T H E M O D E R N M A R K E T E R ’ SG U I D E T O 2 0 1 7 P L A N N I N G

Every marketer knows what it’s like to be buried in spreadsheets from the secondhalf of Q4 to the middle of Q1. That magical time of year when you get out of theday-to-day to look back and plan ahead while sales lunges toward the finish line onlast-minute deals.

There’s a real satisfaction to be had in a year’s worth of analysis — combingthrough campaign stats and mining the answers to marketing’s toughestquestions: What worked? What turned out to be an epic failure? What haven’t youtried yet?

A solid plan, backed by data from your previous campaigns and performance, ismore important than ever. Why? Because there’s more noise than ever. You needto rise above the din to stand out and connect. You need to engage your audiencewith authentic conversation and programs that move the needle — and this year,you have even more competition.

According to Content Marketing Institute, 70% of survey respondents say they’recreating more content than they did a year ago. And no one creates content forthe sake of it. Rather, marketers need content to survive.

Content is at the heart of every B2B digital marketing campaign — serving to unitethe prospect with the brand at the exact moment of googling. And once thatconnection is made, your job is to not screw it up.

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A solid plan, backed by data from your previous campaigns and performance, is more important than ever.

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Albert Einstein had a compelling approach to problem solving: “If I had an hour to solve aproblem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking aboutsolutions.”

As marketers, are we so different? Not really — especially these days, with access to somuch data. Many of us spend more time in Salesforce poring over dashboards and runningreports than we do running actual campaigns. And that’s not a bad thing.

To be a modern marketer is to be a data-driven marketer, with a keen understanding ofstrategies that work and how to convert leads to real sales opportunities. That’s why yourmarketing plan is essential: a solid plan means you’ve done a thorough job ofunderstanding the problems you’re trying to solve first. Only then will you nail the landing.

L E T ’ S D I V E I N T O 2 0 1 7P L A N N I N G W I T H A F O C U S

O N 5 K E Y A R E A S :

1. Get honest about 2016

2. Set your vision for 2017

3. Create an agile marketing plan

4. Build a programs budget

5. Define your metrics

Many of us spend more time running reports in Salesforce than we do running actual campaigns.

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BEFORE WE BEGINWe have a lot to cover so let’s lay the foundation with a few assumptions.

S A L E S & M A R K E T I N G1Let’s assume that sales and marketing have a shared understanding of the goals and numbers required in 2017.

Y O U2Let’s assume you’re ready to embrace change and do things differently by rallying around a theme of “how to be a smarter team in 2017.” Either that or you’re in a new role and ready to shake some major action in the new year.

T O U G H Q U E S T I O N S3Let’s assume you’re ready to ask them, face the answers, and tackle your marketing plan accordingly.

B U D G ET4Let’s assume you have one and you know what it is.

Whether you’re B2B or

B2C, a lean team or a

global operation, this

guide provides real-world

insights to strengthen

your plan and energize

your team.

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GETT ING HONESTA Y E A R I N R E V E I W

Your plan for the upcoming year is only as good as your audit of the past 6 to 12 months.Take a look at your goals and review questions like:

• Did the company achieve its revenue target? What did marketing contribute?

• Which campaigns generated the most leads? The fewest?

• Which campaigns had the highest impact on sales pipeline?

• How did the funnel perform compared to your assumptions?

• What did you learn about specific strategies, tactics, or processes in 2016?

If you already do quarterly reviews, great! But there’s nothing like a look back at Q1 whenyou’re at the end of Q4. Those “what were we thinking?” moments will seem like ancienthistory — and serve as a reminder of where NOT to spend your money in the year ahead.

You’ll also realize how far you’ve come, so there’s that.

Get the data, do the analysis, and document it as Section 1: The Year in Review of yourmarketing plan. Your executive team will love it, and the marketing team can refer to it as asanity check during the (many) strategy meetings to follow.

1

R E S P E C T T H E PA S TIt’s not uncommon for teams to breeze through the year in review, but the upcoming year is only as good as your audit of the past 12 months.

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The end of the year is the right time to get your sales and marketingleaders in a conference room for an afternoon. Your goal? To discussrevenue targets, confirm a shared understanding of the demand waterfall,and agree on how many opportunities sales will need to create in orderto achieve the revenue plan.

From there, you’ll plug in your lead to opp conversion rate(s) to figure outhow many leads marketing will need to generate to support the salespipeline.

