Allocadia Webinar: Win the Race for Marketing Planning Success: 5 Best Practices in Modern Marketing Planning
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Marketing is notorious for developing their plans in isolation. With increasing pressure to deliver business value, great marketing teams are laser focused on aligning their activities to corporate objectives and revenue targets. In this webinar, we'll show you how best-run modern marketing organizations are able to align targets and drive growth while managing budgets within a few percent of target, and answer key questions like: How are we planning our activities against our target? How can we ensure our marketing campaigns, programs and tactics are aligned with revenue growth? Watch this webinar and learn: - 5 best practices in marketing planning used by best-in-class enterprise organizations - How you can build marketing plans aligned to business objectives and global campaign initiatives - How you can measure the impact of marketing investments, and reallocate spend to high performing programs (including what-if scenario plans to determine investment priorities)
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Allocadia Webinar: Win the Race for Marketing Planning Success: 5 Best Practices in Modern Marketing Planning
- 2. James Thomas CMO Allocadia @jthomas_44 Mark Smith Chief Research Officer Ventana Research @marksmithvr Presenters Join us live on | @marksmithvr @jthomas_44 #planningmpm @allocadia
- 3. Agenda 1. 5 Best Practices in Modern Marketing Planning 2. Marketing Planning in Allocadia 3. Q&A Housekeeping Engage with us! Ask a question or post a comment in the chat panel. We’ll answer questions in the Q&A at the end. Technical difficulties? Chat with our operator for assistance. Join us live on | @marksmithvr @jthomas_44 #planningmpm @allocadia
- 4. Marketing Planning Frequency How frequently do you revise your marketing plan? Ventana Research Benchmark Research 2014 Join us live on | @marksmithvr @jthomas_44 #planningmpm @allocadia • Annually (9%) • Semi-annually (14%) • Quarterly (34%) • Monthly (12%) • Weekly (5%) • Daily (1%) • As Needed (17%)
- 5. © 2015 Ventana Research Five Best Practices in Modern Marketing Planning Mark Smith: CEO & Chief Research Officer
- 7. © 2015 Ventana Research7 © 2015 Ventana Research7 Work To Achieve • Ensure plan links the departments budget, spend and results information to its goals. • Only three in 10 said marketing plan is relevant to how company actually operates. • Facilitate access to data to be able to interact with the plan. Fewer than one in four (22%) can drill to details of plan during meetings. Best Practice #1 Align Plan to Business Objectives Source: Ventana Research Business Planning Benchmark Research
- 8. © 2015 Ventana Research8 © 2015 Ventana Research8 Best Practice #2 Use Scenarios to Determine Priorities Use What-if To Plan • Trade-off and scenario planning are key to discovery opportunities and prioritize and require complete and timely data. • Only three in 10 said software can help assess trade-offs well or very-well. • Only 14 percent said they can explore every relevant scenario and fifth do not explore them at all. Source: Ventana Research Business Planning Benchmark Research
- 9. © 2015 Ventana Research9 © 2015 Ventana Research9 Engage the Team • Innovative technology can support collaboration processes that will increase the flow of new ideas and approaches. • Fewer than half (46%) collaborate effectively or very effectively in marketing planning. • Develop multifaceted plans that benefit the entire enterprise. Best Practice #3 Use Collaboration to Establish Alignment Source: Ventana Research Business Planning Benchmark Research
- 10. © 2015 Ventana Research10 © 2015 Ventana Research10 Dedicated Approach • Software designed specifically for marketing can enable agile planning. • Over half (55%) that use dedicated planning are able to explore scenarios. • Evaluate what you use for marketing planning to ensure everyone can participate. Best Practice #4 Adopt Purpose Built Technology Source: Ventana Research Business Planning Benchmark Research
