What's next? How to Plan Ahead

This week I was wandering around the internet, as I tend to do, and stumbled upon this otherwise innocent looking Twitter Poll that asked marketers if they've started to plan for Black Friday & Cyber Monday yet.

If your brain immediately went to "we haven't even hit Summer yet, why are you talking about the holiday shopping season?!?" then you're in good company. Over 75% of the respondents agreed with you. I'm going to offer an alternative perspective and suggest that the 25% who are planning ahead are giving themselves a huge advantage, and we should all consider taking their lead.

In our experience, there are typically two major hurdles that get in marketers' way when it comes to planning ahead:

1. Everything changes so quickly that it seems pointless to try to predict the future
2. We're already working at 110% capacity on this month's activities, there's no time left to plan ahead

The brands that are building their plans several quarters — or even years — in advance, face the same challenges. We've been fortunate to work with some great ones, so we distilled how they overcome the hurdles, and what they do differently:

1. They start with what we can predict
   We know that certain things are going to happen every year. During Back-to-school, holidays, your Spring product release should never come as a surprise. Simply noting the fact that these major events are coming up plants the seed of planning and put them on our radar.
2. They're clear on their big picture goals & strategy
   The overarching goals & strategy aren't subject to fluctuations in technology, platforms, or trends. They set your North Star so that, when things do change along the way, we can always course-correct back to the direction that is most important to the organization as a whole.
3. They use a tiered planning system
   We like to build them as briefs but they go by a lot of different names. The consistent structure is this: In just a couple of pages, we're able to describe what we're going to get up to this year – that's their annual brief and it focuses on the big picture. Then, they take that same document and plan what they're going to get up to each quarter. Once that system is in place, they're free to get creative and be flexible month-to-month, so they build each month's plan no more than 3 months in advance.The monthly plans cover things like content planning, media buying, website content changes, and live events.

The result is that these marketers are always able to see, at a high level, what they'll be working on next quarter while focusing in detail only on what they need to get done this month.

Over the years, two things have become abundantly clear to us when it comes to marketing plans:

1. No two organizations use exactly the same system
2. Those who do plan ahead (without being rigid) are consistently more successful

TIKTOK FOR BUSINESS LAUNCHES ITS OWN TALK SHOW

TikTok is at that phase of adoption where everyone is talking about it, but most business leaders have no idea what they can/should be doing about it.

Enter: Made for TikTok, a short interview-style talk show that appears on the @tiktokforbusiness channel and features marketing leaders, creators, and other guests who can help to offer ideas, direction, and other advice for businesspeople.

The first episode features Oliver McAteer, the head of development at Mischief, Ad Age A-List's 2022 Agency of the year.

Episodes are roughly 3-minutes each, and are themselves a great example of how TikTok can be used for a lot more than just lip syncing and dance challenges.

LEARN MORE

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting