Marketing Plans, Part 2: How to Create a Marketing Plan

Last week we shared the most essential components every marketing plan should have. This week in the second part of this series, we’re telling you exactly how to put your plan together.

Step 1: Do Your Research

Before any plan can come together, you need to understand where your firm’s marketing currently stands. What do you do well? Not so well? What opportunities are out there (or have been done in the past) that you can go after? Understanding what your competitors and other law firms are doing as well can help inform your future decisions. (Our?Legal Marketing Trends Report?can help with that!)

Additionally, you should also have a specific target market in mind. Create a?buyer persona?(or multiple if appropriate) and tailor your marketing to that person.

Step 2: Craft Your Goals

Make them SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely). If your firm has big-picture goals for the year, craft your marketing goals so that your marketing is working towards achieving them. The only difference is that your goals will be on a quarterly basis. Maybe you want to book a certain number of consultations or increase the firm’s TikTok following by 20%—either way, be intentional about your goals and then use them to build out the rest of your plan.

Step 3: Set the Budget

How much money do you have available to pursue your goals and other metrics? Remember—your marketing still needs to generate leads and referrals regardless of whatever other goals you set, so make sure you take that into consideration. Once you have your budget, you can begin doling out the money to each marketing channel based on need and how much you expect to spend.

Pro Tip:?Whenever possible, give yourself a couple hundred dollars as a “buffer” in each marketing channel (and make it a specific line item). This is like bonus money you can use in case something does better than expected and you want to do more; something costs more than you anticipated; or, as is usually the case, something comes up in the middle of a quarter that you want to pursue.

And there you go! You now have a functional marketing plan. Build this out in a spreadsheet and update it quarterly.

Need help executing some of those items in your marketing plan??Give us a call?and let’s see if we can work together.