What’s Going on Down There in Marketing?
By Mary Miller

If you saw the Super Bowl earlier this month, perhaps you caught the Go Daddy commercial. The business is plugging away – everyone in cubes in the typical office environment, and the commercial’s focal character, dressed in a conservative business suit, extols the virtues of what Go Daddy can do for you as he takes the viewer on a tour of the office. When he comes to the marketing department, he opens the door, and we see a huge party going on. It’s a sharp contrast to the rest of the office and a nod to Go Daddy commercials of the past.

It’s a fun commercial, but it also feeds into the common misconception that marketing is all about fun and partying with no accountability. Making sure that relevant executives are aware of the marketing department’s activities goes a long way toward ensuring that the company’s marketing is on track. A diligent marketing communications firm should help you do that.

Using the following tools, you and your agency can make certain everyone knows what is going on down there in marketing. 

The Big Picture
You should start with a marketing communication plan. Developed at the beginning of each year, these plans outline goals, broad strategies and tactics to be executed throughout the year. They provide details on target markets, messages, budgets and an annual timeline for execution. They serve as a blueprint for the year to come and should be referenced on a regular basis to ensure that all efforts are focused on achieving the year’s goals.

Of course, while marketing communications plans are great at giving an overall idea of what is to come throughout the year, they are not designed to provide more granular details. Other documents, produced monthly and weekly, will help you keep the plans on track. 

The Execution
The 90-day plan is a tactical document that provides greater detail concerning the objectives and activities of the coming three months. It outlines the specific deadlines for projects as well as incremental action items for the upcoming 90 days. The 90-day plan features specific information about the tactics and includes a detailed timeline to show when certain activities fall on the calendar in order to meet the final deadline. Because markets can move quickly, it’s a good idea to update the 90-day plan on a monthly basis.

The Details
So you’ve got a yearly plan and an outlook for the next 90 days, but you also need a weekly report. It seems simple, but someone in marketing should be the keeper of a daily to-do list – a status report. Ideally, such a list should exist in a soft-copy format maintained by a single individual – the “one throat to choke” – but available to share and update easily by everyone with assignments on the list. A more formal version of this list can be completed and shared with others in the company.

Status reports keep everyone on the same page. They should be updated weekly and include an overview of what has happened recently as well as what is coming up in the immediate future. Having an up-to-date status report helps support many other internal documents, as well, like the 90-day plan or items such as the company’s quarterly internal newsletter – a great place to update the whole company on marketing successes or the progress of long-term marketing initiatives. Also, status reports can be used to check and update other documents such as monthly coverage reports for media hits scored through public relations efforts.

Depending on who needs to know what, you can create different versions of this list, some containing greater detail than others. This is done for convenience. For instance, the board of directors most likely doesn’t have time to go through 50 detailed line items regarding projects in process, but a quick-hits-style bulleted list might work well for that setting. 

If your agency is diligent about providing these reports, you should be able to use them to keep everyone in the loop. If not, maybe you should look into another marketing communications firm, one that can help you keep track of everything from the big picture down to the granular details.  

E-mail the author: Mary Miller

Click here to e-mail this article to a friend.

Archived Articles