“We need a more strategic lens on our marketing activities. We don’t necessarily need to do more – but we do need to connect and focus what we are delivering today.”
Situation
A multidisciplinary marketing team had a mandate to deliver across multiple functions, industries and geographies. The team’s annual planning process typically resulted in a fragmented group of 200-300 individual marketing tactics, each with its own channels, schedule and resource requirements. The team experienced timing conflicts, difficulty in prioritizing the work of creative and technical staff, and problems in measuring and attrbuting results. Business stakeholders expressed concern over the level of marketing support available to them.
Prescription
The team needed to streamline its various marketing activities by grouping related tactics together in a logical portfolio of integrated, prioritized campaigns. A shared marketing calendar for these campaigns would remove ambiguity and help in allocating resources to the right projects.
Action
We gathered data on planned marketing tactics from across the marketing team. We normalized the data, noting tactics with complementary topics, objectives and channels. Based on this analysis we grouped approximately half the tactics into six “Tier One” campaigns, and created a calendar and measurement scorecard for each one. The rest of the tactics, labelled “Foundational”, were scheduled separately and measured as a group, rather than individually. We worked with business stakeholders to approve and finalize the overall campaign hierarchy.
Benefits
The priority-setting exercise identified a number of overlapping or redundant tactics that could be removed from the portfolio. Grouping the remaining tactics into campaigns resulted in more measurable and impactful marketing activities. Differentiating between Tier One and Foundational campaigns helped the team in setting priorities and allocating resources. Stakeholders felt better served and more confident in the marketing team’s capabilities.