- 11. © 2015 Ventana Research11 © 2015 Ventana Research11 Gain Time to Value • Well designed software is able to compare a plan to actuals to quantify impact of marketing spend. • Measuring revenue impact is poor in fifth of organizations. • Evaluate potential marketing software investments where they yield metrics. Best Practice #5 Measure Impact of Marketing Investments Source: Ventana Research Business Planning Benchmark Research
- 12. © 2015 Ventana Research12 © 2015 Ventana Research12 Modernize Marketing © 2015 Ventana Research
- 13. © 2015 Ventana Research13 © 2015 Ventana Research13 1. Assess performance through planning and objectives 2. Identify areas where improvements has large impact 3. Track improvement by objectives to assess progress 4. Focus where you can optimize to revenue goals 5. Manage marketing to expected performance Five Steps for Marketing Excellence © 2015 Ventana Research
- 14. © 2015 Ventana Research14 © 2015 Ventana Research14 Marketing Planning Enables New Potential © 2015 Ventana Research
- 15. Marketing Planning Tools/Software How well do your tools or software for marketing planning enable you to optimize marketing spend? • Very Well (7%) • Well (22%) • Adequately (24%) • Poorly (22%) • Don't Know (24%) Ventana Research Benchmark Research 2014 Join us live on | @marksmithvr @jthomas_44 #planningmpm @allocadia
- 16. How Modern Marketers Plan in Allocadia Join us live on | @marksmithvr @jthomas_44 #planningmpm @allocadia
- 17. Marketing Performance For All Marketers Cloud marketing software for planning, budgeting, and analysis for revenue-driven marketing teams CMO and Executives Real time visibility & analytics into every aspect of the organizations marketing performance and contribution to company revenue Marketing program ROI across objectives, programs, teams, and segments Marketing Operations Easily unify marketing investments with strategy and programs, so they can optimize marketing performance Global alignment across teams, programs, audiences Field, Trade and Corporate Marketing Easy to use, spreadsheet-free way to manage marketing plans, budgets, investments, and returns Optimize and reallocate spend to high value programs Join us live on | @marksmithvr @jthomas_44 #planningmpm @allocadia
- 18. Allocadia and The Path To Marketing Performance
- 19. How modern marketers plan in Allocadia Scenario Planning Plan with scenarios to act agilely across the organization as your budgets change throughout the year. Strategic Insights Align your top-down strategic targets against bottoms-up marketing plans, empowering all marketers to plan strategically. Revenue Impact Plan your marketing programs to align with revenue targets, achieving a more predictive view of performance. Join us live on | @marksmithvr @jthomas_44 #planningmpm @allocadia
- 20. Planning & Budgeting in Allocadia
- 21. Scenario Planning: Budget view
- 22. Scenario Planning: Analytics View
- 23. Strategic Insights: Budget View 1) Strategic Data 2) Strategic Alignment
- 24. 1) Strategic Data 2) Strategic Alignment Strategic Insights: Analytics View Plan your spend strategically against objectives, product lines, target audiences and campaign.
- 25. Revenue Impact Plan: Budget View
- 26. Revenue Impact Plan: Analytics View
- 28. Summary • To achieve planning excellence, modern marketing organizations should able to: • Judge the effectiveness of their spend and its impact on sales and business results • Have visibility across their investments (ie. demand vs. awareness) • Justify how their planned spend is aligned directly to business objectives Join us live on | @marksmithvr @jthomas_44 #planningmpm @allocadia
- 29. James Thomas CMO Allocadia @jthomas_44 Mark Smith Chief Research Officer Ventana Research @marksmithvr Connect with us Join us live on | @marksmithvr @jthomas_44 #planningmpm @allocadia 1. Get a copy of Strategic Planning for Modern Marketers, a research perspective by Ventana Research 2. Read the eBook: The Gold Medal Playbook of Marketing Planning 3. Get a demo of Allocadia Thanks for joining!
