5 tips on marketing planning

Marketing planning is more than choosing a planning tool

Peter Desmyttere
March 27, 2024
⏱ 5 min. read

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.

In this article, you will learn:

 

Tip 1. First, clarify what you mean by marketing planning

Although marketing planning is a fairly universal concept, it is approached differently within different sectors. Also, the structure of your marketing planning processes also depends on the composition of your marketing team. So think like an architect first when mapping out marketing planning within your company. In doing so, start from the organisational chart of your marketing department and always keep the bigger picture in mind. However, do you want to optimise your content marketing team in terms of marketing planning first? OK, but always think from a bigger picture, because sooner or later their marketing planning will have to merge with the marketing planning of, say, the colleagues who manage and plan campaigns, digital actions or events.

In addition to an organisation chart mindset, it is extremely important that you also look at marketing planning holistically. This is the opposite of thinking about marketing planning in a restrictive or focused way. For example, I see marketing teams spending hundreds on how to communicate with each other in Microsoft Teams, even though this is only part of a marketing planning process. To me, a holistic view of marketing planning means having a strategy for managing:

  • marketing actions or campaigns on a timeline (the communication plan) 
  • marketing tasks (the to do's within the marketing actions or campaigns)
  • internal communication on tasks, actions and campaigns via mail, chat, Teams, ...
  • communicating marketing briefings
  • managing marketing files (visuals, advertisements, designs, etc.)

I discuss these items in more detail in the remainder of this article.

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Tip 2. Marketing planning processes first, then tools or software

Marketing teams looking for a digital tool for marketing planning often ask me "What is the difference between Husky and another tool we are considering?" My answer to that is always, "It depends on how far you want to go within your marketing planning processes." Are you looking for a tool to better communicate with each other within the marketing team? Are you incredibly task-oriented within your team and want to focus on this? Or are you looking for a solution for your entire marketing planning process? The answer to the above questions will quickly reveal which tools qualify and which do not.

Whatever the outcome of this question: make as clear as possible a description of how you want to manage the 5 process components described in tip 1 within your team. A process document with bullets and screenshots in Powerpoint is a great companion for this, which you can smoothly share and update within your team.

 

Tip 3. Manage your marketing planning together on one dynamic timeline

Is your focus on translating your static marketing planning in Excel into dynamic marketing planning in a planning tool? Then be sure to go for a digital planning tool that can dynamically manage all marketing actions and marketing campaigns for all members within your marketing team. Be sure to read my article 'Marketing planning in excel or in a marketing planning tool' if you want to learn how to translate an existing marketing planning in Excel into a dynamic marketing planning in Husky. By dynamic, I mean:

  • enriching planning items (e.g. an e-news on 23 March) with alerts, briefings, files, tasks, discussions ... which is impossible in Excel
  • importing on a regular basis planning items (e.g. sales promos)
  • being able to collaborate with different colleagues on one timeline
  • being able to collaborate with external parties (e.g. a freelancer) on a single timeline

Know that commonly used project management tools such as Monday, Jira, Asana or Trello are not made for this. These tool focus on managing projects within which to-do's are the key to success. These are covered in the next tip, but they are only part of the solution within a marketing team. Dynamic timeline planning of marketing actions and marketing campaigns is at least as important.

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Tip 4. Add step-by-step processes for task management

Task management is a very important part of marketing planning. After all, every marketing action or marketing campaign involves a multitude of to-do's for different marketers. The more actions and campaigns you manage as a team, the more pressure there will be to manage all tasks smoothly. When it comes to task management, processes are extremely important. Thus, using predefined task lists can help you optimise your task process tremendously. In another article, I take a closer look at task management within a marketing team

What I definitely recommend for task management in a marketing team is the ability to manage tasks from different angles:

  • a to-do list for marketers who like to work with lists 
  • a kanban view for marketers who like to approach their tasks from statuses (e.g. always handle priority tasks first)
  • a calendar view with time blocks for marketers who like to schedule their tasks as a time block in their calendar  

 

Tip 5. Include internal communications, marketing briefings and file management in your marketing planning

Within a complete marketing planning philosophy, you cannot ignore internal communications, marketing briefings and files. They are inextricably linked to marketing planning and are often a source of frustration within marketing teams. Is your team struggling with an overload of emails between colleagues related to the marketing planning process? Are marketing briefings far too separate from marketing planning? Is there no link between marketing planning and files related to it? Then you will lose a lot of time and energy in planning and implementing your marketing actions and marketing campaigns.

So when choosing a marketing planning tool, make sure you have an option to integrate briefings, internal communication and files into the planning process. My article 'Marketing planning in excel or in a marketing planning tool' gives you more tips and concrete advice for this.

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Looking for a digital tool to manage your entire marketing planning? Start a free trial of Husky Marketing Planner today. You can quickly get started with a timeline planning, manage tasks in lists and in your calendar, communicate with your colleagues within the planning, and easily attach your files and briefings to the planning.


Want to know how to translate an existing marketing schedule in Excel into a dynamic marketing schedule in Husky? Then read our article 'Marketing planning in excel or in a marketing planning tool'

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