The Path to Start-up Success: How to Build an Effective Marketing Plan

Make It Stand Out.

When working with B2B start-up clients, our CEO and Founder, Amanda Rabideau, puts together a comprehensive marketing plan that sets our clients up for success. In a recent video, Amanda shares her proven week-by-week process that she applies to each marketing plan. 

Why is the marketing plan so crucial? It serves as the connective tissue between our clients current state and their desired future state whether that’s securing Series B funding or getting acquired. The marketing plan is the place to document goals, build a strategic roadmap and determine the budget you need to achieve said goals. 

You can dive into Amanda’s six week process by watching the video here: 

Here’s a quick weekly breakdown of Amanda’s formula to building an effective marketing plan for B2B Start-ups: 

Week 1: The Marketing Audit

It’s time to deep dive into all public facing assets. This step creates a benchmark or baseline to build upon from a content perspective. 

Week 2: Interviews

Internal stakeholder interviews and Voice of Client interviews are crucial. This provides an understanding of the value you offer clients, where your product may need improvement, the buying patterns of prospects, which competitors are at your heels.

Week 3: Additional Research & Synthesis

This week is all about gathering as much information about the client as possible from external stakeholders such as other consultants, analysts, or leaders in the space. This helps validate competitive intelligence by refining or building a competitive matrix.

Week 4: Review Draft with Client

Prior to sharing the plan with the CEO, Amanda presents the plan to her main point of contact. This review serves as part-dry run, part-time for feedback.

Week 5: Build the Budget

Amanda creates a comprehensive budget, per program and line item, to execute the plan end-to-end. This includes both the resource costs (such as the Collective or other vendors) and program costs (such as advertising).

Week 6: Final Deliverables

The final stage of the marketing plan is to the present to the CEO for final approval. This week is about validating, getting feedback, having an open dialogue, and determining next steps for executing against the plan.

If your start-up company is looking to hit aggressive growth targets in 2021, learn more about how Arch Collective can help you scale your marketing efforts for success here.