Here at Marmind, we know that robust marketing planning is key to achieving measurable success.
But while many businesses claim to have a marketing plan in place, the value and effectiveness of their plan is often questionable. Is it documented? Is it well-structured? Is it agile and adaptable to change?
Or is it simply a vague outline in someone’s head?
To help you take your marketing planning to the next level, we spoke with Corey Morris, President/CEO of digital marketing agency Voltage and creator of the Digital Marketing Success Plan™, to bring you some top tips for success.
Check out our full conversation with Corey on the Masters of Marketing podcast.
The Importance of a Robust Marketing Plan
Many businesses struggle with budgeting, scheduling, and misaligned expectations as a result of inadequate marketing planning.
It’s often the case that marketing teams fall prey to “shiny object syndrome”. New trends or leadership directives can easily derail a team’s ongoing efforts, leaving their marketing strategies disjointed and unfocused.
Other times, a strategy might actually be working quite well – only there’s no plan in place to effectively measure its impact.
Sometimes, it’s simply that only one person knows the plan.
The solution is clear: Having a solid, well-thought-out marketing plan keeps your strategy aligned with your business goals, enables continuous optimization, and ensures that new opportunities or challenges can be assessed within the context of existing goals.
Key Tips for Successful Marketing Planning
With over 20 years’ experience in marketing, Corey Morris has refined and perfected his approach to marketing planning. Read on for some of his top tips for a successful marketing plan.
Have a Written Marketing Plan
Corey also points out that many marketing teams shy away from integrating marketing strategies with broader business operations. It’s often the case that a company’s marketing efforts are disconnected from its bottom line; they may have a decent marketing budget, but fail to link their marketing KPIs to tangible business outcomes.
This sort of disconnect leads to confusion in decision making, resulting in inefficiencies, wasted resources, and missed opportunities.
Early in his career, Corey recounts that he himself avoided getting involved with “the business stuff or the politics or the systems,” preferring to focus solely on what he saw as his own remit – SEO.
Ultimately, though, he realized that understanding the business’s overall goals and aligning marketing efforts accordingly is crucial for success:
“We have a marketing budget and maybe we have a plan, but is the plan actually a tool and is it effective enough, or is it deep enough connected to what the business outcome and goal is? Not just marketing KPIs. Then a CEO, CFO, president, owner, or whatever has to try to connect the dots on marketing KPIs to business performance, and that’s not a good place to live if we have the ability to integrate systems and know full ROI.”
In short, it’s vital to ensure that your marketing plan is connected to your broader business outcomes, not just marketing KPIs. This will allow you to measure the real ROI of your marketing efforts – which, as Corey emphasizes, “We have the power to know! Why wouldn’t we get our hands dirty for a minute and get things connected, and get deep enough where we’re not guessing or dancing around. Is this working or not?”
Align Your Marketing with Your Business Goals
Corey also points out that many marketing teams shy away from integrating marketing strategies with broader business operations. It’s often the case that a company’s marketing efforts are disconnected from its bottom line; they may have a decent marketing budget, but fail to link their marketing KPIs to tangible business outcomes.
This sort of disconnect leads to confusion in decision making, resulting in inefficiencies, wasted resources, and missed opportunities.
Early in his career, Corey recounts that he himself avoided getting involved with “the business stuff or the politics or the systems,” preferring to focus solely on what he saw as his own remit – SEO.
Ultimately, though, he realized that understanding the business’s overall goals and aligning marketing efforts accordingly is crucial for success:
“We have a marketing budget and maybe we have a plan, but is the plan actually a tool and is it effective enough, or is it deep enough connected to what the business outcome and goal is? Not just marketing KPIs. Then a CEO, CFO, president, owner, or whatever has to try to connect the dots on marketing KPIs to business performance, and that’s not a good place to live if we have the ability to integrate systems and know full ROI.”
In short, it’s vital to ensure that your marketing plan is connected to your broader business outcomes, not just marketing KPIs. This will allow you to measure the real ROI of your marketing efforts – which, as Corey emphasizes, “We have the power to know! Why wouldn’t we get our hands dirty for a minute and get things connected, and get deep enough where we’re not guessing or dancing around. Is this working or not?”
Recognize Marketing as an Investment, Not an Expense
“It frustrates me when marketing is looked at as an expense, and it’s one of the first expenses that gets cut in any lean time or restructure or whatever,” Corey laments. “Because it should be – it’s an investment with the expectation of return on investment, right?”
If your organization views marketing as an expense, it’s time for a change of perspective. Marketing is one of a business’s most valuable investments. A well-executed marketing plan will drive measurable ROI, whether in the form of leads, sales, or brand awareness; it certainly shouldn’t be the first thing you think to cut during challenging times.
When you approach your marketing with this mindset, it becomes easier to demonstrate its impact, even when times are challenging. By linking your marketing efforts to clear business objectives, as mentioned previously, you’ll be able to see the true value of your business’s marketing investments and ensure buy-in from stakeholders.
Build in Adaptability
While Corey emphasizes the necessity of creating, documenting, and implementing a marketing plan, he also acknowledges that this process is rarely simple. His own journey with digital marketing agency Voltage involved a significant amount of trial and error, especially when it came to transitioning their services from a generalist approach to a more specialized offering.
Although necessary for the agency’s long-term growth, this transition was not without its challenges. For Corey, it illustrated an important aspect of marketing planning: the need for agility.
Your marketing plan should never be thought of as a static document. Flexibility is key, and a solid marketing plan must be agile enough to be adjusted as and when new challenges or priorities emerge. It should be capable not only of adapting to changing business goals, but also responding to changes in the marketplace, technology, and even team structure.
Having a marketing plan that is adaptable, while still adhering to a core strategy, can make a world of difference during periods of transition or uncertainty.
Final Thoughts
Corey Morris’s approach to marketing planning offers valuable insights for businesses looking to optimize their marketing efforts – highlighting the importance of adequate documentation, agility, and alignment with business goals when creating an effective marketing plan, as well as the ability to measure returns when implementing it.
Whatever the size of your business, following these principles will help you create clear marketing plans that are both strategic and adaptable. With a solid marketing plan, you can look forward to more successful marketing campaigns, ensuring your business’s long-term growth and profitability.
