You Need A Marketing Plan That’s Ready For Anything.
There’s a nip in the air, which means It’s time to get started on your annual marketing planning sessions. Maybe you’re dreading it, feeling overwhelmed about how to pull it off remotely, worried about keeping the crowd engaged and the ideas flowing.
Instead of a multi-day on-site session with a whiteboard and a table of healthy snacks or an offsite retreat at a fancy country club, this year’s sessions will be held in people’s kitchens, basements, and home offices with maybe some peanut-butter-smeared crackers and a juice box for refreshments.
And when it comes to the plan itself, you’re pretty much going to have to start from scratch, because simply extending last year’s initiatives might be inappropriate, ineffective, and tone-deaf, given the new realities. And that 5-year plan you labored over? Not much use anymore, because business will never be the same again. Not an overstatement. Not pessimism. Just a fact.
The other important fact is that your business is still here! The composition of your team may have changed, but everyone’s looking for direction and a purpose bigger than their immediate issues. So, why not kick off your first big post-COVID marketing effort with a virtual team-building and planning experience?
Here’s the best part: We have a program to help you get it done.
We call it “Ready for Anything” Virtual Planning, and it’s designed to do two things:
1. Facilitate the creation of a powerful marketing plan, or any other virtual marketing initiative, based on post-2020 market realities, with built-in flexibility for making changes on-the-fly.
2. Introduce and train the team on best practices for effective remote teamwork.
Both of these are interwoven, so the virtual communication skills taught are put to immediate use to systematically design your 2021 marketing plan. This practical application of the remote collaboration skills reinforces the behavior and assures that the project stays on task and the team feels heard and valued.
Who are the people behind “Ready for Anything” virtual planning?
InfiniteEdge is a consultancy of marketing and culture experts that helps companies build trust and navigate today’s rapidly evolving market environment.
We have partnered with LUMAN, an agency of industry leaders who bring a breadth of experience driving innovation and building organizations capable of creating the future. Read Luman’s blogpost on “Rapidly building remote teams” to understand the desired behaviors and tools for successful remote collaboration.
Together, we have developed a virtual marketing planning experience that facilitates the building of a resilient post-COVID marketing plan, while strengthening your team’s capacity to succeed in a virtual world.
Why We’re Eager To Help
We’ve all been living with unpredictability for many years—but since early 2020, our level of unease and apprehension about the future has escalated. The speed of change and the economic uncertainty has been unrelenting, nerve-wracking, and in too many cases, devastating. Our research shows that the companies that thrive will be those with a plan that demonstrates their commitment to relationship over revenue, trust over hype, and real value over empty claims.
InfiniteEdge Consulting was born in mid-2020 out of this chaos, with a singular goal: to make change your brand’s superpower: to help empower individuals, teams, and workplaces to be more flexible, more nurturing to employees, more responsive to customers, and more accountable to the earth we inhabit.
Every Planning Session—Just Like Every Marketing Plan—Is Unique
We start by getting to know you, your challenges, goals, and the path you were on before the pandemic hit. We look at each major section of your 2020 marketing plan, including the situational analysis, target audience, goals, tactics, and budget, and help you review the areas that have been uprooted by today’s marketplace.
It’s likely, for example, that many assumptions upon which you based your 2020 plan are no longer true.
The industry you’re in may have undergone serious setbacks.
Your competition has likely morphed in unpredictable ways.
Your audience may have shifted or lost buying power.
Your personas may have some new priorities.
The channels your customers engaged with most are totally different.
The relevance and popularity of some of your products may have changed.
Your goals may have shifted, which will impact your tactics.
And your budget? Forget about adding x% over last year. It’s a whole new reality.
We work with you to design a program that meets your marketing planning goals, empowers your teams to adopt best practices for remote collaboration, and sets you on the path for a successful marketing and sales season, based on the radically different world we now live in.
Together we set the stage:
Evaluate your current environment
Set goals and outcomes
Define participants and roles
Decide on priorities and the big questions
Select collaboration tools and formats to use
Create an agenda
Design the breakout sessions
Communicate clearly and often
Then leave the rest to us:
Pre-planning logistics and administration
Pre-planning post-covid industry trend research
Coordination between leadership and team members to assure alignment
Big-picture insights to guide discussions
Expert facilitation that encourages productive participation
Practice activities to reinforce desired behaviors
Cohesive integrated strategic guidance
Plan completion assistance by seasoned marketing strategists
Post-workshop follow up to land the plan
Long-term integration of plan components to maximize efforts
How virtual planning sessions can improve decision-making
Planning an offsite retreat or flying in employees to attend meetings at headquarters could take months of detailed event planning, outside vendors contracts, hotel, and entertainment bookings, right down to printing the company logo on coffee mugs and keychains. Virtual events can eliminate many of these logistical problems, saving money, time, and stress.
In this workshop, participants experience an effective framework for conducting interactive planning activities and for making important group decisions.
Facilitators handle many administrative and logistical tasks and bring best practices to the table for optimal remote engagement.
Everyone invited can attend.
Less inhibition, more freedom to contribute among rank-and-file participants.
Greater recognition for contributions and strategic/tactical thinking.
Networking opportunities for small-group breakouts.
Formalized processes for accountability and agreement-keeping for individuals and small groups.
New processes for virtual meetings moving forward.
Elevated status of Marketing within the larger organization for its vision of the future.
Ask us for a proposal.
When it’s time to begin thinking about your 2021 marketing plan, you may find our virtual immersive costs far less than your past in-person planning events. Please contact us to discuss “Ready for Anything” Virtual Planning for your organization.
About Us
InfiniteEdge is a consultancy of marketing and culture experts that helps companies build trust and navigate today’s rapidly evolving market environment, while providing all the marketing services you'd expect from a top-tier integrated agency. Invite us in to help you transition your marketing operation from reactive to responsive and develop a roadmap to help you thrive through the coming unknown.
LUMAN is an agency with a proven framework for supporting you and your team in transforming your culture, specifically in your transition from office-centered to virtual and remote. They are experts in virtual collaboration, planning for change, inspiring innovation, and gaining alignment towards a common purpose.
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