The Blueprint for Marketing Planning

Connecting intent to impact

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Every year marketers grapple with the same problem.

It’s not the budget.

It’s not AI. 

It’s not ROI.

It’s planning. Strategic planning, scenario planning, campaign planning, media planning . . . all of it is a problem. Year after year, planning season barrels through marketing organizations, knocking marketers off their feet.

With surprise budget cuts and the black hole of ad spend, marketing budgets are the obvious thorn in marketers’ sides. But a budget is not a plan. When CMOs can’t prove their impact on the bottom line, marketing organizations fall under fire for failing to deliver on the plan. As the old saying goes, “failing to plan, is planning to fail.”

Marketing leaders and their teams need a clear path forward. A better way to create, execute, and optimize campaign plans so that everyone from the CEO to the marketing automation specialist has a clear understanding of how the marketing plan impacts corporate strategy and revenue.

This blueprint to marketing planning guides enterprise marketing teams through the annual planning and budgeting process with a focus on keeping the marketing strategy aligned to corporate goals. However, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all marketing plan. It’s a framework that provides guidance to help marketers manage issues that were never taught in school or don’t get covered on a 20-minute podcast: How many campaigns are needed to meet quarterly targets? Does your marketing budget reflect your plans and goals? And so on . . .

This seven step planning process touches every level of the marketing organization and shows who needs to be doing what to help marketing teams eliminate that dreaded sprint to the finish line that happens every planning season.

Chapters

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Align to business goals
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Set marketing’s goals & campaign architecture
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Define marketing campaigns​
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Plan your campaigns
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Finalize marketing budget
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Execute campaigns
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Measure campaign ROI & optimize

Keep reading for more best practices and insights about marketing planning.

Chapter 1

Align to business goals

Supporting business goals with marketing goals

There’s no marketing strategy without business goals. At least, not a good one.

The building blocks of an effective marketing plan are essentially the same across industries and verticals. The best marketing plans are anchored to the top three to five annual business goals. With those in hand, the real planning can begin.

For some companies, this might be three months before you’re expected to have campaigns in the market, or it could be as long as three years. For example, HubSpot’s marketing team starts strategic planning six months in advance, whereas at Unilever planning begins one year in advance. The timeline really depends on the size of your organization and your industry.

Oftentimes the financial plans and department budgets aren’t gilded by the CFO until much closer to the start of the year. However, planning takes time and one quarter is not enough time for the entire marketing planning process. Using last year’s total program dollars is a good place to start assigning a preliminary budget to headcount, campaigns, and functions based on the business goals. 

There are two caveats you need to remember:

  1. Use the budget as a reference, but focus more on what you’re going to do next year as opposed to what you did last year. Keep in mind what worked, what could have been better and anticipate how things may change. 
  2. Budget and priorities change year over year. Budgets depend on the corporate goals, how aggressive they are, if there is new unchartered territory, or competitive moves to consider; even a new CMO is going to impact your budget. Be flexible and prepared to adapt.
Key takeaway

It’s more important to focus on how marketing’s strategy will support business goals over the fine strokes of your budget at this stage.

There’s not enough budget to boil the ocean

As marketing leaders think about priorities and budget allocation, a planning framework will prevent scope creep and keep their teams focused on key business goals.

Generally speaking, growth can only come from five key areas, or what Forrester calls “pillars of growth”:  

  1. Productivity: Increasing the efficiency or effectiveness of the company.
  2. Offers: Launching new products/services or enhancing your current ones.
  3. Markets: Entering (or expanding into) new markets using existing and/or new offerings.
    • For B2B, these are vertical, horizontal, and/or geographic segments.
    • For B2C, these are demographic or geographic segments.
  4. Buyers: Targeting new buying centers and buying personas using existing and/or new offerings. A buyer is a unique segment of a company’s target market that shares common interests and characteristics.
  5. Acquisitions: Purchasing the majority or all of another company’s shares.

Marketing can have a direct impact on productivity, offers, markets, and buyers. While ambitious executives may want to see growth in all five areas, it isn’t a realistic growth strategy. 

Instead, marketing leaders should pick one pillar as the priority. Your other pillars are still part of marketing’s strategy, but you think of them in the context of the primary pillar and strategic priorities. Use these questions to help guide you:

Productivity

How can we be more productive across our buyers, markets, and offers?

Offers

How can we introduce new offers to the markets and buyers we target productively?

Markets

How can we open new markets with our offers and buyers while staying productive?

Buyers

How do we approach new buyers across markets productively with our offers?

Let’s see how this plays out in two hypothetical scenarios 

BUYERS: B2C – McDonald's explores product market fit

Goal: Get health-conscious people to become customers.

Primary growth pillar: New buyer

Supporting pillars:

  1. Markets: Are these new buyers in cities? Are they mostly on the West Coast?
  2. Offers: Will McDonald's need vegan offerings? Should it focus on gluten-free products? 
  3. Productivity: How do these regions influence the offerings? Will this drag down productivity and margins if McDonald’s releases too many new offerings for stores to maintain? 

OFFERS: B2B – Microsoft enhances core product bundle

Goal: Add AI note taking capabilities to Teams Meetings. 

Primary growth pillar: Offers

Supporting pillars:

  1. Buyers: Are buyers already using another AI note taking app? Will this offer be available to all Microsoft Teams users, or only at a certain package/subscription?
  2. Markets: Would some regions or industries not want this feature or require even greater security requirements?
  3. Productivity: Is it more productive to focus on customers who can’t use an outside AI vendor and would be more willing to upgrade their package for this offering?

The differences are subtle but critically important. Without focus, marketing planning gets complicated fast. You can’t boil the ocean, and you certainly can’t please everyone. Ensure you are strategic and intentional when deciding which corporate goals to support with your marketing plans. Forrester’s five pillars of growth framework is a great place to start.

Key takeaway

Aligning your marketing plan and budget around a key corporate strategic initiative will have more meaningful impact than spreading your teams thin.

Join our workshop series for more planning advice

Tired of marketing plans that gather dust or being seen as just a “cost center”? Join this hands-on workshops series to get actionable advice and templates that will help you turn your annual plan into a strategic advantage.

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