Creating Complex Marketing Plans

ISSUE

Executive team of rapidly growing multi-state services firm wanted a 3-year strategic plan for marketing, including anticipated marketing cost projections.

SITUATION icon_asses

  • Solid marketing budget growing appropriately, but tactics were haphazard with no clear strategy or way to assess effectiveness of spending
    • Firm excelled at creating original content, but their production volume was overwhelming, with 325 pieces created in the first 8 months of 2013 alone
    • Sales people who asked received marketing dollars to help build their business. This was a common but inconsistent practice across the firm.
  • Seven offices, including recently acquired firm in another region
  • Near-term plans to scale further through M&A
  • Highly competent Director of Marketing and Client Experience stretched thin running organization of 20+ people

ACTIONS icon_act

  • Conducted marketing audit
  • Assessed current marketing spend overall and by each market
  • Interviewed internal team and current clients
    • Spent half a day with the CEO to better understand his vision and goals for the company
  • Positioning
    • Refined existing base product positioning
    • Created positioning for significant new service offering

SOLUTIONS icon_sol

  • Working closely with Director of Business Development, created an innovative territory-building marketing fund for the sales team
    • Allocates discreet marketing budget to each individual sales person
    • Allocation based on title/level
  • Identified three high-potential markets in which to test higher marketing spending
    • Community-specific marketing plans
    • Learning lab for future regional marketing plan best practices
  • Created multiple marketing budget scenarios and selected one to recommend to Executive Team
    • Conducted ROI analysis of final approved budget
  • Rolled e-commerce offering into base service versus original plan to create standalone offering with its own marketing budget and discreet website

“We were
trying to be all things to all people…Having a structured process to clearly
identify our bull’s eye target audience and the unique value proposition our
firm has to offer them proved to be one of the most beneficial pieces of the whole
project. That helped us to align resources with business objectives
appropriately.

It’s been exciting to launch our Sales Fund… We’re seeing some great creative ideas and the desire for our sales team to better leverage their own personal networks for marketing opportunities.
Director of Marketing and Client Experience