How to Draft Marketing Plans Using Online Collaborative Tools?

Documents outlining all the detailed strategies that businesses are going to adapt to reach its target market and sales (revenue) goals are termed as marketing plans. Marketing plans can be of multiple types. It can be a product or brand marketing plan, a content marketing plan, a digital marketing plan, etc. 

Drafting a marketing plan was not such a smooth process a few years back. It involves a lot of experts, time, effort, and expense. But now the advanced collaborative tools available online have made the process much easier. These tools enable you to access and discuss the plan, share ideas, and communicate with the teams remotely. In this blog post, we are going to describe how you can draft marketing plans using collaborative tools. 

Steps for Drafting a Marketing Plan Using Collaborative Tools

Collaborative tools are those that enable you to work with different people on the same project in real time regardless of physical presence. They provide benefits like developing plans, file sharing, conferencing, and project management, to enhance productivity. 

Below we are going to discuss the steps that can be adopted to draft a marketing plan using online collaborative tools. 

1. Set Clear Objectives

A good marketing plan starts by setting up clear objectives. You should also begin with setting up objectives. While setting up, try to involve all your team members. Get input from every expert member of your team so you can incorporate the right ideas into your plan. 

To make this process smooth and accurate you can get assistance from collaborative tools like Trello and Asana. They can help in setting up objectives while you are drafting a marketing plan.

 

You can use Trello to create boards making it easy to divide the marketing objective step wise. Plus, the calendar views in Asana will make it easy for you to track your progress. 

You can make your marketing objectives accessible to your team using these tools. This will enable them to view the timeline, like what task is yet to be achieved and when. 

2. Research and Gather Data

Doing research on the competition and target audience is always considered a wise approach while drafting a marketing plan. Try to gather marketing data of your competition and audience analytics. Have a detailed discussion with your team on it. For this, you can use tools like Google Docs, JPG to Word Converter, and Notion to centralize all the information.

Google Docs will enable you and your team to edit documents and have discussions on the plan in real time. Team members can add comments and provide suggestions on the points in discussion. While a JPG to Word Converter by Imagetotext.info will enable to organize and share images like graphs effectively to have collaborative discussion on it.

For example, if you have different images for your marketing plan, it will be difficult to share each separately and have a discussion on it. Converting those images to a Word file in an organized manner will eliminate this difficulty.

Moreover, you can use Notion to create research databases. It is a great collaborative tool to organize and share the research findings among team members. 

3. Build Your Calendar

Building a calendar can keep every team member updated on the work status from drafting a plan to its execution. You can use collaborative calendars like Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar to schedule and plan activities. 

For example, you can set meeting reminders and create events and task deadlines on Google Calendar. Plus, you can synchronize it with other applications and share access with others to keep them updated.

On the other hand, Microsoft Outlook will make collaboration easy with both internal and external stakeholders. Outlook will help you schedule appointments and keep a record of meeting check-ins of the team members. You can integrate email and other Microsoft applications into Outlook, enabling smooth communication during meetings. 

4. Assign Roles and Responsibilities

While drafting a marketing plan assigning roles to the teams is a critical task. One wrong decision can affect productivity and disrupt accountability. First, you need to identify the roles as per objectives. After that consider assigning them to the right person having the relevant skill. 

To keep things clear and manageable you can use tools like Slack, and Basecamp. 

You can create team groups or channels on Slack by their role. This will help you in effective communication among teams with different tasks. You can ask about the work progress of the relevant persons and team members can share any hurdles or tasks achieved. This will keep you updated role-wise without any confusion. 

On the other hand, Basecamp can help you distribute responsibilities among the team effectively. For example, you can create a To-do list along with deadlines to meet. This will provide a clear overview to both you and team members about which task to complete first. 

5. Review, Edit, and Approve

After drafting the plan, I spent time reviewing it. Edit the mistakes and have a final discussion with your team before approval. Collaborative tools like Adobe Acrobat can help you in this process.

You can use Adobe Acrobat to review the marketing plan you drafted. It will present you with all the elements such as graphs, charts, images, stats, and text documents in one place. You can highlight the things that you think require further discussion or need to be changed. Plus, you can also add annotations and notes directly into the document. 

You can share the file with the team members and other stakeholders for the final discussion. After amendments, you can simply add it to the approval table. 

Tips for Choosing the Right Collaborative Tool

Above we have seen how you can draft a plan with the help of online collaboration tools. But how to find which tool best suits you? For this, we have highlighted some tips below. They can assist you in choosing the right collaborative tool for your marketing plan. 

1. Understand Your Team Needs

Before choosing tools it’s better to have a discussion with your team. Ask them about what type of assistance they need from tools and what collaborative features they want. Understand their specific requirements to smoothen the workflow. 

2. Security Features

Data security is of utmost importance in today's modern world. Before opting for a tool, find out about what security measures it is offering. Will your data be safe on that tool? Aren’t there any chances of a data breach? Once you are clear on all these points then move forward to incorporate them into your marketing plan.  

3. Ease of Use

Choose a tool with a good user experience so that you and your team members can navigate easily. Complex interfaces can create hurdles in collaboration. Moreover, you should also explore tool integration capabilities before incorporating them into your plan to reduce the chance of any disruption in the future. 

4. Pricing

Every marketing plan has a limited budget. So do not rush to purchase subscriptions of tools. Spend time on finding different options. Your priority should be to find a free one. If a tool has a very high pricing structure try searching for alternatives. 

FAQs

Below we have listed some of the questions commonly asked by people while drafting a marketing plan for their business.

1. Why Should I use collaborative tools while drafting a marketing plan? 

Collaborative tools can streamline the drafting process for you. They can help you organize the data, share files among teams, assign tasks, track progress, and schedule meetings with stakeholders, regardless of the physical presence. 

2. What are the best online collaborative tools for drafting a marketing plan?

There are many online collaborative tools that can help you in drafting a marketing plan. Choosing the right one depends on personal needs and the type of the business. Some good options are Google Docs (for editing and sharing documents), Asana (for project management), and Slack (for distributing roles).

3. How can teams effectively collaborate on marketing plans remotely?

By incorporating advanced collaborative tools like Microsoft Teams, Trello, Outlook, etc., teams can collaborate on marketing plans in real time effectively. 

4. What are some common challenges when using collaborative tools for marketing plans?

Some common challenges that most people face while using collaborative tools are version updating, complex interfaces, integration with other tools, and security problems. 

5. Are online collaborative tools secure for sensitive marketing data?

It depends on what collaborative tools you are using. If it’s new in the market there might be a risk. But most of them are reliable and secure to use. Some among them also offer end-to-end encryption to keep your sensitive data safe and secure. 

Bottom Line

Incorporating collaborative tools while drafting a marketing plan for your business can enhance your work efficiency. These tools will make it easy for you to manage, organize, and distribute tasks. Moreover, they enable you to communicate with team members with ease. Plus, you can have discussions on the plan with stakeholders in real-time. We hope that this blog post has guided you well on how to draft marketing plans using collaborative tools.