What Have You Baked Into Your Marketing Plan?

By Perry Rearick, Chief Editor, Follow Your Buyer

This week I heard a news story that described an anticipated action by the US Federal Reserve as “being baked into the plan” for a September rate reduction announcement. What an unusual way to describe the Fed’s decision, I thought. If things can be baked into a cake, can things not be baked in? 

I remember years ago when my young daughters and I made a cake for my wife to celebrate a special occasion. We decided to use a made-from-scratch recipe we found in an old family cookbook. It was complicated, the instructions were vague, and it required a dozen or more ingredients. Once the mixture was in the oven the three of us watched as it not only failed to rise but shrunk and hardened into a piece of brown blob. Something was obviously not baked into this cake. But we couldn’t unbake and unmix the cake batter at this point and we certainly didn’t get the outcome we wanted, although the effort was appreciated.

Developing an annual marketing plan is like baking a cake! Once you get all the ingredients in place, including all the resources and budget, and begin executing, it’s hard to undo. Imagine going back to the CFO and asking for another $90k because you left out some key ingredients.

I’m going to share with you an ugly version of how planning often goes for B2B solution providers, and it happens all too often. The marketing team waits to hear from their CFO and executive team about the budget they’ve been allocated. They hope that they get what they had last year. And when the budget is approved, they begin planning. This is completely backwards!   

Christine Slocumb, in her book, “Stop Starvation Marketing”, offers a ton of tips on how to develop a marketing and sales plan. She emphasizes the importance of tying every marketing activity to your overall business objectives, being detailed in your approach, identifying all the resources needed, and communicating them clearly to your executive team, CFO included.

Think of the resources as the ingredients you need. Like mixing up some cake batter and putting it in the oven, once this plan begins, you cannot go back and remix the ingredients.