The operational marketing plan defines all the technologies and methods that will help you achieve your goals. Throughout the design process, you will highlight your internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as all the strengths and weaknesses of your industry.
What is an operational marketing plan?
It covers all the techniques, methods and tools used to achieve marketing goals. Unlike strategic marketing, which aims at long-term results, the operational marketing plan helps to make decisions that will be carried out in the medium term. So, operational marketing and strategic marketing are interdependent and complementary, the former serving the latter. However, it is not a question of choosing one or the other, but of considering both in an overall strategy. In fact, the operational marketing plan is a strategic guideline defined to obtain the goals and determine the necessary actions and their planning. The plan was developed in one year and summarised the actions for the following year.
Defining marketing goals
The purpose of the operational marketing plan is to achieve goals, and then to define the measures to be taken to meet the goals. Therefore, you need to clearly determine what these goals are, such as business goals, communication goals and customer goals, and then you can further break down these goals into sub-goals and steps. For example, if your ultimate goal is to increase sales, this may lead to other sub-goals, such as increasing the number of customers. This in turn will involve increasing the visibility of the business and so on. This is vital for tracking the improvement curve and determining whether the expected goals have been achieved by the end of the deadline. So, you may be talking about a one-year timeframe for the main target of the plan, but it may also be a shorter timeframe for a secondary target.
Analysing results and using monitoring tools
Monitoring tools help you follow the operations and results that have been accomplished. To measure the results, you need to specify the correct indicators to monitor. These indicators come directly from the goals you set beforehand. There are many potential indicators: sales of your site, visits or registrations, conversion rate. You can then use the dashboard of the management tool to monitor your performance. This will allow you to determine the gap between the expected or desired result and the actual result attained. The operational marketing plan is essential in the marketing strategy, as it is a roadmap that can be followed, and it will show you step by step the way to reach your goals. Its effectiveness depends to a large extent on your analytical skills (to carry out an overall diagnosis beforehand, to evaluate the results of plans carried out in the past, etc.), the actions defined and the monitoring indicators selected.