Traditional marketing plans have always been detailed orientated to facilitate everything from the high level objective to the nitty-gritty day-to-day activities. An alternate version of the traditional marketing plan is the action marketing plan. It was created out of the obvious problems of a traditional marketing plan: they are time intensive. But social media doesn't always have the luxury of time.
The mentality that drove the creation of the action marketing plan is inefficiency. By the nature of creating a detailed orientated marketing plan, time is wasted writing the plan and not enough time executing it. The traditional marketing plan also assumes many constants and does not offer enough flexibility to make changes on the fly. It simply bottlenecks the execution because the time required writing and becomes a constant battle of effort devoted to writing or executing. This becomes a huge disadvantage when working with social media and PR because response time is critical and can be potentially damaging if not handled quickly.
I would be arrogant for saying that all traditional marketing plans are evil, but they aren't. Traditional marketing plans are helpful for businesses that have a more predictable market and need more control. However, there are many commonalities with action marketing plans:
- Simpler to write and orchestrate
- More flexibility due to less detail on assumptions or constraints
- Easier to implement due to the lack of strenuous detail
Typically, action marketing plans are meant for businesses that have time against them, need something easy to implement or want more flexibility when it comes to executing their goals, strategies or tactics. When laying out goals, strategies, tactics, each are accompanied by their justification for using them and what are.
Take this example layout for example:
Goals are the overall aim, the light at the end of the tunnel, the reward for all the hard work. For this business, they wanted to increase their revenue and supplement it with an increased awareness amongst consumers. To achieve those goals, they need a few strategies to help them get there. Strategies are different routes to focus on. These can be determined by asking, "How are you going to achieve your goals?" The best approach for this business was to increase advertising, promotions, and repeat customers.
Tactics are determined much like determining strategies: "How are you going to advertise?" "What are you going to promote?" "How are you going to increase repeat customers?" They are the specific activities to meet the needs of the strategy and achieve the goals.
With this reductionist method, the advantage is that everything can be traced to the ultimate goal and aids in the tracking of KPIs. In addition, these action marketing plans are much more adaptable to specific areas of marketing and easier to implement. For instance, if a social media plan need to be crafted, the plan can be easily adapted with the enhanced flexibility and simplicity.
Remember, a plan is worthless if nothing can be executed. While many situations call for detail intensive purposes; simplicity and flexibility are advantageous when it comes to time intensive implementation or a need for adaptability. It's a solid tool to have as a marketer or an advertiser and comes in handy when traditional thinking becomes too complex.