While any of these things can and should inform the marketing plan, they're not the best foundation on which to build a plan. The best place to start planning is by looking at your organization's or business's overall goals for the year, and what marketing activities and resources are going to make it possible for you to achieve those goals.
Once you've identified those overall goals, it's time to plan how marketing can contribute to them. And the first step in that process is benchmarking.
Benchmarking is the act of taking note of how your current marketing and website efforts perform. It serves as a reference point to which you and your team can look back in the future and compare your performance.
By clearly identifying where you are now, you can more effectively begin setting goals for where you want to be.
To know where to go, you have to know where your brand is now. Before embarking on any kind of marketing activities, a clear understanding of the current reality, no matter what that reality is, is essential. You'll need data to understand the current state of your marketing. Key tools for collecting the data are:
The first question most people have during this time is, "what should I measure?" While key metrics are relative to the specific industry or business that you are in, here are some of the most common to start with:
Now that you have an idea of what benchmarking entails, what data to track down, and where to find it, here are a few action items you can move forward with.
Once you have your benchmarks in place, you'll be much closer to having an inbound marketing plan that will lead your organization to marketing success.