Editor's Notes
- James to introduce call
- James to run through agenda Money & Metrics discussion: what’s working, what’s not How Eloqua users can understand ROI using Allocadia Questions
- Five Best Practices in Modern Marketing Planning to Achieve Your Objectives Marketing is notorious for developing their plans in isolation. With increasing pressure to deliver business value, great marketing teams are laser focused on aligning their activities to corporate objectives and revenue targets. In this webinar, we'll show you how best-run modern marketing organizations are able to align targets and drive growth while managing budgets within a few percent of target, and answer key questions like: How are we planning our activities against our target? How can we ensure our marketing campaigns, programs and tactics are aligned with revenue growth? 5 best practices in marketing planning used by best-in-class enterprise organizations How you can build marketing plans aligned to business objectives and global campaign initiatives How you can measure the impact of marketing investments, and reallocate spend to high performing programs (including what-if scenario plans to determine investment priorities)
- Marketing departments are under pressure to justify their spending in terms of value delivered to the business overall. Thus marketing plans must demonstrate that their planned activities align with strategic goals and contribute to attainment of sales and revenue goals and that their planned expenses are worthwhile and justified. To do so requires complete, accurate and timely data that can be analyzed to produce metrics that show this contribution and track marketing performance. It also requires flexible software that has capabilities to support these efforts. Improving marketing planning processes, involving all stakeholders and giving them information and tools to understand it should be priorities for today’s marketing teams. As competition increases and customer preferences change, the pressure on marketing departments intensifies. Marketing must modernize with the times. It must continue to adjust its efforts to changing markets, but the pace of change in those markets is accelerating. New technologies such as search engine optimization and social media, added to new communication channels that influence customer behavior, create challenges as marketing professionals struggle to adapt their approaches to these shifts. In an increasingly online world where customers can jump instantly from one company to another and do so at any time of day in any location, Marketing must find ways to catch and hold their attention. Marketers are dissatisfied with their department’s ability to plan, yet planning to align with strategic goals is now an essential activity for Marketing. Fewer than half (48%) of organizations participating in our recently completed benchmark research on next-generation business planning said they are satisfied with their organization’s current process of creating marketing plans. More than 40 percent said the marketing planning process is too slow, has too few skilled resources and lacks readily available data; more than one in three (36%) said their technology is inadequate. Overall only 15 percent of research participants said they manage their marketing planning process very well. Executive management expects marketing’s efforts to align with strategic goals and correlate directly to sales and revenue results, but it is a major challenge to connect marketing spend to its planning, execution and results. Marketing business planning requires data with which to compare actual spend to the budget and to results. But many organizations lack complete information about their marketing and sales environments and activities; without it, developing plans and setting objectives is difficult. Most marketing plans can’t compare actual spend information to the budget without time-consuming manual effort. One-third (34%) of research participants admitted that the accuracy of their plans depends very much on having accurate and timely data from other parts of the organization. For effective marketing, organizations must integrate data about sales, customers, operations, suppliers and accounting to develop a complete picture of activities. Only with such a picture can the organization improve the accuracy of the marketing plan. Integrating data that results from marketing activities is essential to determine how fully goals have been achieved. Organizations should build a single repository for all marketing-related information in which they can use analytics to measure the results of marketing efforts by integrating data from other systems and regularly updating it to track alignment between spending and execution. According to our benchmark research, more than one-third (36%) of marketing organizations take 10 days or longer to review marketing spend vs. budgeted amounts, and nearly three-fourths (73%) take at least seven days. Rather than being done once and remaining static thereafter, planning should be a continuous process to manage marketing performance to achieve objectives. More than half (53%) of organizations in our research create a marketing plan annually or semiannually. More than one-fourth (28%) review it quarterly, and one-third (34%) revise it quarterly. We assert that greater frequency improves effectiveness in management. [CHART 1: Performing Marketing Planning] Others that perform these activities less often are likely to struggle in aligning marketing spend to the budget. Marketing should be able to update plans when changes necessitate it, but the research finds that organizations have difficulty in developing such flexibility. When major changes take place from the original plan, one-third, the largest percentage (34%), do a shorter revised plan, and only one in five (22%) do a complete revision. In large measure that’s because most organizations use inadequate technology tools, primarily spreadsheets, for planning. For example, in linking their plan to the budget, 38 percent consolidate individual spreadsheets manually, one-fourth (24%) link them on the server, and the same percentage paste information from systems and spreadsheets are into other systems and spreadsheets. Two in five (39%) use a spreadsheet by itself for marketing planning, and one-fourth (25%) use spreadsheets in conjunction with another application; very few (5%) use a dedicated application. Among those that use spreadsheets almost half (42%) admit that those tools make it difficult to manage the marketing planning process. Few automated methods are available to determine the impact of budget on marketing and business. Most organizations copy and paste data into spreadsheets and manually update it. To develop flexible, accurate marketing plans is a complex challenge that requires focus on all aspects of planning: people, process, information and technology. Toward that end we offer the following five suggestions for practices that if instituted can provide an advantage over competitors.
