At the beginning, there is always marketing analysis. But the biggest questions when preparing marketing campaign is actually not related directly to marketing, but to the business itself. If you do not have clear answers, it will become very difficult to prepare any type of campaign. So what should you have clarified in the first place?
1. What is your risk tolerance versus profit opportunity?
What are your financial expectations (eg in relation to shareholders)? Does the answer depend on one product line, a region or a part of the company which should meet it?
Companies often have different levels of risk tolerance, depending on what level of management is asked. The result is a confusion and lack of coordination. As part of an integrated marketing plan, it is therefore worth having a clear answer just to that question.
2. What is your company truly excellent at?
What are you really selling, what will you communicate? Do you have the best product, the lowest cost or the best solution? Define your core competence and run your business accordingly.
Best marketing activities are based on a good strategy, in which there are clear long-term and short-term goals and their drivers.
3. What do you want to achieve?
The same question over and over again and still many managers can not clearly answer it. But behind the scenes of a marketing plan, there must be clear priorities from which everything else will arise.
The answer to the question can have multiple levels. At the highest, macro or long term- level, you say where you want to end and why and what will drive your organization to achieve it. At the lowest level, you need to set targets that will help achieve the whole. After that it will be easy to create a marketing plan, set KPIs and other components of any marketing campaign.
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