Insight case article: A new campaign planning process and playbooks driving success across multiregional marketing teams

A typical challenge for large international companies with marketing functions that combine local and centralized operations: how to align everyone to row in the same direction and at the same rhythm? In this insight case article, I share how we helped our client turn a time-consuming, inconsistent global campaign planning process into a competitive advantage for their nine-region marketing function.

A starting point: How to align campaign planning and achieve success across 9 regions?

Our client is an international professional services company specializing in technology and IT. At the time, each of their nine regions planned campaigns independently. This decentralized approach made it difficult to manage marketing at a global scale, misaligned budget allocations, and led to significant variation in campaign planning and executing practices. The result was ad hoc, overdue tasks, unclear expectations, and inconsistent goals and outcomes across the marketing team.

The biggest issue was the inability to track and measure overarching campaign performance effectively and show marketing’s impact to business. Each region followed unique and often complex planning and operating models, which also prolonged onboarding and made training inconsistent.

The solution: a simplified campaign planning playbook

We developed a straightforward, actionable playbook for group campaign planning. It categorized the steps required for each stage of the campaign planning process, outlined how to execute the process, and defined who to involve at each phase.

The playbook was co-created with the Group Marketing CMO and her team member responsible for group campaigns. By leveraging Mavenfirst’s proven frameworks and best practices and tailoring them to the client’s specific environment, we ensured the solution addressed their unique needs.

The solution followed a five-step process:

1. Define the goals and identify obstacles 
   Together with the CMO and Campaign Manager, we pinpointed the key bottlenecks and obstacles in the current process and set the desired outcomes and main metrics to measure success in the new process.
   
   
2. Engage regional marketing leaders 
   We conducted interviews with regional marketing leaders to incorporate their perspectives. This ensured the process wasn’t overly centralized and accounted for the unique needs, challenges, and situations of each region.
   
   
3. Design the process and exit criteria 
   We created a structured process with clear exit criteria for each stage, ensuring everyone understood when a stage was complete. This step also included creating meeting agendas, templates, and a written playbook to guide the team.
   
   
4. Assign roles and pilot the process 
   Roles and responsibilities were clearly defined. We conducted a pilot run with two regions and a smaller campaign. Feedback from this pilot helped make necessary adjustments before rolling out the playbook to all nine regions.
   
   
5. Review and refine 
   After three months of implementation, we conducted a review to ensure the desired outcomes were achieved and to fine-tune the process further.

Biggest benefits of the new approach

Improved measurability
The consolidated goal-setting and standardized planning process made it easier to track and measure group campaign performance, providing a clear overview of results.

Flexibility for localization
Despite the standardized framework, regions retained the ability to localize campaigns as needed, accommodating unique goals, target audiences, and market conditions.

Reduced overdue tasks
Streamlined planning reduced the number of simultaneous campaigns, enabling better predictability and significantly lowering the volume of overdue tasks and last-minute ad hoc work.

Enhanced communication and visibility
The new process improved internal communication and gave all regions better visibility into group campaigns, leading to clearer resource allocation and fewer bottlenecks.

Achieved cost savings
Regions discovered opportunities to centralize previously localized campaign elements, achieving cost efficiencies without compromising performance.

Learn more

Planning processes are a vital part of building a world-class marketing team and function. For more insights on how to elevate your marketing operations, read our article: Building a world-class marketing team: six concrete operating models.

Have questions or want to discuss marketing leadership? Reach out to us—we’re happy to arrange an introductory meeting.