Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan

This integrated planning brief (IPB), comprises of six sections which can
support and influence your strategy and integration to provide credible and
successful business solutions for your chosen brand or business.

This section will look at the business or brand, its competitors,

BUSINESS challenges and identifies the business opportunity.

Here you are required to do an in-depth analysis of the target

TARGET MARKET market, their demographics, hobbies, interests, motivations etc..

When looking at customer & competitor behaviours, you will

BEHAVIOUR focus on their actions, decision paths, drivers, barriers and tasks.

This section will summarise the business strategies that you will
STRATEGY use to engage with your customers and bring your brand to life.
life.
How does your target market consume media? What is their day
MEDIA CONSUMPTION in the life of media?

What is your proposition? How should you communicate to your

COMMUNICATION customers? How do you make your proposition believable?
 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

BUSINESS

This section aims to assist you in finding out information relating to your brand, business and target audience. These
factors then influence the product categories that your product or services sit within, which will influence the
questions you ask in your primary research and the types of business strategies that you will use.

Category Information

Business Objective: What is the key objective of the business. (For example, to be market leaders in sustainably
sourced fashion.

Type here:

Business Challenge: What are the key challenges that your business may have to overcome in the future? (For
example, COVID-19 – What are the effects of this for your brand/ business and how may you overcome this?)

Type here:

Marketing Objectives: State your brands quantifiable KPI’s (Brand image, Customer Perceptions, Usage of the product
or service, Market Penetration etc…) and the time period in which you want to reach this.

Type here:
 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

Competitors: Who are you brands competitors? Direct, Secondary and Indirect? (Refer back to the lecture slides in
Weeks 4 & 5 to remind you of the definitions)

Type here:

IN-DIRECT

SECONDARY

DIRECT
 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

Sources of Business: Who or what represents the sources of business? Present vs Future sources of business (are your
customer demographics intending to change or expand? How? Why? Are you bring more customers into your
category/ brand?

Type here:

Critical Industry and brand category information: What are your industry and brand dynamics, brand positioning and
performance within the category (For example, if your brand is a Vegan Beauty product or service, then what are the
current dynamics of this industry? Where does your brand sit in comparison to competitors in-regards to key
attributes in the vegan beauty industry? You could use a Positioning map referenced in Week 8’s Lecture to show this.
How does your brand perform in comparison to other players?

Type here:
 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

TARGET MARKET
This section is about understanding and visualising your target market for your product or service, through
identifying their demographics, lifestyle, attitudes, hobbies & interests and motivations. This stage of the IPB
activity, could pose useful when creating your customer profiles (primary and secondary) in your market research
section.

Demographics: Age, Sex, Geographical locations and Social Classes of your target market. (For example, If you are
launching a new Swimwear product range, your target market may be 18-30 year old Females based in the European
Premium- Luxury Market).

Type here:

Hobbies & Interests: Start to create a typical lifestyle for your customer demographic. This information can be gained
from sources like Mintel Academic, MarketLine, Global Data and other Consumer data and insights sources. Having
this information at an early stage will help you for your Market Analysis stage of your assignments.

Type here:

Brands: Start to think about other brands, products and services that your customer profiles (Primary and Secondary)
consume on a daily and weekly basis. Again, refer to consumer data and insights source such as MarketLine, Mintel
Academic and others and ensure this information is up to date (within 2 years) and from a credible source.

Type here:
 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

Visual Representation: To aid the development of your customer profiles, get visual and insert a series of pictures
that represent your primary and secondary target markets. Describe each picture with a short sentence.

Primary Target Market:

Secondary Target Market:

 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

BEHAVIOUR

This section will help you identify and prioritise key tasks (what you need to do to overcome certain barriers when
it comes to customer engagement). You will need to discover and plan out the decision path of your target market
and then map out the tasks around this, enabling you to identify and fill any gaps that may exist.

Barriers: Start to think about what is preventing your target market (customers) from choosing your product or
service. It would be useful to arrange this in order of importance to find out which barriers are high. This information
will help support a Porters 5 Forces Analysis. (For example, this could be competitors of your brand that are getting in
the way or it could be the sales or distributions network that may need to change to accommodate your brands
growth’?

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Drivers: Start to find out what driving forces exist that help the target market want to choose your brand over others.
This could be unique selling points (USP’s) of your brand that make it better than competitors, or it could be specific
Macro factors (PESTLE) that may influence the customer to purchase your product or service. Prioritise this in order of
importance.

Type here:
 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

Consumer Goal: Start to consider what you want your target market (primary and secondary customers) to think, feel
and do with your brand. (For example, if your product is luxury jewellery, what do you want your customers to think
about this piece of jewellery? How do you want them to feel when they are wearing it? In what scenario’s will it be
worn and what publicity do you want your piece of jewellery to have? What platforms of publicity? Instagram? Red-
Carpet?)

Type here:

Tasks: What would your brand need to do to ensure that they overcome the barriers and meet your over-all
objectives discussed above? (For example, will your brand need to partner or collaborate with other brands, designers
or supplier to reach this goal? What will your marketing & PR plan and sales & distribution plan need to include to
ensure the drivers and consumer goals are present?)

