A Marketer’s Take: The Need For Long-Term Marketing Planning
*Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on LinkedIn.
One of the core reasons for marketing, in any organization, is to function as a pillar for growth. Companies with balanced forecasts develop both inbound and outbound growth strategies as methods to achieve their targets. Marketing typically functions as the engine for inbound growth.
However, when targets are too aspirational and budgets for marketing programs are minimal, an irreconcilable gap forms between expectations and reality. In these scenarios, marketers are expected to provide vigorous lead and demand generation programs without the time, budget, or resources to properly achieve those expectations.
Sadly, this is not an uncommon problem for marketing teams, especially in the high-growth tech space. Companies set their sights on high growth targets, but lack the strategic planning and roadmaps for how to make those targets realistically achievable. As a result, it’s not uncommon for teams to feel adrift and low on morale.
Successful organizations are able to find a healthy balance between high growth and realistic expectations. Companies that buy into strategic marketing recognize the need for long-term investments in scalable solutions in order to achieve measurable and sustainable results for years to come.
Cross-functional collaboration leads to high growth
“Integrated marketing offers opportunities to break through to consumers in new markets.”
Betsy Holden, Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Co.
Now, don’t mistake my seemingly cynical opening. High growth motivates marketers to pull up our sleeves and do our jobs. Experienced marketing teams thrive on chasing the next big accomplishment, determined to put our skills to good use.
One of the great benefits of high growth environments is that they motivate marketers to become more collaborative. Cross-functional marketing, across multiple departments, aligns growth expectations with KPIs as measured by the various areas of the business. Marketers should, and often do take the lead in constructing these interdepartmental relationships. However, input from stakeholders in sales, product, client success, and finance align all teams on how to analyze success.
As marketers, we often live within and maintain our focus on the top of the funnel. Insights from stakeholders in low funnel or post-sale departments helps us gain a better understanding of the needs of our customers. Through this collaborative effort, marketing can craft content, campaigns, and a narrative that is fully informed. This allows us to better educate our prospective consumers as we expand the size and scope of the top of the funnel. We can create content and campaigns that fully educate our users on what to expect in their post-sale experience with our organization.
Work backwards from revenue up the funnel
Once we align with all key stakeholders on how to quantify success, marketing teams can begin work on a strategic framework for growth. This is where we can start to forecast upwards from revenue targets towards:
Number of closed deals are required to achieve the revenue target
The average deal size or order value per closed opportunity
The amount of pipeline necessary to generate those winning deals
How many leads are required to create enough pipeline
Conversion rates on various channels that will generate lead flow
Audience sizes and engagement rates on each channel
Types of content that generates engagement across those channels
How much traffic can be captured using that content
And so on
Each of these data points help teams identify the most effective pathway for growth. Use numbers from the company’s history, such as sales dashboards and other internal analytics platforms to capture this early data. If there are no detailed historic accounts, use industry-wide best practices - i.e. from leaders like Salesforce - to paint a more detailed picture on how the company will achieve revenue expectations.
Why are these calculations important?
Developing this framework helps the business accurately forecast revenue. It also allows marketing and sales to work in tandem towards the common goal and, let’s face it; companies with united marketing and sales departments are often more successful than companies where they’re divided.
But, why is this roadmap so important for marketers?
Unlike sales reps, marketers are not responsible for, or associated with direct revenue. In marketing, our primary job is to provide visibility for the business. We develop an enticing hook to drive people who are aware of the business to want to become customers of the business. Those customer inquiries are then passed onto the appropriate sales reps to pick up the baton and close out the deal.
Too often, it becomes incredibly difficult to justify the money spent on marketing campaigns without a method to track marketing-influenced activity. Companies that are focused on improving the bottom line will frequently cut budget or resources for marketing programs if there’s no way to quantify the value of the work produced by marketers. As a result, for many of us marketers, our job security and livelihoods are tied to our ability to generate demand and influence revenue for the company.
A strategic roadmap that outlines the amount of activity by marketers to facilitate sales deals and revenue growth keeps everyone accountable. The roadmap also becomes a north star of sorts for marketers. It serves as the guidebook on whether an activity or campaign will yield the necessary leads or pipeline required to justify the resources spent on the program.
In conclusion: strike a balance between expectations and reality
“We need to stop assigning “credit” and start attributing the influence that each touchpoint delivers along the journey – using data science to know the relative importance of each.”
Steven Shapiro, Founder, DigitalDemandGen
Companies have wisely recognized that multiple channels - i.e. web, mobile, social media, emails, referrals, word of mouth, etc. - can increase the size and scope of their sales funnels. However, that same recognition needs to be extended to marketing’s contribution to a company’s overall performance.
There is no singular first or last touch between brand and consumer that leaders can definitively point to as the sole cause for a boost in direct revenue. Customer experiences are multi-touch journeys and, as such, there needs to be appropriate forecasting and tracking at each stage of the customer journey with the business. This ensures the most accurate understanding of what programs are generating the most value to help influence the long-term strategic vision for the company.
In the end, data and data-driven insights will yield higher and more sustainable growth for the company. Coincidentally, it will also allow marketers to demonstrate their value and contributions to the overall future of the organization.
