‘A Marketing Plan’ or ‘A Plan for Marketing Transformation’

This time of year, most marketers are creating their marketing plans. Which brands to support? How? With what budgets? The list goes on. But how many marketers are writing a plan for marketing? A plan dealing with the marketing structures, processes, capabilities, technologies, agency resources and data capabilities that need to be improved. Most marketers know they need to transform their marketing organisation. They know WHAT they want to do, but may not have the resources or knowledge of HOW.

In addition, many Marketing Directors and Marketing Procurement Directors look at the HOW tasks of a marketing transformation plan piecemeal (i.e. they look to fix a little bit at a time). Perhaps they put a content strategy in place, then they change their media agency, then they look at data etc.

The problem with this bit-by-bit approach is that very often the bits do not fit together, so the company never actually ‘gets ahead’ of the consumer – the incremental changes do not add up to wholesale marketing transformation.

A different way of executing a marketing transformation plan is to consider the HOW? of marketing, alongside the WHAT? To look at the system of marketing as a whole entity; an INTEGRATED MARKETING ECOSYSTEM, and then look at projects (WHAT and HOW) designed to fit together and effect an overall system change.

A different way to build a marketing transformation plan might be:

1. Look three years into the future and see what the consumer will demand of the marketing organisation.
2. Decide what internal structures, organisation, processes, resources, and technologies the client requires.
3. Decide what external resources are required.
4. Map out different Marketing Models that bring internal and external resources together into an integrated marketing ecosystem.
5. Work back to the current reality, planning out a set of workstreams in the right order to tackle the changes.
6. Measure the impact of the changes.

This approach enables the WHAT? of marketing to flourish because it has a HOW? system built to facilitate it.

Marketing and Procurement Directors know they should do these marketing ecosystem transformation reviews, but they are busy people with products to sell. That is where they may turn to a Marketing Transformation Company, like Flock, to do the ‘heavy lifting’, make recommendations, and help implement the changes.

If you would like to understand how to integrate the WHAT and HOW into an integrated marketing transformation plan, do not hesitate to contact us.

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