- Align plans to business objectives – and keep them aligned. Ensure that your plan links the department’s budget, spend and results information to its goals. Only three out of 10 research participants said their marketing plan is relevant to how the company actually operates. Plans won’t stay relevant on their own. Revisit them regularly; involve leaders in emphasizing the importance of keeping plans current. Gaining alignment and ensuring plans are relevant requires communication across the team. In only about one in three (37%) organizations do executives and managers communicate the need to adapt the marketing plan to changes during the year. Facilitate access to data to enable stakeholders to interact with the plan at any time. Fewer than one in four (22%) organizations can drill down to details of the marketing plan during meetings; most (37%) require hours or one or two days afterward to perform this analysis, and one-third (34%) take a week or longer.
- Use what-if scenarios to determine investment priorities. Marketing planners need to work with complete, timely data to determine the best path forward for investments and to generate revenue. Trade-off analysis and scenario planning are key tools for discovering the best opportunities and preparing to shift investment priorities if necessary. When trying to assess potential trade-offs, fewer than one-third (30%) of organizations said they have all or most of the numbers needed to measure their impacts on the plan’s alignment to strategy. [CHART 2: Trade-Offs] To efficiently measure trade-offs or create what-if scenarios, capable technology tools are essential. Only three in 10 (29%) organizations said their current software can help users assess trade-offs well or very well; nearly as many (22%) said the software does this poorly. Similarly, only 14 percent said they can explore every relevant scenario and examine their implications for the entire company. Most (42%) have limits on the number of scenarios and/or on their ability to understand their implications while one-fourth (26%) have limits on both aspects. Almost one-fifth (19%) do not explore what-if scenarios. To utilize trade-off analysis and scenario planning fully for managing investments, adopt software that has these capabilities.
- Use collaboration to establish and maintain Marketing’s alignment with other functions. Innovative technology can support collaboration processes that will increase the flow of new ideas and approaches for marketing, but fewer than half (46%) of research participants said they collaborate effectively or very effectively in marketing planning. To develop multifaceted plans that benefit the entire enterprise, make it easy for stakeholders in whatever role or location to contribute ideas and information to the process. Our research finds that 85 percent of companies that collaborate effectively also manage planning well. Marketing should provide collaborative tools with which to discuss budgets, plans and results.
- Adopt purpose-built technology that supports marketing planning processes and users. As noted earlier, many organizations use spreadsheets for planning, but we find consistently that this technology is not adequate for complicated enterprise tasks involving many people. Software designed specifically for marketing can enable agile planning that changes as conditions do. A majority (55%) of those that use a dedicated planning application said they are able to explore all implications of scenarios. Our research shows that more organizations are leaning in this direction. One-third (34%) have evaluated alternatives to their current software and have decided to implement one or are deciding on their next steps. Planning applications now available have been designed for nontechnical business users, which can encourage adoption. Look for products that are easy to use and understand. In our business planning research, usability is the technology and vendor selection criterion most participants (63%) said is very important. Another next-generation technology that facilitates marketing planning is cloud computing, which does not require costly upfront licenses and in-house maintenance. More research participants (36%) now prefer cloud-based software as a service to access marketing planning applications and tools than prefer to have it on-premises (33%). Evaluate the tool your organization now uses for marketing planning and compare its capabilities and usability to those of dedicated software. Our research consistently finds that organizations that use dedicated software complete planning faster and gain better results than those that use other tools.
