and create a practical methodology that leads to an affordable strategic roadmap that is tightly customised to the specific marketing needs of my clients.

We named this process BrandPlan, and it results in clear and concise answers to the following questions:
 

	What strategy is going to help you beat your direct competition?
	Which target audience should you concentrate your marketing budget on?
	What is the key message that will sell the most?
	Which specific marketing tactics are the best ones to use?
	Which marketing channels are the most suitable?

Equipped with a BrandPlan you will have a roadmap that allows you to execute your marketing in a way that  makes the sales numbers work, you will be more positive, energised, focused and able to succeed and grow.

In a succinct number of pages and delivered within 30 working days, BrandPlan maps out how you can beat your competitors by:

	Clearly delineating your target customers and understanding what they value
	Identifying and/or developing a point of difference that your competitors can't match and that your target customers value enough to make them consistently choose your brand
	Identifying how to increase the appeal of your offer to these groups
	Developing a creative concept that will deliver powerful persuasive marketing
	Identifying technical elements to substantiate, reinforce and protect your position
	Identifying the most appropriate test and measure style tactics to use to execute the strategy within the constraints of your promotional budget.

BrandPlan is a collaborative process.

BrandPlan does require you to do some work too.  After all, you are the expert on your industry, your company, your customers and your competitors. Through searching investigation, BrandPlan unlocks this intellectual property, extracting from you the most salient information so it can analysed and the most appropriate solution recommended.

BrandPlan does not lock you into one marketing supplier. As your BrandPlan provider, I will develop a sound understanding of your marketing challenge and would like the opportunity to build your marketing tools. However I believe it is vital you are able to choose your best of breed tool builders so your BrandPlan describes in sufficient detail what your marketing should smell like, look like and sound like so any professional marketing supplier can implement to a satisfactory level.

Who Needs a BrandPlan?

Although BrandPlan addresses some common fundamental areas, the emphasis and focus of each BrandPlan varies depending on client need. BrandPlan clients have included:

Start Ups Wanting to Reduce Business Risk

By getting clear on your target market and what they want and need before you launch your business, you are more likely to create an offer that is both appealing to your target market and difficult for your competitors to beat.  In this situation the experience and insights of a BrandPlan allows you to make better decisions about pricing, packaging, promotion, product and distribution. Your business plans have more realism, the sales targets and cashflow projections are more certain. The promotional budget and plan is sized in relation to the commercial opportunity, punches above its weight and there is less wastage. Potential problems are identified ahead of time so they can be avoided or at least minimised.

Developing Companies Dissatisfied with Sales Performance

After a couple of years or even a couple of months trading, some companies realise the product is not flying out the door at the rate they anticipated and realise they need to address this issue if they are to go the distance.  Perhaps they experiment with some of the latest marketing tactics promoted on the seminar circuit or by business coaches. They may get some success but often the results are not satisfactory.  In this situation BrandPlan addresses the fundamental questionwho wants the product above all others, why, what will they pay, and are there enough to them to make a viable business? We identify what needs to change, where the future riches lie and map out a transition plan to get there while getting more sales coming in the door ASAP.

Established Companies Struggling to Express a Clear Point of Difference

Often established companies have invested in systems, technology or people to create a meaningful point of difference. What they struggle with is finding a way to communicate in a single minded compelling persuasive way. Instead they have 10 different reasons why customers should choose them but their communication is noisy and lacks cut through. What BrandPlan provides is a way to express a single compelling point of difference and how to support and strengthen this proposition through street-smart marketing implementations.

Any Company Wanting to Optimise an Aspect of Their Marketing

Often companies have their strategy well in hand but are disappointed with the performance of one of the tactical components such as a website that fails to generate sufficient qualified enquiries. At other times they realise there is a gap in their system such as a method for generating repeat purchases. BrandPlan can focus in on this need, designing and optimising a particular component so it pulls its weight executing the overarching strategy.
 
Who Delivers BrandPlan and how much does it cost?

BrandPlan is delivered by myself and, if required, I bring on board other experienced individuals who will be able to lend their specialist expertise to the desired marketing objectives. The BrandPlan process also requires meaningful collaboration with you in order to produce a relevant roadmap that will get the desired marketing results. BrandPlan does not involve lengthy and repeated chat-fests, preferring to expend available resources on the most efficient and effective development pathway based on the specific conditions.

The scope of your BrandPlan will be designed to meet your specific marketing needs. Each company presents with a range of strengths and weaknesses. I have learned that the most cost-effective marketing plan is built around existing product or service strengths that have not yet been fully optimised. This has proven to be by far the quickest, most affordable and practical strategic direction. It costs a lot more in time and money to take an entirely underdeveloped service or product and take it to a point of success.

Thats not to say that BrandPlan doesnt work for start-ups because the same foundational principles apply irrespective of what stage of the business cysle youre in. Its just that BrandPlan has been developed for companies that have limited marketing resources and need to get measurable results in the shortest time-frame and at the lowest cost.

If you have a limited budget for marketing planning and implementation then this will determine the scope of the BrandPlan process. This may mean that we have to concentrate on just one important element of your marketing and getting results there first, before expanding the scope of your marketing ambitions to areas further down the priority list.

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