Promotional (Advertising) Planning Tools

This section includes tools for analyzing your current promotional capabilities and activities; planning marketing campaigns and more...from concept to execution. Plus tools for enabling improved communications between on groups that are involved in developing and executing campaigns.  The tools are suitable for both B2B and B2C analysis and planning.

Promotional Capabilities Assessment Tool 

The purpose of the Promotional Assessment Tool is to determine your organization's overall readiness for successfully using integrated marketing campaigns across multiple media for promoting your products (services) to generate revenue and drive profits.

Marketing Campaign Planning Guide & Template 

Use this 20 page planning guide and template to create your marketing campaign, which may include one or more tactics or be a fully integrated marketing campaign. Each section includes instructions to guide you through the planning process and details each aspect of the campaign. This guide walks you through every step of campaign planning, development and execution. 

Communications Strategy Template

This template will help you prepare your overall communications strategy, objectives and tactical direction. It guides you through outlining and addressing the strategic issues involved in developing a marketing communications campaign.

Marketing Communications Plan Template

This template is used to layout your detailed communication plan, activities, and budgets for new customer acquisition, customer retention and reactivation of lost customers.  The first section of the plan addresses the communications plan framework: target audiences, key decision criteria; perception of company; needs; messages; and more.  The budget section covers the projected expenses for each marketing activity.  It includes a section for action plans that are required to implement your marketing communications strategies.  

Message Planning Template

This tool will help you plan your marketing communications activities and messages for each of the target markets that you are pursuing in this planning period and the opportunity ($'s) that exist for your organization in that target segment.  There are 6 worksheets that take you through each step of the planning process starting with determining who will be the target contacts and how deep within that target segment that you need to go from a messaging perspective to reach the end users, buyers and influencers, whether they are internal or external.

Advertising Effectiveness Tool 

The Advertising Effectiveness Tool is a checklist of all the factors that you must consider in developing your advertisements. There are 74 factors on which to evaluate your advertisement. This tool can be used to compare and rate different versions of the same advertisement or ad concepts for all media types and formats.

Creative Brief Template

Use this template to prepare the creative strategy, objectives, and activities that are required to support marketing communications activities.

Marketing Agency Evaluation Tool

Selecting the right advertising agency (aka a marketing agency or creative agency) is a crucial decision for every company. Based on years of experience on both the client and agency sides, here is a simple, straight-forward tool that can help lead to the best decision.

List Rental / Circulation Planning Tool

This list circulation planning tool helps you build a circulation plan with up to fifteen different direct response list, whether they are mailing lists or email lists.  

Campaign Response Tracking Tool

Use this tool to forecast and track and graph campaign responses over a selected time frame.  Use it to conduct "what-if" analysis based on different response flows and curves.

Sample Size Calculator

Use this tool to determine a sample size for testing the response to an upcoming B2B or B2C direct marketing campaign, or for a research survey in which you want to determine how many people to interview or send questionnaires (the minimum sample size).