As we pass a milestone, such as the end of January, do you feel you are on track or are you already frustrated by a lack of progress and a form of marketing planning paralysis?
Creating overly ambitious plans can be just as unproductive as doing no planning at all.
The answer is to keep your plans simple, focussed and agile.
Defining marketing planning
Sometimes the reason for plans getting stuck is confusion around ‘strategy’ and ‘planning’.
Clearly there are subtleties in the relationship between ‘strategy’ and ‘planning’ , as a recent *LinkedIn post by Harvard Business Review demonstrates. However to keep things simple
Strategy is fundamentally documenting ‘why?’ you are delivering your service or product. It encompasses your vision and values (which remain fundamentally the same) and your long-term goals. For an excellent place to start working out how to articulate your ‘why?’ check out **Simon Sinek.
Your planning should answer ‘how?’ ‘when?’ and ‘where?’ – starting with top level campaigns and then drilling down into detailed tactics.
One of the underlying reasons for paralysis is jumping into tactics before working out strategy. Why? Because elements of a plan will be wrong almost before the ink (or carriage return!) is dry.
Plans, not only should but, must be agile, because in the real world there is constant change, and you need to adapt intelligently to that change. However if you’ve not anchored your business in a well-thought-out strategy, you will be at the whim of that change rather than in control. Enough of the vessel analogy.
Checklist to help you recognise the signs
These are all signs that you are heading towards, or symptoms of, marketing planning paralysis:
- Trying to do everything at the same time.
- Wasting resource on what you suspect are the wrong activities.
- No agreement about what ‘not to do’ or to do later.
- Lack of clarity about marketing goals.
- Poor target market focus.
- Inconsistent branding or messaging.
- No written marketing plan.
- Only referring to the plan once a year, or never.
- Spending too long creating the plan without it leading to action.
- Only the senior team know the strategy or plan.
- Aimless marketing and sales meetings.
- No regular sales and marketing meetings.
- Drowning in complicated spreadsheets and project flows .
- Spending on technology/marketing platforms you don’t understand or suspect aren’t being used properly.
- Tracking meaningless metrics.
- Not tracking any metrics.
- Not sure what to do when a project goes off-plan.
- A general lack of marketing skills, resource or understanding.
- Lack of a central marketing function.
How to solve marketing planning paralysis
Step One
Often leaders feel their marketing is ‘stuck’ before they diagnose the reason. The first step to avoiding marketing planning paralysis is recognising something is wrong. To do this, you need to pause. Acknowledge what you have achieved and that you are now ready to move into a ne phase of business growth.
Step Two
More often than not, the reason your marketing has become stuck is because there are gaps in the strategic foundations. Revisit your strategy and your vision. Next put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. View everything through their lens, rather than your need. How does that change your marketing approach?
Step Three
Document activities both at a top-level (at a glance for the senior team ) and in more detail (for marketing implementers). Make sure you work with your customer-facing teams for their insight, challenge and adoption. Are all activities SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timebound)?
I like to start by creating a director-level ‘dashboard’ tab and a rolling 90-day activity schedule tab in good old-fashioned Excel. If we need further tools to control projects, it varies by agency and by client.
Step Four
Assign clear responsibilities and book regular check-in and review meetings.
Along with you, encourage your team be prepared, think ahead and have contingency plans.
If plans appear to be or are going awry, give permission to pause, review and decide whether you need to adjust the plan. Even the best-laid plans will need to change if, for example, a delay in the delivery of that all-important component is likely to affect the launch of a new product.
You have more control than you realise.
My ‘why?’ is to shine a light on value-driven leaders and their purpose-led organisations who deserve to be heard and seen.
My plan is to help them get there easier and quicker than doing it by themselves. If you’d like to avoid or solve marketing planning paralysis, my door is open. Calendly su@priddeymarketing.co.uk