By the way, don’t confuse these plans with an overall marketing plan, which includes fun stuff like a situation analysis, marketing strategy, financials, etc. If you need to write a full-blown marketing plan, head here. For industry specific marketing plan samples, go straight here. If you’re a MarketingProfs Premium or Premium Plus member, we have developed a marketing plan SmartTool just for you.

During the past year and a half I’ve written a bunch of posts on how to write solid campaign plans that are measurable and can lead to ROI… Here’s a recap:

Writing a Plan: The Basic Elements

• A goal (One. If you find yourself writing “and” in your goal, you’ll probably need two plans)
• Objectives (as many as needed)
• Strategies (every objective gets its own strategies)
• Tactics (every strategy gets its own tactics)
• A way to measure (Hint: It’s partly in the way you write your objectives)

Mapping Out a Basic Campaign Plan

• Goal
• Objective 1.1
• Strategy 1.1
• Tactic 1.1
• Strategy 1.2
• Tactic 1.2
• Objective 2.1
• Strategy 2.1
• Tactic 2.1
• Strategy 2.2
• Tactic 2.2

Objective Writing: Four MUST-HAVE Simple Steps To Measurement

1. A specific desire communication or behavioral effect;
2. A designated market(s) or public(s) among whom the effect is to be achieved;
3. The expected level of attainment; and
4. The timeframe in which those attainments are to occur.

Examples:

• Objective 1: Generate 30% more website contact us leads from target Market X within 60 days.
• Objective 2: Grow the Facebook Fan page by 20% in 30-days solely targeting female teens ages 12-16.
• Objective 3: To reduce negative sentiment of Brand A within target Market X by 15% within six months.

The MAJOR item here is the market… You need to know that or your efforts will be in vain. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s great to say increase website leads by 30%, but what if they are the wrong leads? What if they are people who will never buy your product or service?

Another key to success with objectives and measurement is it to first benchmark your previous marketing efforts. If you know that your web traffic for 2009 has been typically X each month, and then you’ll have a sense that increasing it by 30% should be about Y.

Planning That Leads to ROI
If your CFO gives you or your department $10 million dollars, they are going to want to know how you spend it and what the return was…it’s their job. Just like if you give your money to an investor, you want to know what they made for you, right? The CFO is investing in marketing, so let’s help him/her out!

Remember the above tactics? That’s where your expenditures come in to play. Simply, tactics cost money. Even if you think social media is free (the tools that is), your time, your agencies’ time, etc. isn’t free.
Let’s take a look at a simple campaign:

• Goal: To increase sales in 60 days
• Objective 1: Generate 30% more website contact us leads from target Market X within 60 days.
• Strategy 1: Drive traffic to our website via online banner ads, direct mail, Facebook ads and sharing links on Twitter.
• Tactic 1a: Banner ads on XYZ Site
• Tactic 1b: Direct Mail to ABC List
• Tactic 1c: Facebook Ads
• Tactic 1d: Twitter

Calculating expenditures:

• Banner ads – $5,500 (2 months = $11,000)
• Direct Mail (agency time, printing, postage, employee time) – $50,000
• Facebook Ads – $2,500/month (2 months = $5,000)
• Employee’s Facebook Time – $40/hour ($50/hr * 10 hrs/wk * 8 weeks = $4,000)
• Twitter Tool – Free
• Employee’s Twitter Time – $40/hour ($50/hr * 10 hrs/wk * 8 weeks = $4,000)

TOTAL Costs: $74,000.00
Total Contact Us Leads: 100 (Cost: $740.00 per lead)
Total Sales: 10 totaling $100,000 (Assumption: Product is $10,000 per sale)
ROI: 35%

Simple ROI Calculation: Gain from Investment minus Cost of Investment divided by Cost of Investment (Note: always expressed as a percentage)

$100,000 minus $74,000 divided by $74,000 (35%)

Detailed Management ROI Calculation: Net Profit divided by Sales times Sales divided by Investment
(Note: Two different equations based on rate of profit on sales and rate of capital turnover. Hey, if you can’t trust a Marketing textbook, what can you trust?!)

BIG Assumptions:
First this is basic and simple … marketers know it gets way more complicated than this! Also, to be able to track sales based on this particular campaign, a CRM system is needed. It’s also a good idea to have a system in place to track that the specific tactics in this campaign lead to sales…one way to do that is to use codes, Adrefs, etc. And finally, there’s the issue of weighting which tactics (if any) actually lead to a particular sale, that’s the tricky part. We know as marketers there are a TON of variable that go into why someone decised to buy…this isn’t the post for determining that level of detail.

Planning is easy, right?! The point here? Just get started. Take small steps and learn along the way. It’s better than not having a plan at all. And more importantly, a plan that’s measurable gets you one step closed to proving marketing’s value.

What do you think? What would you add/change? How have you written plans or proved ROI?

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If you have time on your hands or want specifics, here’s a collection of all my posts, slides and/or seminar:

Want to Figure Out Your Social Media ROI? Consider a Plan. (November 24, 2008)
Why Writing Plans Can Be SMART (December 22, 2008)
Logistics of Integrating Twitter into your Existing Marketing & PR (June 15, 2009)
*Includes planning, objectives and ROI
Implementing & Measuring Public Relationships–You can do it! (May 15, 2009)
*Major kudos to Katie Paine here, she’s the go-to-source for this topic.
Outputs, Outtakes, Outcomes–Oh, my! (June 29, 2009)
*How to get over everything you feared about writing objectives.
Getting Buy-in with Social Media Measurement: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff (August 20, 2009)
*This is a MarketingProfs seminar that gets into the nitty gritty. (FREE for Premium Plus Members)
Social Media Planning & Measurement (August 21, 2009)
Ten Basic Steps To an Easy AND Effective Crisis Plan (August 27, 2009)
*Throwing this one in for good measure… ’cause you never know when a crisis might hit!