A Strategic Marketing Plan to Successfully Deliver Your Professional Brand

Abstract

This exercise will help students understand how to develop a Strategic Marketing Plan: an essential skill, but one that many business, government, and organizational leaders are not equipped to develop strong and competitively superior strategic plans. Because it is complicated to develop a case with the information needed for students to practice developing a Strategic Marketing Plan, this exercise is designed to help students understand how to create a strategic plan in the context of their own brand creation. As such, this exercise not only provides students with practice creating a strategic plan, it has a side benefit of helping them achieve greater success during their internships and careers through more proactive thought and management of their professional brand. In general, this exercise should provide useful, practical insight regarding what it takes to create and demonstrate a superior brand at work, while generating depth of insight about the process of creating a strong strategic plan.This exercise is intended for more advanced students (e.g., undergraduate seniors or MBA, executive MBA, or executive education students) at any point during the business school curriculum. It is designed to follow either “Your Professional Brand: Creating a Brand Essence Statement for Your Internship” (UVA-M-0881) (designed for use by someone starting a dream internship) or “Your Professional Brand: Creating a Brand Essence Statement for Your Career” (UVA-M-0887) (designed for use by someone starting a dream full-time job), which help students understand how to create a superior Brand Essence Statement (BES). The assignment in this exercise also requires students to read and work with “Developing a Superior Brand Essence Statement” (UVA-M-0892) and “Developing a Superior Creative Brief Plan” (UVA-M-0890).

Excerpt

UVA-M-0894

Rev. Aug. 22, 2018

A Strategic Marketing Plan to Successfully Deliver Your Professional Brand

Companies only deliver on their brand promises half the time…(However) top companies deliver on their brand promise 75% of the time. These companies have greater levels of customer engagement, which enables them to surpass their competitors in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth.

—Ed O'Boyle and Amy Adkins

Most brands fail to deliver on the promises they make. For professional brands, very few people take the time to think through what they want their brand promise to be, let alone whether or not they can deliver on it. Yet those individuals who recognize the importance of creating a professional brand are steps beyond their peers. As Mark Suster indicates, “If you don't control your messaging—someone else will. That goes for both your business and your personal brand.”

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Keywords: marketing plans, strategy, branding, product management