Here's how you can mitigate the risks of poor decision making in retail marketing.

Mitigating risks should simply be a component of any comprehensive marketing strategy. The way I tackle this is the same way I tackle everything else in my world, data and analytics. - First, setting the table on the front-end of marketing programs greatly increases the chances of success out-of-the-gate. The correct audience/message/channel. - Then, having a solid feedback loop to recycle learnings back into your strategies, is critical to stay on top of your changes that may pop-up mid-campaign. - Finally, doing a post-mortem on complete programs rounds out analysis that will help on subsequent programs. This is the process I follow to give us the best chances at success.

I fully agree with this point, and the ability to triangulate data across market share growth, primary, secondary and tertiary volume & sell through rates, and impact on distribution numbers can clearly give signals to prove or disprove your hypotheses. Use this, alongwith any competitor actions, front line feedback from your sales teams to create locally relevant hypothesis, and present findings with proposed solutions to help drive decisions and change the elements of the decisions which do not work.

You can’t underestimate the power of seeing it in action. If you play any part of the customer journey, you should make it a practice to get out and visit the stores. Spend time observing customer interactions with products, see what others are doing well, and ask questions to find out if there are things you could do better.

Success can be found not only by setting goals, but also by: 1) Proactively itemizing risks within the plan and thoughtfully documenting corresponding actions that will be taken to mitigate these risks and potential contingency plans that can be activated if the plan is off track; 2) Establishing longitudinal milestones & performance indicators to enable the leadership team to assess whether or not the plan is on track, thereby revealing risk at the earliest possible interval so contingency plans can be activated on a timely basis.

Another very important point which is not covered here is - Professional Development! Invest in training and development for your marketing team to enhance their skills and knowledge, ensuring they are equipped to make informed decisions.

Create a culture of trust and safety so that the team can provide feedback on ideas/plans that need improvement and present alternative ideas in a constructive way. When a high trust, high performance culture is fostered, the team can also say something early if a plan isn’t working - including their own - and not fear for consequence more than the excitement they might instead feel to turn it around.