Get Your 2021
Strategy On Target

Written By Mark Kakkuri

2020

Some of you will be glad to turn the calendar over from 2020 to 2021. Without question, it’s been a unique and challenging year marked mainly by the effects of a global pandemic and widespread social unrest sweeping the country.

In many cases, the business plans you made for 2020 may have gotten thrown out the window at the end of the first quarter. Even if 2020 was mostly positive, it still threw you for a loop.

Regardless of whether you’re looking at 2021 with disdain, cautious optimism or unbridled positivity, you’re going to need a marketing strategy. And, in the current climate of uncertainty, it may need to be created and changed on a quarterly basis instead of annually. Here’s how to plan for what will seem like constant change.

1. Decide now to meet as a staff before the end of 2020 to say thanks and to lay out a high-level plan.

It’s okay if you don’t have the full plan completely thought through. The point is to be up front with the staff you’re thinking about marketing in 2021 and you want them to know it and provide input.

If you can manage it, combine this meeting with an end-of-the-year party or give some kind of gift to say “thank you” to the staff for enduring what they did in 2020. Give an hour or two to the high-level planning and then bring the meeting to an end and give out the gifts or get on with the dinner and the white elephant exchange.

Make sure your staff is clear the high-level plan may be in need of some significant details yet to be determined. And make sure they realize the plan doesn’t have to be complete (and likely won’t be) when the meeting is over.

Finally, plan for and communicate the ongoing nature of the 2021 marketing strategy: You and the staff will meet every three months to plan for the next three months. The plan may change. The plan may stay the same. In any case, you’ll have the whole staff aware, engaged and flexible to adapt to quick changes in the market — especially apt these days.

2. Keep the marketing plans and related documents in a central repository available to all staff.

A marketing plan will include the company’s mission, vision and goals — whatever values or ideals the company operates from, the grander purpose of the company and how it will measure and achieve success. These should always be available and constantly reviewed by staff.

Additionally, each time you meet have an agenda to cover specific items (wins worth praising, problems to solve, financial reports and so on).

As a meeting progresses, someone in attendance should be recording the minutes: decisions reached, items needing follow-up and open issues. Tip: The meeting agenda can be annotated throughout the meeting and become the meeting minutes. Having the agenda on a screen helps, too.

Without question, the meeting will include supporting documents: drafts of communications including ideas for advertising or marketing collateral, financial statements and more.

Any and all documents should reside electronically in a shared central repository such as Google Drive or Dropbox. Allow all key personnel access to the shared central repository and invite them to update information as needed. Usually one or two people will excel at this level of administration and can provide significant help to others in maintaining and using it.

In any meeting, if only print copies of important documents are available, take pictures of them with your mobile phone and upload them to the shared central repository. The key is have everything important located in one place and refer to it often.

3. During marketing meetings, don’t merely ask for feedback, ask for specific ideas and ways to improve.

Meetings are critical business tools to be used for the good of the company. Unfortunately, they often devolve into ego trips and/or opportunities for others to suck up. This may result in the best ideas never coming to light or the right questions never being asked. And this means … the meeting is a waste of time.

If you’re not good at leading a meeting or asking good questions, it may take some time for your staff to get used to a new context where they feel they can contribute. You can stop and ask for feedback, yes, but it’s better to stop and ask for specific ideas and ways to improve.

Be open to being helped by your staff. Be willing to wait patiently for them to answer. Be a listener and think hard about what you’re hearing. Look for ideas with hard data and facts to back them up, but realize some marketing is a matter of gut feel and intuition. And always be open to brainstorming. Make sure any and all ideas are placed on the table for consideration. Even if an idea doesn’t get any traction in the current meeting, it may come in handy in the next — or the next. At any rate, you’ll be creating an atmosphere that welcomes new insights into the marketing mix.

The most difficult question to ask is “How do we improve?” Slightly more painful is “How do I improve?” Ask these questions at some point in every marketing meeting and let the staff answer freely. Some of the best meetings will occur when your staff senses a true openness to change and a willingness on your part to listen to what they have to say.

Finally, put as much of this as is helpful in the minutes but take your own notes, too. This will demonstrate to the staff your willingness to hear them out. Trust will build, and over time the meetings will yield better results — and not just in marketing. It all starts with you asking for it.

4. Do all of this at least four times per year.

When you and your staff know the marketing plan will be under constant scrutiny, carefully documented and available for the staff to see (and marked by times of open and honest feedback) the process will be less daunting than it seems. It’s true some marketing plans need to work themselves out over longer than three months. As such, during the quarterly marketing meeting you and the team may resolve not to change anything.

The mere exercise of meeting and discussing and deciding has tremendous value even if nothing changes. But it’s likely some things will change. At the least, if you make a decision — to change or not — it’s a decision made as a staff. (And you know there will be opportunity to correct, as needed, in three months.)

Getting into a cadence like this usually comes with increasing efficiency. The first meeting will be weird, the second much more productive. By the third you may be wondering why you didn’t do it this way much sooner. Besides efficiency, creativity will likely increase. The staff will know new marketing ideas are welcome and the ideas will flow much more freely. Don’t be surprised if the staff starts to suggest adding a meeting or two to solve a problem or discuss a new idea.

Look for ideas with hard data and facts to back them up, but realize some marketing is a matter of gut feel and intuition. And always be open to brainstorming.

Conspicuously absent from this article are recommendations for updating your website, changing a social media campaign, looking at print advertising and a hundred other marketing communication tactics. All that info — customized to your business — is available right in your own context. You and your staff are the ones who can get your marketing on target for 2021 … by meeting and reevaluating it every three months.

Dealers, with 2021’s imminent arrival, how are you targeting growth in Q1? We want to hear from you! comments@shootingindustry.com

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Get Your 2021 Strategy On Target