Author’s Note: The Marketing Plan is the Fifth Pillar of the Five Pillars for Success in Marketing. Prior articles have dealt with the other Four Pillars: Positioning, Branding, Differentiation and Strategy.

Your Family Business Marketing Plan puts it all together. It brings into a common program the Five Pillars for Success in Marketing and provides you with a comprehensive way to move your Family Business marketing efforts forward successfully. There are five phases to address in the development and implementation of the Fifth Pillar of Marketing, your Family Business Marketing Plan:

I. Develop your Family Business Marketing Plan
II. Build your Family Business Marketing Infrastructure
III. Implement your Family Business Marketing Plan
IV. Monitor your Family Business Marketing Plan
V. Evaluate and modify your Family Business Marketing Plan.

I. Develop Your Family Business Marketing Plan

While in some organizations the Marketing Plan is really ignored, particularly where 1) at this time, marketing planning is not a major value in the culture; and 2) the responsibility for marketing is currently not a full time responsibility of any senior officer (other than perhaps the principal owner); and 3) the marketing functions are not considered separate from the sales function.

As part of the development process, the Family Business Marketing Plan needs to reflect the goals, objectives and strategies of your company. In addition, in order to assure success, the Family Business Marketing Plan must be built with considered input from within the organization. The opportunities for input from family members and selected employees will not only provide a reality basis for the plan, but it will offer the opportunity for “buy in” on the part of the family and employees. The “buy in” is critical to establish a proprietary interest on the part of the input providers and crucial for the plan to succeed.

Your Family Business Marketing Plan should identify what is being sold, each product or service, their features, benefits and utility to the customer. Identify the potential profitability of and interrelationship of each to the other.

And your Family Business Marketing Plan should identify your target market for each. In addition, the plan should profile competition and the competition’s relative strength and weaknesses, along with your own. You seek to match your strength with their weakness. Then determine what you want to sell and to whom.

Here are the programs and tasks you can consider to accomplish your marketing objectives, which represent somewhat nontraditional yet potentially meaningful activities.

During the first year:

1. Prepare a worksheet of marketing outcomes. Just list what marketing outcomes you would be satisfied to achieve for the year.
2. Decide on your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Everyone should come to know it and freely communicate it to customers, prospects and the community. For example, “We do it right the first time … always!” can be learned and said by everyone. Or, one of my favorites, “The answer is yes, what is your question?” It says something about who you are and what you believe.
3. Review your website to make sure that it is dynamic, interactive and supports your marketing outcomes. Make sure that it has the capability for customers and prospects to contact you. Adopt a social media strategy for your family business.
4. Identify a small core of “good” customers who can serve as the founders of a customer council. Meet with the council at least three times each year to discuss the good, the bad and the nearly awful. Stay in touch. They can become a relatively no-cost sales force.
5. Plan to visibly support at least one not-for-profit organization. Have your people become active with it, too. Consider groups such as Junior Achievement, teen shelters or a Ronald McDonald House.
6. Generate periodic status reports on the progress of your plan. Post them in your offices so everyone can know what is happening.
7. Establish relationships with your local Chambers of Commerce and Rotary.

During the second year:

1. Continue the first-year programs.
2. Sponsor your own community event. Tie into the local newspaper or Business Journal.
3. Motivate your business council to become a network of referrers. Offer incentives and recognition.
4. Establish a community award in your company’s name such as Public School Teacher of the Year or Most Accomplished Challenged Student.
5. Establish an e-newsletter for customers and prospects.

Once your master plan is established, specific product/service plans can then be developed and implemented for each of the product, service and functional areas in your company. These plans will include both strategies and tactics for use in PR, advertising, promotions and on the Internet. And each of these sub-plans must work in harmony with the company Master Marketing Plan. Take advantage of your family business heritage. Include “A Family Owned Business” on your correspondence, invoices and advertising.

While the Family Business Marketing Plan is being developed, pursue marketing programs and activities to meet the current needs of the organization. In effect, you will be operating on parallel tracks from Day 1. One track will be the ongoing activities, and the second track will be the Family Business Marketing Plan development process that will ultimately coordinate and guide the marketing activities of your company.

