With host Darrell Alfonso
7 Marketing Leaders’ Planning Perspectives
Introduction
How do marketers learn to plan?
There’s no industry standard for planning, and no course that gives you a cheat sheet. Many marketing organizations are starting to recognize that planning is its own discipline, so they’re creating roles focused entirely around marketing planning and strategy.
Marketing leaders across different industries share their insights on marketing planning—how they learned to plan, what lessons they’ve learned, and how they keep hundreds of marketers aligned to the plan.
Each chapter shares a new perspective and advice backed by decades of experience.
Chapter 1
Today’s CMO faces more budget scrutiny than at any time in recent history. However, they’re blocked by operational silos, limited visibility, and poorly utilized technology investments. One path through the noise is for CMOs to take the lead on revenue operations (rev ops) initiatives to drive growth.
So what can a veteran rev ops leader share about planning?
Richard Wasylynchuk, former vice president of revenue operations at Visier Inc., says that since the formation of the rev ops function, the organization is able to look at plans and performance more holistically. In the past, planning might have started with corporate objectives and key results, which were typically pipeline and revenue targets, and then marketing and sales would divide and conquer.
As Viser started looking at programs more holistically, their investments began to take a full-funnel approach. The mindset changed from “we need leads, we need MQLs, so here’s the budget, and here’s how we’re going to do it,” and they were able to focus more on programs that impacted velocity down the funnel.
Richard recommends viewing marketing performance data through two lenses. The first is understanding operational program data points such as, “Are webinar registrations trending up or down?” But then there is the strategic lens: “How long does it take for those webinar registrations to convert into pipeline?”
A feedback loop to review trends and take action is where many marketers struggle. Richard advises on establishing a cadence of reporting and insights tied into the same cadence as budget management. Depending on the complexity of your marketing organization, that could be monthly or quarterly.
Chapter 2
To marketers, their plans are blueprints for how they’re going to hit pipeline targets. But for the rest of the company, marketing plans are a promise and expectation of what marketing will deliver to the business.
Eric Gillies, marketing finance analytics manager at Unilever, always approaches marketing plans by thinking of the CEO’s and CFO’s expectations. Unilever uses a “North Star” marketing strategy to keep more than 400 global brands and hundreds of marketers aligned to top-level company targets and business goals.
The “North Star” starts with the global team to set the strategic intentions for marketing. Those goals trickle down to the geographical leadership level and then to a category level, such as Ice Cream, where marketers are delivering on the spending goals but can change the plans to better fit the needs of that region or product line.
For B2C enterprises, any campaign in a marketing plan has months and months of preparation, but things can still change by the time a campaign is ready to roll out. Supply chains have been the biggest change agent in the last couple of years. To ensure that things land as expected or to handle a necessary pivot, Unilever uses scenario planning and matrices to know when their windows for change occur.
Chapter 3
Up until spring 2020, many marketers saw planning as an annual exercise. Even though the majority of marketing departments have since move to shorter planning cycles, Sean Hiss, vice president of global GTM operations at WEKA, still believes most marketers see planning as a checkbox.
Marketers need to start seeing planning as strategic instead of a chore or the next item on their to-do list. Sean likes to ask his team what plans they would execute if they had an endless budget. They take the best of their limitless ideas, and then work backwards to see what’s possible based on available budget, people, and time to execute.
A CMO’s or VP’s role in the planning process is to make sure their team understands the value of a cross-functional plan, thinks holistically about their plans, and is invested in the execution and success of their programs.
With how fast the markets change, there’s a sense of urgency to get programs and campaigns out the door. But that urgency doesn’t negate the need to think and act strategically. In Sean’s experience, you’ll go into market faster and stronger if your marketing team takes the time up front to get aligned by agreeing on outcomes and order of priorities.
Chapter 4
For a plan to succeed, everyone involved needs to be aligned. At Faro Technologies, while everyone is involved in the planning process to some degree, the four integrated marketing directors (IMDs) act as stakeholders to prevent random acts of marketing from taking over plans.
The IMD role is a new change implemented by Lisa Cole, vice president of corporate marketing at Faro. As the keepers of the plans, an IMD will build the plan, and then report on performance. They’re aligned with workflow directors in product marketing for revenue expectations, and they reverse-engineer demand generation programs and campaigns based on what they need to create in the context of their goals and regions.
Lisa says Faro’s marketing team used to start planning based on what sales needed in a region. And although sales and marketing alignment is important, this process led to too many random acts of marketing.
