Data-driven marketing is becoming the de facto standard; with over 74% of marketers* expect to increase budgets on data marketing. This statistic pops few critical questions to me as a marketer: (a) If our marketing plans are data-driven? and (b) How to write one? A deeper read of analyst reports reveals the areas where data-driven marketing is currently in practice. Data is used to arrive at new product strategy, special offer creation & targeting, and to track customer support experience. Data usage to devise yearly marketing plans and budgets are yet to catch up. Augentia consultants reviewed many marketing plans and found they fall in one of the following two methods, 1) A rehash of past year’s plan & budgets by simply asking for a % increase or 2) As a thumb-rule, marketing budgets are taken as a % of overall revenue, and the marketing plans are accommodated within it. It is also referred to as Marketing Budget Ratio (MBR). Many analyst reports, such as the recent CMO survey 2016 budgets++, feeds to this thumb rule, by stating the average marketing spend %. Both these methods are not backed by marketing and sales data, or learning from past experiences. Instead, a data-driven marketing plan focuses on past year’s performance, market opportunities to tap, dropping non-performing campaigns of yester-years while adding new / improved ones, and demonstrate how 1$ marketing investments multiplies into x$ of revenue, with a ROMI** framework. As marketers or business people, if you think marketing plans to be data-driven, I encourage you to read this article. We will discuss 5 simple steps to write a data-driven marketing plan, and provide a template to write one.

2. “
If marketing is data-driven,
why your marketing plans and
budgets are thumb rule driven?
Businesses follow these thumb rules in marketing planning & budgeting
◎% increase over past year campaigns & programs
◎Industry norm to invest 9% of revenue on marketing
For a world of data-driven marketing, an outline of
5 steps to write a Data-driven Marketing Plan

3. Step 1.
Assemble Data
Internal Data
(Past year trends)
External Data
(Industry trends &
share)
Revenue growth Industry performance
Campaign performance
Category growthLaunch success/failures
Priority product
performance
Buyer persona /
segment wins
Social sentiment
analysis
Key competitor Win:
Lose Your market-share
Marketing metrics

4. “
Internal Audience
◎Align with their priorities
◎Get them to signoff the plan
◎Collaborate effectively
A lot has been written on
marketing story telling, for
external audience. Your
internal stakeholders are
critical audience too!
Step 2.
Tell your story Align

5. Step 3.
Make your
Choices
Campaign
Names
Year
2015
2015
ROI
Year
2016
Campaign 1 ✔ ___% ✖
Campaign 2 ✔ ___% ✖
Campaign 3 ✔ ___% ✔
Campaign 4 ✔ ___% ✔
Campaign 5 (new) ✔
Campaign 6 (new) ✔
Which campaigns to continue, the
products to focus on, the must-attend
events, the most lucrative buyer persona,
and the new channels to be present

6. 80%
71%
63%
Of businesses are
measuring leads
generated by
marketing
campaigns
Of businesses are measuring opportunities
generated by marketing campaigns
Of businesses are
measuring revenue
generated by
campaigns
Step 4.
What do we measure?

7. Step 5.
Pick a Template
A simple Google search+ shows
◎231,000 results for a ‘Marketing plan
template’.
◎Wherein searching for ‘data-driven
marketing plan template’ shows only 4 links
Hence, presenting a free template here for our
fellow marketers, and business people

8. “
Let us adopt data-driven marketing
plans to enable data-driven
marketing, and
Let go of thumb rules!