How to Write a Marketing Plan

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How to Write a Marketing Plan

• A simple, effective strategy for libraries.

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What gets us into trouble is not what we dont
know. Its what we know for sure that just aint
so. Mark Twain
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What is marketing?
Marketing is the management process by which
goods and services move from concept to the
customer. It includes the coordination of four
elements called the 4 Ps of marketing
identifying and developing a PRODUCT
determining its PRICE (the value of anything
exchanged) getting the product to the
customers PLACE developing and implementing a
PROMOTION strategy (often called marketing
communications)
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Four Ps Four Cs
Product Concept Place
Channel Price Cost Promotion
Communication
The Four Ps are variables controlled by the
organization. Regardless of the forces at play in
the market, these Four Ps are under your control.
Together, they are referred to as the MARKETING
MIX. Youll apply the marketing mix to every
goal you set.
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Uncontrollable Variables

• State of the economy
• Legislative Actions (budgeting)
• Changes in the competitive landscape
• Unemployment
• Technology Changes
• Operational Costs
• List is practically endless

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What is Marketing?
Inputs materials acquisition mineral
extracting
Outputs Products ready to be delivered to
customers and stores
Everything but manufacturing.
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What are a librarys products?

• Information sources that do not circulate
• Products that circulate books, CDs, DVDs,
  magazines, pamphlets
• Services and programs you offer
• Room rentals
• Community events
• Any others?

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What role does price play?

• Fees for service (copying, printing, etc.)
• Fines for late returns
• Is the concept of price important to you? Do you
  talk about it in meetings? How often do you talk
  about income or revenue? Are you focused on
  making money? Likely to be a tiny percentage of
  your operating budget.

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What about distribution or place?

• One location or main with branches?
• Do you do community outreach?
• Bookmobile?
• Speakers bureau?
• Inter-library loan?
• Kiosks?

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Is promotion important?

• How you promote your products and services
  will be the guts of your marketing plan.

Promotion is likely to be the most important
variable of your marketing mix because it is the
most easily controlled.
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Promotion Elements
Each of the following is a sub-set of promotion.

• Advertising
• Public Relations
• Personal Selling
• Sales Promotion

• Print Collateral
• Direct Marketing
• Event Marketing
• Online Advertising

These elements constitute traditional
marketing. Today, more and more organizations
are adopting inbound marketing strategies.
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Inbound Marketing

• A strategy developed in response to changes in
  buyer behavior how people shop and buy products
  and services
• Leverages the power of Google search
• Is focused on getting found online and maximizing
  the ROI of your website
• Positions your website as your marketing
  hub(More on Inbound Marketing later.)

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Terms are not interchangeable
Great idea! How will we market that? Great
idea! How will we advertise that? Great idea!
How will we promote that?
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Why now?

• Why do you need a marketing plan now?
• What has changed in the last 20 years or so?
• Why are all nonprofits suddenly buying into
  marketing as a necessary business function?

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Answer Economics

• Marketing has its roots in economics
• The first marketing classes had to do with
  distribution problems of dairy farmers
• Economics is the mother science of marketing

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What is economics?

• Social science that analyzes and describes the
  consequences of choices made concerning scarce
  productive resources. Economics is the study of
  how individuals and societies choose to employ
  those resources what goods and services will be
  produced, how they will be produced, and how they
  will be distributed among the members of society.

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Economic UTILITY
The VALUE producers and marketers add to raw
materials when they make them into a product and
offer them for sale to the public. There are
five types of utility. Organizations are paid
according the the extent of the economic utility
their products or services provide.
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FORM UTILITY
Involves changing RAW MATERIALS or PUTTING PARTS
TOGETHER to make them more useful. RAW
MATERIALS When you cut down a tree and use the
lumber to create pencils, paper, furniture, etc.,
the tree now becomes more valuable to the
customer.
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TIME UTILITY
Time utility is having a product available at a
certain time of the year or at a convenient time
of the day. Value is added when marketers make
them available at the right time. What are some
products that sell better during certain hours of
the day? Days or months of the year?
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PLACE UTILITY
This involves placing a product where a customer
can purchase it. Businesses study consumer
shopping habits to determine the most convenient
and efficient locations to sell products.
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POSSESSION UTILITY
The exchange of a product for some monetary value
is possession utility. Purchasing the product
has given it added value. What are some ways you
can purchase a product?
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INFORMATION UTILITY
This involves communication with the
customer. Sales people, displays, packaging and
labeling, advertising, sales brochures Anything
used to encourage sales gives the product added
value.
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Do you provide economic utility?

• If you provide economic utility, you have
  something to market!

