Larry D. Lauer

A consultant firm recently contacted me asking what I thought about marketing plan models. The timing was interesting since I had just posted a blog essay on the place of marketing planning in overall strategic planning.

Since I am in the consultant role from time to time myself, I realize that the client’s expectation is often that a marketing plan will be developed. My experience, however, has been that I never actually implement a marketing plan the same way twice. A “model plan,” I believe, is for textbooks only, and for teaching marketing 101.

You can never stop marketing and communication activities one day and start under a new plan the next day.  When you try to do that the plan will inevitably wind up “on the shelf.”  My impression is that consultants with model plans actually fail to realize that after they leave town, everything goes back to the way it was before they arrived.

My practice has been to talk first about a “blueprint” for a way forward, or about “special initiatives” plans. You must start with what and who is already there. It’s the people, not the plan, that will make change work. And change comes when the momentum of managed collaborative processes begin to alter how people are thinking about what they do, and how they will do it.

The best starting point is a professional development seminar that shows what an overall integrated marketing plan might look like. This seminar should also introduce the concept of how using collaborative processes can transform organizations, getting everyone on the same page developing new objectives and practices over time.

With these processes, early successes can also be produced by using “action teams” to launch special initiatives over and above daily marketing and communication activities. Then, with a measure of personal and group satisfaction established, it will be possible to phase in more permanent changes.

Integrated processes also will bring everyone involved to a better understanding of how marketing and communication planning should work in tandum with academic or program planning, facilities planning, and fund raising planning. This is critically important to long term institutional success, and was the topic of my last post!