How to Address Industry Issues in Your Marketing Plan

marketing

How do you know that your marketing plan needs updating? It either fails your company, or you prevent failure by checking it against a template to catch missing information. For example, according to Wilson & McQueen PLLC, every year in the U.S. more than 4,000 surgical errors occur. This statistic is best not swept under the rug, but instead, evaluated by that industry to work on improvement.

Now, let’s look at the top ways to improve your marketing plan to address industry issues without experiencing major errors.

Check Your Marketing Plan for Completeness

Check your marketing plan against an industry-preferred template to ensure it includes needed aspects. Your plan can’t address what it doesn’t include, so make sure it covers every aspect of marketing needs. Its marketing action plan should define initiatives, break each into tasks with deadlines and key performance indicators (KPIs), and assign each task to an employee. Each initiative becomes a line item in your budget, and so does each task.

Address Missing Items

Although every marketing plan needs to include accepted tactics and KPIs, you need to update this living document consistently. Your customers tell you what you need to provide – sometimes without stating it plainly. Consider their comments on your existing blogs and social media posts. Read and respond to reviews of your business on websites like the Better Business Bureau, Google My Business, and Bing.

What problems do your customers have that your products or services solve? Where do they communicate these problems to you? Alter your marketing plan if you post regularly to your Google My Business, but your customers flock to your Instagram.

Address this incongruity by ramping up your Instagram posts and mining the data your customers provide on your existing posts. Create new posts that offer solutions to the problems they mention in the comments. Your posts should present how your products or services solve their problems and provide that information where they consume it.

Develop Tactics that Get Customers Involved

Create how-to blogs to lead customers through the process of solving their problems. For example, according to Dyer, Garofalo, Mann & Schultz, about 300,000 car crashes occur yearly due to brake failure. An insurance company’s blog could get its customers involved in preventing these accidents by teaching them essential auto maintenance and underlying the importance of the manufacturer’s recommended maintenance. Empowering clients to help themselves turns your company into a thought leader and builds trust.

Recognize the Value of Proactive Problem-Solving

The pest control industry is an example of one that understands the value of proactivity. According to Statista, the 2023 market value of the U.S. pest control industry stands at $26.2 billion. Pest control experts tout regularly scheduled treatments to avoid bug problems or other pests. They also educate homeowners on how to clean and organize their yard and home, so pests avoid it.

Include proactive tactics in your marketing plan that result in lead generation, such as a newsletter, premium content for registering, or an app for Android and iPhone. As your business grows, you’ll reach potential customers in new ways and retain your current clients by offering added value items. When you look at your client’s problems the same way the pest control industry does pests, you add new marketing tactics to help them avoid the problem altogether, typically through regular use of your products or services.

Marketing Plan Review Schedule

How often should you review and update your marketing plan? Although an annual review works best, many businesses can manage with a review every three years. Consider which communication technologies or emerging social media platforms your customers use, then set up active accounts there, providing actionable, problem-solving information. Create content lists based on your customer comments, messages, and reviews to fulfill their needs through your company’s marketing plan implementation.

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Valerie M.

Contributor at Small Business Marketing Tools
Valerie M. is a writer from Upstate New York. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from The State University of New York at Fredonia in 2016 and is currently working at a digital marketing agency where she writes blog posts for a variety of small businesses all over the country. Valerie enjoys writing about music, animals, nature, and traveling.
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