Photo by Eleni Afiontzi
The era of the digital marketing roadmap is here, and it makes the planning of your marketing strategy a whole lot easier.
But what is a marketing roadmap, and how will it benefit you in your work?
Well, the first step for any successful marketing strategy is a solid idea. But without direction, you might miss out on some epic results. To make sure that your team stays on course during your marketing efforts- you need to create a good work structure. A popular method used today to increase efficiency and impact when it comes to marketing is a product marketing roadmap.
The objective of this roadmap is to create a clear path from start to finish of your project. The roadmap helps you set and define a clear goal, and to make that goal attainable by showing you step-by-step how you are going to achieve it. Not only does a good marketing roadmap show what you are working on today, but also where that work will take you down the line, giving each member of your team a clear purpose for their day-to-day work. Your team must know how they are contributing to your companies competitive advantage.
Benefits Of A Marketing Roadmap
A marketing roadmap highlights key-operations to help aid a marketing team. Here are some of the benefits:
- Prioritization. When you are facing an unexpected challenge, it can consume valuable resources (workers and time). By having a clear view of all of your tasks, it makes it easier to prioritize and make the right decision to minimize lost progression.
- Communication & Impact. Having a roadmap makes it easier to communicate your plans and the impact you are having on your companies high-level goals. Thanks to the roadmap, everyone can see exactly where you are and where you are heading.
- Alignment. Having a clear structure to follow ensures that everyone in your team is on the same page. Creating more efficient teamwork.
- Collaboration. Including new talent in a project becomes easy because you can present a clear picture of what you are working on today.
Building your roadmap
The beautiful thing about building a marketing roadmap is that you can make it as advanced as you need it to me.
The first step…
is also the most important one, this is where you plan out your marketing strategy. Consider what your short- and long-term goals are, and make sure that they are easy for everyone to understand. Then create a structure that will get you there as fast as possible.
Define high-level goals
The what and the why. It is essential that your team knows what they are working on. Knowing why will not only bring a sense of purpose, but also increase the efficiency of the work.
The objective of your marketing roadmap is to have a clear structure that shows how you are progressing towards your high-level goals. By clearly defining your company’s high-level goals, you are giving your team an understanding of the impact of their daily work.
The objective of your marketing roadmap is to have a clear structure that shows how you are progressing towards your high-level goals. By clearly defining your company’s high-level goals, you are giving your team an understanding of the impact of their daily work. Your roadmap should consist of a step-by-step guide where each step directly ties into your company’s overall high-level goals.
Break down goals into initiatives
How to break down your high-level goals, with the use of a marketing roadmap? Establishing milestones further down the line can be very hard, but it is essential to give your marketing efforts a direction. Breaking these milestones down into smaller pieces along the way can make this journey feel like reality rather than fiction.
Example: Let’s say that one of your high-level goals for this quarter is to improve brand awareness by 10%.
To make this more attainable, you can break this down into smaller initiatives. Consider what might help you to reach this milestone?
- Scale-up content production. One of your initiatives can be to increase the amount of content that you are producing for your website. Having great and relevant content can increase the amount of organic traffic to your website.
- Increased paid-promotion. Another initiative might be to put more focus on the paid-promotion of your product. It might be time to find new outlets for your marketing, like ads on social media or tie in an influencer to your promotion.
- Off-site content production. More focus on establishing an online presence for your company through social media or creating a kick-ass newsletter might be one of your initiatives for this quarter.
These are just some examples of initiatives that could help to reach your high-level goal. You can further break down these initiatives to make every step more attainable. By placing each step into your digital marketing roadmap, you are creating a direct and manageable road to follow.
The power of categories
To make your marketing roadmap easier to follow, you can add categories in different themes. Adding themes is a great way to give everyone involved a clear view of the overall goal and also specific topics. Below you will find a product marketing roadmap where a board game is the focus product. Notice the different themes for each category:
Thanks to the simplicity of the layout, the marketing roadmap becomes a great visual tool to use when presenting your marketing strategy for others.
You might notice that the roadmap is divided into different quarters as well. This method is called quarterly roadmap planning, and it ́s a great example of how to get efficient use out of your roadmap. Now you know some of the nifty things a marketing roadmap can do!
Keep it in mind when you are planning your next marketing adventure - it might come in handy.
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