Type here:
 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

Decision Path: You will need to list the target audience’s decision path and indicate where specific tasks (explained
above) fit on this list. Your decision paths for your primary and secondary customers will be different as each
customer profile has different lifestyles and ways of living. By mapping out this decision path, it will showcase that you
not only understand your customers, but how and when your strategies need to applied for maximum impact. – This
will can support your marketing plan and sales and distribution plan for your assignments)

Primary Target Market:

Secondary Target Market:

 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

STRATEGY

This section will help you clearly describe and show your insight and identify and develop (if already in existence)
the idea you will use to bring your brands strategy to life. Write your strategy in a short paragraph, and capture the
meaning of the idea and the roles of each channel and discipline (marketing, sales, manufacturing, distribution etc)

Key Insights: A creative and in-depth understanding of the ‘WHY’ behind the ‘WHAT’ of your customers behaviours.
By understanding ‘WHY’ your customers do certain things, it will enable you to piece together your strategy to ensure
that it delivers the outcome you want. (Reference your consumer insight data to add credibility to this).

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Your idea/ Platform: In one or two sentences, try to describe what your idea is and what you aim to achieve from it.
(This will be you explaining your product or service, who it is selling to, and what impact you want it to make in the
wider industry)

Type here:
 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

Strategy: In one or two sentences, try to describe what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. (This will
be you explaining how you are going to get your customers to engage with your brand and to purchase your product
or service. This could be one or a number of different strategies.)

Type here:

Amplify: How will you amplify your product or service and the strategy that you are using to engage with your desired
target market? Here you will need to summarise ALL of the activities that you will be doing and ensuring that these
are linked together. This section will help you when creating your timeline (Gantt Chart or Timeline) for your major
project.

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 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

How did you challenge the Strategy: As you have developed your strategy, what did you do to challenge the brief or
the ideas? When you challenge an idea or strategy, you need to be looking at the positive and the negative impacts
(Pro’s & Cons) through a SWOT analysis of your idea/ strategy.

Strengths
Type here:

W eaknesses
Type here:

Opportunities
Type here:

TType
hreats
here:
 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

MEDIA CONSUMPTION

This section will help you in clarifying ALL of the touchpoints your customer encounters with your brand. It will be
asking what are the main channels of media consumer by your target consumer? What is the traditional day in the
life of your customer when it comes to engaging with media? (You can use statistics and consumer data sources to
add credibility to your propositions here. Try to find out how often your customer engages with your type of
media?)

Media Consumption types: What are the different types of media that your customers engage with? How often does
your customer type engage with this type of media? How impactful is that type of media in influencing them to
purchase your product or service?

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 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

COMMUNICATION
This section aims to find out how you are going to communicate and identify your unique proposition (product or
service and strategy) to ensure that your communication campaign gets the results that you want. Here you will be
thinking about: What do you want to show to your customers? What do you want to say? What information do we
need to communicate?

Your proposition: What is the most impactful/ impelling thing you can say to our target market to get the action that
you want? (Why should they buy your product or service?)

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Why should your customers believe in your brand? What facts back up your proposition? Here you will be explaining
the credentials of your product or service that make it unique and special to your customers. You can use elements of
your brands history, heritage, craftsmanship etc to enhance this.

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 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

Describe the customer journey. What are your customers doing before and what do we want them to be doing after
the engagement and communication with your brand? By mapping out the past, present and future actions/ journey
of your customers, it will enable you to predict their movements and interact with them authentically.

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Tone of Voice. How should your brand talk to your audience? Do they use any certain words or phrases? Do they
reference to a specific lifestyle? This is an opportunity for you to research and find examples of your brands previous
marketing campaigns, social media campaigns and any other form of communication.

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 Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

The essence of your brand. Here you need to be looking at the values that your brand holds. The brands mission and
vision statements. How does this communicate to your customers? What does it mean? How is this relevant to the
strategy that you will be using?

(For example, if you brand is heavily influenced by sustainability, then how is this visualised through the brands values,
mission and vision statements? Is this shown through marketing etc? If so, how and what is the impact?)

Type here:
Week 9: Integrated Planning Brief for your Business Plan.

Links that may help and assist you with this activity

Integrated Marketing Communication Plan:

https://www.managementstudyguide.com/creating-integrated-marketing-communication-plan.htm

What should an objective statement of a company describe?

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/should-objective-statement-company-describe-10048.html

How to define your target market?

https://www.inc.com/guides/2010/06/defining-your-target-market.html

10 Steps to learning your customers behaviours:

https://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/behavioral-insights-customers.html

How to understand your customers?

https://neilpatel.com/blog/understand-your-customers/

Building brand strategy: Essentials for long-term success:

https://marketingland.com/building-a-brand-strategy-essentials-for-long-term-success-240712

How does the target market media consumption affect the strategy?

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/target-market-media-consumption-affect-strategy-67596.html

The secret to better communication with your customers:

https://www.inc.com/the-muse/how-to-communicate-more-effectively-with-customers.html