Breaking Marketing Strategy Into Actionable Work

Marketing Planning Series | Week 2 of 12

One thing I've learned from managing marketing across different organizations is that having a strategy doesn't automatically mean everyone knows what needs to happen next. The business may have established its objectives, identified its audience, selected its marketing channels, and determined its priorities, but there's still work to do before those decisions become actual marketing activities.

That's where the planning process begins. Rather than revisiting decisions already made during strategy, the focus shifts to identifying the campaigns and projects needed to support them, breaking larger initiatives into manageable tasks, and understanding how those activities connect to one another. It also means determining what needs to happen first so the team can begin organizing its work.

Through my experience in both marketing and project management, I've found that this early stage of planning can make a significant difference. It helps organizations understand the full scope of their marketing efforts before they begin assigning responsibilities, committing to timelines, or launching campaigns.

Start by Identifying the Work

Once the strategy is established, I like to start by looking at the major campaigns, projects, and activities required to carry it out. This might include developing an email campaign, updating website content, creating advertising materials, or preparing communications for an upcoming event.

At this stage, the goal isn't to schedule every individual task. It's to identify the major pieces of work so the organization understands what needs to be developed, launched, or maintained. For example, if email marketing is one of the channels identified in the strategy, planning might involve outlining the campaigns that need to be created and identifying the content or supporting materials each will require.

This gives the team a clearer picture of the work ahead before getting into the details of how each initiative will be completed.

Break Larger Projects Into Manageable Tasks

A campaign or project can sound relatively straightforward until you begin looking at everything required to complete it. I've worked on marketing initiatives where a single launch involved content development, design, website updates, approvals, testing, and coordination between several people.

Breaking that work into smaller tasks makes those requirements easier to manage. An email campaign, for example, may need approved copy, finalized graphics, updated landing pages, and testing before it can be sent. Listing those tasks helps the team understand the actual work involved rather than treating the campaign as one item on a calendar.

I've found that this is often where the true scope of a marketing initiative becomes clear. What initially seemed like a simple campaign may require more time and coordination than expected, which is important to recognize before making commitments about delivery.

Understand How the Work Fits Together

Marketing activities rarely happen in isolation. A single campaign might involve email marketing, social media, advertising, and website updates, with different people contributing to each part.

When those activities are planned separately, important connections can be missed. For example, an advertising campaign might depend on a landing page being completed, or a social media announcement might need to wait until an event registration page is ready. If those relationships aren't identified early, one delay can affect several other activities.

This becomes especially important when multiple campaigns are happening at once. A designer might be supporting several projects, or different teams may be waiting on the same approvals. I've found that identifying these overlaps early helps organizations recognize potential conflicts and make more realistic decisions about how the work should be organized.

Determine What Needs to Happen First

Once the work and its dependencies are understood, the next step is deciding the order in which activities should happen. Some projects have fixed launch dates, while others can move forward as resources become available.

I think this is where planning begins to bring real clarity to a marketing team's workload. Instead of treating every request as equally urgent, the team can look at deadlines, prerequisites, and the work that needs to be completed before other activities can begin. That helps prevent situations where a campaign is nearly ready to launch but is waiting on something that should have been addressed much earlier.

The goal at this stage isn't to finalize every deadline. It's to establish a sensible sequence of work that can be developed into a more detailed schedule as planning continues.

Final Thoughts

Breaking a marketing strategy into actionable work is an important step in preparing an organization to carry out its marketing efforts. It starts with identifying the campaigns and projects required, then looking more closely at the tasks involved in completing them.

From there, understanding how activities connect and which ones need to happen first helps the team recognize potential challenges before work begins. Those early decisions make it easier to develop realistic schedules and coordinate the people involved.

Throughout my career, I've learned that marketing projects tend to be easier to manage when the full scope of the work is understood from the beginning. It doesn't eliminate unexpected challenges, but it gives teams a better starting point and reduces the need to constantly figure things out as they go.

As we continue through the Marketing Planning phase, we'll build on this work by exploring timelines, responsibilities, and resource coordination. For now, the focus is on understanding what needs to happen before deciding exactly when and by whom.