Discover our top 7 recommended different types of marketing plan options for developing and streamlining your marketing planning activities
Planning is a must for any business that wants to succeed, but choosing the right type of plan to define your strategy and structuring it can be difficult. Especially since there are so many different types of marketing plan within marketing and business, all with a different scope.
The challenge is compounded if you are new to creating plans, or to the culture of planning within a business. It seems that the difficulty of choosing the right type of plan and how to structure it to deliver results stops many in their tracks.
Our research shows that, shockingly, as many as half of businesses don't have a digital marketing plan or, perhaps worse, a marketing plan on which to base it.
Our free marketing plan template structured around RACE,…
Our GTM plan template structured using RACE designed for small businesses and startups
You may have heard people talking about their ‘Go To Market Strategy’ and wondered how this type of plan differs from other classical types of marketing plans. In this article, I’ll explain the purpose of a Go To Market plan and how to structure it using our RACE planning system using our template download and example.
A plan defining your Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy is distinct from other types of business plans because its focus and scope is centred on product launches and introducing products into new markets. In larger businesses, GTM plans are often owned by Product Managers together with marketing managers. In small businesses, it will often be the co-founder, owner or a marketer who creates the GTM plan for investors. Our simple template will suit these type of…
How to structure your software go-to-market strategy using Smart Insights’ Opportunity Strategy Action framework
When planning to go live with a new product or service, it’s important to have a clear idea of how and when you will launch.
This is particularly true for software marketing leaders, planning their go-to-market strategy in a growing and competitive marketplace. Software as a service (SaaS) spending worldwide is estimated to reach $10 trillion by 2030.
When you also take into account that up to 45% of product launches are delayed for different reasons, the importance of having a clearly defined go-to-market strategy becomes even more stark.
Delayed product launches may mean your software won't be received in the same way as it could have been at your anticipated on-time product launch. In some instances, missing the boat here could significantly impact your product's financial viability, despite costing the same amount to…
7 steps ensure top-down strategic alignment between business strategy and partner marketing
Aligning partner marketing with your organization's overall business strategy and specific strategic initiatives is essential for driving success and maximizing the value that partners bring to an organization.
However, this alignment can often be challenging due to a lack of understanding and buy-in from internal stakeholders.
Before exploring practical strategies to bridge this gap, let's first clarify business strategy.
Harvard Business School defines Business Strategy as
“The strategic initiatives a company pursues to create value for the organization and its stakeholders and gain a competitive advantage in the market.
This strategy is crucial to a company's success and is needed before any goods or services are produced or delivered.”
Does your organization value partner as part of your overall strategy?
If the answer is “no” or “partly” then it will hinder the effectiveness of any marketing programme. There is a need to establish…
Three Go-to-Market models to help you strategize, plan and deliver
Business and marketing go-to-market strategy is an essential component in the delivery of any successful product, service, or promotional launch/campaign.
We’ve written extensively at Smart Insights about the importance of defining a target audience, producing a clear value proposition and optimizing the right marketing mix; just three elements of good marketing strategy to help ensure brands create a competitive advantage, deliver value for customers and generate profit for the business.
However, the success of any strategy is dependent on how this is ultimately executed and within this post, I’d like to look at a few different ways this can be brought to life as part of a Go-to-Market (GTM) plan.
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A vital step towards marketing digital transformation
In the current climate, digital interactions between brands and their B2B and B2C partners have become a major feature in their customers' buying journey.
Given the complexity of customer interactions via different touchpoints and channels across the modern customer lifecycle as shown in the visual, planning frameworks can help simplify the analysis and prioritization of digital marketing activities.
It is sometimes difficult to orchestrate marketing activities in order to ensure that the right digital tactics are used at the right time and in the right place in that journey, to nurture a customer lead. However, in the partner world it’s a lot more complex, because before you embark on the development of any marketing campaign with or through a partner, an imperative step is to market to that partner to raise awareness of your brand and educate…
