Are you going with your gut when planning your marketing activity or following a detailed plan?
A few years ago, when we only talked about ‘HR’ people and ‘People and Culture’ was a fledgling concept, the fabulous Anne Aitken spent the day with my old team. Through a range of hugely entertaining exercises, we soon understood more about what made each of us tick.
One particular task that stuck with me was designed to help us understand our attitudes to planning ahead, using the analogy of how organised we are for our holidays. We gathered in the courtyard and, through a series of questions and discussion, put ourselves in order.
At the front of the queue was the person who needed to have carefully researched lists, calendars and itineraries. She wasn’t going to go anywhere without detailed scenarios and back-up options, all carefully documented.
At the back was the person who would book last minute, throw a few things in a bag and see where life took him.
Back then, I was closer to the front than the back. OK, I’ll be honest, I was second from the front. With number one, I looked at the tail of the queue with a mixture of horror and admiration.
Nowadays, I’d definitely be further down the line. But why? Is it that I know I can benefit from what I’ve learned from experience? Or that I have a bit more confidence to be able to deal with whatever might knock my plan off course? Or that I care less about the worry of facing challenges – so long as we’re all safe and well, let’s just go with the flow. If I have the funds to get out of most situations, surely, so it’s all hunky-dory.
Recently, I’ve been comparing this analogy to that of marketing planning, and how attitudes and expectations vary across my range of people I’ve been working with.
For some, the fear of getting tripped up is driven by the need for high levels of accountability. Responsibility to shareholders or funders, mixed with reputational risk, sees many organisations have planning processes that sink into infinite levels of detail. This is all well and good, but some fail to acknowledge the need for flexibility because, as the Covid years have taught us, sometimes things just change.
Being able to write a robust comms and marketing plan is a valuable skill. Understanding and documenting all the parameters, making recommendations to achieve goals, setting budgets and timings for tactical activities – all that’s essential to the smooth running of any marcomms activity.
But sometimes I look at monster-sized plans and baulk at the thought of the work that would be needed to change the plan if any aspect needed to change, or if one idea didn’t quite work as expected.
If you run a small business, you probably have personal pressure and responsibility for making sure your marketing money is spent effectively, so a detailed plan feels like it will give you the reassurance of having looked at the options from every angle.
Planning ahead as far as you can gives you comfort that your marketing will maintain your presence in the minds of your potential customers, but maybe don’t carve it into a block of wood unless you’re prepared to do some sanding.
Having the knowledge and confidence to react to new opportunities or walk away from ones whose appeal has waned are vital components of successful marketing and communications. A simple over-arching plan for your business, with top-level goals and strategies, is best supported by a series of tactical plans, with plans for more focused initiatives that can be more bendy in their reaction to the prevailing winds.
Our holiday-planning example might see you booking six weeks in America and, with a few weeks to go before you get on the plane, firming up details of a couple of places you want to be on certain days. What happens in between? Well, those gaps get filled in closer to the time.
Social media marketing allows us to be like our colleague at the end of the line, and act immediately. But even our spontaneous traveller needed passport, visa, access to cash, just as on over-arching top level plan should be your organisation’s essential marketing guidebook.
Travel well.
