Everyone in business knows that in running the race of business, in order to get from point A to point B, you need to plan the course. Without a plan, you can find your company off-track, in the weeds, and struggling to keep up with competitors.

When you want your business to win the growth race, your strategic marketing plan is key to finding your way in the dark, as I’ve written about before. But is your winning approach one of the proverbial Tortoise (slow and steady) or the Hare (nimble and fast)? Having led countless companies through successful growth, I can confidently say that you need to embrace both the Tortoise and the Hare approach to reach the finish line!

Meet the Tortoise & the Hare

Let’s start with a little background about strategic planning and agile development to understand the analogy.

The Tortoise:  Strategic planning has been around since the early 1920s when Harvard Business School created one of the first documented strategic planning methodologies for business in their Harvard Policy Model. Strategic planning is all about the longer-term approach, focused on a company’s big picture. It is concerned with setting goals today that are meant to take the company into the next year, 5 years, and beyond.

The Hare: The Agile approach, on the other hand, came about in 2001, initially as a new way of approaching software development. The process enabled coders to develop software in short spurts or “sprints”, ensuring that the in-progress work was still on track with the bigger picture before moving on to the next sprint. Other disciplines outside of software development, like marketing for example, adopted agile as a way of implementing plans.

Running the Race Together

You might think that strategic planning is the antithesis of agile development – since agile’s tenet is to respond to change over planning. The value, as we see it in marketing, is finding a way to let the tortoise and the hare live together in harmony, staying in their “race lanes” to do what they individually are good at doing. Strategic marketing planning should also be a dynamic process, since what is relevant at one point in time might not be so months later.

Here are three things to consider as you set up your marketing programs for success:

Know the Course

Planning lays the groundwork for setting and reaching your growth goals, and you may be surprised to learn how many businesses don’t have a strategic marketing plan. While it might seem daunting to develop, like the slow and steady tortoise, you can begin by answering the following questions:

  • Why are you in business? What is your vision and mission for the company?
  • What are your SMART business goals (revenue, people, product/service development, markets)?
  • How would you define your product/service? What sets you apart?
  • Who needs your product/service and how will it improve their lives?
  • What makes you unique and what do you want to be known for?
  • What are your business strengths, weaknesses/challenges, opportunities and threats?
  • Where are the gaps and how do you plan to fill them?
  • How will you measure progress?

By having the answers to these questions in writing, you’ve documented what your company looks like today and created a tangible course to follow for where and how you want it to evolve into the future. You can also start to see the holes that will need to be filled in order to keep you on track for the journey ahead.

Break Into Short Sprints

Once your plan is developed, you have a starting point and course to follow. To get a clear perspective of how you’re doing and if you need to change tactics, set smaller sprint marketing goals in 90-day chunks of time. These allow you to stay laser-focused on the tasks in front of you, working towards the overall objectives established in the plan.

This is our approach to working with our clients. It is at the beginning of each 90-day period that we get clear about what we are trying to accomplish, how we will go about testing our theories, and how we will measure those activities. The actions then unfold, enabling us – like the agile hare – to pivot as needed on our way to achieving the larger goals.

Set a New Pace

The sprint begins with everyone on your team being on the same page about the goals for the next 90 days. Over the course of the next three months, data is captured and notes are kept. Then, as you near the finish line at the end of your sprint, gather the goals and the data and review them with your team. As you look at the data, discuss openly what worked and what didn’t work. If you’re used to doing post mortems at the end of a larger project, think of these as ongoing mini post mortems that help you evaluate results to get to your next steps. Next, decide what you are going to keep doing, stop doing, and start doing, and make a plan for the next 90 days. Then, it’s back to the starting line for the next sprint! With each cycle your pace and ability to shift and respond to change will be faster and more effective.

Planning is truly a dynamic process that requires big-picture thinking to work in tandem with nimble and thoughtful responsiveness. With the two disciplines working hand-in-hand, your company is more likely to stay on track and make course corrections quickly without getting too far down the path, too late. You’re also less likely to fall prey to shiny object syndrome since you are clear on your overall vision as well as your next steps.

If the planning process still feels daunting, a wise owl advisor can help. We’d welcome a conversation with you to understand your challenges and determine if we might be a good fit to help navigate the process.