Habits of highly effective marketers: Document your strategy and processes

Let’s start where so many of us skip over. Look at the title of this blog. What is an “effective marketer” (no less a highly effective one)?

As you may be thinking, the term “effective” is undeniably vague based in its definition alone. It begs to be clarified. What is the intended result? In marketing, “effective” can mean different things based on the company, team, and even individual. But the core of marketing is intrigue—to get potential customers or clients interested in what you do. The products you sell, the services you provide, your unique brand. That’s a very general, high-level goal, but each company will also have their more specific desired marketing outcomes, as well as their own ways to achieve them.

This blog series is all about the foundations of effective marketing, and what we identified above is actually where we will begin: documentation. And though that word sounds intimidating, it doesn’t have to be. It’s a crucial first step toward becoming effective in your marketing efforts and measuring how effective you actually are.

Documentation: The ultimate success tool

How many times have you thought to yourself, “I forgot all about that! I should have written it down”? Well, truth is that’s how success happens. To just think about your goals is not enough. Those who take certain measures—and writing them down is the first big step—have a higher chance of achieving their goals. In fact, the following steps result in 33% more goal success than just keeping them in your noggin:

• write goals down
• rate goals on importance, difficulty, and feasibility
• establish (and also write down) actions you will take to get to the goal
• share all this with someone
• regularly report on progress

If these steps feel familiar, it’s because these are the building blocks of a marketing strategy, which we’ll dig into a little later. And the impact of these steps are similar on marketing efforts. In one branch of marketing, 78% of those with a documented marketing strategy achieved their goals. This contrasts starkly with the 81% who didn’t have a documented strategy and did not meet their goals.

With all this in mind, why do only 37% of B2B and 40% of B2C marketers have a written plan?

Why else is it helpful?

The statistics show the overall beneficial trend of documentation, but what changes arise within the business as a result? First and foremost, there’s increased consistency across individuals performing the same tasks. This leads your business as a whole to becoming more consistent, short- and long-term. Everyone is on the same page about the company values and vision, as well as specific ways to get there. This promotes efficiency and allows employees to get their job done quickly and successfully.

Your present and future customers will feel the difference consistency brings—your brand will feel more aligned across all customer touchpoints, and since all employees have the same expectations set for reaching out to and connecting with leads, they will receive the same quality and types of communication. It may feel obvious that consistency increases trust, which will likely land you more lead conversions and sales.

Because everything is on record, there’s also no forgetting processes and decisions that your team and management have made in the past, even if someone from your team has left the business. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, which pays dividends in time and effort saved. Managers are better able to lead and support their team because everyone is on the same page. Plus, documentation makes onboarding or other training much easier because they are the resources you need to train a new employee, and they are already assembled and ready to go! (Need I mention that an onboarding schedule is also documentation?) For both new and established employees, clear documentation removes confusion and job uncertainty and raises satisfaction and retention.

What documentation do I need?

If you’re on board with this concept by now, you’re likely wondering what specific documents a marketing team needs to increase their chances of success.

Strategy

Think of strategy documents as outlines of your whole marketing operation. You’ll want at least these a general marketing strategy where you identify all your marketing pursuits – from the big picture vision of your business to the individual campaigns you will run. While being specific generally is preferable over being vague, your marketing plan can be flexible in how deep you dive into the details. The marketing strategy should include:

• your business’ mission and marketing (or brand) goals,
• the specific things you want to achieve as a marketing department and their importance,
• the methods through which you’ll achieve them, and
• the KPIs (key performance indicators)—metrics you measure to gauge the success of your marketing efforts. These KPIs must be regularly assessed, and your strategy should shift as your KPIs reveal the success of your strategy.

Depending on your business, you may also choose to create a content strategy, which can be a completely separate document or can be housed inside this bigger marketing strategy. Content strategies often include a content calendar, at the very least, to detail when blogs, emails, webinars, and other created content will go out into the world. Businesses focusing on content marketing will find this section much larger than other businesses, but no matter what kind of marketing you do, campaigns have to go out, and you need to plan for that. The content strategy should include who your target audience is for your content and the metrics you will measure the content’s success by (if separate from the marketing strategy).

Yet another strategy you’ll contemplate is the social media strategy. Again, there is flexibility here – perhaps your social media strategy is part of the content strategy, perhaps it is a separate document. Regardless, social media is an unavoidable part of marketing these days. Every business will want to leverage it—and clearly identify how to do so. Specific social media marketing goals, approaches, content, and platforms should be identified:

• What platforms will you use?
• How often will you post?
• What kind of content will you post?
• How will you engage with the comments on your posts or DMs?
• What will the tone of your social media accounts be (goofy, serious, informative…), and how does this tone vary from the tone of your blogs, emails, website, etc?

You’ll, of course, want to create all these strategies with your team, and thus you and your team will be accountable to each other to fulfill what is written in the strategy.

And with that, you’re on track to fulfill the steps that increase goal achievement by 33%:

• write goals down
• rate goals on importance, difficulty, and feasibility
• establish (and also write down) actions you will take to get to the goal
• share all this with someone
• regularly report on progress

Process/Expectations

These are the how-tos your team should follow when doing anything related to their job, and the main goal is to show employees how to do a certain task. Process documents can be checklists, tutorials, forms, videos, screenshots, or whatever works for your team and the specific process you’re trying to document.

One excellent place to begin for process documents would be the technology employees use to get their jobs done. Perhaps you have a survey platform you use to create and distribute a variety of surveys to your current customers—you’ll want to somehow explain that platform such as how to:

• get to the app/website
• log in
• use the application generally, especially key features
• create a survey
• make survey questions
• send a survey,
• view survey analytics

Again, a process document can be a video, a written step-by-step guide, or whatever else works. When onboarding, these process documents can replace or supplement 1-1 or group training. For established employees, these documents can be used to give clarity and guidance if there is any confusion or miscommunication about how to do a task.

Next for marketers specifically, the process of content creation should be addressed. If a business hosts a blog, for instance:

• What are all the steps of creating a blog post? Idea generating, research, drafting, revising, SEO, fact-checking, copyediting, gathering or creating visuals, writing the excerpt, putting it on the website?
• Who does what step, when, and how long should each step take?
• When in the process must there be oversight or review?
• How long should the review take, and how should that review take place (in a meeting, in an email, in written notes on the document)?

From blog posts to printed promotional material to social media posts—any of these processes may benefit from documentation.

Think of strategy and process documents as living entities that can—indeed, must—be shifted as your priorities, needs, and team shifts.

Another success tool: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys (formerly Dynamics 365 Marketing)

Whatever your specific marketing strategies or processes, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys (formerly Dynamics 365 Marketing) is a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution with functionality for all sorts of marketing needs. Social media posting, event management, email marketing, customer journey orchestration, SMS messaging, segment building, lead scoring, marketing forms—this system is the place where much of your marketing strategies can be put into action.

The intuitive, easy-to-use interface and essential functionality will make your job easier. Plus, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys also includes features to help you create content faster, like drag-and-drop email designer, AI-assisted content ideas, and marketing automation campaign tools.

Get started

Check out the next few installments if this blog series, where we'll dig into the finer points of a few targeted conversations from above, like the specific marketing strategies of cross posting and cross linking and how to measure the success of those strategies.

Give your marketers a key tool that they will need—besides clear documentation of your strategies and processes—to do their job and do it well. Are you ready to see what a CRM system like Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys can do for your business? Connect with our skilled CRM consultants today by clicking the button below. We offer free custom demos to show you how Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys can streamline marketing efforts in your organization.