Blog for marketers and marketing teams

October 16, 2024

The 7 benefits of digital communication planning

Digital technology is everywhere and within marketing it also offers numerous advantages. Digital tools and platforms today make it easier than ever to create and manage an effective and successful communication plan. In this blog, I discuss the seven key benefits of digital communication planning and how they can transform your organisation.

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September 25, 2024

5 common mistakes when managing your marketing calendar
Why your marketing calendar is not working and how to fix it

A marketing calendar is essential for planning, coordinating, optimising, and executing your marketing efforts. It serves as a central tool where all campaigns, channels, and marketing tools for a given period are organised in a clear overview. It ensures that everyone in your team is up-to-date with ongoing projects, tasks, and deadlines. When managed properly, a marketing calendar helps you communicate consistently and purposefully with your target audience. However, despite its importance, many businesses and marketers make mistakes that undermine their success. In this blog, I’ll discuss five common mistakes when managing your marketing calendar and offer tips on how to avoid them.

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July 3, 2024

Is there an alternative to a marketing calendar in Excel?
7 advantages of a marketing calendar tool over Excel

Excel is the most widely used tool within marketing teams to visually create a marketing calendar. This sounds logical because Excel is easy to use and can be fully customised with a horizontal timeline and a vertical project structure, then within this setup coloured cubes for communication actions, marketing milestones or marketing campaigns. Excel as the ultimate marketing calendar tool then? “Yes, but … “ is always my answer. The right answer depends entirely on the simplicity (or complexity) of your marketing calendar, on the number of marketing calendars you need and on the number of marketers who need to work with the marketing calendar(s).

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March 27, 2024

5 tips on marketing planning
Marketing planning is more than choosing a planning tool

The bigger your marketing team, the more need for clear and workable processes to plan marketing actions and marketing campaigns. Those who fail to do so risk misunderstandings and wasted time within the team. In this article, I describe which 5 crucial decisions you need to consider if you want to set up a complete and successful marketing planning process. After all, it is insufficient to set up a marketing planning process in Excel if your ambition is to optimise the planning processes within your team. What you need is a holistic view of marketing planning that covers all the different aspects of the planning process. I have translated these 5 crucial decisions into 5 concrete tips.

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February 14, 2024

Marketing planning in Excel or in a marketing planning tool?
7 advantages of a marketing planning tool over Excel

Marketing planning is becoming increasingly challenging. The marketing team has to be short on time for marketing campaigns, marketing promotions or media campaigns and not infrequently has to plan this across different teams and team members to launch a successful omnichannel campaign. The biggest pain point for many marketing teams is the lack of oversight that arises because the various schedules are no longer aligned in Excel. The bigger the team, the more Excels, the greater the lack of overview among those responsible for planning campaigns and campaigns. While each individual marketer may feel comfortable in his or her Excel, media planners, campaign planners, marketing managers or marketing directors struggle with the planning overview. The result? Lost time, misunderstandings and mistakes when launching campaigns.

The solution is to merge all Excel schedules. In doing so, we have to reconcile 2 worlds. The individual marketer likes to keep the simplicity and insight into his or her planning, while those responsible at a higher planning level need the overview of all planning. In this article I describe – using 7 concrete examples – how to combine the simplicity of Excel with the flexibility and overview of a specialised marketing planning tool.

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January 3, 2024

Roadmap to marketing budget planning
Five steps to practical marketing budget planning

Professional marketers absolutely need marketing budget planning if they want a good understanding of the progress of their marketing budget at any time of the year. Yet many marketers struggle with setting up a marketing budget and implementing marketing budget planning. However, this is easier than you think. In this article, I provide a step-by-step plan to quickly set up a logical and clear structure for planning your marketing budget.

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December 27, 2023

How to manage a marketing budget?
A guideline for preparing, reporting, and optimising your marketing budget

Managing the marketing budget is an essential part of marketing management. After all, marketers must carefully watch over the budget they have been allocated. Are they spending less? Then they haven’t gotten everything out of the budget. Are they spending more? Then they’ve managed their budget poorly. But how do you manage a marketing budget? In this article, I describe the three essential components of a marketing budget and give concrete examples of how to manage marketing budgets well.

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December 6, 2023

Artificial intelligence for marketing results
Can AI add value in predicting marketing outcomes?

A recent marketing benchmark report on artificial intelligence (AI) indicated that 61.4% of marketers are already using AI to optimise their marketing activities. The majority (44.4%) use AI for content production. The next step will undoubtedly be the use of AI to determine, via marketing analytics, which content is or is not successful. The result of these analyses will then probably lead to an adjustment of the content marketing plan. But using AI to analyse marketing results will go beyond content. The results of, say, digital advertising campaigns, landing pages for SEO or the number of registrants for an event will also be quickly and clearly mapped by AI. AI will thus become an ally for marketers who want more focus on analysing data, spotting trends, and providing valuable insights. In this article, I map out the basics of ‘measuring marketing results through AI’ for marketers.

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November 26, 2023

Analyse, structure, and manage marketing results
On the importance of KPIs and dashboards in managing marketing results

Marketing is more measurable than ever thanks to digital tools that make the results of marketing actions measurable. The modern marketer therefore has a basket of data available to quickly and accurately manage marketing results: in Google Analytics, in CRM tools, in e-mail marketing software, in Marketing Automation technology, in dashboards, in Excel sheets … But how do you bring these together within a strategy to sustainably manage marketing results and look at marketing ROI? Those who do, see marketing as an investment that pays off, brings concrete results, and thus rolls out the red carpet for sales and business development.

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July 6, 2023

Overview and insight biggest problems for marketers

Together with a market research agency, we surveyed marketeers for the biggest problems in personal and team organisation. The research shows that marketers mainly struggle with a lack of insight and overview. In particular, marketers lack insight into marketing processes and an overview of the course of specific projects, tasks and campaigns.

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