7. Create a Quarter Marketing Plan
Your marketing plan for the next quarter needs to cover:
- Pilot, small-scoped campaigns with a detailed playbook
- Clear goals and objectives
- Leading indicators to measure campaign progress
- Tying leading indicators to revenue
- Defining a minimal tech stack for pilot campaigns
I recommend considering a few points here.
A. Switch from marketing plans to growth sprints and operations.
If you launch a new campaign, avoid massive launches. You do it for the first time and can easily lose trust in marketing.
Start by adding small-scoped campaigns to your regular marketing operations. When you see enough traction, operationalize it and add it to your operations.
Start with 5-6 weeks sprints, 1-2 team members, and 1 market to validate the campaign and get the market feedback fast. Almost every pilot campaign is all about learning that you can use to refine it.
B. Set up clear, measurable goals and outcomes
For every pilot campaign, try to make a basic revenue forecast and ROI. But also make sure to add qualitative outcomes.
E.g., improved brand recognition measured by traffic from target accounts and media invites, which leads us to the next point.
C. Define leading indicators
Not all marketing campaigns and activities can be directly attributed to revenue, but it doesn’t mean they should be measured.
Define leading indicators and get everybody aligned.
Examples:
- ABM: # of connections with buying committee members.
- Thought leadership: # of chats about your product, brand mentions, media invites
- Awareness: # of views/clicks from target accounts
D. Create a detailed campaign timeline with the tasks, video explanation, and worksheets for team onboarding
Demand gen is not about showing up consistently and sharing random content on social media.
ABM is not about making a list of accounts and sending semi-personalized emails or direct mails.
Show:
- Step-by-step plan that highlights leading indicators and targets
- Guidelines and training for sales
- Tasks, responsibilities and involvement of every team member who’ll be involved in the campaign
- Revenue forecast or sales pipeline velocity
