Creating a Marketing Plan – Step 3 – Using Appropriate Tactics

Our quick and simple marketing plan is almost complete.  We have determined our company’s current competitive position, outlined our marketing objectives and determined ​our primary and secondary target audiences.  Now it is time to choose the appropriate marketing tactics to motivate our target audiences.

Just to clarify, tactics and strategy are not interchangeable words.  A very brief explanation of the difference is, a tactic is a single part of your overall strategy.  Tactics are tools you use to help implement your overall strategy.

Goal: Win the War
Strategy: Divide & Conquer
Tactics: Gather intelligence, knock out enemy communication, secure enemy air bases, etc.​

A marketing strategy could be to increase referrals by building trust in your brand.  The tactics used to achieve this could be: targeted Facebook updates, blogging, e-newsletters / other email marketing techniques, etc.  It is very important to do your research and determine the appropriate marketing tactics.

We have been working with the fictional company, Western Automotive.  Their marketing objective is to sell more of the new smaller SUVs to young females, ages 16 to 23.  When coming up with marketing tactics for this campaign, it is important to keep our two target audiences in mind.  Our primary target audience is young females, ages 16 to 23, and our secondary target audience is fathers of young women, ages 16 to 23.

Let’s start with our primary target audience: young females, ages 16 to 23.  What would be the best way to position our product to them (Why would this age group want this vehicle)?  What are the best ways to reach these young women (Social media, Television, Magazine Ads)?  A good way to answer these questions is through market research, focus groups are very useful at this point.

Let’s say our focus group results show that the best way to position our product is to show the vehicle as a cute, fun and affordable vehicle.  Our focus group results told us these are the most important factors for our primary target audience.  To position this vehicle as a cute, fun and affordable vehicle we need to come up with specific tactics to show our target market how cute, fun and affordable this vehicle is.  This can be done in many ways.  A popular way is through celebrity endorsements, but it is important to choose a celebrity that people can relate to and trust.

The next step would be finding the appropriate method of delivering the celebrity’s message.  It is good to cross market their message, or send the message out through multiple sources.  For instance, through a TV commercial and various social media platforms.  Remember to always aim for engagement, don’t just throw the message at people.

Let’s say we found the perfect celebrity to help us reach our primary target market, Celeb-XYZ.  We shoot a wonderful commercial with Celeb-XYZ and air it at the proper times to reach our primary target audience – all of these details are determined through our market research.  To help cross market the vehicle, Celeb-XYZ has a call action at the end of at the end of the commercial (encouraging viewers to upload photos of their small SUV) which references the company’s Instagram name.  Now, people who own the car and want to show it off may upload pictures to Instagram and tag the company.  This would be a good cross marketing technique for three reasons.

1. Engages the audience.  Engagement increases the amount of time spent thinking about the brand.
2. More face time with your brand.  Not only will the target audience see your brand on TV, but also on the internet, specifically social media sites.
3. More endorsements.  Having people upload photos of their vehicle / showing off how much they love it while help build a trust in the brand and each person is giving the vehicle their own personal endorsement.

The same process should be done for secondary target audiences.

​Step 1: Identify Secondary Target Audience(s).
Step 2: Perform market research – What motivates them, why? How can you effectively reach them? When? Etc.
Step 3: Build specific tactics.
Step 4: Cross market.

Always keep in mind; the key to marketing success is thorough market research!  Once you’re finished designing your marketing masterpiece, make sure you implement ways to test and track your success!