What is Marketing Planning you ask?

We like the CFI's definition here - "Marketing planning is the process of organising and defining the marketing aims of a company and gathering strategies and tactics to achieve them".

We plan our marketing to make sure we have enough resources, have set aside enough money for advertising spend, and have robust plans on the marketing strategies and tactics - including channels, that will be the most effective.

So that's what Marketing Planning is... but what are its benefits?

Understanding our KPIs and Unit economics (costs per unit, effectiveness per unit etc) - A solid understanding of our Key Performance Indicators - Cost per click, Conversion rate, Bounce rate, Cost per lead etc - is the foundation for understanding performance and critically comparing performance across different channels to understand channel effectiveness.‍

No second guessing - Spending with confidence that your money is going to the right place.

Maximise the upside and control the downside - Understand how small increases and decreases in performance impact key outcomes.

We suggest you find a good cadence to track your advertising spend on different channels, mostly we see teams do this every 1-2 weeks.

Our Marketing Planning block provides a high level plan based on your unit economics and key ratios - we suggest you revisit this monthly, or at least quarterly to re-forecast your spend, and/or rebalance your investment across the best performing channels accordingly.

Common questions you might have when it comes to Marketing Planning

• How much should we spend on advertising to meet our ambitious targets?
• Which advertising channel is the best for me?
• How much does it cost to acquire new leads / customers?
• What Return-on-Investment (ROI) should we get for a given marketing investment?
• If I can increase marketing efficiency in one area, which one should it be - Conversion rate, Cost per customer etc?

All these pivotal questions can be answered with Blox.

How will you model with this Marketing Planning block?

Modelling with Blox is fast and fun! You can create a plan in 5 minutes by following the simple guided steps:

1. Select your planning timescales
2. Add your marketing channels - Social, Organic search, Paid search, Affiliates etc
3. Input some assumptions. Including:
   - Organic visitors
   - Advertising Spend
   - Cost per click
   - Bounce rate
   - Engaged visitor conversion rate
4. View your plan through an interactive dashboard and adjust your drivers to see different scenarios so you can make the best decisions. Plan outputs include:
   - Visitors
   - Bounces
   - Engaged visitors
   - Leads
   - Cost per Lead
5. Save your model and share it with others!

Learn more on our Marketing Planning model page, or click here to try it yourself for free, no credit card required!