Click Image to Enlarge Sample "Plan on a Page"
Almost every member I speak to is in throes of planning season, and many are struggling to build plans that reflect a growth agenda as budgets edge closer to pre-recession levels. In many cases, we see marketers try to make up for lost time, sprinkling in a little bit of everything that they couldn’t afford to do last year.
To help members, we’ve been presenting a tried and true best practice more than ever. MasterCard’s Plan on a Page is about getting back to the basics – mapping your planned marketing activities to your company’s strategic objectives – and scrapping the ones that don’t help meet them. Easier said than done, especially when your internal partners are grilling you about not being on Twitter or not sponsoring that golf tournament the CEO really likes.
Beyond activities, the other big part of the budget is obviously people. Over the last year, we saw a flurry of restructuring as companies shed workers and centralized resources to drive efficiency. There doesn’t seem to be a drive to add more people except in one area – social media. MLC benchmarking data shows – and anecdotal evidence confirms – that many companies plan to hire at least one FTE to manage social media initiatives.
MLC Members: We have a whole host of planning and budgeting tools and insights to help you through this busy time, including the full “MasterCard Plan on a Page” case study. And if you’re planning to hire that Social Media Manager, check out job descriptions here.
