Learn how to create a PESTLE analysis to identify threats and opportunities in the macro environment to guide your marketing planning
You may have heard PESTLE mentioned when studying marketing theory or in your workplace. It is a powerful, yet simple, analysis tool for overall business and marketing planning. In this blog we explain what it is, why it is useful, and how you can create your own PESTLE analysis for marketing planning today.
What is a PESTLE analysis?
PESTLE is an acronym that covers 6 key areas in your macro (external) environment. Each letter stands for a different factor, as shown in the graphic below:
Did you know? Sometimes it is referred to as a PEST analysis, or spelt ‘PESTEL’, but the most common acronym is PESTLE.
A PESTLE analysis is a framework to help you identify external factors - happening outside…
Planning how companies communicate with customers has always been an important aspect of marketing strategy. But the introduction of new omnichannel marketing technologies in the era of digital disruption makes it even more crucial today
The pace of innovation continues to drive new options for reaching customers across a number of key channels. Savvy business leaders know that to thrive in this market, they must be ready to adapt and develop their strategies. For example, Omnichannel marketing is now recognized as an essential approach for all businesses with an online presence. But how does omnichannel relate back to your customer?
Twenty years ago, when digital channels didn’t have the diversity and importance they do now, the choice of which channel to use and how best to connect with customers didn’t influence customer service outcomes so heavily. Today, however, customers have an astounding number of options for communicating with companies — and businesses…
Marketing plan integrating the RACE Framework alongside PR Smith's SOSTAC® planning model
Given the increasingly omnichannel nature of marketing today, applying an effective, data-driven approach to your marketing strategy is more important than ever. But it can be difficult finding a structure that works for your team and integrates your objectives across your customers' journeys. That's where SOSTAC® and the RACE Framework come in.
For marketers looking to rapidly grow their businesses through an insights-driven, efficient and streamlined marketing strategy, we recommend utilizing the Smart Insights RACE framework to get started. This popular structure enables marketing managers and teams to critically evaluate each stage of their marketing funnels across the customer lifecycle of Plan - Reach - Act - Convert - and Engage.
SOSTAC® is another widely used tool for marketing and business planning. The positioning of the SOSTAC® planning model divides up the close working that agile digital marketers seek to create…
What are the essential parts of a business plan template?
Understanding and creating different types of marketing plans and knowing when they are needed is essential to creating a thriving business. But it can be difficult to know which type of plan to use when and how best to structure them. In this article, we look at the essential parts of a business plan and show how to lay it out.
Our new, free PDF download detailing the different types of marketing plans will help you structure different types of plan and gives recommendations on how to make them effective.
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What is a business plan?
A business plan…
The Ansoff Model is a matrix that helps marketing leaders identify business growth opportunities for their marketing strategies in a challenging market
What is the Ansoff Model?
Also referred to as the Ansoff matrix, due to its grid format, the Ansoff Model helps marketers identify opportunities to grow revenue for a business through developing new products and services or "tapping into" new markets. So it's sometimes known as the ‘Product-Market Matrix’ instead of the ‘Ansoff Matrix’.
The Ansoff Model's focus on growth means that it's one of the most widely used marketing models. It is used to evaluate opportunities for companies to increase their sales through showing alternative combinations for new markets (i.e. customer segments and geographical locations) against products and services offering four strategies as shown.
How to use the Ansoff Matrix
Strategic questions that can be answered using the matrix include:
Market Penetration:…
To give your business the best chance of success, you need to invest in marketing skills. For a simple reason: marketing provides visibility for your products and converts customers.
Having said that, investing in marketing skills goes beyond just buying marketing tools and hoping for the best. Those tools will only be effective when your marketers have the training to utilize them effectively.
Accelerating learning is one of the most important organizational factors in business growth, and a crucial step to being 'future-ready', according to McKinsey's 2021 study. Of course, for managers, holding on to skilled employees is also important. Future-ready companies recognize that talent is their 'scarcest form of capital'.
In this blog post, you’ll find 10 vital marketing skills that your business should start investing in today.
1. Interpersonal relationship skills
Even though a lot of marketing is done online today, marketers still end up interacting with their co-workers and…
Exploring the latest medical landing page conversion rates to inform your pharma or healthcare marketing strategy
'What does good look like?' 'How do we compare?' and 'How do we get there?' are common questions when healthcare marketing strategy is concerned. With so much competition in healthcare marketing today, you need to benchmark yourself against the key metrics within your industry.
But, good benchmarking is only as useful as your marketing strategy allows it to be. Are you confident that you're applying a data-driven strategy? Are you happy with the metrics in place to inform your digital marketing optimization?
We'll delve into some recommended resources and marketing tools to help you implement your benchmarking learning and increase your healthcare customer conversion and retention.
Conversion rate benchmarking for your healthcare marketing strategy
It's useful to have conversion statistics to compare your conversion rates against if you're serious about conversion rate optimization (CRO). And with the resources and…
Explore the essentials of a successful e-commerce marketing plan, with real-life examples. Plus find out more about our tools and frameworks to support your strategic planning across the omnichannel retail customer lifecycle
What does a good e-commerce marketing plan look like? What structures and frameworks help e-commerce marketers to accelerate their ROI? In this blog, I'll be covering the essential elements for you to apply to your online retail strategy, including a case-study of Clinique. Plus, find out how the RACE Framework will help you streamline your omnichannel marketing, so you can plan, manage and optimize every customer touchpoint in their journey to purchase.
Omnichannel e-commerce marketing planning took the top spot in our recent 2021 e-commerce marketing trends report. Clearly, omnichannel planning is a hot topic for online retail marketers at the moment. But still, so many businesses are not doing it well. In this…
Streamline your digital marketing strategy through omnichannel marketing planning
Knowing where to start and how to structure a plan is often the most difficult part of planning, especially if you aren’t experienced in creating plans. You may already have one plan or several in place and will be thinking you don't need an omnichannel marketing plan on top of that.
Depending on the type and scale of business, you may have all kinds of different plans in place - both business-wide and for individual channels where different people are responsible for each. For example:
The business plan
Marketing plan
Digital Marketing plan (may or may not be integrated into the marketing plan)
Advertising plan
Customer acquisition plan
Email marketing plan
A retention plan
A social media marketing plan
Conversion optimization plan
That’s a lot of plans and a lot of complexity. All these plans can overlap and even pull in different directions. Omnichannel planning…
If you're planning to optimize your branding or rebranding, we have tools to support your brand development at every stage
Have you ever wondered how brands grow as large and as well known as they do? From companies like Google to Starbucks, their names are known, customers know exactly what services and products they provide, and satisfied customers keep coming back for more. Brand development is how this happens, and it is no small feat. It takes time to cultivate a brand, to the point that a company has universal recognition like Gillette and Coca-Cola.
What does brand development involve?
Now that you recognize the importance of branding, what do you need to create a good brand? In a nutshell, brand development means:
Finding your brand’s voice and communicating your value proposition
Implementing your voice and style consistently throughout…
