It's not too late to make your 2021 marketing strategy

When it comes to strategic planning, the path to tomorrow is never a straight line. Or so goes that old saying. Truth is, there isn't a CMO around who doesn't have big plans to innovate and evolve his organization's game plan.

And yes, while it's already July, now is no exception. It has been one heck of a past year or so. A pandemic. Mounting social unrest. Political upheaval. Add your event here. But as any good marketer knows, you are only as good as how fast you react to the changes—historic as some may have been.

In the end, success will hinge on setting realistic expectations and making tough choices. In Gartner's "5 Strategic Priorities for CMOs" report, the company examines how and why today's CMOs may be overly ambitious about how they can change their organizations’ interactions with their customers. The report shows that the majority of CMOs plan to reinvent nearly all strategies impacted by the pandemic, with 25% expecting retail and physical events to return to pre pandemic levels.

How CMOs "reinvent" their strategies while still executing effectively and remaining agile is what we will all watch. For every strategy they rescale, they choose another to reduce or retire. For every strategy reinvented, another returns to a pre-pandemic level. As Ganter suggests, you pick your priorities based on category, position, and unique challenges and opportunities.

CMOs who do too much too soon risk failing to do any one thing right and overburdening their teams. Being choosy enables you to prioritize efforts that are most essential in the short term, most aligned with your growth strategies for 2021, best suited for your organization’s capabilities and resources, and most responsive to consumer demands for diversity, equity and social justice.

Delay, deprioritize or delegate any efforts that don’t meet these criteria. Expect a constant cycle of iterative planning and institute formal scenario planning to address economic uncertainty in 2021.

For a complete look at Gartner's "5 Strategic Priorities for CMOs" report, click here.