8 Steps to Create and Execute a Strategic 12-Week Marketing Plan

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8 Steps to Create and Execute a Strategic Marketing Plan

Step 1: Set your 12-week goal – is it to build visibility and build brand awareness? Generate more sales? Collect more leads? Your marketing activities, the content you share, and the call-to-action you promote depends on what you’re looking to achieve in the next 12 weeks. Identify the lead and lag indicators for this goal, such as an increase in sales, discovery calls booked, or email subscribers.

Step 2: Get clear on your ideal clients (see Episode 10 to find out the 10 things you absolutely need to know about your Ideal Client Avatar) and the messages that you need to share to build trust.

Step 3: Identify the top 3 or 4 topics that are pillars of your offer (for most of my clients these pillars are one of the following: nutrition, hydration, stress management, time management, physical activity, gut health, and self care.)

Step 4: For each one of these big topics, identify 3 subtopics that align with the pain points your ideal client is struggling with. You’ll focus on one subtopic per month (4 weeks)

Step 5: For each one of the subtopics, create 4 engaging pieces of content. Each piece of content should pertain to a relevant problem/solution that interests your ideal client in the format they want to consume it (blog post, vlog, podcast episode, etc). Plan to publish these pieces weekly.

BTW – The type of content you create is up to you! Will you create a step-by-step tutorial? Tell a story to build connection? Share a case study to show how you help people just like them? Will you provide an interactive tool such as a calculator or a quiz that will engage your readers?

Step 6: Send a weekly email to subscribers teasing the content you’ve published for the week and provide them with a link back to your site to get the whole story.

Step 7: From each piece of content, create 5 pieces of micro-content that connect to some aspect of the main piece that you’ll share throughout the week that the piece is published. Tease the main piece of content with the micro-content and share it on social media to pique the curiosity of your followers, directing them back to where the main content is published (ideally on your website!)

Step 8: Find out which platform your ideal client hangs out on most and be sure to engage with other users on that platform for 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after publishing your content daily.

Episode Transcript: Create and Execute a Strategic 12-Week Marketing Plan

Welcome, everyone. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the eight steps to create and execute a strategic 90-day marketing content plan.

So step number one, set your 12-week goal.

Now, if you’ve listened to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know that I am a huge fan of the 12-week year planning system, and I like to do my strategic marketing plan in a 12-week block as well. Think about your goal, and we’re going to only set one or two goals per 12 weeks.

Is your goal to build visibility? Is it to build brand awareness? Is it to generate more sales, collect more leads? Your marketing activities and the content you share and the calls to action that you promote depend on what you’re looking to achieve in the next 12 weeks. So identify the lead and lag indicators for this goal as you’re working through the 12 weeks, such as an increase in sales or email subscribers so that you know that you are on the right path to reaching your goal. Step number two is to get clear on your ideal client.

I’m going to drop a link for the episode where we talked about really getting to know your ideal client so that you know what messaging you need to share in your content and in your marketing to build trust with this ideal client. Now, step number three is to identify the top three or four topics that are the pillars of your offer. Now, for most of my clients, these pillars are one of the following.

It’s nutrition, hydration, stress management, time management, physical activity, gut health, and self-care. Step number four is for each one of these pillar topics, identify three sub-topics that are going to align with the pain points that your ideal client is struggling with. You’re going to focus on one sub-topic per month or four weeks of the 12 weeks.

Now, we’re going to take in step five for each one of these sub-topics, create four engaging pieces of content. Now, each piece of content should pertain to a relevant problem and solution that interests your ideal client in the format that they want to consume it. So it’s a blog post if they like reading or it’s a vlog.

If they’re on YouTube, it’s a podcast episode if they like audio and you’re going to plan to publish one of these pieces every week for the 12 weeks. By the way, the type of content that you create is totally up to you. It could be a step by step tutorial.

It could be telling stories, sharing case studies to show how you help people just like them. And it could also be an interactive tool such as like a calculator or a quiz that’s going to engage your readers.

Step number six, you’re going to send a weekly email to your subscribers teasing the content that you’re going to be publishing for the week and you’re going to provide them with a link back to your website to get the entire piece of content.

And step number seven, for each piece of content, create five pieces of micro content to share on social media. Now, each micro content piece is going to connect to some aspect of the main piece of content that’s on your website that you’re going to be sharing throughout the week that that piece is published. Tease that main piece in the micro content and put it on your social media platforms in the format that makes the most sense.

What you’re trying to do here is to pique the curiosity of your followers and directing them back to your website where the main piece of content is published. And step number eight is find out where your ideal client is hanging out most and be sure to do what I call the sandwich engagement strategy. I don’t know if I made that up.

Maybe I did. But the idea is that you use the platform and you’re social on it.

You’re liking, engaging, commenting on other people’s posts and comments for 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after you publish your daily content.

And what this does is it shows the platform that you’re using it to be social. You’re not just posting and running and using it for your business and not really showing up to use the platform, but you are actually engaging. I hope these steps were really helpful for you in overcoming the overwhelm and creating a strategic marketing plan for your business.