How to Create a Marketing Playbook
The definition of an actual playbook is to help the team ‘visualize targets, understand the continuous improvement model, and know what is needed to achieve goals and be successful.’ While traditionally, playbooks have been used to organize sports team, a marketing playbook provides the same guideline goals with a hope to lead the team to business victory.
Your playbook should have at least seven sections (remember you can always add more or less, as long as it’s customized for YOUR plan). The first three sections should go over the goal of the marketing strategy in a brief overview. Include information about your target audience and their user persona, key messages about the strategy, and assets you want to utilize in the marketing strategy—such as social media channels, online material, and advertising efforts.
The next sections should pinpoint which teams are needed for execution and their responsibilities. Now is the time where project management layouts come into play. Unpack which type of project workflow will be used—such as scrum or the waterfall flow—and the timelines. This will provide clarity for the teams and their leaders.
The final section should provide a breakdown of what the communication focus will be. Go over what the content will look like, any specific messaging that needs to be used, social media scripts, replies (if specific verbiage is requested), and if a style guide is required.
Provide information about what kind of monitoring system you’ll use to capture data analytics, track KPIs, ongoing results, and who will be responsible for them.
What Can You Learn from a Marketing Playbook
Whether your business is still in the start-up phase or you’re a veteran in the consumer world, a marketing playbook can provide insight into the world of marketing communication and teach you a lot about how your business does with marketing.
If you look at the data following a marketing playbook period, you can learn valuable insight about your audience. Such as how they consume media-how they like to interact with your brand, how they communicate on different channels.
Your team also learns the value of setting objectives, evaluating them, and working with KPIs. Data analytics can seem like a scary word that’s best left to your accountants, but a marketing playbook can provide a digestible way to understand them.
What are the Different Playbooks that Businesses Use
A marketing playbook is one of the most common tools a business uses to build upon marketing efforts, but it can also be used in different scenarios. Remember, playbooks are all about customization. If you need to implement a plan for another department, take the sections outlined above and apply them to whatever playbook you need to put together.
Growth-focused businesses use: lead generation playbooks, lead management playbooks, sales development playbooks, new sales playbooks, customer success playbooks, company playbooks, and operations playbooks to name a few.
Remember, this is just a shortlist of different playbooks you can count on to keep your business running and growing. The most important thing is to utilize your playbook to gather information about the objective, break down how it will happen, and what the goal is. Invite your team to be a part of the huddle and watch your business grow.
