Implementing your marketing campaign

At this point you should be clear about the 'who, what, when, how, who by and how much' of your marketing plan.

A good plan should make implementation much easier for all involved.  Whether implementing a direct marketing campaign, developing a visitor survey, sourcing volunteers or simply looking for tips and techniques on how to manage your resources more effectively, AAM provides a range of practical guides and services to assist arts providers in implementing their marketing and audience development plans. 

In addition to these more tactical marketing activities, there are number of other things to bear in mind during implementation:

Make sure you know exactly what your plan is contingent on and that you know what to do if things change. 

The easiest way of doing this is to go through your tactical activities and to link those that are dependant on each other. Then establish the degree to which they are interdependent - and whether or not the activities could be replaced or withdrawn, should your resources or objectives change. 

Make sure you think through the risks associated with each activity and make a note of these.  Being explicit about the risks at the start allows you to monitor them as you progress. If risks do materialise, you are then in a position to react quickly.
 

Take time for thorough scheduling 

Often, it's the amount of time needed for the activities that cause marketers to steer away from their plans.  Simply being aware of this helps, but a good plan works wonders.

You will find that understanding the interdependencies between activities will make it much easier to see how much impact any delays will have.  You can then easily identify which activities you can shorten to minimise delays.
 

It’s easy for marketers to get so focused on developing communications for their external audiences that they forget to tell their own colleagues. 

Once you've got buy-in from colleagues on the initial plan, make sure you keep them informed on how work is progressing. The people you work with are likely to be in a good position to provide early feedback and support during the implementation. 

Internal communications needn’t be time-consuming.  Hijacking a few minutes on the agenda of an existing meeting can provide a simple route to keeping everyone involved.