Build Your HIIT Marketing Action Plan

Raise your hand if you love change!

It’s hard to commit to long-term goals if they mean a big shift in routine, whether you’re working on a healthier lifestyle or building a coordinated revenue generation system.

Say you set some new priorities at the start of the year. Even if you push through the midwinter temptation to drift away from your goals, by springtime, it’s easy to coast. 

Time for a quick progress check. 

Does your plan bring in leads and revenue? How could you push those goals further and keep your sales team busy with qualified leads instead of cold calls to empty offices?

Keep your revenue generation healthy and borrow a page from the fitness playbook. Refresh that long-term growth strategy with some high-intensity interval training (HIIT) – a marketing action plan. 

From Strategy to Action

A marketing strategy helps you identify your revenue generation goals and formulate a high-level, comprehensive plan. It’s a long-term plan to differentiate from your competitors, align your sales and marketing efforts and set the direction for your tactics. 

A marketing action plan breaks down your core goals into the steps you need for day-to-day execution.

If you’re new to a strategic marketing approach, versus the hit-or-miss marketing that keeps many companies from meeting their revenue goals, more planning may sound like a grind. But think of this as a reward for your strategic efforts. You’ll get to see immediate results that lead directly to achieving your goals. 

Get to Work

Give yourself room to make a realistic plan by framing it around questions. You’re gearing up for a tough workout; know your motivation before you begin in each of these key areas: 

1. Short-Term Focus: What do you need to achieve this quarter? This month? Before your next big trade show? 
2. Detailed Roadmap: What are the necessary responsibilities and resources to meet your objectives by your deadline?
3. Tactical Approach: How will you meet your objectives for engagement and/or conversion? Advertising campaigns, content creation, social media management? All of the above?
4. Measurable Results: Are your objectives clear (and SMART)? How can you measure them, and what will success look like? How do these numbers align with your strategic key performance indicators (KPIs)? 
5. Fast Implementation: Working backward from that initial short-term deadline, identify what immediate steps need to be taken to execute your plan. 

Track Your Progress 

If you don’t already, get granular with your data management and analysis. With a short-term project, you have an opportunity to gain detailed information on who responds to your marketing and how. Make it easy on yourself: Automate the process as much as possible with marketing technology built to help you find, qualify, track and convert. 

What should you look for? While it depends on your target audience and tactics, some key KPIs might be: 

• Website visitors 
• Asset downloads
• Leads generated
• New customers generated

Look at results for this month versus last month and this year versus last year. Mark changes over the course of your planned timeline. 

If you’re not seeing the results you expected, think about getting an expert opinion to evaluate and refine your marketing action plan. Perhaps you have the right tactics but in the wrong order. We often see this with paid social campaigns – leading new prospects to conversion forms is not the way!

Just like with a trainer, make sure you choose a partner that can give you the tools to succeed and hold yourself accountable. 

Celebrate Your Milestones

During the pandemic, I managed my anxiety about the “unprecedented times” by downloading the Peloton app and exercising after my son went to sleep. When I completed my 100th yoga class, they sent me a “Century Club” t-shirt in the mail. 

Everyone at Square 2 will tell you I love a t-shirt*, but even I was surprised how it motivated me to keep going and turn this early win into an ongoing practice. 

If you hit your goals for your marketing action plan, don’t just start mapping out the next one. Meet with your team to take note of what went well and who’s responsible. It’s easy to focus on the math of effective marketing, but those numbers don’t make themselves.

*If you make t-shirts, please send me one!