Strategic Marketing Planning Course

Marketing Communications. Connect better with your audience.

Take your marketing skills to the next level by learning how to write a detailed and well thought through strategic marketing plan for your brand or business.

Designed for existing marketers with some experience, this course will equip you with practical take-home tools to enable you to develop stand-out brand goals, write powerful marketing plans and measure your performance. We will review the latest marketing trends and thinking, and learn how to apply them to your own digital landscape.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• develop and write a well thought through strategic marketing plan for your business or organisation, including online and offline marketing
• review a wide range of marketing models and tools that facilitate better planning
• develop clear and business focused marketing objectives
• articulate a vision and goals for your brand or marketing responsibility
• identify the latest marketing trends, both on and offline, and how they could apply to your role or organisation
• think more strategically in a range of marketing scenarios.

Content

Strategic planning background

• Why plan
• Brief review of marketing, branding and differentiation
• Developing your own brand essence (exercise)
• Segmentation – identifying an attractive market gap

How to write a strategic marketing plan

• Situation analysis – internal and external reviews
• Using strategic marketing models for your business (exercise)
• SWOT – theory and development for your business
• Getting from SWOT to objectives
• Choosing the right marketing mix to meet your objectives
• Developing marketing action plans (exercise)
• Timings, budgets and measurements of success

Review the latest marketing trends and marketing thinking

• Digital and online developments
• Big picture market changes
• Consumer and market research

The new digital marketing world

• Thought leadership marketing
• Key success factors in the digital age including social media
• Tips for getting your online presence humming

Intended audience

Suitable for:

• anyone wanting to learn how to plan and write focused and effective marketing plans
• those who have already attended the Marketing Level 1 and Marketing Level 2 courses, completed an undergraduate marketing degree, or have some experience working in a marketing role
• marketers from a range of environments, including product, services, business to business (B2B), government and not-for-profit
• marketers from a range of sizes from SMEs (small to medium enterprises) to corporates
• anyone with hands on marketing responsibilities, wanting to improve their theoretical knowledge, particularly around marketing planning.

Delivery style

Combined lecture and interactive workshop.

Materials

A course workbook will be provided.

Before the course

Please bring along the following (if possible):

• a current (or old) marketing plan
• any sales or profit history – for your business or organisation, brand or by product
• any background information that will help you write your plan, eg market information, research, analysis of what has worked well for your business in the past.