0 Marketing Planning - Key Ingredients  Brand Strategy  Product Strategy  Communications Strategy

1 Competitive SWOT STRENGTHSWEAKNESS OPPORTUNITIES THREATS

2 Brand Strategy (use the SWOT as the guide)  Target: –The audience it is critical the brand win against. It should be tightly defined by demographic and/or psychographic dimensions –Consumer or B2B  Target Insight  Pillars (proof) –What are the key differentiators or reasons why the target audience will want to choose the brand –Is the brand differentiated largely on image or is there significant differentiation on feature/function? –Is it a new innovation with no competition  Brand Promise –This is the singular idea that captures the core differentiated consumer value proposition for the brand. –It will help create alignment across all business functions against a core idea

3 Product Strategy: Pricing Premium brand: High price, never on sale Budget Brand: Lowest price, highly promotional

4 Product Strategy: Distribution  “Hard” Products –Direct to consumer – Retail – Direct –Web –Phone – Partner/Reseller Model –Branded –White Label  “Service” Products –Scale?

5 Communications – Objective setting  Business Objective – What is the business result the marketing initiative(s) are intended to drive? –Sales, Revenue, EBITDA  Communication Objective – What is the consumer result the marketing initiative(s) are intended to drive? –Product awareness, store traffic, visits to the website, shifting brand perceptions * Be as specific as possible!

6 Communications - What is the Message?  Defining a great key message in a marketing campaign is an art form  Too often marketing communications are ruined by trying to communicate too many things.  The ingredients for a great message: –Singular –Focus on the benefit to the target –Works across all tactics to amplify their effect.

7 Communications – The mix  Traditional Advertising: Expensive, broad reach, media mix and creative execution can dramatically impact success  PR: A good compliment  Social: Hit and miss. Generally better for post sales customer relationship building  Sponsorship: Brand halo but activation is narrow but highly targeted  Channel: Usually forgotten but perhaps the most important - The media mix is determined from a number of factors including the target, the communication objective, the messaging strategy and budget - Marketing communications success is usually driven by measurement and optimization over time. For a lunch plan there is no magic formula. It is a combination of experience and gut.