Developing an Effective Marketing Plan Using Discovery Sessions

Each year, ColinKurtis Advertising hosts discovery meetings with every client to develop a marketing strategy for the upcoming year. These meetings help us better understand our clients, their products, their brand, and their marketing and overall business goals so we can craft an effective, impactful marketing strategy.

Digging Deep

Participation and feedback are critical to an effective discovery session. We want all of our clients’ marketing team members involved so we can get the full picture of what they need from us as an agency.

Strategic marketing planning relies on having deep understandings of where your company has been, where they are now, and where the business strives to go next. This means the CK team asks hard-hitting questions about clients’ competitors, successes and areas for improvement. This is how we get a holistic view of our clients’ goals in order to craft the best possible marketing strategy.

Create a Questionnaire

To ensure meeting time is being used effectively, we typically prepare a pre-discovery session questionnaire for our clients to fill out ahead of the big meeting.

The pre-session questionnaire includes questions such as:

• Who is your main audience?
• Who are your competitors?
• What do their current sales look like?
• What do you hope to get out of your discovery session?

These questions are open ended, allowing for descriptive answers as long or as short as our clients would like to provide. This gives the CK team baseline information to use when preparing for the discovery session so we can tailor every meeting to each client’s specific needs.

Design an Agenda

Once we have the questionnaire submissions, our team is ready to design our client’s discovery session agenda.

We typically spend one to two days on a marketing plan discovery session. This time allows for all attendees to be able to focus, ask questions, speak their mind and elaborate on any and all marketing topics they want to discuss.

For an effective marketing session, we are sure to include the following segments in our agendas:

1. Develop business and marketing goals and objectives as well as develop deep understanding of product features and benefits
2. Review existing brand materials, such as guidelines or pillars
3. Identify key target audiences and audience personas, and prioritize them
4. Conduct a thorough competitive review
5. Develop/adjust short- and long-term goals, key messaging, branding and positioning statements

We’ve found this is the best format to gather the information we need to develop an effective, in-depth marketing plan. Deliverables our clients walk away with include:

• Key insights recap
• Questions and additional information required identified

Running an Effective Marketing Discovery Session

Now it’s showtime—the big meeting. The CK team knows how to have constructive conversations and communicate effectively, and we pride ourselves on taking a specialized approach to each client, so they can have the best possible experience. We are true partners that make our clients feel safe to provide open and honest feedback that helps us develop a marketing plan that results in measurable success for our clients’ marketing teams and overall companies.

The final marketing plan includes:

• Executive Summary
• Situation Overview
• Goals (Corporate & Marketing)
• Marketing Strategy
• Communication Strategy
• Key Messaging
• Tactical Execution Recommendation/Plan
• Budget Options
• Timelines for Tactical Execution

Have additional questions about our discovery session process, or are curious about what crafting a marketing plan with ColinKurtis entails? Contact Mitch Robinson at Mitch@colinkurtis.com or call 815-965-6657 EXT. 1 to learn how we can engage your team in a successful discovery session and execution towards an effective marketing plan.

Blog post from:

Matt Hensler
Chief Marketing Officer