In a highly competitive business environment where some of the most tried and tested marketing strategies aren’t performing as well as in years past, supporting your marketing team is more important than ever to ensure you stay at the forefront of your customer’s minds.

Establishing a strategic management framework is a key part of this. How do your team stay on top of what tasks have been completed and what’s outstanding? How do they assess how the tasks contribute to the overall business objectives and targets? If you – or them – can’t answer this easily, it’s time to put some processes in place or improve the ones you currently have. 

To help, here is an example of a management framework your marketing team can implement to increase communication, transparency, performance, and results.

Identify the activities needed to successfully manage your marketing.

Below are the activities that need to be performed to manage and report on the marketing projects you undertake successfully. These activities provide maximum transparency and visibility around every aspect of your marketing.

Key marketing management tasks:

• Evaluate the quality of everything being produced and performed.
• Track what is and isn’t working regularly (and quickly).
• Brainstorm ideas (‘two heads are better than one’).
• Identify roadblocks that are slowing things down.
• Look at overall performance.
• Determine budget versus actual.

This information will inform the marketing team's direction and provide management with the information they need to make further decisions or budget approvals.

Increase transparency around daily tasks.

It's important for the team to have a quick daily check-in to ensure everything is proceeding as planned, overcome any hurdles, and identify problems before they snowball. This could be done in a quick face-to-face huddle or a Teams or Slack conversation.

Here are some prompts to get started:

• A quick check on top metrics - The 2-3 top metrics that show how marketing and sales performed yesterday.
• What work/tasks did we get through yesterday (or didn’t we get through).
• What are the roadblocks slowing us down, and what do we need to change/adapt/get help on?
• What do we need to get through today to make sure we stay on track to the weekly plan?

Organise weekly check-ins.

Every week, the marketing team should review the results of the last week and plan out the following week based on priorities.

Here are some prompts to get your team started:

• Run through a dashboard of marketing and sales results (high level, not too in-depth – just everything you need to know at a glance) – are they up, down, or stable?
• Review all tasks completed.
• Review all tasks that are still being worked on.
• Identify tasks that are stuck and need a push.
• Run through any major declines or setbacks that need addressing.
• Review the monthly plan to make sure it’s on track.
• Plan out the week ahead – who is doing what and when?

Book in monthly strategy meetings.

Every month, your marketing department should analyse, dissect, discuss, brainstorm, and replan! As one of the more important meeting points, the monthly meeting gives everybody a chance to stop, review, plan and get cracking with the next month's work.

What is needed for the meeting:

• Dashboards of high-level results and metrics in both sales and marketing.
• Detailed reports on each campaign and how it has performed.

Conduct an analysis and develop recommendations. This should cover:

• What’s working well, and how do we do more of it?
• What’s not working, and how do we get it performing?
• What needs to be stopped because it can’t be fixed?
• Review the work completed last month:
  • What got completed?
  • What’s delayed/roadblocked?
  • What didn’t even get started?
• Review the quarterly plan and map out what next month needs to look like
  • Who is doing what & when?
  • What are our expected results?
• Brainstorm on things we could be doing better, faster, etc.

Schedule quarterly planning workshops.

It's time to get strategic. This is where the long-term focus becomes integral to ensure your marketing department stays on track. This also requires time set aside to ensure you cover everything you need to.

Preparation for the quarterly planning workshop:

• Gather all the data by ‘marketing campaign’ and sales performance.
• Determine projected payoffs of results.
• Have each marketing team member review the good, the bad and the ugly and provide recommendations on what to do better. 

The agenda for the quarterly planning workshop should include the following:

• Review all results and campaigns.
• Dissect analysis.
• Review and prioritise recommendations.
• High-level plan of attack for next quarter.
• Review and set budgets. 

Post-workshop deliverables:

• Updated strategic marketing plan.
• A project plan for next quarter with tasks and those responsible clearly outlined.
• Project management and software updated.

Coordinate an annual planning session.

Your annual planning session will be a turbocharged version of your quarterly workshop. You want to take it to the next level on all fronts and ensure you take the time to analyse the last 12 months and plan out the next 12 months. Ensure this is strategically aligned with the broader organisational goals and marketing budget.

Want more tips and hints to support your marketing team and increase their performance? Check out our blog.