BUSINESS
Is your marketing working? Part 1 How would you know? by Trip Jobe, CEO, Rand Inc.
If you haven’t developed scenario plans for marketing, don’t you think now’s the time? The Pandemic has challenged all of our businesses and the way we think. If you weren’t in the habit of having scenario plans for the operational side or financial side of your business, I’m sure you do now. But most marketing departments and leaders think about marketing plans as an annual exercise and need time to play out before they develop a new plan. Why is marketing any different than supply chain or operations? It shouldn’t be! Let’s assume for now, that the reason marketers don’t develop scenario plans is they don’t know where to start. In this article, I will share some tips at a high level to get you started.
Step 2: Alternative plans.
Step 1: Interim campaign goals.
Step 3: Activate adjustments.
You probably have annual goals for your campaign, which is super. But few businesses develop interim goals to reflect how and when they will get to a certain number of leads, opportunities, or deals. Start here, if not monthly then at least quarterly. The second part of this step is to then determine your guardrails for this chart, is it +/- 5%, 10%, 20%? Only you know the best percentage to discern if you are on or off track enough to initiate action. (Fig. 1)
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This step should be the easiest, but most companies don’t put together a list of alternatives until it’s too late and then they are in scramble mode. The reality is most of your original plans include marketing tactics that you chose not to execute. It may be due to budget or the audience focus, but you had other options. This is your starting point, always take your unused choices and begin your alternative plan list. The second part of this step is to then add some thoughts on who is the audience and at what stage of the funnel would these tactics impact your plan. (Fig. 2)
When do you pull the trigger on your adjustments? This is where the guardrails from the second part of Step 1 become critical. If we used a green, yellow, red matrix of our actuals to our forecasts, we can stay the course while in the green zone, begin to evaluate the need for adjustments while in the yellow, and act by the time we reach the red zone. One benefit is this also means staying on the positive side! I’ve been fortunate to work for CEOs who said they wanted to double down if something is working better than
