Recalibrating Your Marketing Plan

Things are moving fast, and marketers are feeling the pressure to cut spend and shift priorities. CMOs need to quickly adjust this year’s strategy, not to mention rethink how they lead and deploy teams, engage with customers, and manage the brand(s), marketing activities, spend, resources and reputation. For product owners in particular, there are specific plans to reconsider or find workarounds, including launch dates, product updates, lead gen management, and problem-solving to move from in-person to digital for sales, conferences and servicing.

Work at two speeds

There’s no shortage of issues to tackle, but while you’re handling the urgent ones ad-hoc, marketing leaders should gather their lieutenants and take a fresh look at the marketing strategy for the rest of the year.

What you need to do

1. Audit existing goals and planned activities. Quickly. Perhaps in a workshop or a long night, develop hypotheses for market, and business shifts (30, 60, 90 days and beyond — or alternative stage gates vs. arbitrary numbers) as a consequence of the pandemic.
2. Articulate how things will change for your audiences, the tactics (channels, content, programs) to reach them and the right enablers to pull it off (data, resources, tech, governance).
3. Sprint to revise the existing marketing plan through a rapid, develop and iterate process that aligns budget to target, activities, clear owners, next steps, and results measurement.  What should you stop, start, continue or adapt? What would success now look like in December? Revise models and projections as needed.
4. Codify approach and determine cadence, process and frequency for retooling marketing plans moving forward. Things are fluid, but a little structure might help. Your adjustments might need to be bi-weekly for start, then monthly as things stabilize. Put it in the calendar.
5. Socialize the draft with your partners in sales, comms, product and of course, the executive suite. Don’t wait until it’s perfect to refine. Report back.

I spoke to my colleague Hanif Perry who does a lot of this work and he advised: “Companies are rapidly rethinking their business models in this environment and their marketing plans need to quickly pivot to adapt. Many marketing organizations have addressed the first part of the exercise which is crisis management but need to pivot to crisis leadership and how they ready their marketing plans to support their business through and coming out of a new normal.”

Examples of companies in action

Panera Bread has pivoted its business strategy to focus heavy on delivery, including grocery delivery. Its marketing team has evolved to quickly pivot its entire plan to support this, including PR, advertising, front-end experience development.

American Express has redesigned much of its marketing plan during this time. Engagement programs for its existing cardmembers and small businesses are focused on promoting programs around managing financial hardships such as waiving late interest fees and benefits extensions on things like travel. Its acquisition engine has been promoting longer extensions on the eligible purchase window for new card member bonuses.

Extra good news: Muscle memory

Doing this you’ll be able to right-size the rest of the year, not to mention build some of those agile capabilities everyone says we all need long-term. Many companies are shifting to quarterly marketing reviews anyway, so this will get you moving in that direction.