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A Strategic Marketing Plan to Successfully Deliver Your Professional Brand

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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.

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—Ed O’Boyle and Amy Adkins1

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.”2
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In “Your Professional Brand: Creating a Brand Essence Statement for Your Internship/Career” (UVA-M-
0881/UVA-M-0887),3 you created a Brand Essence Statement (BES) that reflected what you want your brand
to be at work; however, this is just a blueprint and doesn’t actually determine what your brand will be. Your
actions, behaviors, characteristics, and decisions will determine how others ultimately perceive you (i.e., brand
image). And this is why many brands fail to deliver on their promises. Creating a BES, while difficult and
important, does not guarantee that you will achieve it. Only your actions and behaviors will determine whether
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your BES actually becomes your brand image.

The value of the BES, the first step in building a superior brand, is that it provides a vision of what you
want your brand to be. The second step is creating a strategic plan that, if acted upon, will help ensure that your
behavior is aligned with your BES. In this exercise, you will create a strategic marketing plan to identify the
objectives, strategies, measures, and tactics you will focus on over the next year to ensure that you effectively
deliver against your BES.
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1 Ed O’Boyle and Amy Adkins, “Companies Only Deliver on Their Brand Promises Half the Time,” Gallup, May 4, 2015,

http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/182981/companies-deliver-brand-promises-half-time.aspx (accessed Jul. 27, 2015).

2 Mark Suster, “Your Personal Brand Matters,” Inc., July 24, 2013, http://www.inc.com/mark-suster/your-personal-brand-matters.html (accessed Jul.

26, 2015).
3 Kimberly A. Whitler and Marian Chapman Moore, “Your Professional Brand: Creating a Brand Essence Statement for Your Internship,” UVA-

M-0881 (Charlottesville, VA: Darden Business Publishing, 2015); Kimberly A. Whitler and Marian Chapman Moore, “Your Professional Brand:
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Creating a Brand Essence Statement for Your Career,” UVA-M-0887 (Charlottesville, VA: Darden Business Publishing, 2015).

This exercise was prepared by Kimberly A. Whitler, Assistant Professor of Business Administration. The author would like to thank Marian Chapman
Moore, Professor Emeritus of Business Administration at the Darden School of Business, and Chris Puto, President of Spring Hill College.
Copyright  2015 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville, VA. All rights reserved. To order copies, send an email to
sales@dardenbusinesspublishing.com. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by
any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the Darden School Foundation. Our goal is to publish materials of the
highest quality, so please submit any errata to editorial@dardenbusinesspublishing.com.

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The Situation

Recall from the “Your Professional Brand” exercises4 that you have landed a dream opportunity, whether
an internship or a full-time job. You realize that all new employees in your area will be reviewed. Managers will
review their employees’ accomplishments in both a formal written report and in a verbal presentation to the

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leadership team. The managers and the leadership team will then compare and contrast the employees and rate
each employee’s overall performance and fit within the organization. You know that lower-rated employees
may be asked to leave. You also know that higher-rated employees not only get higher raises, but they likely
end up assigned to more prestigious businesses and projects. This helps set those employees up for success
over the length of their time at the company.

You have decided that you want to earn one of the top ratings by the end of the first year. In the “Your
Professional Brand” exercises, you created a BES that defined the brand image that you hope to achieve. Now

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that you have defined the BES, what is it that you have to do to ensure that it is delivered? The next step is to
convert your BES into a strategic plan that will guide your actions and behaviors over the next year. This
exercise will walk you through the steps to make this happen.

Assignment

1. Read “Developing a Superior Brand Essence Statement” (UVA-M-0892) and “Developing a Superior
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Creative Brief Plan” (UVA-M-0890).5
2. For this exercise, focus on the company you will be working with (if you haven’t yet decided where
you will be working, identify any target company/industry you’d like to work with). Assume that you
are in the position described above (i.e., you are anticipating your new job and the launch of your
career). Remember that you are defining a plan to achieve your BES. Use that statement as the beacon
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against which you are creating a roadmap. Also remember that the BES and strategic marketing plan
have to fit with who you are. As you consider different strategies, tactics, and measures, make sure that
with focused effort you have the possibility of achieving success.
3. Next, you will begin developing a strategic plan to activate your BES. Following the steps in
“Developing a Superior Strategic Marketing Plan,” begin by thinking about the vision you have for
your professional brand. Thinking beyond 12 months, what do you envision having achieved? You
want the vision to be aspirational yet attainable. Make sure that your vision statement focuses on a
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future point in time (e.g., three or more years in the future), frames your brand relative to the
marketplace, and identifies the general category of target companies. For example: “Sally will be a top-
rated (e.g., one-rated) brand manager at a leading consumer packaged goods company.” By articulating
that Sally will be a brand manager, she is automatically thinking four or more years in the future. Keep
the vision statement short. If you haven’t had much experience developing vision statements and/or
strategic plans and this step is challenging, move through the other steps (short-term plans) and then
come back to the vision statement. Ideally, you would start by anchoring on the future state first and
designing toward it, but this may be difficult if you haven’t had any experience developing strategic
plans.
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4 See either “Your Professional Brand: Creating a Brand Essence Statement for Your Career,” UVA-M-0887 (Charlottesville, VA: Darden Business

Publishing, 2015), or “Your Professional Brand: Creating a Brand Essence Statement for Your Internship,” UVA-M-0881 (Charlottesville, VA: Darden
Business Publishing, 2015).
5 Kimberly A. Whitler, “Developing a Superior Brand Essence Statement,” UVA-M-0892 (Charlottesville, VA: Darden Business Publishing, 2015);

Kimberly A. Whitler, “Developing a Superior Strategic Marketing Plan,” UVA-M-0890 (Charlottesville, VA: Darden Business Publishing, 2015).

