The Power of Organization: Using Basecamp to Execute Your Marketing Plan

May 09, 2019

Using Basecamp to Execute Your Marketing Plan

A marketing plan isn’t a true plan unless you have specific goals in mind that you are striving to reach. As you move forward with your marketing plan, you’ll need a clear purpose in order to achieve the outcome you desire. By keeping yourself organized, you’ll be sure not to miss any deadlines or critical elements of your marketing plan.

Your business might decide to implement a marketing plan for many reasons. Maybe you are creating a paid advertising campaign for a new product, relaunching a website, or promoting a service your business offers. No matter what you are trying to achieve with your marketing plan, you’ll need to have a clear objective with measurable outcomes.

Here are some questions to ask yourself before beginning your marketing plan. These questions may seem obvious, but take some time to really think about them.

What is it that I am really promoting?

Let’s say you are offering a service. When you think about what you need to promote, there is more to it than just the service itself. You will also want to promote the convenience or money saving benefits you can provide.

What is it that I am hoping to accomplish?

Are you looking to grow your email lists? Do you want more social media followers? Do you want more people to visit your location? When creating a marketing plan, keep your goal specific so you don’t get off track.

How will I measure my success?

Whether you are using Google Analytics, social media data, or in-person visits to your store, you’ll need to track your results to ensure your efforts are being used in the right areas.

Using The Right Tools

Here at Ellen Grace, Basecamp is our go-to tool for managing the day-to-day marketing tasks and digital marketing deliverables for us and for all of our clients. There are a number of different tools and programs you can use to keep organized. For us, we’ve found that Basecamp is the best way to clearly track our marketing plans and projects.

Our team of consultants are located from coast to coast, and this powerful tool helps us stay connected while executing client campaigns on-time. Using Basecamp allows our team the ability to see where projects stand, a place to store and share documents, and a way for everyone to stay on the same page while still offering the flexibility they need.

For our purposes, we use Basecamp like this:

  • First, we set up PROJECTS for each of our clients. These Projects can be client specific or a month-to-month plan for overall marketing.
  • Within each PROJECT, we create separate TO-DO LISTS. For example we often use separate lists for prep and execution.
  • The LISTS are made up of TASKS such as Content Creation, Social Media, Email Campaigns and Website Enhancements – as well as idea buckets for future months.
  • Each task has an owner with a due date.

Our team sees a number of great benefits from Basecamp:

  • A clear and straightforward way to manage client deliverables
  • An easy way to share and store documents with other members of our team
  • Transparency within the team; so we all know where everyone else is with their specific Tasks.
  • Each team member has autonomy to execute at their convenience.

Using Basecamp to break everything down the way we do, we’re able to easily track our work and keep ourselves organized no matter how in depth a project may be. By keeping our team organized and informed, we are able to provide exceptional service to our clients, with our deliverables always on time.

A Goal Without a Plan Is Just a Wish!

Each part of your marketing plan should be broken down into segments with specific deliverables. In order to reach the goals you wish to achieve, you’ll need clarity about what you are promoting. As you set timelines for deliverables, you’ll want to work with your team so each member is on board and able to execute their specific tasks effectively.

One thing to keep in mind while setting up each Project, List, and Task, is to try and avoid the short-term mindset. While the steps to reaching your goal may be segmented, think of your marketing plan as a piece of your overall strategy. A strategy designed to give you long-term results!

Our team would love to help you craft and organize YOUR marketing plan! Get in touch with us to learn more about what we can offer!