The Marketing Plan bridge

The Marketing Plan bridge

The Marketing Plan bridge helps firms facilitate the development of a 12-month Marketing Plan, recording the client's marketing goals, KPIs, and activities to achieve their goals.

To access the Marketing Plan bridge, navigate to Navigation panel >  Bridges > Marketing Plan.

Tip
Check out the Guide to Marketing Your Firm for a deeper understanding of marketing concepts. Navigate to Navigation panel >  Marketing > Advisor Marketing Resources.

Understanding the Marketing Plan process

It's essential for business owners to understand their marketing KPIs and measure the effectiveness of their various marketing strategies. A Marketing Plan helps businesses identify their purpose, target market, unique selling point, and promotion strategy, as well as their marketing budget and KPIs. They'll use this information to set four key marketing goals for the year, identifying the relevant KPIs and activities required to ensure the goals are achieved.
  1. The Process Guide outlines best practice use of the content in the Marketing Plan bridge; click the Download Process Guide button in the top right-hand corner to view this guide

Important info
We strongly recommend that firms develop their firm's Marketing Plan before offering this service. Navigate to Navigation panel >  Marketing > Advisor Marketing Resources > Your Firm's Marketing Plan.

Promoting the Marketing Plan service

There are many ways to actively promote the Marketing Plan service, including:
  1. Discussing your Marketing Plan service as part of a CCR, Annual Accounts Review Meeting or Business Planning session.
  2. Sending out relevant educational marketing content to your database to subtly position the value of a Marketing Plan.
    1. Navigate to Navigation panel > Marketing > The Gap + BOMA > The Gap + BOMA Content Library Catalogue  to check out our educational marketing content ready for you to send via BOMA
  3. Hosting a marketing seminar or webinar to generate interest in your Marketing Plan service.

The Marketing Plan proposal

There is a Marketing Plan proposal in the 3. Selling folder in the Marketing Plan bridge. Only send a proposal for services you have gained conceptual agreement for.
  1. Consider the client's unique situation and use the checkboxes to select the objectives, measures of success and value to the client; add bespoke objectives, measures of success and points of value to reflect the client's individual needs
  2. If your client does not accept within seven days, call them to follow up
For more information, see our Using proposals article.

Tip
Carefully read through the objectives, measures of success and values to better understand the types of problems this service will help you solve for your clients.

Delivering the Marketing Plan session

Client Outcomes

By attending a Marketing Plan session, clients will:
  1. Identify their purpose, target market, and unique selling point
  2. Determine their product mix, positioning, and promotion strategy
  3. Develop a clear outline of the marketing strategies that will work for their business
  4. Understand the marketing KPIs they need to monitor
  5. Set SMART marketing goals to achieve over the next 12 months
  6. Increase the return on their marketing investment

Service duration

A Marketing Plan session should take four hours. If delivering the session virtually, consider splitting the session into two two-hour sessions. The Delivery Notes available in Navigation panel >  Bridges > Marketing Plan > Delivery contains recommended timings for each agenda item.

The service

You will facilitate a structured Marketing Plan session to document your client's succinct Marketing Plan and clarify their marketing KPIs, goals, and actions.

Prior to the session, you will provide all attendees with pre-work to complete; ensuring that any issues that need to be discussed are identified and you can prepare accordingly.

Important info
We recommend enforcing a 'no pre-work, no meeting' policy. Politely discuss the benefit of pre-work and reschedule the meeting so it does not become one of discovery.

Click  here for more information about common content found in the Gap bridges and how they relate to each step in the Marketing Plan process. See the Marketing Plan Process Guide for detailed information about the Marketing Plan content.

Key content in the 4. Delivery folder includes:
  1. Guide to Marketing: a resource to provide to clients explaining key marketing definitions, how to define and build a strong brand, marketing activities to undertake, and KPIs to measure.
  2. The Marketing Funnel: a resource to provide to clients depicting the process to convert leads into raving advocates.
  3. The Marketing Gravity Wheel: a resource to provide to clients showing the layers of marketing they should utilise to generate leads and keep the pipeline full.
  4. Marketing Plan Growth Equation: an Excel calculator to demonstrate how small changes to marketing KPIs can have a big impact on profit.
  5. Annual Marketing Campaign Planner: a Word template to send to clients to plan their marketing activities for the year, ensuring there are activities planned for each month.
  6. Marketing Campaign Plan Template: a Word template to send to clients to create a plan for each marketing campaign; setting the goal, identifying the target market, positioning, and promotion strategy for each campaign, and recording the required marketing activities, deadline, and person responsible for each activity.
  7. Annual Marketing Budget Template: an Excel template to send to clients to help them break their marketing budget into monthly targets and keep track by comparing their actual results to their monthly and annual targets.
  8. Marketing KPI Report: an Excel template to send to clients to help them keep track of their actual vs target marketing KPIs over the year if they don't use an app to monitor their marketing KPIs.

Important info
You can attach some of the client resources above to the Meeting Minutes from the Marketing Plan session. Ensure you update the body of the email to reference any attached files and only attached the resources relevant to the client. 

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