See why this matters? Only once this exercise is complete can you evenbegin to think about the campaigns and programs that will drive theleads you need.

2 YOU R V IS ION, YOU R PLA N# m a r k e t i n g G O A L S

Lead and OPP Targets to Achieve

Revenue Goals

Average Sales Price (ASP)

Lead to OPP Conversion Rate

Sales Cycle

Revenue Goals

T H I N K O F I T T H I S W AY:

B O N U SNot super mathy? Download this Lead to Revenue Template to help you get started.

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BIG YEAR, BIG THEMESNow that the math is out of the way (just kidding,those numbers will change a lot before you land onthe final plan), here comes the fun part — the reasonmost of us wanted to be marketers in the first place:themes and strategy.

Think of your themes for the year like umbrellas,under which all of your campaigns and tactical planswill fit. Themes are the guideposts to keep themarketing team focused on what really matters andhelp you spot extraneous activities that won’t helpyou achieve your goals.

A S Y S T E M T H AT S U P P O RT S Y O USign up for the Systematize Your Funnel Webinar to learn howto implement your demand waterfall from an ops perspective.

For inspiration, look to the brands you admire. Remember that great line from Cary Grant? “I pretended to be who I wanted to be, until I became that person. Or he became me.”

Here are a few examples of themes ripped from actual marketing plans:

AWARENESS – This is the year we step up PR and social for brand awareness.

TARGET PERSONA – This is the year we tighten up who we’re marketing to andabandon generic offers catered to everyone and no one.

DATA – This is the year we increase our marketable database by 50% by engagingexisting leads and increasing net new leads through targeted marketing programs.

INBOUND – This is the year of “them finding us.” We focus on creating content to berepurposed across channels and SEO optimized. We’ll experiment with ungatedcontent and minimal forms that drive conversion.

Of course, these are just examples to get you started. You’ll know what’s appropriatefor your team based on the strategic goals of the company. For mature teams at largeenterprises, a reasonable goal might be to optimize lead nurturing to decrease timeto revenue, whereas startups might focus on a foundational goal like, start doingemail marketing.

IDEA: Why not do a marketing crush session? Talk about the companies and campaigns you admire and brainstorm how to make them your own.

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STOP. START. ADJUST.Stop, Start, Adjust is an exercise that forces brevity and clarity around where you’ve been and where you want to go.

Once you’ve nailed lead and opp targets and you have an idea of themes for the year, dedicate a session to outline the practices that need to goaway completely, that need to begin in earnest, and that need to be optimized for better performance.

Here are some real-world examples from a recent planning session:

• Stop running programs that don’tconvert leads to opps at an agreedrate

• Stop reacting and stay on course todeliver higher quality leads thatconvert better

• Stop defining all leads by companytype and do a better job of targetingby job title/role

• Stop getting distracted by minor datapoints and start looking at trends

S T O P

• Start defining a weekly top of thefunnel (TOFU) lead goal, middle ofthe funnel (MOFU) lead goal, and agoal for demos and trials

• Start running end-to-end campaignsthat target different stages of funnel

• Start piloting highly targetedprograms (LinkedIn, contentsyndication, webinars) to capture theright persona

• Start assessing vendors to pilot ABM

• Start segmenting and nurturingprospects by their by job title and role

S TA RT

• Adjust the balance between highlytargeted campaigns and “catch alls”that influence opps and still contributeto the waterfall

• Adjust content strategy to focus moreon MOFU assets and less onsnackable pieces

• Refine the business developmentprogram and enable them with freshemail templates, follow ups, andscripts

• Refine the feedback loop betweensales and marketing on campaigneffectiveness and lead quality

A D J U S T

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3 MAJOR CAMPAIGNS VS . AG ILEW H Y Y O U N E E D B O T H

So far we’ve covered annual planning and how it relates to themes andstrategy. But when you think about the year ahead, consider the need forflexibility.

Let’s say your team plans to roll out two big campaign themes in the first halfof the year, with various multi-channel programs rolling up under thosethemes.

You’re on track with your campaigns, but you’re not hitting the number ofleads you planned. Your goals and themes won’t change, but your tacticsmight have to — and that’s what agile is about.

If social is proving ineffective for driving leads, for example, you’ll need torethink your social strategy or consider replacing it with another tactic toclose the gap.

