Pub355 7 Sentence Marketing Plan Basics

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Back to Basics: The 7 Sentence Marketing Plan

PUB 355: Feb 25, 2011by Monique Trottier

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[email protected]: @boxcarmarketing

1. What is the purpose of your marketing?

• You need speci!c, measurable goals:

• Lead Generation: Get a customer or get a chance to convince them to be a customer in the future. If you are trying to increase subscribers or # ppl to store - what % increase are you aiming for?

• Engagement: If you’re trying to get build community - how many new members? If you are generating buzz, what volume increase are you estimating?

• Online/Offline: Ultimately you are trying to increase conversions. If you’re trying to increase traffic to the site - how many unique visits /month? How many downloads? Subscribes? Event attendees?

• Your goals need to be measurable so that you can know if you’ve met them or not.

• Goals > Actions > Tactics > Estimated Results




• Clearly de!ne the characteristics of your audience. Elaborate on your persona work - who are these people? What are they really like? What do they do online?

• Basics about that person

• Go back to the conversation prism - where does your audience hang out online? What blogs do they read? What websites do they visit?

• What goals do they have when engaging with your campaign?

• (Namaste eg.)

3. Who is Your Target Audience?




• Think about the motivations behind online behaviour. Read Chapter 5 in Here Comes Everybody about why Shirky participates in wikipedia.

• Also think about the different types of community affiliation:

• Source: Harvard Business Review’s “Getting Brand Communities Right”




4. What is Your Niche in the Marketplace?

• Be clear about why the audience cares about what you’re doing.

• In order to attract your target audience you need to answer “what is this”, “who is this for” and “why should I care”.

• What attracts your audience? Why do they return?

• Who are your competitors? What sets you apart? Look at your competitors’ “About Us” page for how they describe themselves. How are you better or different?




• Why should someone choose your product over your competitors’?

• You need a strong elevator pitch - make advertisers say “Wow, why aren’t I advertising with them?” Make customers say “I will go out of my way to shop there because ...”

What is Your Competitive Advantage?




SPHERE• Pre-mature if you haven’t nailed down your campaign (eg. So Nice):

• So What: Why does your client’s product/service matter? What makes your client different from its competitors? (list competitors – name, URL) Why do consumers choose your client over someone else?

• Personality: What are the adjectives that describe your client’s brand?

• Hook: What’s your client’s story angle? Use phrases that are easy to remember to helps to spread your client’s story via word of mouth.

• Ego: Who does your client need to engage with? Who can bene!t from promoting the brand amongst their friends? Why do people want to engage with the brand?

• Relevancy: What is the relevancy between the audiences’ motivations and what your client is trying to do?

• Effort: What does your client need to do in order to keep the audience engaged throughout the campaign as well as after the campaign is !nished.




5. Marketing Weapons that I Plan to Employ:

• Your marketing weapons need to:

• Clearly explain what you will do.

• Explain how your tactics are related to the purpose & goals from #1.

• Do you plan to do blogger outreach? Which blogs would be good to pitch to? [include URLs].

• How are you going to increase your email list?

• How will you implement Facebook Ads (what demographics/psychographics/keywords? Remember, you can set up ads in Facebook without having to pay. It will give you an idea of potential reach and costs.)

• Look at the conversation prism - what tools can you use? Think about your target audience and what they care about/where they are.




• What is your brand’s personality?

• What adjectives describe it?

• What are the feelings the company wants to evoke?

• What brand attributes does it want to convey?

• Go back and look at the brand attributes of OPEN companies.

• How do you align your identity with the identity of your customers?

6. What is Your Business Identity?




• As a rule, estimate 2 hours per channel per week for maintenance mode.

• Double or triple that during a contest period—promo mode.

• You have to really nail down your campaign before we can answer questions about hours or dollars

• You may want to cut down on the number of social media channels you’re using so that you can concentrate your efforts in a few channels in order to be more effective.

• ROI = Return on Investment (If you run this campaign, what do you expect to achieve? Is there a good business reason to do it, or is it a waste of time and money?)

• Goals > Actions > Tactics > Results

7. I Plan to Devote ($ or hrs) to marketing (ROI)




Overall Comments

• Make sure you’re thinking through each of the sentences and building on the lessons and presentations from the class.

• Use the conversation prism to look at existing communities beyond twitter and facebook.

• Follow your goals from #1 all the way through the document.

• Ideas need to have clear, executable tactics associated with them.

• Make sure to be clear in your focus and not distracted by all the possible things you could do.

• If you haven’t already, read Friends With Bene!ts. In particular: Chapter 2, 3, 5, 6, 11, 12 and 13.




The sentences are connected

• You need to make connections between the sentences and between the strategy (the why) and the tools (the how)

• Sentence #1 (your purpose and goals), needs to align with Sentence #6 (your marketing tactics), and #7 (the time you'll spend on your tactics and what you'll measure).

• The marketing tactics that you choose to use and how you will measure success needs to be directly related to your goals - if a tactic isn't related to your goals it shouldn't be a part of your marketing plan




• Sentence #2 (your client's target audience), #3 (your client's niche), #4 (your client's competitive advantage) and Sentence #5 (your client's business identity) all need to work together.

• Your client's niche, competitive advantage and business identity need to re%ect the wants and needs of the target audience. If your client's identity and positioning don't address something that your audience wants or needs you need to reexamine the audience that you're targeting.



[email protected] should follow me on twitter @boxcarmarketing

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Pub355 7 Sentence Marketing Plan Basics

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