Post on 07-Jun-2020
transcript
How to Avoid the Eight Pitfalls of Marketing Campaign Planning
wrike.com
How to Avoid the Eight Pitfal ls of Marketing Campaign Planning
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The Contents1. You’re planning in silos 4
2. Your plan is too optimistic 5
3. You didn’t plan for approval delays 6
4. You didn’t plan for vacations and holidays 7
5. You’re too detailed 8
6. You’re not detailed enough 9
7. You assume everyone is onboard with your top-down approach 10
8. You’re assigning a deliverable to different people at the same time 11
The Art of Marketing Campaign Planning
Planning a marketing campaign is a complex, time-intensive process that involves coordinating multiple individuals and teams in a tightly scripted effort. In addition, today’s typical marketing campaign is likely to involve more than a dozen essential tactics including an array of digital components. With so many different factors to manage and ever increasing time pressures, it’s easy to overlook some basic marketing essentials. In planning your next campaign, here are eight pitfalls that you should carefully avoid:
How to Avoid the Eight Pitfal ls of Marketing Campaign Planning
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Problem:The silo mentality is the silent killer of great projects and cross-
functional campaigns. When each group in marketing lives in its
own silo, making its own plans, uncoordinated and unaligned
with other teams, confusion reigns. The silo mentality provides
little or no visibility into dependencies with other campaigns
and projects. It invariably leads to delays, missed deadlines,
overwork, and poor morale.
Solution:One of the signs of a corporate silo mentality is planning by
spreadsheet. Each group and team has its own spreadsheet
unconnected and not shared with other teams. The solution?
Dump the spreadsheet. You need to consolidate all projects
in one place to let every team see dependencies and where
resources overlap.
1. You’re planning in silos
How to Avoid the Eight Pitfal ls of Marketing Campaign Planning
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Problem:Optimism is good. In fact, more than 80% of us experience “optimism
bias.” It’s a cognitive illusion that causes us to overestimate our
likelihood of experiencing good outcomes. But anything in excess
can lead to problems. You set overly optimistic goals and timelines.
You underestimate risks and fail to make contingency plans. You
forget that if something can go wrong it will go wrong, damaging your
credibility, making your team look bad, and wasting time and money.
Solution:Be thoughtful and realistic. Ask yourself what could go wrong
at every step in your plan. Build in extra time for delays
and problems, especially where multiple stakeholders have to agree
or approve something. If a key member of the team catches
the flu, do you have a substitute ready to step in? When you have
your plan roughed out, be sure to bounce your ideas off of your
colleagues. Don’t be afraid of having your ideas and assumptions
analyzed, criticized, or knocked down. After all, the objective is to put
together the best possible plan -- and not protect egos.
2. Your plan is too optimistic
How to Avoid the Eight Pitfal ls of Marketing Campaign Planning
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Problem:You have multiple stakeholders who need to approve the budget,
media, creative, legal, and so on. The more decision makers involved,
the more unpredictable the outcome. What if a critical approval
is delayed because the decision maker is away on a business trip
or a vacation? Did you plan for such events and have a substitute
ready to fill in?
Solution:It‘s often not possible to see where approval delays may occur.
That’s where a RACI matrix can help. In this matrix, you define who
does what in the campaign. “R” people are responsible for specific
tasks. “A” people delegate the work and are accountable for getting
it done. “C” people are subject matter experts who provide valuable
information and insights. “I” people are those you just need to keep
informed. A RACI matrix will quickly show if there are too many
people involved in approving something, causing potential delays.
In such a case, it’s likely that many of them just need to be informed
and can be switched from the “A” to “I” category.
3. You didn’t plan for approval delays
Identify appropriate social media and targets
Create charter
Develop test plan
Collect requirements
Submit change request
C R A, I
R A C, I
R A I
I C R A
C C R, A
Task Graphic designer
Marketing developer
Marketing strategist
Social media
developer
How to Avoid the Eight Pitfal ls of Marketing Campaign Planning
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Problem:It’s easy to forget that people on your team will be on vacation when
you need them the most. If your team is global, are you accounting
for holidays in their countries? People also take personal days
and are sometimes out for a week with the flu.
Solution:With any project, especially those with long timelines,
vacation plans can disrupt schedules. The solution is extending
campaign estimates or reallocating resources. Wrike makes
this management task easy. You simply enter all planned
vacation days and holidays and Wrike automatically extends all
related tasks.
