New year, new plan, right? In our last blog, we talked about the critical steps for developing your annual plan and promised more on marketing implementation. The best plans don’t matter without proper implementation—which takes time, focus, and an investment in the right tools and resources.

Follow along in this two-part series for all of our suggestions on implementing a marketing plan to set you up for your most successful year yet.

Create Your Team and Get Everyone on The Same Page 

Now that you know the key initiatives you’ll focus on, it’s time to ensure you have the proper team, systems, and marketing tactics in place. Consider members of your marketing, sales, and customer service groups as part of your implementation team. Plus, think about what leadership buy-in you need. You may also identify some gaps in your in-house resources and consider bringing on an outsourced marketing expert.

Your marketing implementation team will be responsible for setting goals and KPIs, creating milestones and measuring against them, and consistently communicating on each of these items.

You may already have some tools for managing collaboration and communication across your team, but we strongly advise taking advantage of Google Docs and platforms like Basecamp and SharePoint (we’ll dive into how to best use these tools for your marketing implementation in our next post).

Establish Tasks and Timelines

Each member of your implementation team should clearly understand timelines and their precise contribution to larger goals. Create a detailed project timeline, and if you have multiple projects that will be running simultaneously, create a Gantt chart, or at the very least a simple tracking document in Excel or Word—whatever makes the most sense for your team. Make sure your staff are equipped to collaborate properly, both with the right tools and training.

The ultimate success of your plan will come down to efficient coordination of activities. As the saying goes, “the devil is in the details”: set up each timeline and task so that there are no questions about who is doing what and when.

Track your Success

What gets measured is what gets attention. These items will be different for every company based on your unique strategies, launches, or goals. Create a measurement dashboard that communicates key marketing KPIs and other data insights and is easily updated and shared. Make sure to tie specific metrics to overall company objectives to ensure your activities closely align with business goals.

Remember, a key component of achieving your marketing goals is focusing on what you do best. No matter how large or dedicated your team, no one can do everything. You’ll get the best results if you delegate in the areas where you need more resources. That’s where JABR Marketing comes in: we support marketing implementation or any other key marketing projects that extend beyond your current bandwidth.

Stay tuned for more on marketing implementation in our next post. Or get in touch today to learn how we can help streamline your marketing.