Are You Creating A Great Brand Plan?

Tis the season and right now a lot of teams are developing their brand’s marketing plan for 2017. The question is, how do you make that plan a great one?

In my experience, the way that you develop a plan largely depends on how stable your business environment is and how well you like your current plan. If you feel that you understand your business environment well, not much has changed and everything is generally going in the right direction, the focus of brand planning should be on figuring out which strategies and tactics are giving the best ROI and adjusting those strategies, tactics and your related investments accordingly.

It is important to keep looking for those breakout ideas but unless you have one, you are focusing on optimizing your current mix.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you have significant unknowns or big changes in market, you need to be focused on making sure that you have a clear understanding of your evolving business reality and work to create/adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly.

These two possible realities mean two very different approaches to how you structure your brand planning meetings.

Stable business environment, more focus and workshops designed around using the experience of your team and the data that you have to understand what strategies/tactics are giving you the best ROI and in turn, how to optimize your investments.

It is a very different approach if you have a changing business environment or have a lot of unknowns. The focus of your workshops is much more about leveraging the perspective and experience of your team on understanding exactly what is happening in your business environment. Only when you have the best possible understanding of what is going on do you then start developing and refining your strategies and tactics.

Two tips. One, I want to highlight here that involving all the members of your team is critical. Often at a meeting you have a small number of people who do most of the talking. Take the time, make the effort to get everyone to contribute. I guarantee that you will be surprised at the great ideas and perspective you will get from people who typically sit quietly and don’t say much.

Secondly, don’t forget the external members of your team. Your agencies and suppliers work with a wide range of organizations and have a broader view on the business. Leverage their perspective and what they have seen work and fail in other organizations. Their experience can be priceless to you.

Brand planning is one of the most critical times for your brand and for you as a brand manager. You are setting your brand’s future direction and at the same time building the commitment of your extended team members and organization to support that brand going forward.

Take the time, leverage your team both internal and external, use the resources that it takes and build a great plan that ensures that your brand will perform to it’s best potential.

It is probably the most challenging aspect of being a brand manager but if you do it well, you will have proven yourself as a marketer.