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To find what you have to market, you must start
with your business plan or strategic plan.
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Elements of a Business Plan

• Executive Summary
• A Competitive Analysis
• Mission, Vision, Values and Goals
• A Finance Plan
• A Marketing Plan
• A Production Plan
• A Facilities Plan
• A Human Resources Plan

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The Marketing Plan

• Is that portion of the business plan that lays
  out the direction for the organizations
  marketing strategy.
• A written statement of marketing objectives and
  strategies to support broader goals.
• Explains who is responsible for managing
  activities and provides a timeline for their
  completion.

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Cascading Plans

• Start with your business plan or a recent
  strategic plan. Your marketing plan must support
  the goals established with the strategic plan.
• Develop a marketing plan in the context of the
  larger, more encompassing strategic plan or
  business plan.
• Develop a strategy for each marketing mix
  variable that comes into play for each objective.

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Marketing Plan Outline

• Eight Steps to Making a Meaningful Marketing Plan

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I. The Executive Summary

• Outlines the who, what, where, when, how and why
  of the marketing plan.
• Appears first but is written last.
• No need to be longer than a page.
• Describe how the plan was created. Name committee
  members or contributors and describe that process
  for strategy development.
• Involve others the plan should not be the
  product of one person working along.

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II. Library Description

• The section should describe the librarys role in
  the community, its history, emerging trends,
  products and services offered and its strategic
  objectives.
• Keep this simple. Can be done in a few paragraphs
  or one page unless youre in crisis management
  mode.
• Creates a context for the plan for those who may
  not be familiar with your library.

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III. Mission and Goals

• Mission, Vision and Values can be lifted from the
  strategic plan.
• Using SMART goals, describe what the librarys
  objectives are for the coming year.
• We will develop marketing mix strategies and
  tactics to achieve each goal.

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IV. Core Competencies

• What do we do exceptionally well?
• What makes us better than our competition?
• What kind of relationships do we foster with our
  service?
• What word or phrase do we own?

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V. Situation Analysis

• It is helpful (but not required) to do a SWOT
  analysis of your librarys marketing capabilities
  to better understand your situation.
• Some nonprofits pull together a marketing
  committee consisting of non-staff members with
  specific marketing expertise.
• Determine market research needs if you have them.

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VI. Strategy Development

• Identify your target market Who are we trying to
  reach? Be as specific as possible.
• Message development What do we want our target
  market to know? Get your best writer to craft an
  effective message.
• Media selection How do we get our message out?
• Budget allocation How much can I spend?(Your
  marketing budget reflects your librarys
  commitment to marketing. What does your budget
  say?)

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How this Process Works

1. Write out a statement of your first goal.
2. Write down how each element of the marketing mix
   can be used to achieve the goal. Do we need to
   make changes to our PRODUCT offerings to
   achieve this goal? Do we need to develop a new
   PRICE strategy? Is achieving this goal
   dependent upon changes in how or where we
   deliver our service? (PLACE) What PROMOTION
   strategy can we devise to achieve this goal?

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VII. Implementation
Identify tactics Assign tasks Establish a
timeline Execute the plan Set progress
points Measure progress Make needed changes
Quantify results
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VIII. Evaluation

• Did you accomplish your objective? If not, why
  not?
• Were there any unintended consequences?
• What did we do that worked?
• What would we do differently next time?
• What did we learn?

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Example of Goal / Strategy / Tactics

• Goal We will increase the number of library card
  holders by 6 by Oct. 1, 2014
• Strategy We will develop a Get a Card Today
  promotion campaign and fully implement it in Q2,
  2014.
• Tactic 1 Create posters for display in library
  for display by February 1.

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Goal / Strategy / Tactics
Tactic 2 Launch campaign with press releases to
local newspaper, chamber groups and other civic
organizations by Feb. 15. Tactic 3 Create
newspaper ads for placement as remnant space by
March 1. Tactic 4 Write a PSA and meet with
local radio station for airing by March 20.
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Marketing Challenges

• The marketing industry is going through a rapid
  change from traditional methods to inbound
  marketing methods.

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What is Traditional Marketing?

• Radio
• Television
• Newspapers
• Magazines

• Direct Mail
• Trade Shows
• Telemarketing
• Billboards, etc.

The traditional marketing playbook is broken.
Its increasingly difficult to get a good ROI
Using these methods. Why are they less
effective than they used to be?
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People are tired of being marketed to!

