How to Plan 3 Months of Marketing Projects in One Day

I’m a project manager, so I like to plan. Before you think “no shit, Sherlock” and click away from this post, I need you to truly understand the how deeply good (or bad) planning affects my core being. 
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If I go to bed with more than 3-4 unfinished tasks on my to do list, I fall into an existential crisis. When I’m stressed, I cope by organizing and reorganizing my Wunderlist until I feel better. I know peoples’ meeting calendars at Emplify better than they do. And I mean this with all the love in the world, but I’m pretty sure my husband would look like Weird Al Yankovic if I didn’t set reminders to give him haircuts.

Case in point.

Digressions aside, when our new VP of Marketing came to me with some pretty revolutionary, but also very intimidating, visions for our marketing strategy, all I wanted to do was lock myself in an office and compulsively move Trello cards until all the scary feelings went away. However, when you are at a crossroads with a team that warrants a greater discussion around marketing vision (and how you’re going to actually achieve said vision), ignoring those scary feelings will only result in spinning wheels on projects and team members who aren’t invested in their work.

Being the process-oriented monster that I am, I suggested tackling these big strategic concepts during a day-long planning offsite. I know team offsites can often warrant an audible groan from those who have endured horrendous training sessions or “team building activities,” but our recent offsite literally set our goals in motion for an entire quarter. We’re currently planning our team’s objectives for Q3, and we didn’t even need to meet about them, because we planned out the majority of our objectives during our offsite. How would you like to plan out an entire quarter’s worth of goals by just collaborating on a Google Doc?

It’s possible, but it takes some intentional focus on how to make your vision a tangible reality. Here are some takeaways from our recent offsite that you can apply to your quarterly planning:  

1. Segment your visions into themes. At Emplify, we are constantly working to improve our marketing processes using key functions of Agile methodology. One way that Agile development teams plan projects around bigger goals is by creating “epics.” An epic is a large body of work segmented by smaller user stories, or project deliverables/tasks.
   
   On our marketing team, we view epics as bigger themes of work that we are striving to segment all of our projects into. For example, one of our epics for the rest of this year is to create a comprehensive user journey for our product’s target market. Our goal is to segment all of our projects into one of these three themes, which makes goal setting and planning monumentally easier because it helps you prioritize.
   
   
2. Know the difference between long-term forecasts and short-term goals. When left to their own devices, marketing teams have a tendency to let brainstorming overshadow how much time it takes to actually get shit done. But who wants a marketing team with a bunch of realists? 
   
   To keep your team grounded during goal setting without limiting that creative vision, focus on one theme at a time and ask your team where they would like to be with that theme by the end of a long period of time. For us, it was by the end of 2017. Then, with that long-term vision in mind, ask your team to identify blockers they may encounter while working toward that goal. Creating goals around those blockers will help your team think realistically about smaller projects that will ultimately contribute to a more comprehensive goal.
   
   
3. Make sure every goal has a clear owner and stakeholder. This has zero research to support it except for my team’s own experiences, but I strongly believe that a project without both an owner and a stakeholder is a project that is destined to fail. Without a designated person on your team who is responsible for the success of a project, there is no one to hold accountable if things go off the tracks. And without a single approver who determines if a project is ready to ship, you’ll get stuck in a holding pattern of last minute edits from unexpected contributors to the project.
   
   Once you’ve determined your short-term goals as a team, make sure you identify that project owner and stakeholder. On our team at Emplify, we determine this by adding those members to Trello cards and indicating ownership in the card description, but you can achieve this using a Google Spreadsheet or other project management tool.

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What tactics have you used to set actionable goals for your marketing team? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments, and good luck with your Q3 planning!