Talking about planning

In this blog we have often talked about planning and more specifically the importance of a marketing plan. But what about individual campaigns?

Simply writing a marketing plan annually when reviewing the budget, then forgetting it for a year is a pretty pointless exercise. And when it comes to campaigns that are part of that marketing plan, then it is important to give these the same attention to planning. Whether it is a major event such as a new product launch, a trade show or a special price promotion, setting objectives, strategy and targets as well as ensuring all the marketing tools are in place calls for some careful planning and at the end of the campaign evaluating the results. Was the outcome successful? Were targets achieved? What worked and what didn't?

In today's time short environment it is all too easy to respond to an imperious directive from on high within the company to do some marketing initiative without understanding the rationale, having the right tools in place, agreeing benchmarks and reviewing results. Then rush on to the next half executed scheme. As the chairman of a company I worked for some time ago when observing such frenzied activity was fond of asking, "are we merely being busy fools?"