• Consumers are using technology to thwart unwanted
  marketing messages that are an interruption to
  their day
• Interruption marketing is unwelcome in todays
  busy world.
• Average person exposed to thousands of branding
  messages a day
• Look at the ways consumers are blocking out our
  messages

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Do Not Call Lists
In a country of 310 million people, we have 200
million phone numbers on the do not call
list. Caller ID Abandonment of land lines
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We mute TV spots or use DVRs
We no longer sit through commercials. Whoever has
the remote is in charge!
The incredible growth in the number of channels
available has resulted in audience fragmentation
and lends itself to channel surfing during
commercials.
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Radio Competition
What else do we do in the car or at work instead
of listen to the radio? CDs Sirius XM
iTunes Public Broadcasting Streaming Internet
Spotify Phone calls Texting
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Trade Shows
No longer a good source of B2B leads Mainly
attended by vendors and sales people Travel
expenses have eroded their effectiveness
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Email Marketing
Spam filters Legal issues Poor open and
click through rates (CTRs) Inbox clutter
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The First 50 Years
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The Next 50 Years
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Inbound Marketing

• Driven by changes in consumer behavior, not by
  marketers
• Average knowledge worker does 20-25 Google
  searches each day
• The blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and
  YouTube are replacing traditional media

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Implications

• Inbound marketing strategies have to be part of
  your toolkit when promoting your library
• Inbound Marketing is centered around the concept
  of attracting visitors to your website,
  converting some of them into leads, and turning
  leads into patrons or library users.
• Extremely cost-effective form of marketing!
• Everything on the Internet is trackable! This is
  a huge advantage over traditional marketing.

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Inbound Marketing Components

• Search Engine Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Link-building
• Analytics
• (These are important but cannot be covered today.
  Well focus our attention on the next column.)

• Content creation
• Blogging
• Social Media integration
• Promotion via Twitter
• Email marketing

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The new reality

• gt2,000,000,000 searches a month
• A quarter of the searches are unique
• People are searching for YOUR programs and
  services right in your own back yard

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How it Works

• Think like a publisher
• The Internet is the largest publishing platform
  in human history use it!
• Create remarkable content!
• Push it out into the Internet using your blog,
  Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
• Tweet the heck out of it to improve your PageRank

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Write a blog post

• Adds a page to your website forever
• Tweet your blog post to your followers
• Some will re-Tweet to their followers, creating
  links to your website
• Google interprets inbound links as authority
• Your website rises in SERPs
• Post should be 400 to 600 words
• Add a photo and be sure you include ALT tags

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The Call to Action (CTA)

• End every blog post with a CTA
• Provide a link to additional content
• Offer a free download of premium content
• Encourage some type of action
• See us today for a library card application.
• Call today to register for the seminar.

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Why Blogging Matters

• More web pages means more authority
• Blogging 3x a week adds 156 pages of content to
  your site, bulking it up
• Dont forget deep linking within your site
• Your content will spread throughout the Internet
  as people share the link to your blog post
• Each page pays dividends for months and years
• Think of it like compounding interest

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Tie Inbound Marketing to Strategy

• Create an inbound marketing campaign to support
  your strategy
• Write several blog posts with different angles
• Tweet the heck out of each one
• Push your content out through other channels
• Get guest bloggers to write for you

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Goal / Strategy / Tactics
(Going back to our original goal, here is how you
would add the elements of inbound
marketing.) Goal We will increase the number of
library card holders by 6 by Oct. 1,
2014 Strategy 1 We will develop a Get a Card
Today promotion campaign and fully implement it
in Q2, 2014. Tactic 1 Create posters for
display in library for display by February 1.
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Goal / Strategy / Tactics
Tactic 2 Launch campaign with press releases to
local newspaper, chamber groups and other civic
organizations by Feb. 15. Tactic 3 Create
newspaper ads for placement as remnant space by
March 1. Tactic 4 Write a PSA and meet with
local radio station for airing by March 20.
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Goal / Strategy / Tactics
Goal We will increase the number of library card
holders by 6 by Oct. 1, 2014 Strategy 2
Develop an Inbound Marketing Plan to achieve this
goal. Tactic 1 Write a series of blog posts
using the blogging editorial calendar Tactic 2
Push this content onto multiple platforms
Tactic 3 Schedule Tweets throughout each week
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Example of a blog post on the website.
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(The same blog post put on a Facebook page.)
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(Sample tweet promoting a blog post using bit.ly
URL shortener.)
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This is a data visualization of the Internet. The
brightest lights are the biggest websites at the
hub of many links. You want your site to linked
to many others, rather than just being off by
itself.Google puts a premium on websites with
LOTS of content and frequent updates.
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Rules? What rules?

