Marketing moves fast, and building a plan that actually works can be tricky; not because of a lack of new ideas, but because it’s hard to know what’s genuinely moving the needle versus what’s just noise. More often than not, this is because the fundamentals of the plan aren’t solid enough to guide decision-making.
Even the best ideas will struggle to prove their value without the right groundwork setting them up for success. Focusing on the fundamentals might not be the most exhilarating part of our jobs, but it’s what separates teams who get lucky from those who build success on purpose. Those who see sustained success are the ones who get the basics right, stay focused on what actually moves the needle, and build a plan that evolves with their business.
Without strong foundations, marketing efforts can either be left up to chance or lack the space for improvement, optimisation and – most importantly – genuine growth. A great marketing plan is designed to keep learning and improving. Get the fundamentals right, and everything else will follow.
Setting the Right Objectives
Just because you can track it, doesn’t mean you should necessarily focus on it. High engagement? Low CPA? Great, but what does that actually mean?
A solid KPI framework is built top-down, starting at the business level and laddering into the jobs-to-be-done across marketing and media:
- Business Objective – the big picture: revenue growth, market expansion – the thing which gets the boardroom popping the champagne.
- Marketing Objective – what marketing needs to do to support the business in achieving its goal: brand awareness, lead generation, and customer retention.
- Media Objective – how media should be optimised to deliver the jobs to be done in marketing: cost-per-acquisition, engagement rates, unique reach and so on.
How you identify the jobs to be done will depend on your strategy. We use an approach called Growth Dynamics – more info here.
Too often, businesses hold up tactical, media-optimisation metrics disproportionately high versus their relative importance to the business. This is important because if we’re looking at the wrong data, we end up making decisions based on incomplete data and misleading insight; which ultimately might lead us away from making good decisions which contribute to our business goals.
Good objectives are specific, realistic, and accountable. That last part is key—if you don’t have a framework that keeps everything on track, you’re just guessing. Build a structure that makes it clear what success looks like and how you’ll measure progress.
Stop gambling and start testing
The marketing industry loves a shiny new trend, and they always come with a promise of instant results. But smart marketers don’t gamble; they test.
A structured experimentation plan should:
- Prioritise – identify which tactics are actually worth testing.
- Define – set clear hypotheses and expected outcomes.
- Measure – using a holistic approach to measurement, not just what individual ad platforms claim.
- Iterate – a plan to learn from the results and refine your approach as you integrate it into your plan at large.
Whether it’s hold-out tests, geo-experimentation, or upweighted campaign trials, the goal is always the same: prove effectiveness before scaling. The best marketing plans build continuous testing into the strategy, so you’re always improving.
Measure what actually matters
There is no silver bullet for accurate marketing effectiveness measurement, despite what some platforms will say. If you’re only looking at platform-reported data, you’re not getting the full picture. But some more data-intensive solutions are slower to digest, and not as agile if you’re trying to optimise more frequently.
A mature measurement strategy includes:
- Incrementality Testing – Understanding the true causal impact of media.
- Media Mix Modelling (MMM) – A big-picture view of how different channels contribute to business outcomes.
- Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) – Connecting the dots across customer touchpoints (where privacy laws allow).
Learn more about these in our video series.
Real measurement means looking beyond last-click attribution and focusing on contribution-based insights. The goal? To make marketing decisions defensible, strategic, and aligned with actual business growth.
A plan that evolves with you
Marketing isn’t about quick wins, it’s about building a strategy that adapts, evolves, and consistently delivers.
- Set clear, meaningful objectives that align with business growth.
- Test before you invest, ensuring every tactic earns its place in the strategy.
- Measure contribution over attribution to get a more accurate picture of what’s working.
A great marketing plan isn’t static; it’s built to keep learning and improving. Get the fundamentals right, and everything else will follow.
