I was asked to work with a marketing manager of a cyber security consultancy on their corporate marketing plan. The marketing project that the consultancy was taking on involved two other marketing consultants too.

The role of the marketing consultants

We all had separate roles to play – mine was to look at the overarching marketing plan for the business whilst the other two marketing consultants were closely aligned to separate services. One service line is very hands-on and people-focused and the other is automated and lead-heavy.

It was quite a complicated project and involved all marketing consultants working closely together to deliver the business brief that we had.

Kicking the marketing planning off

We started off by identifying the key stakeholders in the business and creating deep dive sessions to understand the competitor landscape, target market, and key services that they offered. We were keen to know what marketing had been done to date and worked together to establish a set of questions that we could use. We also conducted a staff survey and a client survey to help us gain a 360-degree view of where we were now.

A marketing plan that complemented the service line plans

My marketing consultant colleague was briefed to create a brand positioning statement and tone of voice document for their service line. Because my role was to write the overall marketing plan for the business, I had to be involved in all meetings to listen, understand, and start to plot out the corporate marketing plan.

This was considering that it wasn’t to overlap with the service line plans that the other marketing consultants were mapping out. It was a daunting and overwhelming task synthesizing so much information and not being able to pull my plan together until the other marketing consultants had completed their planning.

What did I do?

Once the consultant’s marketing plans had been completed, I could then take a look at where the gaps were and start mapping out the corporate marketing plan. This included identifying that a brand refresh was needed, a complete rewrite of the copy as well as the key marketing activities that they needed to implement such as PR and thought leadership campaigns pulling all the service lines together.

I also was tasked with looking at how the marketing team would be resourced, the marketing budget, and bigger issues such as allowing marketing to have a seat at the leadership table. It was a combined corporate marketing plan looking at building awareness and market profile, overarching marketing activities, marketing operations as well as business development activities that the firm needed to look at from a corporate level.

I submitted my marketing plan to the CEO for board-level discussion and I had no questions from the board. They were pleased with the level of detail in the plan and were then happy to take the plan forward internally.