Contingency planning for marketing

This time last year I was rewriting all the carefully crafted marketing strategies and plans developed over the previous year, a picture replicated in marketing departments worldwide, no doubt. Even the best researched and tested marketing plans of 2019 were unlikely to resonate with consumers in early 2020 after Coronavirus changed our world.

Whilst we couldn’t have seen the pandemic coming, the practice of contingency planning isn’t new. The need to adapt and adjust marketing plans in response to macro-environmental factors should be obvious to all good marketers.

Back in 2016 I wrote a blog article about Marketing Contingency Planning, based on the knowledge that the best laid plans are subject to unexpected change. I suspect, based partly on views to that blog, that many marketing leaders are now being tasked with documenting their marketing contingency plans.

Here’s the headlines of how to approach contingency planning for marketing. To read the full article visit the link at the end.

What is a Marketing Contingency Plan?

A Marketing Contingency Plan is a document that outlines the steps to be taken, and the stakeholders to be considered, should a major disruptive event take place. It could be a local flood, an act of terrorism, or any other incident that causes your organisation to react in crisis mode.

A contingency plan should be developed in advance, during calm, so that you can consider and document all actions to be taken. It should be discussed with other departments to ensure alignment and understanding, and be communicated within the marketing team as well, so that its existence is not a surprise when it is suddenly brought to life. The plan should then be kept ‘on the shelf’ ready to be put into action at short notice should it be needed.

Without a contingency plan the marketing team (and any other department for that matter) risks going into headless chicken mode, making things up as you go along, with the risk of duplicating effort or important tasks falling through the gaps. A good plan will allow you to have a clear head in the midst of a crisis.

What should a contingency plan cover?

Your contingency plan should list the decisions to be taken should a major event take place, that disrupts business as usual.

It documents the actions that the marketing team need to take, assigns ownership of each task, and records who has decision making authority for each element.

For instance, who will be responsible for reviewing all currently scheduled marketing activity, including advertising, email sequences and social media posts?

Who will be responsible for handing press enquiries, providing social customer service and answering email queries?

Which IT systems will be in use for each element, who has access, and what are the passwords that will be needed?

A prioritised framework of workstreams and tasks will provide you with a process to follow should the plan need to be put into action.

A good starting point for developing your contingency plan is to consider: What is the first thing you should do? Who needs to be involved? What is the process for reporting that actions have been completed? What's the next priority?

Communicating in a crisis

Your marketing contingency plan will include a stakeholder mapping which should include internal as well as external audiences.

Document all stakeholders and identify their information needs during a crisis, noting how often and which method will be used to keep them informed. Who will be responsible for communicating with each audience, and is that noted in their contingency plan? For instance, who will communicate with colleagues, suppliers or regulated bodies?

At the planning stage agree the approvals process for the communications that each team is responsible for, and if possible draft some outline messages that can be copied and pasted in the event of an emergency.

It’s not just the social media team that will need to act quickly during a time of crisis, so the more that is pre-approved and templated the better.

Taking ownership of the contingency plan

Clear leadership is more important than ever in times of crisis. As Marketing Director or Head of Marketing you are likely to be the main owner of the marketing contingency plan, and thus it is not only your responsibility to shape it in the first place, but also to keep it updated on an annual basis.

Include any recent learnings in your next update, based on experiences within your company and also issues that other organisations have faced that could be a problem for you – such as how to gain access to social media accounts at short notice.

The contingency plan will be an evolving document that you can add to over time. The important thing is to make a start so that you have something, even an outline, in place before the next time it is needed.

Find out more

My article from 2016 approaches the topic from a more tactical angle of what to do in a crisis and discusses the steps that you could include in your marketing contingency plan. You can read the full article here.