Management Framework
Underpin your marketing with a framework that guarantees success.
The Right Management Framework Ensures Long Term Growth.
As a client working with any consultant, agency or advisor, you probably want a clear insight into the management framework they adhere to in the process of managing the work they are undertaking for you.
What’s their process for communicating how they’re tracking? How do they stay on top of the tasks which have been completed and what’s outstanding? How do they assess how the tasks being performed are contributing to the overall business objectives and targets?
Below are the activities that need to be performed to successfully manage and report on the marketing projects you undertake. This management framework is designed to provide maximum transparency and visibility around every aspect of marketing – primarily the tasks performed and planned and the results achieved.
Central to every part of your business, including marketing, is having the right management framework in place that ensures long term success. Setting and forgetting anything is not a good concept.
Install a process
- Tracking what is and isn’t working regularly (and quickly).
- Getting through the required tasks promptly.
- Quality in everything produced/performed.
- Brainstorming ideas (‘two heads are better than one’)
- Are there roadblocks slowing things down?
- Overall performance.
- Budgets versus actuals.
The right process
Ultimately this comes down to setting the right process and meeting cadence that ticks all the boxes:
- Daily Meeting: Quick check on results, yesterdays’ work and the plan for today.
- Weekly: Results for last week, WIPS (work in progress) review and plan.
- Monthly: Results for the month, detailed campaign analysis, last months’ work and plan for the coming months.
- Quarterly: Strategic review of last quarter (results, work, campaigns) and plan of attack for the next 90 days.
- Annual: Strategic planning for the coming year and analysis of the last 12 months.
Marketing Managers
Every business needs a marketing manager! They are responsible for creating, overseeing and driving your marketing projects. Equipped with a broad range of skills and years of experience, marketing managers are capable of both creating the strategic direction and executing the plan. They work closely with speciality teams/staff to deliver on all aspects of the plan. They will work closely with you to monitor, review and adjust the course where necessary.
If you’re a small business, you can find a marketing manager that may do one day a week (freelancer, consultant etc). There are many creative ways you can resource this at a fraction of the cost of full-time staff. But, you do need one if you’re keen to grow your business over time.
- Daily – Two or three high-level metrics that tell you how yesterday went and any major alarm bells. You might look at Total Visitors, Leads and Sales for example.
- Weekly – Taking it to the next level, you want to look at approximately 5-7 core metrics that tell you how well last week went and if there is anything urgent that you need to address or change course.
- Monthly – Once again drilling down to the detail, you want to look at all campaigns, all channels, all components of these campaigns and how well they have performed.
- Quarterly – Detailed review of the whole quarter across all major touchpoints.
Meeting Rhythm & Cadence
It’s important to make your meeting rhythm part of your business DNA. It’s mandatory and vital to do every single day, week, month etc. You won’t get it right from day one, and you’ll need to try different things, different agendas, have virtual meetings sometimes, offsite/retreats other times. But they are vital to driving growth.
Daily Pow Wow
- A quick check on top metrics: The 2-3 top metrics that show how marketing and sales performed yesterday.
- What work/tasks did we get through yesterday (or didn’t we get through).
- What do we need to get through today to make sure we stay on track to the weekly plan?
- What are the roadblocks slowing us down and what do we need to change/ adapt/get help on?
Weekly WIP
Every week, you need to review last weeks results and work and plan out next weeks based on your priorities. It needs to identify/highlight any red flags or issues. It’s also a great opportunity for you to provide input, ask questions and influence efforts on specific tasks.
- A dashboard of marketing and sales results (high level, not too in-depth), so we can see within 15 seconds that last weeks’ results were up, down, or stable.
- Review of all tasks completed.
- What tasks are we still working on?
- What tasks are stuck and need some push?
- Any major declines/setbacks that need addressing.
- A quick review of the monthly plan to make sure we are on track.
- Planning out the week ahead – who is doing what by when?
Monthly
Analyse, dissect, discuss, brainstorm and re-plan! One of the more important meeting points, the monthly meeting, gives everybody a good chance to stop, review, plan and get cracking with the next month’s work.
- Dashboards of high-level results, metrics in both sales and marketing.
- Detailed reports on each campaign and how it has performed.
- Analysis and recommendations into each campaign component:
- What’s working well and how do we do more of it?
- What’s not working so well and how do we get it performing?
- What’s f*** and let’s stop doing it because it can’t be fixed?
- A review of work completed last month.
- What was completed?
- What’s delayed/roadblocked?
- What didn’t even get started?
- Review of the quarterly plan and mapping out what next month needs
look like. - Who is doing what & when?
- What are our expected results?
- Brainstorm and be creative on things we can be doing better, faster etc.
Quarterly
Time to get strategic. This is where the long-term focus becomes integral to ensure we are staying on track. This also requires a bit of time set aside to cover off everything you need to.
- Preparation for the meeting.
- Gather all the data by ‘marketing campaign’ and sales performance.
- Analysis of the good, the bad and the ugly.
- Recommendations on what to do better.
- Projected pay-offs of results.
Quarterly Meeting
- Review all results and campaigns.
- Dissect analysis.
- Review & prioritise recommendations.
- High-level plan of attack for next quarter.
- Review and set budgets.
- Cash.
- Time.
- Resources.
- Post Meeting.
- Strategic marketing plan updated.
- A project plan for next quarter.
- Roles and responsibilities.
- Project management and software updated.
Annually
Ultimately annually is the same as quarterly, but just on steroids. You want to take it to the next level on all fronts properly analysing the last 12 months and planning out the next 12 months. And most importantly, the analysis and plan is aligned/strategised to the bigger picture of the whole business/organisation and the amazing opportunities that your business faces moving forward.
It’s the 70 – 20 – 10 Rule with your annual management
- 70% of your time is spent on the status quo and day-to-day that makes you the money today.
- 20% of your time should be spent on developing/expanding your product/service so it's closely aligned with your current offering (eg: “Do you want fries with that”).
- 10% of your time should be spent on pie in the sky, game-changing, competitor-beating work, that will see your world revolutionised in 3 years.
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“I love working with Due North. They are a no nonsense, ‘get it done’, company. If you want to grow your business, I’d choose Due North.”
Toby Cumpstay
