When it comes to planning, Luan Wise is somewhat of an anomaly - in that she actually enjoys it. “It’s my favourite part of marketing because it gives me time to think,” she says. “You often don’t get to do that on a day-to-day basis when you’re busy checking emails and hitting deadlines.”

Particularly with big projects, marketers are under immense pressure to get things off the ground. The board have all eyes on marketing’s activities and want the end result now. So it’s no surprise that many give a half-hearted attempt on their marketing plan so they can get on with scrambling to the finish line. Taking a tick-box approach, the exercise often results in either a colossal dose of oversights or a large amount of waffle. This is exactly why Luan believes you need to slow down and ensure you have a proper plan before lift off.

“Your plan has got to become your Bible, outlining what you’re going to do and what you’re working for,” she explains. “It is not something you create because you’ve been asked to, or something that’s going to sit in a drawer.”

To ensure your plan takes you down the right path you need cover two bases; firstly, the research aspect and secondly, the practical aspect of outlining your planned activities in a clear way.

The practicalities

What do you do when you’ve finished researching and finally put pen to paper? Don’t get bogged down in using impressive words to wow your stakeholders. Luan believes it's imperative to keep things simple and clear. Essentially it’s about going back to basics.

“Everything needs to be summarised at the beginning of the plan so it’s really clear and actionable,” she says.

Start your plan by outlining:

• Who will be involved in the campaign.
• What are people’s roles and responsibilities
• Your budget.

From here, you can break the campaign planning into clear subheads to concentrate your focus. There are a number of ways you can structure and organise your plan - which Luan will unveil in her course with B2B Marketing. It may seem simple, the kind of the stuff you covered at marketing school, but it’s the basics that are often overlooked and not done properly. Luan will help others go back to the roots of marketing to ensure fruitful future campaigns.

3 tips for writing marketing plans

1. Understand what success looks like. Outline the goals and objectives of your business and measure how well your marketing plan addresses these.

2. Audit the resources you have available. This will enable you to write a plan that’s both practical and achievable.

3. Nail the background information. Half of your plan should be concentrated on situation analysis. This means researching not just your business, but the wider industry and competitors.