The Ultimate 7-Step Method for Planning a Promotional Plan

I have heard many of my friends and colleagues talk about their state when writing proposals. They often open the PPT for a long time and still stay on the first page, writing down only a few words... I believe this phenomenon should be quite common in the workplace.

Why can some people write proposals in one go, while you spend a long time squeezing toothpaste and can't even write a few words?

Why is it that the proposals written by others are clear in structure, but yours is confusing and incomprehensible?

The reason is that there is no logical framework formed in the mind in advance. The framework of conception is the premise and foundation for writing a plan. The lack of a framework will not only lead to low efficiency and logical confusion, but also make you unable to grasp the core issue and go off topic.

Some people say that it is impossible to write a plan without inspiration. Is that true?

This is probably an excuse for lack of confidence in one's own abilities; Lao Pao firmly believes that writing proposals is a science. As long as you master the scientific methodology, you can achieve stable proposal output regardless of whether you have inspiration or not!

Lao Pao discussed with several senior planners and summarized their years of experience in writing marketing plans. They extracted a set of universal routines for the creative framework to help everyone master the meta-skills and thinking patterns for writing marketing plans.

Step 1: Understand needs and goals: Decide on the general direction

Any plan exists to "solve problems" or "produce effects", so the first step is to communicate with the party that proposes the demand many times to figure out the needs and goals of the plan (marketing plan needs usually include brand diagnosis and positioning? Market research? New product launch promotion? Sales promotion? Increase awareness? Competitive product analysis? Consumer insights? User operations? Advertising strategy and creativity? Media placement plan? Etc.)

Only by clarifying the needs and goals of the plan can we find the dimensions of the conceptual framework and ensure that the general direction is correct.

Step 2: Organize and collect information: familiarize yourself with the project

After having a general direction, in order to become familiar with the overall situation of the project, you need to organize and collect a lot of information. For example, when making a brand positioning plan, the information usually needed includes: an introduction to the brand and products, the overall market environment and trends, competitors' brands and products, competitors' advertisements, consumer attributes and behaviors, and consumer perception of the brand (which may not be readily available and may need to be obtained through research), etc.

Websites that collect reports include 199IT, iResearch, Penguin Think Tank, Analysys, etc.; websites that collect marketing cases include Shuying.com, AdChina, Meihua.com, Socialbeta, etc.; of course, Baidu, Zhihu, WeChat, etc. are also very good information collection platforms, but when searching for information on these platforms, searching for keywords is a very sophisticated art.

Although organizing and collecting information is a rather laborious and boring task, only by organizing the information well and digesting it thoroughly can you provide sufficient ammunition support for the subsequent output of ideas.

Step 3 Research and Investigation: Finding Clues

Some information is available for immediate use, such as brand and product introductions, market environment and trends, etc. However, most of the information must be further studied and analyzed in order to find valuable clues; or further investigation must be carried out to draw the conclusions we need; for example, when we get the advertising information of competitors, we have to study what its advertising strategy is? What are the advantages and disadvantages of advertising? For example, once you have obtained consumer information, you need to further use quantitative and qualitative methods such as questionnaires and focus groups based on known basic consumer attributes to gain insight into the real reasons behind consumer purchasing behavior.

Research and investigation work is extremely challenging for planners. Usually only experienced planners can quickly discover valuable clues. Of course, as long as junior planners ask more questions, learn more and think more, they will also gain a lot in this process.

Step 4: Extract the core topic: Establish the proposition

Generally speaking, the three preliminary tasks of "understanding needs, organizing information, researching and investigating" may take up half of our time, but we have not yet officially entered the stage of proposal writing. Why does it take so much time and effort up front? It is to accurately extract the core issues of the entire plan and strike a fatal blow! It is just like when a doctor examines a patient. He will first ask the patient to do some tests and ask about his physical symptoms. Only after a clear diagnosis can he prescribe the right medicine and give a reasonable treatment plan.

Charles Gidelin, a management consultant for General Motors in the United States, proposed a famous Gidelin's Law: If you state the problem clearly, you are halfway through solving it. This shows that in any work, identifying the core issue is a very critical part.

Step 5 Propose a solution: Solve the problem

Now that we have diagnosed the problem, what solutions are available to solve it? Usually, both the client company and the agency have some mature methodologies to solve marketing problems; for example, Ogilvy's "360 Brand Compass", Roland Berger's "PROFIL Consumer Value Model", Leo Burnett's "Humankind Brand Model", JWT's "Total Branding" are all authoritative methodologies in the marketing and advertising circles.

The more methodologies you master, and the more you integrate and use them in combination, the higher the quality of problem solving will be. This is why in martial arts novels, if a martial artist has learned a lot of kung fu, the standard for measuring whether he can truly become a martial arts master is not how many moves he has remembered, but how much he has forgotten, because the process of forgetting is the process of understanding and integration. Only when you understand and apply it flexibly can you truly master it. The same principle applies to work.

Through work and study over the years, I have accumulated some marketing models, thinking models and doing models; these models are stored in my mind, and when I encounter specific problems, I will call out the corresponding model to solve the problem. The accumulation of these models mainly relies on three methods: (1) learning some classic and easy-to-use models; (2) improving other people’s models based on your own understanding; and (3) thinking hard during actual operations and summarizing some models.

(Positioning model)

Step 6: Organizing and packaging: logical expression

The core problem was diagnosed and a solution was proposed. The next step is to consider how to make your views more easily accepted and understood? We need to sort out the logic of the overall plan and package the story line of the plan. This is also an indispensable step to make a plan sublime. It is not enough to figure it out by yourself. Only when your ideas are successfully understood by others can it be considered a high-quality plan.

Step 7: Finalize the framework: Record your ideas

Once the framework is sorted out, it cannot be kept in the mind only. As the saying goes, a good memory is not as good as a bad pen. There are usually three ways to record the framework. You can choose to use it according to your own habits:

1. Writing on paper was a popular method in the days before computers became popular. Today, many senior professionals still keep the habit of taking notes on paper.
2. The advantage of using PPT to record in pages is that once you have built the framework, you can enrich the content of each slide based on the framework. The disadvantage is that after the pages are divided, you cannot see the entire framework at a glance, and any omissions will be difficult to detect.
3. Using mind mapping tools is the method I recommend. Mind mapping can help you quickly sort out your thoughts, which is both convenient and efficient. Commonly used mind mapping tools include Xmind, Mindmanager, Baidu Mind Map, etc.

(Conceptual scheme framework summary)

A seemingly simple framework actually contains a lot of thoughts!

A universal routine for conceiving a marketing plan framework, every planner deserves it!

Author: Lao Pao

Source: Laopao