KL West & Co

How To Build a Cross Functional Marketing Plan

How to Build a Cross-Functional Marketing Plan

Compartmentalized marketing for small to mid-sized businesses isn’t cutting it anymore. Here’s how you can sync your marketing strategy across business functions for greater results. 

In this new era of sales, the buying power no longer rests in your sale’s department but in the hands of the consumer, and marketing no longer plays a supporting role for sales departments like years past. Hello, paradigm shift!  Building and following a unified marketing plan with concise goals can help your company shorten the buying cycle and land higher sales. Here are several steps to get started: 

Organize Your Team 

If the goal is seamless cross-functionality, you’ll want to fully define, organize, and prepare your team. Know the specific capabilities and mindset most needed from your team, then gather all stakeholders and individuals who will offer significant feedback, collaboration, and expertise. Include representatives from marketing, sales, IT, HR, product management, and any other department that has valuable interactions and insights on various aspects of the consumer. 

Excellent customer service can make or break a sale or continued relationship. Lean in to maturing your processes by building a fully aligned team framework. 

Examine Your Environment

For a successful marketing plan, start your team’s discussion by taking a good look at your company’s current situation with a typical SWOT analysis. You’ll want to determine what’s working well and which areas leave room for improvement. 

To move forward effectively, make sure you’re clear on where your company stands in the market. 

Clarify Your Target Market 

Sure, your team can create initiatives in response to the latest news or competitor ideas, but for sustainable momentum, consumer needs should be driving your organization’s processes and innovations. Don’t get so caught up in sales numbers that you lose track of your purpose—keep client feedback at the heart of your planning. 

Define your buyer audience. Expand upon your buyer persona. Who are they, who and what influences their decisions, and what are their content consumption habits? 

Clients want brands they can trust. Understand your audience to communicate effectively and build your brand loyalty. If your functions revolve around customer behavior, you can better influence purchasing decisions and remain relevant as buyer behavior evolves. 

Evaluate the Customer Value Journey 

You need to create a personal, content-rich customer experience at every stage across the buyer journey. Review your current customer’s buyer journey by defining the start and end points and any interaction in between. You’ll want to be honest and realistic as you review touchpoints. 

Leverage your cross-functional framework to identify any gaps as well as opportunities to improve processes. For example, your customer service representatives could identify client frustrations with cross-channel consistency. Further, your sales members may educate the team of client wants. In turn, those in marketing may have action steps for increased customer acquisition and retention.  

Finally, test your customer journey yourself. Consider the perspective of the buyer and reflect on whether you found the journey more delightful or disruptive and why.

Set Clear, Measurable Goals 

Discuss business objectives early on to ensure all members of your team understand the overall purpose and vision, as well as their roles and responsibilities and how they play an integral role in the customer journey. There should be no room for confusion on individual and team expectations and how specific responsibilities connect to the broader organization. 

Don’t rush through setting your SMART goals and risk weakening your team by setting goals that are too broad and immeasurable, too vague and misinterpreted, or too rigid and ill-suited for sustainable growth. After you’ve established your goals, avoid the roadblock of facing insufficient resources by discussing your budget and all needed support up front. 

Determine Your Tactics 

Here’s where you’ll plan how to reach your goals by getting more specific. For example, if you have a goal of building brand credibility, your tactic might be to demonstrate thought leadership in additional white papers, articles, etc. Here are some other examples: 

Establish & Measure KPIs 

KPIs offer a way to measure different aspects of your goal. Setting and measuring KPIs lets your team accurately assess the success of their strategy and make informed decisions on next steps. Common KPIs include: 

Communicate Frequently 

Cross-functional teams are a great match for marketing plans. This framework emphasizes greater speed and innovation, so your team and efforts remain adaptable and relevant to the evolving marketplace and buyer journey. 

As your team moves forward, keep everything on the calendar and prioritize project deadlines. Set check-ins at shorter than usual timeframes to communicate what’s been learned and tested and what’s failed or succeeded. You’ll want to closely monitor your plans and provide room for continual updates, research, and ideas to keep everyone clear on their objectives and connected with the common goal.   

Re-Adjust or Double-Down 

Like any smart plan, you need to analyze data to effectively tweak your strategy or amplify an initiative. As your team reviews what efforts have worked, double-down on those successes. Similarly, archive what was less effective and consult data and relevant evidence to determine what changes to make or what aspects to toss out altogether. 

Just because you’ve put a process in place doesn’t, and shouldn’t, mean it can’t be changed. Leverage your team’s diverse expertise and perspectives as you continue to digest consumer feedback and make continual improvements. 

Final Tips

Anyone can throw a team together and shout out some orders, but it’s a true balancing act to have that team work well. Making the most of skill diversity in your marketing collaborations can help increase your team’s productivity and processes. Don’t rush through organizing your team and orienting them to the marketing plan. Be welcoming of new ideas and different opinions and generous with team communication. 

Contact us to learn how we can assist with meeting your marketing objectives. 

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