Doing business in today’s world is full of surprises. Dynamic, ever-changing technology, fluctuations in global market prices, and unstable supply chains have kept things interesting, to put it mildly.
And yet, even as we know that things rarely stay the same from one week (or even day!) to the next, marketing agencies continue to cling to the tradition of creating fixed, inflexible plans once a year. Every detail is considered, and every penny is accounted for.
In today’s world, though, annual planning may be obsolete. At WS, we’re striving to better plan, execute, measure, and optimize marketing for our client partners. Our outcome-based marketing approach demands that our plans are flexible and responsive to the needs and goals of the businesses we serve.
Waiting months for tactic performance feedback is no longer the case. Modern tools allow us to access data within hours, if not in real time. There’s no reason to wait until Q4 to decide whether a plan succeeded. In fact, waiting may lead to wasted budgets and lost opportunities.
An inflexible marketing plan likely won’t show that a trend exists, let alone capitalize on opportunities to showcase market apprehension. And while not every trend wave deserves effort investment, it should definitely translate into a decision-making milestone.
What works on January 1 may disappear completely on August 12, sometimes with limited warning. If your plan isn’t agile, entire sections of your marketing plan may fail to deliver the desired outcomes. Therefore, leaving room for flexibility is crucial.
Only 29% of strategists agree their organizations adapt fast enough to trends and disruption. (Gartner)
And to be clear, we aren’t advocating for not planning at all. However, annual plans should be living, flexible documents. To implement this approach, consider establishing a system for marketing plan evaluation. For example:
Regardless of how often you review the performance, always align the tactic to the outcome. Impressive metrics are only impressive if they help you achieve the goals.
One way to re-envision long-term planning is to make it even longer. While annual planning techniques and short-term evaluations focus on right here and right now, multi-annual plans embody the company’s vision and the means of achieving it.
Based on our experience, the three key consideration aspects of multi-annual planning are budget, innovation, and collaboration.
Multi-year plans allow for allocating resources more evenly and effectively. For example, large projects will benefit from the financial support of several budgeting years.
Research and development take time, as does bringing new products to market. Multi-year plans cover these extended processes from launch to execution, often eliminating risks and surprises along the way.
One overlooked benefit of annual planning is communicating the strategy with the entire organization. The same logic applies to multi-annual plans as they help keep everyone on the same page and mitigate uncertainties.
“No matter where the pressure to change your strategy comes from, think not only about whether you can align the changes with a long-term vision, but also how you can do it in a way that accelerates your company’s pursuit of that vision,” – Ron Ashkenas for Harvard Business Review.
WS’s outcome-based marketing approach hinges on a key understanding that marketing must ladder up to your business goals and do that in a measurable way. Well-crafted plans not only help to achieve outlined milestones but also discover new ones along the way.
Our recipe for fulfilling your vision includes a deep understanding of the end goal, data-driven decisions, and active collaboration between the in-house team and your team.
This article was originally published in March 2022.
Want to learn about how agility and optimization can help you reach your business goals? Let’s talk.