A close relationship with sales and a pulse on real-time metrics are key — ifsomething’s not working, you need to react quickly to turn things aroundwhile there’s still time to impact pipeline. Simply looking back at the end ofthe quarter and saying, “That didn’t work; we should have done somethingelse,” helps no one.

GOAL250 opportunities

1953 leads (conversion rate = 12.8%)

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Helping agenciesdo more with less

Driving efficiency in the cloud

ContentSyndication

Search/display

Social

Email

ContentSyndication

The 80/20 rule applies well here: 80% of your campaigns and activities (and thus, resources) should be planned in advance, while the remaining 20% can be committed later as you test, learn, and iterate. Website

Social

Email

Website

Search/display

Social

Email

Website

Social

Email

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Email

Website

Social

BIG CAMPAIGN 1 BIG CAMPAIGN 2

Channels forPromotion=

T H E M O D E R N M A R K E T E R ’ S G U I D E T O 2 0 1 7 P L A N N I N G 10

4 BUDGETS & PROGRAMMING3 T I P S T O W H I T E B O A R D

Now that you’ve outlined your goals and themes for the year, it’s time to think budget and programming.The results of the Stop, Start, Adjust exercise will help you identify programs that will need more or lessfunding in the new year.

Here are 3 guidelines to throw on your budget whiteboard right now:

1. Be bold enough to kill anything that isn’t working. Do not be afraid of losing leads. If you havecampaigns or channels that generate leads with abysmal conversion rates, take them out back and shootthem. Free up that budget to try something new. You have nothing to lose.

2. Revisit your target personas. Funny how we lose sight of who we’re actually marketing to in the midstof all this number crunching. Make sure everyone is clear on who your target personas are and aren’t —and evaluate whether your programs do a good job of reaching them.

3. Budget with agility. We talked about marketing agility, and the same is true of budgeting. Start with thebig buckets and assign budgets accordingly. Then plan a budget review every two weeks and adjust asnecessary. Give your team the freedom to spend smarter on campaigns that move the needle.

P R O T I PIf you have budget to spend at the end of the year, spend it. Start evaluatingnew technologies and queuing up campaigns to accelerate deals.

Sales reps are desperate to hit Q4 numbers, so negotiate a deal on new technologies you want to pilot in the new year. Thinking about ABM? Start assessing vendors, lock in the deal, and implement for a January kick off.

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5 METR ICSM E A S U R I N G W H AT M AT T E R S

We all agree that B2B marketing and analysis is tough. Our systems are difficult and not fully integrated. We invest in automation platforms likeMarketo, Pardot, and Hubspot, yet still rely on Salesforce and Excel for most of our reporting. Our roles have evolved into a unicorn-like mix thatrequires deeply analytical and uniquely creative thinking.

Regardless of the complexities you face, 5 metrics will help you stay the course:

1. Lead to opp conversion. Sure, this metric relies on sales follow up and performance, but it also reflectslead quality. Track this conversion rate monthly but also go back a year or two and observe trends.

2. Campaign opportunity influence and ROI. Whatever you do, have access to a dashboard that showswhich campaigns and content are influencing opportunities during the quarter.

3. Email open rates and engagement. Opens and click-throughs are a great way to check thetemperature of your nurture campaigns. Email is still the best way to engage leads once they’re in yourdatabase. Poor performance could be a sign of exhaustion and/or lack of compelling offers.

4. Funnel velocity. Work with marketing ops to ensure you have a way to track lead flow from beginningto end. When the CEO asks, “How long does it take a lead to convert to an opportunity?” you shouldprobably have the answer ready to go.

5. Happiness. You read that right. Don’t lose sight of your team and your customers. Don’t get so caughtup in analysis paralysis and hitting your numbers that you sacrifice quality and sanity.

Enjoy the 2017 planning process, and may you do truly amazing marketing work this year!

TA L K I T O U T ?If you’re in the midst of planning and analysis, Sponge can help. Talk to a demand gen expert and get some fresh perspective.

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” – Sherlock Holmes

CONTACT US

A B O U T U SSponge is an all-in-one marketing planning & analytics solution that helps users model different revenuescenarios, create data-driven marketing plans, and measure performance to understand which campaignsare driving results.

Founded by demand gen leaders frustrated by the lack of visibility into core operational metrics, Spongedrives sales and marketing alignment by enabling users to work back from revenue goals to calculate leadand opportunity goals, manage campaigns, and analyze performance across channels — all without Excel.

Want to see how Sponge can automate your funnel math?

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