How to Avoid the Eight Pitfalls of Marketing Campaign Planning

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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.

“

How to Avoid the Eight Pitfal ls of Marketing Campaign Planning

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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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