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4. Once the vision is defined, determine what the objectives are for the next 12 months. Look at the
rational benefit you created in the “Your Professional Brand” exercises. The rational benefit is what
you plan to offer the company. The objective you create in this step must align with the benefit you
intend to offer. An objective is typically expressed numerically (e.g., “increase revenue by 5% versus a
year ago”). In the case of a professional brand, however, it may not be easy to determine a numerical

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objective if you are not measured, reviewed, or ranked. Most full-time employees, however, will have
a formal review, be assigned a rating or ranking, or have some other method of measuring performance.
You will want to talk to somebody at the company you will be working with to understand how you
are measured at the end of the first year. What are the metrics? What are the characteristics evaluated?
Who will be evaluating your performance (e.g., boss, peers, external partners, etc.)? Based on this
insight, create an objective(s) that will adequately capture whether or not you have been successful at
developing the brand you wish to become.

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As an example (see Figure 1), if the rational benefit from a professor’s BES is “to be one of the
students’ preferred marketing professors who inspires interest and excitement in marketing,
broadening and deepening student understanding of the field and its value and criticality in driving
overall enterprise results,” then an objective that could align with this would be “to be a top-rated
(e.g., top 10%) faculty member.” If you are unable to use a number, identify as close of a proxy as
possible (e.g., to be considered a highly valued faculty member).

Figure 1. Sample Brand Essence Statement.

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Source: All tables and figures created by author.

5. Once the objectives are defined, review the rational benefit and the reasons to believe from your BES.
You want to identify the three to five strategies that you will focus your efforts on over the next year
that will enable you to effectively deliver your rational benefit and reasons to believe and therefore,
help you achieve your objective. This is arguably the most important part of the process. People rarely

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have too few strategies they are working against. Instead, the bigger problem is that leaders fail to
identify the most important strategies against which focused effort will yield the greatest results.
Determining which to prioritize is difficult, requiring practice and skill. There is no algorithm that can
create a strategic plan for you. To help you practice distinguishing tactics from strategies and to make
this step simpler, here is an approach to help you identify the three to five best strategies:

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 Review the rational benefit and proof points from the “Your Professional Brand” exercises. You
are essentially determining the three to five strategies that will ensure that you will achieve these
two elements of your brand essence statement.
 List all possible tactics that you could employ to achieve the objective. For example, using the BES
from Figure 1, you could create the following list of potential tactics that would help you
demonstrate the four proof points (Table 1):

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Creates a risk-free
learning experience,
requiring deeper
thinking and data-based
support, rewarding
progress over perfection
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Reinforce (over quarter)
that engagement is more
important than perfection
Double- and triple-click on
student answers
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Table 1. Potential tactics.
Increases relevance
of classroom
experience by
connecting with
leading practitioners
and sharing insight
Write Forbes articles
that address some key
student challenges
Write Forbes articles
that provide insight
Creates content and Brings a student-
experiences that centered approach
emphasize conceptual, going beyond the
strategic, and classroom to help
communication skills students achieve long-
(primary) and analytical term goals and career
skills (secondary) success
Augment case teaching Ask questions to
with a few workshops to understand students’ job
challenge students in a interests
different way
Challenge students to Get to know students
better articulate answers individually, including

into C-level issues to strengthen their career interests

Challenge students to use
data to support their
answers
Reward the right behavior
in class on the spot so that
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Bring successful C-
level experienced
leaders into the
classroom
As appropriate, share
real-world examples
communication
Provide students with
opportunities to exhibit
conceptual/strategic skills
Develop content that
goes beyond other classes
Stay engaged in as many
student-based activities
as possible
Help students, when
possible, achieve their

all students know what it
looks like
Recognize students out of
class (e.g., by email) when
progress occurs
with students out of
class
Regularly share real-
world examples with
students in class
(primarily analytical) to
round out the learning
experience
Provide students with
new content and
experiences not available
elsewhere
career goals (e.g., mock
interview, provide
insight, coach)
Focus on recognizing
individual growth (rather
than classroom growth)

 In reality, you could have had more potential groups of tactics than just the four that support your
proof points. For example, there could be a set of tactics that emphasizes conceptual thinking skills
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(from the third column above), a set that focuses on strategic thinking skills, and so on.
 Next, name each of your potential strategic areas in Table 2 to be able to create a “shorthand”
understanding of what each area contributes to the overall objective (and rational benefit on your
BES):

