After a strategy is devised and implemented, your organization must find balance between the essentials of that plan and the need to be responsive to shifting business conditions. When this balance is achieved, your marketing team can address changes in your operating climate without deviating from the core goals and approach you’ve established.
As you create a strategic plan, whether alone or with a marketing firm, you can build in the flexibility to do the following:
Depending on your industry, your sales cycle may be greatly affected by the season or specific events. For B2B businesses, this can include trade show schedules and budget cycles, but also events like holidays, because they affect the schedule and attention of your potential buyers. As these dates approach, the tone or delivery of your marketing may need to be adjusted somewhat to make an impact.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to anticipate all of the situations that may arise in your organization or industry, and a strategic plan can’t account for what it can’t anticipate. So couple it with a plan for how your marketing will respond in a crisis. While the specifics of your actions will depend on the situation, having guidelines in place will help your organization bounce back faster, ultimately keeping your strategy on track.
It’s likely that your organization’s offerings are not static. Thanks to internal research, client feedback or competitors’ actions, the products and services you’ll be marketing a few years from now will probably look different from what you’re working with today. As you create your strategic plan, identify the areas that should stay constant and those that may be shifted in the event of a new release or update to your products or services.
As we often discuss here, data and analytics should guide every aspect of your marketing. Every digital marketing campaign your organization runs should be carefully tracked and adjusted in real-time based on your data. That may mean drastically altering or even halting an underperforming campaign, or redoubling efforts for a successful one. Add regular check-ins with the data and appropriate adjustments to your campaigns into your strategic plan, so that they become a foundation of your work, not an afterthought.
Your strategic plan undoubtedly includes digital content creation, but does it include guidelines for including both timely and evergreen content? Timely content is important, as it performs best when your audience recieves it when they are most receptive to it.. Evergreen content has a variety of benefits for your thought leadership, and can also provide a deep bench of content to draw on for your email and social media marketing. By balancing your time and resources creating content with an immediate impact and content that you can use for years, your strategic plan sets your organization on the road to digital success.
An actionable strategy that accounts for these needs is just one of the key aspects of a strong brand. For more on how your organization can be its best, read our white paper, 10 simple truths about strong brands.
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