Now they have guardrails up to guide their planning process and keep it aligned to strategy. They start by asking:
IMDs ensure their plans perform well by going over reports on a monthly basis. They check for underspending, gaps in lead flow, and any other areas where they need to pivot to hit their marketing goals.
Chapter 5
Too often, marketing ops is mired in configurations and integrations so that it becomes no more than a glorified lead processing function.
Marc McNabb, vice president of marketing operations and strategy at Hyland Software, passionately disagrees. To Marc, marketing ops should run planning; they should be the ones to drive and optimize the strategy process. He’s speaking from decades of experience running strategy and planning processes at companies like Siemens and formalizing the marketing ops process at SAP.
Hyland’s marketing ops team is integral to Hyland’s planning process, which is broken into the strategic marketing operational plan for the year and the always-on campaign planning. Every quarter, marketing ops creates reporting packages so marketing leadership can vet active campaign performance and any expansions or modifications against net-new campaign proposals.
Marc’s team evaluates each campaign’s success from a program objective: reputation, demand volume, demand ABM, sales enablement, and customer. The process is still evolving, but it gives Hyland’s marketers the ability to make data-driven changes faster.
Chapter 6
No battle plan ever survives first contact, and Ron Myers, performance management and operations at NSF, would say no marketing plan ever survives the first marketing activity. The only way to make intelligent and agile decisions to change plans is to listen to your metrics.
Over the last two years, this has been a very focused project to connect revenue targets and attributable marketing actions. This measurement system is critical to NSF’s planning process. It is imperative to connect marketing’s investments to specific activities and measure their return.
But Ron cautions not to get too sucked in by a beautiful dashboard of metrics. It doesn’t mean anything if those metrics aren’t key performance indicators (KPIs), and you can’t use those measurements to truly drive your actions moving forward.
It’s not enough to have a consistent planning process, you need consistency around reporting too and those processes must be aligned. Ron recommends starting by agreeing on your KPIs, how those are being measured, and the reporting cadence. Then you can focus on how those KPIs will be used to direct and adjust your plans to that you ultimately reach the objectives that support the larger business goals.
Chapter 7
Marketing planning is now a constantly evolving operation, not an annual process. To change plans with agility, marketers need:
Plans inevitably face roadblocks. Campaigns that execute well in one geography may not perform well in another. Teams may suddenly face a lack of resources or personnel. Economic conditions can change opportunities in different markets.
This is where Stephan sees the benefits of flexibility from allowing centrally developed materials to be adapted to fit local requirements. But without any sort of guardrail system, there would be chaos.
Marketers can build the plans that work for the specific region. Having that level of autonomy creates a better environment for the marketers to thrive and for the team to reap the benefits together.
Chapter 8
In the Plan Smart. Pivot Fast. webinar series, Forrester Principal Analyst Marcia Trask identified three areas to monitor for signs to pivot:
1. Dependencies and risks2. Operational KPIs3. Early-warning systems
Forrester flagged eight early-warning systems:
1. Macroeconomic growth data2. Customer community feedback3. Local client spending data4. Customer satisfaction surveys5. Market trends radar6. Regional marketing data7. Customer journey maps8. Product usage/client business outcomes
Forrester recommends leveraging the role of marketing operations as a strategic function to own measurement and analytics, drive the planning process, and work cross-functionally to mitigate risk and discrepancies.
Conclusion
Throughout the conversations with these marketing leaders, we started to see three persistent themes emerge.
1. Strategy and planning are inextricably linked
Marketers need to stop thinking about planning as a chore, a checkbox, or a budgeting exercise. Planning is strategic. You should always be able to explain how the marketing plan can ladder up to the business plan, align to product roadmaps, and link directly to the sales plan.
2. Return on intent is a new measurement for success
The program with the best ROI really depends on your goal and what the intent was, not just the investment. If your core objective was X and your go-to-market machine did Y, were those plans really aligned to that intent? Highlight how those outcomes translate to hitting your business goals to reinforce marketing’s contribution.
3. Monthly reporting and re-evaluation of campaigns is a must
Marketing operations plays a critical strategic role in planning. Their expertise is necessary to understand how campaigns are performing, if there is under- or overspending, and if there are gaps in your lead flow. These check-ins and scenario planning can help you better understand how your plans need to pivot to meet your marketing goals.
Continue to learn about strategic and agile marketing planning in our Plan, Pivot, & Repeat Webinar Series.
Marketing leaders at companies like ON24, Cisco, and Hyland Software share their stories on keeping their team aligned to strategy, staying agile with planning processes, and building innovation into their plans.
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