- Measure the impact of current marketing investments to be able to optimize spending. Executive management supports business units that spend effectively and can demonstrate cost-effective results. Take steps to be able to evaluate yours. Well-designed software is able to compare a plan to actuals to quantify the impact of marketing spending on business results. In our research nearly as many organizations said their software’s ability to measure revenue impact is poor (20%) as said it does so well or very well (27%). As regards optimizing marketing spend, more (27%) said the software does this poorly than said it does so well or very well (19%). Evaluate potential marketing software investments on whether they will yield metrics that contribute to reaching your goals. To gain support for an investment, show that it can help produce quantifiable measures of marketing performance and its relevance to achievement of overall strategic goals.
- Invest in a Modern Approach In today’s fierce competition for customers and market share, marketing groups must be able to immediately judge the effectiveness of their spending and its impact on sales and business results. In our research just 10 percent of organizations said they can accurately measure their marketing plan’s effect on the rest of the company; the largest percentage (45%) have only a general idea of the impact. Marketing groups that plan routinely are more able to track alignment to goals than those plan sporadically. Frequent planning can ensure that necessary changes are made promptly. Doing so requires appropriate processes and tools that for most is an investment. Marketing organizations must take responsibility for the accuracy of their plans, but our research shows that many cannot assure this. Only 37 percent said their marketing plan are accurate or very accurate; most (48%) are only somewhat accurate. In addition only a slight majority (56%) measure the accuracy of their plans. Even fewer (10%) can accurately measure their plan’s impact on the rest of the company. Managing marketing effectively requires having applications that support its efforts, and planning is a key job. It’s never too soon to improve modernize Marketing and improve its contribution to the company’s competitiveness. Implementing a dedicated tool for marketing planning can alleviate a number of issues that hinder productivity and reduce the department’s importance to the business. It can enable you to move beyond sporadic, partial reviews and manual tasks that waste time that could be used for core functions that add value to the business.
- Targets: "What are our investment goals by strategic objective?” (E.g. thought leadership in a new market vs sales enablement in an established one?) “What are our investment goals by strategic initiative?” (E.g. global campaign A vs. B?) Benefits: With strategic targets, marketing operations professionals can share marketing objectives with their marketing organization and empower them to be accountable to them. Alignment: "How do our plans align to strategic objectives?” Benefits: With the strategic targets alignment module marketers can instantly understand how their plans align to corporate objectives. They can be more accountable by identifying any alignment issues and can make better decisions around their spend.
- Scenarios can be layered on top of strategic investment alignment and revenue impact planner modules: Investments: What is our marketing plan (our “plan B”) if more budget becomes available? Strategic Alignment: What is our strategic distribution of spend if we decide to do a particular activity over another? Revenue Impact: How can we readjust our marketing efforts to generate 10% revenue before year-end? Or if budget gets cut mid year how will this affect our ability to hit our revenue targets?
- Scenarios can be layered on top of strategic investment alignment and revenue impact planner modules: Investments: What is our marketing plan (our “plan B”) if more budget becomes available? Strategic Alignment: What is our strategic distribution of spend if we decide to do a particular activity over another? Revenue Impact: How can we readjust our marketing efforts to generate 10% revenue before year-end? Or if budget gets cut mid year how will this affect our ability to hit our revenue targets?
- Targets: "What are our investment goals by strategic objective?” (E.g. thought leadership in a new market vs sales enablement in an established one?) “What are our investment goals by strategic initiative?” (E.g. global campaign A vs. B?) Benefits: With strategic targets, marketing operations professionals can share marketing objectives with their marketing organization and empower them to be accountable to them. Alignment: "How do our plans align to strategic objectives?” Benefits: With the strategic targets alignment module marketers can instantly understand how their plans align to corporate objectives. They can be more accountable by identifying any alignment issues and can make better decisions around their spend.
- James to lead Poll will show in ReadyTalk (Brittany to open/close)