The holy grail of marketing is to create a truly scalable and repeatable marketing plan. Repeatable strategies require documented processes that are followed by all.
That’s right; you must document the processes that deliver your outcomes—whether good or bad. Set the expectation that every process of consequence is documented by your marketing team no matter its current outcome.
Why? Because you need to understand with clarity exactly what processes your marketing employees consistently follow before you’ll be able to work with the team to improve those processes. You should be able to place any skilled specialist into a seat on your marketing team and, if they follow your processes, have a similar result to others executing that same process. With all processes documented, you can prove to clients and stakeholders that your positive outcomes aren’t luck—they’re the products of intentional strategy, market research and optimizations.
But this isn’t just about consistency of execution. Documenting all processes ensures that your guaranteed pathway to success is institutional knowledge, rather than just in the head of one person whose departure could drastically alter your company’s growth. In this scenario, your SOPs are a contingency plan to account for any transition, making your employee onboarding more efficient and effective.
The same holds true for your agency. Before selecting an agency partner, ask agency leadership how well their team documents its marketing operational practices, and how they hold their team accountable to following those processes. They are unlikely to share the actual SOPs (standard operating procedures) with you, however, as they are likely a proprietary part of the agency’s model. Instead, just ask for a simple list of the names of the agency’s documented processes, including detail on how often those processes are covered in team training and how leadership holds its team accountable to following those processes.
Following are a few of the marketing processes you should consider documenting:
- Market research:
- Objective setting
- Data collection methods (surveys, focus groups, online tools)
- Frequency of ongoing research
- Data analysis and reporting
- Feedback loops for product or service improvement
- Content creation:
- Topic ideation
- Content format determination (blog, video, podcast, etc.)
- Writing, editing, and approval processes
- Publishing and promotion
- Social media management:
- Platform selection and optimization
- Content scheduling
- Engagement guidelines (responding to comments, DMs) by platform
- Hashtag protocols by platform
- Crisis management
- Email marketing:
- List segmentation and management
- Email design and copywriting guidelines
- Scheduling and frequency
- A/B testing procedures
- Metrics tracking and analysis
- Campaign monitoring and optimization
- SEO:
- Keyword research
- On-page optimization (meta tags, content, images)
- Off-page optimization (backlinking strategies)
- Reporting and metrics analysis
- Paid advertising:
- Campaign objective setting
- Target audience segmentation
- Ad design and copywriting
- Budget allocation and bidding strategies
- A/B testing procedures
- Campaign monitoring and optimization
- Event marketing:
- Event planning and logistics
- Promotion and ticket sales
- On-site event management
- Post-event feedback and analysis
- PR and media relations:
- Press release creation and distribution
- Media list management
- Crisis communication
- Tracking media mentions and coverage
- Analytics and reporting:
- Selection of KPIs
- Data collection methods and tools
- Data analysis and interpretation
- Reporting formats and frequency
- Brand guidelines:
- Logo usage
- Color palette
- Typography
- Tone of voice and messaging
- Affiliate and influencer marketing:
- Partner selection criteria
- Contract negotiations and terms
- Campaign tracking and payment terms
- Lead generation and nurturing:
- Target audience profiling
- Lead magnet creation
- Landing page design and optimization
- Lead scoring and follow-up
- Product launches:
- Market analysis and positioning
- Pre-launch promotional strategies
- Launch day logistics
- Post-launch feedback collection
- Customer feedback and reviews:
- Collection methods (surveys, online reviews)
- Review response guidelines
- Repurposing positive reviews in marketing efforts
- Feedback integration into product/service improvements
- Website optimization:
- Periodic website audits (quarterly, bi-annually, etc.)
- Regular monitoring for broken links
- Usability testing schedules
- Mobile responsiveness checks
- Site speed and performance evaluations
- CRO (conversion rate optimization):
- A/B testing schedules for landing pages, CTAs, and other key elements
- Funnel analysis and drop-off point assessments
- Regularly scheduled reviews of analytics to identify areas of improvement
When developing an SOP for any of these processes, it’s essential to provide detailed step-by-step instructions, define responsibilities for each task, specify tools or software to be used, and set timelines where appropriate. Regularly reviewing and updating SOPs—ideally quarterly—to align with the latest best practices, tools, and market conditions is equally important.
By Lori Turner-Wilson, RedRover CEO/Founder, Internationally Best-Selling Author of The B2B Marketing RevolutionTM: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes
Taking Action
Documenting processes is one of hundreds of best practices found in The B2B Marketing RevolutionTM: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes — the playbook that middle-market B2B CEOs and marketing leaders lean on to scale. Backed by a groundbreaking research study, this book offers time-tested best practices, indispensable KPIs for benchmarking, insights on where your dollars are best spent, and, above all, the proven 12 BattlesTM Framework for generating guaranteed marketing outcomes. The B2B Marketing RevolutionTM is a battle-hardened approach to becoming an outcomes-first leader who’s ready to shake up the status quo, invest in high-payoff market research and optimization, and — yes — even torch what’s not serving your endgame. Download more than 50 templates, scripts and tools from the book on the Battle Reader Hub.
If you’d like to talk about how to build a marketing engine that delivers predictable results — whether you want to build it yourself or tag in our team to lead the way — we’d be delighted to help you get started.
