The 7 Deadly Sins of Tech Consulting Marketing Planning

Tech consulting firms must have effective marketing to accelerate growth, and effective marketing begins with a plan.

Unfortunately, tech consulting firm marketing plans fail when the plan is not well-crafted, the scope is too narrow, there is no budget allocated to the plan, the timeline is unrealistic, the input from the leadership team and stakeholders is minimal, the resource projections are insufficient, and the plan is not monitored and updated regularly.

To be successful in planning efforts, firm leaders need to remember the ‘7 Deadly Sins’ that plague tech consulting firms’ marketing planning and embrace redemption

To be successful in planning efforts, firm leaders need to remember the ‘7 Deadly Sins’ that plague tech consulting firms’ marketing planning and embrace redemption.

Procrastination

Ignoring your responsibility to create the marketing plan doesn’t improve anything: You can’t ignore planning. Doing so will ensure you feel time pressure to complete your 2024 plan, making compromise and generalization more likely.

Redemption:  Just start. The first step leads to the second. It’s like taking a first step on a long journey: once you’ve taken that first step, the rest becomes easier.

Ignorance

Not analyzing and understanding past marketing performance and results removes the ability to make data-based decisions. Data from the past provides valuable insight. Data provides valuable insights into how marketing efforts have performed, what worked and what didn’t, and how to optimize future campaigns. Without utilizing this data, marketers can easily become reliant on guesswork and intuition rather than evidence-based decisions.

Redemption: Use a comprehensive framework to analyze past performance and identify improvement areas.

Isolation

Your plan is not an island! A marketing planning effort that excludes sales, customer success, and other areas of your tech consulting firm will diminish the quality and effectiveness of the plan.

Every stakeholder should be able to offer their input when creating the plan. Each stakeholder will have unique insights into the customer that should be considered. Having input from all areas of the company will ensure that the plan takes into account the entire customer journey and is not just focused on one part of it.

Redemption: Collaborate with sales, product, customer success, and other teams to gain insight, input, and alignment.

Generalization

Being too “generic” produces a weak plan. Your marketing plan must be detailed because it allocates time, money, and effort and needs to be tailored to the specific needs of your business. A generic plan may not take into account all the factors that can affect the success of your business, which could lead to wasted resources.  

Redemption: Include detailed goals, calendars, budgets, and campaigns in your plan.

Distractions

Do not get caught up in shiny objects, the latest MarTech pitches, or efforts to produce vanity metrics. Your plan should align with the firm’s business goals, not the wants of the marketing department. Vanity metrics, such as follower counts and likes, are important, but building them into your plan will only add distractions.

Redemption: Concentrating on creating a quality plan will amplify its value. Set aside the appropriate time necessary to produce your plan.

Assumptions

Assuming you know your ideal customer, their needs, wants, and behavior will make your planning more challenging and less effective. Without understanding your ideal customer, it is difficult to identify the best channels to reach them, the best message to send, and the offer to make. Without this information, it is impossible to create an effective marketing strategy.

Redemption: Ensure you have updated strategic elements (ICP, channel, content performance, etc.) and include those in your planning.

Perfection

Striving to create the perfect plan will prolong your efforts and prevent you from completing the plan and getting on with execution. When you focus on perfection, you tend to overthink and overanalyze your plan, which can lead to you spending too much time making changes and tweaking details that may not even matter in the long run. The more time you put into perfecting your plan, the less time you have to focus on executing it.

Redemption: Realize that a plan is only valuable if executed. Get comfortable with a level of done that is effective but not perfect. Ultimately, it’s more important to take action than to be perfect.

Avoiding these 7 Deadly Sins will increase the value of your marketing plan and increase the positive impact the plan has on your results. And remember, even if you find yourself in one of these areas of sin, there is always a path to redemption.