4. You didn’t plan for vacations and holidaysEnter all planned vacation days
Spot possible scheduling conflicts
How to Avoid the Eight Pitfal ls of Marketing Campaign Planning
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Problem:Yes, you want to cover all your bases. So you get down
into the weeds and craft a detailed plan that has way too many
dependencies, forcing you to make too many adjustments
in the process. If you’re using the Waterfall methodology,
remember that it doesn’t easily accommodate changes.
Getting too detailed also means that you may be creating tasks
that waste time, energy, and focus. Is a task in line with the project’s
key objectives? Can you explain to your team the real purpose
and value of a task to the project?
Solution:If your project is a “big bang” campaign, the Waterfall approach
may be best for planning MVP, critical path, and major milestones
in detail. While the project is in process and unexpected
opportunities arise, you can plan, refine, and execute smaller
tasks as the big plan unfolds.
On the other hand, an Agile Methodology may work better for you.
Agile is opportunistic. Instead of executing a predetermined
5. You’re too detailedplan, with Agile you execute rapid iterations, gather and analyze
data on the fly and test new ideas quickly to take advantage
of changing market conditions.
Agile brings every stakeholder in the process together -- business,
creative, design, and sales -- right from the start. Instead of the linear
Waterfall process, Agile keeps everyone involved and informed
throughout the entire process. Changes are made on the fly based
on informed input with the ultimate objective of getting to market
faster with a more effective campaign. With Agile, continual
collaboration and communication are vitally important.
Read ebook
7 Steps to Developing an Agile Marketing Team
FREE EBOOK
How to Avoid the Eight Pitfal ls of Marketing Campaign Planning
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Problem:On the other end of the spectrum, being too loose can get you
into trouble as well. If you provide too much room for flexibility,
your team may have trouble staying in sync. The result can be
chaos. Nowhere is this state of affairs more disastrous than when
working with multiple teams around the world and with cross-
functional campaigns.
Executing marketing plans across different geographies almost
always requires the collaboration of multiple teams with different
skill sets. These cross-functional teams all bring different
perspectives to the effort – and all need to contribute. That’s why
it’s vitally important to provide a single platform where teams
can communicate, share data, check schedules, and access
the information they need when they need it.
Solution:To enable rapid upfront planning and execution, consider
upgrading to a software platform designed just for planning
marketing campaigns. By enabling fast communication,
coordination, and collaboration, you make sure everyone stays
organized, involved, accountable and up to date on project
details, responsibilities and timelines so nothing falls through
the cracks.
6. You’re not detailed enough
Keeping track of every detail and every task to ensure all elements are in place on launch day was a challenge; Wrike enables us to do it
more accurately, thereby decreasing our costs.
― Meredith Selden, Director of Process Integration,
TGI Fridays.
“
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Problem:One of the greatest challenges is getting everyone aligned
on objectives, strategy, tactics, and results. The gap between
strategy and execution is one of the most difficult to bridge. Before
beginning every project you need the commitment of all players
right from the start. But how?
Solution:One proven approach is to plan from both “top down” and “bottom
up”. Start by presenting a big-picture, high-level plan that identifies
the major milestones to all key stakeholders. Invite input and expect
changes. Once everyone agrees to the plan, ask the group
to develop a detailed bottom-up plan. As details are ironed out,
high-level objectives become more achievable and realistic to all.
Make sure that the plan and all details and timelines are available
to all in a shared online space to assure that everyone
shares the same reality. As work moves forward, refer back
to the plan frequently and adjust things as needed.
7. You assume everyone is onboard with your top-down approach
Learn how Stitch Fix increased transparency across
the board and reached 90% on-time delivery of creative
and marketing projects.
Read case study
How to Avoid the Eight Pitfal ls of Marketing Campaign Planning
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Problem:No matter what size the project, responsibilities need to be clearly
defined. Assigning multiple individuals to the same task is a big
no-no and a sure recipe for disaster. If there are several people
responsible for a task, then no one is really responsible.
Solution:Of course, there will be collective sharing of responsibilities in any
campaign. For instance the creative team will be collectively
responsible for developing concepts, design, copy, and so on. So
one person will be responsible for design, another for photos,
another visuals for videos, and yet another for coordination. The
objective is to clearly assign specific tasks to specific individuals
Bottom line: Make sure you assign responsibility for every task
and action item to a specific person.
8. You’re assigning a deliverable to different people at the same time
Break large tasks into actionable items. They should be small enough to be assigned to one person.
Wrike. Sidestep pitfalls and streamline your marketing planning.
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their overall work visibility
has improved.
Today, more than 15,000 innovative companies worldwide use
Wrike to turbocharge their marketing plans, including Airbnb,
Hootsuite, Stitch Fix, Sotheby’s Real Estate, MTD Products, TGI
Friday’s and more.
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