This document discusses modernizing the marketing planning process. It describes common problems with traditional marketing planning such as budget allocation issues, lack of data measurement, and inflexibility. It then provides solutions to each problem, including taking a zero-based budgeting approach, implementing a marketing calendar for continuous planning, and increasing flexibility with agile marketing practices. The full eBook covers marketing planning stages and strategies to modernize plans for different industries. Overall, the document advocates using a marketing resource management system to solve traditional planning challenges and facilitate a more data-driven, collaborative approach.

1. simple.io
Bringing Your Marketing Planning
Process into the Digital Era

2. What is Marketing Planning?

3. ● Marketing planning is a systematic process involving the assessment of marketing opportunities
and resources, the determination of marketing objectives and the development of a plan for
implementation and control.
● Marketing planning allows an organisation to gain more insights on their competitive landscape,
set objectives and strategies, and gain internal stakeholder buy-in for resource commitment.
What is Marketing Planning?
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4. ● The marketing planning process has changed little to cope with the disruption from digital
technologies.
● The media landscape is undergoing a continuous process of audience fragmentation and
transformation that introduces new channels and technologies at an alarming pace.
● AI, augmented reality and virtual reality to name a few have gained tremendous momentum in
the market and marketers have had to adapt their planning process to incorporate these new
channels.
The Need for Change
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5. 9 Common Marketing Planning
Problems...Solved!

6. Solution: Take a zero-based approach
● The base of the marketing budget is zero and
marketing will not be allocated funds until they
can make a business case to the organisation.
● Marketers will use information from past
activities to build their case, and typically, the
more ambitious the case the more funds they
get allocated.
Problem #1: Budget allocation and prioritisation is a nightmare
● When the overall marketing budget has been set, the budget allocation,
prioritisation and release process begins.
● This triggers a time-consuming and highly political process of negotiation
involving different business units.
● Lack of a standard process for decision-making.
9 Common Marketing Planning Problems...Solved
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Solution: Run a productivity project
● Marketers often deploy resources without
knowing what other business units are doing.
● A productivity review can help examine and
optimise existing ways of doing things and put
those savings to better use.

7. Problem #2: Past activity determines future activity
● The new marketing plan should be driven by new marketing priorities.
● It is very common that the marketing mix is dictated by what a marketing team did last year.
● Can result in failure to achieving a proper balance of marketing activities.
Solution: Incorporate a feasibility review
● A feasibility review ropes in all representatives across business units to provide a
whole-of-business perspective
● Determines whether a marketing campaign should be executed and if the timing and
resourcing allocation is feasible.
9 Common Marketing Planning Problems...Solved
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8. Solution: Continuous planning with a marketing calendar
● Modern MRM systems offer marketing calendars that can move marketing planning
from complex spreadsheets into centralised calendars that enable teams to run a
dynamic planning process.
● This makes marketing planning centralised, continuous, collaborative and iterative.
Problem #3: Lack of a uniform process
and planning tool
● Marketers often submit budget requests using
different tools such as powerpoint slides or
emails.
● This results in incomplete submissions without
the right supporting data or a good business
case.
9 Common Marketing Planning Problems...Solved
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Problem #4: Spreadsheet hell
● Nine out of 10 organisations use spreadsheets
● Only 1 in 5 is happy with them.
● Planning in spreadsheets can be error-prone
and inefficient with version-control being a
massive problem.

9. Problem #5: Lack of data measuring campaign effectiveness
● Marketers are often operating in the space of the unknown.
● Data needed to track a campaign’s effectiveness is not always available in real time or measured at all
● credit for success goes towards the wrong initiative which is then replicated in the planning process.
Solution: Integrate data into your marketing planning tool
● It is important to identify key campaign success metrics during your planning process.
● Access to real-time analytics is critical to enable brands to respond quickly if the campaign is not
meeting targets.
9 Common Marketing Planning Problems...Solved
simple.io

10. Problem #6: Marketing plan not visible to
the organisation
● Stakeholders have little understanding on what
marketing is planning or launching.
● Communication between business units is poor
and marketers often have to make regular
presentations to the business to justify
marketing spend.
Solution: Know what your team is working on
● A marketing operations platform lets you tag and track your activity so you have
visibility on what your team is working on and can track your marketing activity
mix.
● Bottlenecks in campaigns can be identified at an early stage and work can be
reallocated easily.
9 Common Marketing Planning Problems...Solved
simple.io
Problem #7: Lack of data about marketing
activity
● It is important for marketers to know how their team
is performing to avoid bottlenecks that slow down
the marketing process.

11. Problem #8: Lack of flexibility/responsiveness
● Marketing plans should be flexible and marketers should be able to make changes when the need
arises without the plan becoming obsolete.
● Brands cannot afford to wait a quarter or a year to respond to a change in the marketplace.
Solution: Greater discretionary
budget to respond to change
● New digital channels are reaching
mainstream every 6 months or so.
● Marketers are now holding 30-40% of
their budget in reserve to allow
themselves to be responsive to market
changes.
9 Common Marketing Planning Problems...Solved
simple.io
Solution: Start an agile marketing
pilot
● Agile marketing planning involves setting
marketing objectives and roadmaps to
achieving marketing goals.
● However it also allows teams to respond
quickly to market changes and focuses on
a test-and-learn approach of iterating in
short cycles.

12. Problem #9: Short-termism
● A failure to monitor the marketing mix and spend enough on the brand has resulted in short-term
sales blips at the expense of long-term growth.
● Recent research has shown the optimal spend allocation for most companies is about 60 per cent to
brand and 40 per cent to activation.
Solution: Rebalance your brand
● Capture and track key metrics such as the mix of brand (broad-reach) to activation (highly
targeted) activity.
● Ensure your spending is not only in line with key business objectives and achieving short term
sales but also sufficient to support long-term growth.
9 Common Marketing Planning Problems...Solved
simple.io

13. Download the Full eBook

14. Download the full eBook to learn more about:
● Marketing Planning and
● SOSTAC’s 6 Stages of Marketing Planning
● Marketing Planning in FMCG, utility and technology verticals
● 9 Strategies to modernise your marketing plan
9 Ways to Modernise Your Marketing Plan eBook
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15. How to Modernise the Marketing
Planning Process

16. How to Modernise the Marketing Planning Process
simple.io
Marketing calendar
Get planning out of spreadsheets into a centralised, collaborative, continuous planning calendar that provides
different views to each of your stakeholders.
Visibility
Tag-and-track custom attributes that enable organisations to get the full picture of their marketing activity.
Playbook
Capture and clone projects to create playbooks that allow you easily to re-plan successful activity.
Team data
Understand marketing team productivity and capacity with team performance metrics.
Agile marketing
Run agile with a prioritised backlog and centralised kanban board that provides complete transparency into
planned and active work.
Campaign results
Monitor and report your results on the same platform in which you plan and conduct all your marketing activity.

17. Simple’s Marketing Resource Management System
simple.io
Simple’s marketing resource management system helps enterprise marketing teams to plan, review and
optimise their marketing activity to create exceptional customer experiences while ticking every marketing
compliance box. Book a Demo to see how it works.

18. Less complexity and more effective marketing.
www.simple.io
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