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Awareness: How to Build a Marketing Plan That Delivers
The A in the STRATEGY Framework stands for Awareness. In my new book, Marketing Strategy, I explain how Awareness leads to profit (and how to make it work for you).
If you've been following my blog, you'll know all about my marketing framework, STRATEGY.
STRATEGY is a framework that takes you through every step of planning, creating, executing, and learning from a campaign:
- S: Scenario. Taking stock of your situation.
- T: Target. Building objectives for your campaign.
- R: Reach. Understanding your audience.
- A: Awareness. Creating a marketing plan.
- T: Tactics. Finding creative ways to deliver your campaign.
- E: Execution. Bringing your campaign to life.
- G: Generate. Gathering and analysing ongoing data.
- Y: Yield. Analysing your performance and drawing actionable insights for next time.
The book Marketing Strategy by Jenna Tiffany has a full chapter on each of these steps. Marketing mentor Joolz Joseph FCIM describes it as "A superbly practical, up-to-date and comprehensive marketing textbook". It's packed with case studies, helpful frameworks, interviews, and everything else you need to become a world-class strategic marketer.
I've been sharing tasters of the book by going through each letter of the acronym in blog posts. So far, we've covered Scenario, Target, and Reach. Today, I'm going to talk about Awareness.
As always, you'll get the full story in Marketing Strategy, so order your copy now if you want to know more!
What Is the Awareness Stage of STRATEGY All About?
The Awareness stage is about taking everything you've gathered so far (your scenario, your competitor research, your objectives, and your detailed audience knowledge) and building it into a plan that places your campaign exactly where it needs to be.
To do this, my advice is to create a marketing plan.
Here's how I describe a good marketing plan in my book, Marketing Strategy:
"A good marketing plan is a blueprint for marketing your products and services. Essentially, a marketing plan is a step-by-step guide which details how to deliver your marketing strategy. You began to 'plan' your strategic approach by analysing the macro and micro-environments of your organization in Chapter 2. A marketing plan builds on this by identifying the resources needed, and the areas which require the most focus (we'll explore this in Chapter 6).
As we uncovered in Chapter 1, everyone in the organization must be moving in the same direction and fulfilling the organization's vision. Your marketing plan will improve cross-team communication, and make sure that everyone knows what's required of them to achieve the brand's goals."
So, how do you come up with a great marketing plan? I recommend using the 7Ps.
Creating a Marketing Plan with the 7Ps
In my last blog, I took you through the 4Ps: Price, Place, Promotion, and Product. These are useful when positioning your campaign.
However, when it comes to creating a marketing plan, it's worth considering three more Ps: People, Process, and Physical Evidence.
These three extra Ps were first added to help market services. But I find their potential goes beyond service marketing. In my experience, they're fantastic for making sure your marketing plan is well balanced, without too much focus on any one factor.
I go through the full 7Ps model in Chapter Five of Marketing Strategy. Here's a quick rundown of the last three Ps (you can find the first four in my blog on Reach):
People. This is one of the most important parts of the marketing mix. It's about the people involved in the marketing and conversion process. The people customers meet can greatly change their experience of a brand, so it's worth thinking about this P in detail.
Process. This covers everything that needs to happen to get a product or service to the customer. Every part of this process is a chance to engage customers and make a great impression. It's a vital (but often forgotten) part of any marketing plan.
Physical Evidence. There's a strong psychological side to marketing. Physical evidence makes you think about how the environment around your product or service will make the customer feel. If it's not a great environment, how can you manage or reduce this through your marketing? If the physical setting is part of the experience, how can your marketing highlight it?
If it's not yet clear how all this adds up to an amazing marketing plan, don't worry. I explain everything in detail in Marketing Strategy: Overcome Common Pitfalls and Create Effective Marketing.
Order your copy today and get a 20% discount