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Risk-Free Experience
Creates a risk-free learning
experience, requiring
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Table 2. Potential strategic areas.
Holistic Student
Content Relevance Content Augmentation Centricity
Increases relevance of Creates content and Brings a student-centered
classroom experience experiences that approach, going beyond

deeper thinking and data-
based support, rewarding
progress over perfection
by connecting with
leading practitioners
and sharing insight
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emphasize conceptual,
strategic, and
communication skills
(primary) and analytical
skills (secondary)
the classroom to be
interested in students’
learning team success (as
well as classroom
success)

 This next step is critical. You will choose which of the areas, identified as possible strategies, you
will not pursue. Of the potential strategies listed, which are the three, in combination, that will yield

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the best results? In the example above, you could argue that the first three are the most important
strategies to deliver a superior learning experience (risk-free experience, content relevance, and
content augmentation). But you could argue that these are the most closely related to one another,
all focusing on the in-class experience. Instead, you might want to create the most inclusive set of
strategies; to do so, you decide to drop one of the most similar strategies (content relevance and
content augmentation) to be able to include the holistic student-centricity strategy, which is more
unique than the others. How do you determine which one, in this example, to exclude? Here are
some questions that you can consider:
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i. Which combination, if excellently executed, will most likely ensure you achieve your rational
benefit (from the brand essence statement) and your objective (from the strategic marketing
plan)?
ii. Do you believe you can deliver all three strategies (and drafted tactics) with excellence? Or do
you believe that one of the strategies will be more challenging for you to excellently execute?
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iii. Are all strategies additive (rather than substitutive) to each other? Ideally, you would choose
three strategies that are distinct, rather than similar, to one another. In the example above, two
strategies are more similar to one another as they both have to do with content. This could be
one way you can streamline your strategies: eliminate redundant or very similar strategies.
iv. Lastly, which combination of strategies is most unique relative to competitors and meaningful
to the target? If I asked my “target audience” (i.e., students) which three of the strategies are
most meaningful to them, which three might they pick? If I looked at my “competitors” (in
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reality, faculty don’t consider other faculty competitors, but for purposes of this exercise, we
will continue with the analogy), which combination of strategies is more distinctive and
unique?
 At this point, you have identified your three strategies, and you can write them out so that they are
complete. Note that practicing over and over again what you won’t do is a critical competency of
great leaders. Also note that in this exercise, we are choosing to identify only three strategies; in
reality, a reasonable number of strategies is between three and five.
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6. Next, you will identify the three to five tactics that you will focus on under each strategy. What this
means is that you ultimately will end up with a plan of three strategies and three to five tactics for each
strategy. The more focused you are, the easier it is to execute. Follow the same steps you used to
identify the strategies to determine which brainstormed tactics you will include and which you will
eliminate from your final strategic plan.

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7. Now identify how you will measure each of the strategies. For example, how might a professor measure
progress against the “Content Relevance” strategy? How would professors know when they have
succeeded? With actual brands, there are several measurement systems, but it is a little more difficult
for a professional brand. One way professors could measure this is through consistent inclusion of
relevant examples that are widely recognized. Another way could be via an informal student survey

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halfway in the course and at the end of the course: “Students rate professor at a mean level of 4.5 or
higher at interim and final review on ‘brings relevance to classroom content.’” For your professional
brand, there are several ways to measure progress. You can measure your progress via a three-, six-,
and nine-month self-assessment to evaluate your own progress. Another possible way to measure
progress is to seek feedback from your boss at regular intervals, making sure that you are getting
feedback on performance against your specific strategies and tactics. Another way to measure progress
could be to ask peers to provide informal feedback. Again, after brainstorming a number of different
ways to measure each strategy, pick the key measure(s) that you believe are best at determining whether

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you have achieved success on each strategy.
8. At this point, you have developed all the parts of a strategic plan. Use one of the templates provided
in the tech note “Developing a Superior Strategic Marketing Plan” or one that you create to complete
the strategic plan. The basic VOSMT template (See “Developing a Superior Creative Brief” for more
insight on each part of the VOSMT tool) is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. VOSMT tool.

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Vision:

Objective Strategies Measures Tactics

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Conclusion
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A BES written on paper is simply a possibility or a promise. It isn’t realized until the brand actions
consistently deliver on the strategy, creating the value represented in the BES. Therefore, a critical part of this
exercise was to identify the action steps that you plan to take to ensure that by the time you have your first
formal review, you have effectively delivered on your promise. Developing a superior strategic plan is half the

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battle of delivering superior results. Excellently executing it every single day is the other half (and arguably the
much more difficult part).

Developing a superior strategic plan that enables you to effectively deliver on a BES is an iterative process
requiring time, feedback, and deep thinking and assessment. A great marketing plan isn’t developed in one day

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but rather requires a lot of data about the consumer, competitors, marketplace, trends, and the focal company
that provide important insight regarding which strategies and tactics are better to pursue. This exercise was
designed to help you: (1) understand how to develop a strategic plan (in the context of developing your own
professional brand), and (2) increase your ability to proactively and effectively manage your own brand
throughout your career. As such, this process can be used to help you achieve personal goals (e.g., financial
goals), professional goals, and ultimately, when applied in the context of your job, business goals.

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