II. Build Your Family Business Marketing Infrastructure

In order for the approach presented in Item I to work well, a marketing infrastructure and mentality must be nurtured, installed and affirmed from the top, down through the entire organization. The chief marketing officer must be designated, titled, identified and positioned as a member of the executive leadership team of the organization. The chief marketing officer needs to report at the highest levels of the organization in order to clearly communicate to the entire organization that professional marketing is the order of the day and is an important component of your culture.

In addition to the chief marketing officer, appropriate marketing support mechanisms must be put in place. Establish a marketing database to track customers, their purchases, services needs and satisfaction (evidenced by repeat business). Develop a customer profitability Index to learn which customers and products/services are the most profitable.

Each member of your family business should be expected, encouraged and rewarded for working in support of the marketing plan. Give them specific marketing tasks to perform, i.e. calling a customer to say thank you for the business. This design can also serve to cross-train employees to prepare for promotions, vacancies and emergencies. In example, one person may be assigned to a particular applications product, another may be assigned to systems design and another may be assigned learn new marketing software.

Develop a family business marketing matrix so that all responsibilities can be visually communicated, monitored and understood. Social media and Internet marketing should be the responsibility of the chief marketing officer.

As your marketing effort moves into the implementation phase of the plan, modest increases in staffing may be required.

Utilize the Family Business Planning Model (emulating the Procter & Gamble model) with a minimum number of pages, containing: 1) goals/objectives, 2) product/service, 3) target markets, 4) competitive issues, 5) strategies, 6) tactics (including MarCom message), 7) budget, 8) people, 9) timelines, and 10) monitoring and evaluation.

In addition to in-house or “hire a marketing department” capability that is prepared and equipped to handle your marketing needs instantly, there will be suppliers available to assist with specified projects and assignments. Suppliers with capabilities in public relations, advertising and marketing communications need to be identified and available on an as needed basis to support the in-house marketing group. Over time, bringing these capabilities in-house can be considered, but initially they are acquired more efficiently and effectively from outside suppliers.

Leadership by example, employee intranet newsletters, employee orientation, education and recognition programs are just some of the ways that can be employed to install a marketing culture. The premise is that marketing is everyone’s job.

III. Implement Your Marketing Plan

Operating a two-track marketing program, you will implement the plan while meeting the ongoing needs of the organization. This will be accomplished by integrating the implementation of the Family Business Marketing Plan with your ongoing program.

In order to accomplish this two-track approach both the plan and the ongoing marketing activity should be designed in a modular fashion. Each module will have a specific objective, timeline and resource budget. When the Family Business Marketing Plan is built and approved, the plan modules can begin to be substituted for the ongoing program. The ongoing marketing program will contain elements that can be retained and carried into the Family Business Marketing Plan. That will permit you to retain the activities which are successful.

IV. Monitor Your Marketing Plan

By building the plan and sector plans in programmatic modules using the Family Business Planning Model, it will be a relatively simple matter to monitor the plan and each sector plan against expected outcomes, timelines and budgets. Using marketing project management software that may already exist within your software library, you will be able to track and report on the Family Business Marketing Plan and sector plans in a timely manner.

This will allow adjustments to be made, if necessary, on an as-needed basis rather than having to wait until the end of a longer period of time. This will also enable the progress of the plan and sector plans to be reviewed virtually in real time.

This monitoring mechanism provides management with an efficient and effective way to make certain that the Family Business Marketing Plan and sector plans are yielding the results anticipated within the constraints of the resources allocated. Monitoring in this fashion allows the marketing staff to “manage themselves,” as well. They will have their assigned responsibilities as part of the Family Business Marketing Plan and sector plans. The project management software will generate the information necessary for each to your progress and other members of Management will have the same information available simultaneously.

V. Evaluate and Modify Your Marketing Plan

“If we don’t know where we are and we don’t know where we’re going,
then any road will get us there, but we won’t know when or whether we have arrived.”

I have shared this philosophy with my clients, classes and colleagues for a very long time, and I believe it remains true today. Your Family Business Marketing Plan will provide a road map to success that can be understood by your management and other involved personnel. Then it can be implemented and evaluated by all using agreed upon measures of effectiveness.

It will encourage a desirable marketing culture and an effective investment of resources in the marketing function. It will allow your company to speak with effective, focused messages to the customers, prospects, employees and communities that you serve.