Plan Like There Are No Rules
By Perry Rearick, Chief Editor, Follow Your Buyer
Tomorrow is the first day of October, wow, yes, already!
If you already began planning for your business’ success 2025, including a marketing plan with supporting budget, congratulations, you are ahead of schedule. But now it’s Q4 so let’s get on with it.
Years ago, I was introduced to a planning concept, “plan like there are no rules.” At face value it sounds like a chaotic, lawless approach to planning. Nothing could be further from the truth!
What it means is to plan without arbitrary, self-imposed limitations. Too often marketing departments conduct planning by resurrecting last year’s plan and then cutting, pasting & editing. And we keep changes to a minimum, because we are, after all, time constrained. This is often done year after year and the plan we end up with is one that reflects “what we’ve always done.” Yes, those famous words of failing businesses right before they die.
If you have been part of this downward cycle of planning and budgeting for your marketing and business success, I strongly encourage you to break the cycle this year by doing the following:
- Commit to and schedule adequate time for your team to plan. This means time together to collaborate and time to work individually.
- Determine what the businesses goals are for 2025. This means meeting with senior leaders: CEO/president, CFO, head of strategy or growth. Is everyone saying the same thing? If not, get clarity!
- Develop a marketing strategy! This isn’t a list of tactics and a budget, but rather
- defined marketing objectives that support business outcomes
- how marketing objectives will be accomplished
- what success looks like for each marketing objective
- resources needed for success
- and how you will measure success throughout the year
For more, I invite you to read Plan Like There Are No Rules and listen to what Chris Slocumb, author of “Stop Starvation Marketing”, has to say about creating strategic marketing plans.