This is what you need for your 5 year marketing plan

You’ve probably heard the interview question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Marketers take that question on a daily basis and apply it to their marketing strategies. They understand what they want to achieve and develop actionable steps to get there. Please note that these plans are not designed to be all-inclusive. They act as guidebooks for different scenarios and get your team thinking about what they want to achieve in the long run.

A five-year plan is a way to build a comprehensive metric of where you are now, or how you plan to plan for the next five years. There are many things to consider when planning. Here are some that you should consider carefully.

3 important buckets

A successful five-year marketing plan should stick to three main questions:

1. What assumptions can you make about your company’s next five years?
2. what is the goal you want to achieve?
3. What metrics do you use to measure these goals?

Assumptions are things that the business does not expect to change in the next five years. For example, you can continue to use a particular vendor or assume that packaging costs are stable. From there, he can decide on goals such as increasing sales by 50% or acquiring 10,000 new customers. The metric that measures progress is the number of sales or the company’s market share. It’s essential to include both easily accessible metrics, such as website visits, and slightly harder-to-get brand metrics, such as how customers connect with your product or company.

Importantly, there are no “right” or “wrong” answers to these questions. Every business has its own vision, resources, and position, all of which influence its marketing strategy. The goal is to develop a plan that produces the most desired results. yourather than worrying about what other companies can do.

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focus

Just like consumer preferences, marketing strategies are constantly changing. Social media shows this well. With the proliferation of social media platforms over the past two decades, marketers no longer rely solely on traditional platforms such as print and TV advertising. Even within social media, the situation is not constant. TikTok has become one of the fastest growing platforms, quickly overtaking Facebook.

With so many options, your marketing plan should have a narrow focus. For some companies, TikTok doesn’t matter. This is not a viable opportunity as we have not yet been able to measure the benefits from the platform. Don’t be tempted to try everything or be everywhere. It’s important to isolate what you can actually use to gain useful insight.

The following two questions will help narrow your strategy.

• How do your goals compare to last year?
• What are you aiming for (e.g. strengthening your brand and increasing brand awareness)?

How you answer these questions will help you identify where and how to focus your efforts. That way you don’t get bogged down in small irrelevant tactics.

Budget usage

Most people think of budgets as stable or solid data, but most companies are dealing with unknown data. In fact, the best they can do is come up with an educated guess that they think makes sense: the range of ballparks. Because you can’t do anything, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by endless results, it’s a good idea to base your strategy on a few key financial assumptions.

Once you have a budget figure to work with, create high and low projections for everything you want to do. Let’s say your goal is to have 50% brand awareness. What will your plans look like if you go beyond that and get to 75%? Or what if your awareness drops to 25%? You can design a smart approach and avoid being caught off guard.

Once you’ve come up with your main scenarios and high and low projections, think about the key internal factors that need to be addressed next year. Evaluate if you have the data, technology and skills to consider the risks and develop and maintain what you are proposing. Remember that turning around when things go wrong is more important than predicting exactly what will happen.

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Paint with flexibility with broad strokes

A five-year marketing plan paints a broad, long-term picture of how you will communicate with your audience, detailing your target product or service. It involves assumptions and factors that aren’t necessarily static, so you should approach it with a grain of salt and be prepared to shift gears if your plans don’t pan out.

Still, if you stick to your three main buckets (assumptions, goals, and metrics), keep your tactical focus narrow, and incorporate multiple forecasts into your budget, you’ll have the data and flexibility you need to strive in a changing environment. It should be a mixed strategy. world. Your annual marketing plan should be tied to your long-term marketing vision, so let your annual marketing meeting serve as a check-in point to keep your long-term marketing plan relevant and viable.