• You dont need no stinking rules!
• Let staffers Tweet away
• Ask for guest bloggers from time to time
• Be spontaneous!
• You can schedule Tweets in advance
• Try to Tweet at least 10x a day

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10 things you should do when you get back to the
library

• Set up a Twitter account
• The name of the account should match your
  domain name
• Link to Twitter from your main page and from
  your Twitter account to your home page

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10 things you should do when you get back to the
library

• Set up a simple Facebook business page
• This is known as a fan page
• Youll need to administer this off your
  personal page
• Add a description of your library, a photo and
  link back to your website
• This is easy to do. Just follow directions.

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10 things you should do when you get back to the
library

• 3. Kick off a blog and start blogging
• Add Blog to your navigation menu
• You can use a free hosting tool like Wordpress
  but DO NOT use their domain name
• create a subdomain if necessary to make sure
  you get the SEO authority (Example
  blog.yourlibrary.org)
• ask several staffers to create one blog post a
  week

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10 things you should do when you get back to the
library

• 4. Write your first blog article and post it
• Shorten the URL using bit.ly
• Tweet to your follower(s) throughout the day
• Post link to the blog on your Facebook page
• Post link to the blog on LinkedIn

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10 things you should do when you get back to the
library

• 5. Set up Google Alerts for your library
• Set an alert up for your library
• Set one up for industry alerts
• Anyone can do this, but the marketing person
  should monitor this. Why? Because marketing is
  always responsible for brand management.

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10 things you should do when you get back to the
library

• 6. Find three competitors to track
• Read their blogs
• Follow them through Google Alerts
• Follow them on Twitter
• You will learn from these competitors!

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10 things you should do when you get back to the
library

• 7. Find relevant Twitter users
• Search by topic, location, or subject using
  hashtags () and start following people
• Do not mass follow numbers of people
• Follow back followers you think make sense

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10 things you should do when you get back to the
library

• 8. Find bloggers who write about your topic area
• Subscribe to their feed and read them
  regularly
• Leave valuable comments
• NO spam
• NO fluff or self promotion!
• Remember, youre building
• relationships here, not selling!

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10 things you should do when you get back to the
library

• 9. Start re-tweeting good articles
• Helps people expand their Internet presence
• Behavior is noticed
• Attracts followers
• Social media is social, so be social.
• (Can you handle these deep thoughts?)

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10 things you should do when you get back to the
library

• 10. Make a list of the top people in your
  industry
• Convert into a blog post 14 library rock
  stars Id like to have coffee with
• List them, write a couple sentences about why,
  link to their profile pages or website
• This helps others and increases the chances
  that they will visit your blog
• A similar post can talk about books, music,
  speakers, etc. just about anything!

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How to Hire a Marketer

• Traits you want your marketing staff person to
  have in todays changing marketing environment.

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D.A.R.C.

• Hire Digital Citizens
• With Analytical Skills
• Who have some web Reach
• And can Create Content

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Hire Digital Citizens

• Digital Citizens were born web savvy or got very
  familiar with the web. They speak web fluently.
• Digital Tourists were born analog and not too
  familiar with the web. They speak web with an
  accent.
• NEVER assume recent college grads are digital
  citizens. They arent.

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Questions and Show me!

• Ask your applicants to bring their laptop to the
  interview. Sit side by side rather than across
  the desk. Most applicants will claim to be web
  savvy. Test them with these questions and ask
  them to show you .
• What RSS reader do you use? Can I see it?
• What blogs do you read? Can you show me?
• Do you have a blog?
• How many Twitter followers do you have?
• When did you last update your Facebook or
  LinkedIn profile?

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Hire Analytical Skills

• Should be very familiar with Excel or a
  statistical software package
• Should know Google Analytics and how to use the
  tool
• Should understand keyword strategies involving
  long-tail keyword research

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Hire for Web Reach

• How many LinkedIn connections do you have?
• How many Twitter followers do you have? Do you
  talk about our industry on your Twitter account?
• How often do you post to Facebook?
• Do you have a blog?
• (True digital citizens will be part of online
  communities. Look at their bookmarks and how
  organized their desktop is. Dont be afraid of
  gamers, unless they exhibit psychopathic
  behaviors. )

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Hire Content Creators

• Your candidate should have GREAT writing skills
• Be great if they could shoot and post a video on
  YouTube
• Have they ever done a podcast or screencast?
• They should be comfortable with blogging on a
  fixed schedule. (2x a week minimum)

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Hiring Tips

• You probably wont find someone with all of these
  traits, but look for them anyway. Make sure your
  candidate has either the coursework or experience
  to swim in the waters of online marketing.
• Being able to take a selfie and post it on
  Instagram doesnt qualify you as a digital
  citizen.

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Thank you!
John Murphy The Murphy Agency, Inc. 10 W.
Streetsboro St., Suite 205 Hudson, OH
44236 330-342-1255 www.themurphyagency.com