From Early Starts to Smarter Planning: How to Build Marketing That Lasts the Year
In my last post, I talked about why starting marketing planning too late puts teams on the back foot and robs them of the chance to do anything truly meaningful. Starting earlier gives you the breathing room to think, align, and build properly.
But let’s be honest: starting early is only half the story.
Plenty of plans still fall apart once they leave the approved PowerPoint deck. Priorities shift. Budgets change. Leadership attention moves on. The plan that felt watertight in the autumn can look irrelevant by March. I’ve seen it more times than I can count.
So how do you stop that happening?
The answer isn’t to stop planning altogether (though I’ve heard plenty of people argue that planning is obsolete in today’s fast-changing world). If that’s your view, I’d say you’ve got the wrong thinking cap on. Planning isn’t a dinosaur activity, it just needs to be done in a way that reflects how businesses actually work today.
Here are two lenses I’ve found useful.
Pitfalls to Avoid (Planning for Reality, Not Just the Page)
McKinsey did a big piece of research into why most change programmes fail. While it wasn’t about marketing planning specifically, the patterns are the same. Plans fall apart when:
No shared vision: Everyone’s pulling in different directions because the goal isn’t crystal clear.
Leadership alignment in principle, but not always in practice: Senior stakeholders may agree at a high level, but competing priorities mean follow-through is really inconsistent.
Underestimating complexity: Teams think it’s “just a plan” without factoring in all the moving parts across sales, other functions, and regions.
No early wins: People lose faith before results appear. I’ve seen whole teams lose momentum by February because they couldn’t point to a single thing working…total morale killer.
Slow decision-making: Bottlenecks kill momentum and stall progress.
Not embedding changes: Everyone slides back to the old way once the pressure is off.
If you don’t guard against these pitfalls, even the smartest plan is vulnerable. A shared vision means alignment with Sales and other functions before you draft a single campaign. Early wins could be smaller activities in Q1 that demonstrate value. And quick, confident decision-making? That’s where C-Suite sponsorship becomes critical, not a nice-to-have.
Planning for Flexibility, Not Certainty
Too often, plans are treated like fixed contracts: neat timelines, locked budgets, and a quiet hope the world will behave itself. It never does.
A smarter approach is to plan for flexibility:
Start with assumptions, not certainties, and test them.
Decide upfront how you’ll communicate progress and keep people aligned along the journey.
Agree on the conditions that would make you pivot or switch direction.
Build in checkpoints to sense-check against what’s happening in the market, with customers, and inside the business.
Done this way, planning isn’t about being rigid. It’s about being ready. Ready to flex when things change, without losing sight of the bigger goal. And that adaptability is what gives the business confidence that marketing won’t just set a plan and defend it, but will keep moving forward intelligently.
Next Steps
If you’re in the middle of planning right now, take a step back and ask:
Does this plan avoid the obvious pitfalls?
Have we built in the flexibility to adapt as things change?
The good news is, it’s never too late to reset. Even small tweaks now can set you up for a stronger year.
Because plans don’t usually fail for lack of ambition. They fail because they’re too rigid, too late, or too disconnected from the wider business. Fix those things, and suddenly your plan has a real shot at lasting the year.
Let’s Talk.
If you’re navigating change - a merger, transformation, or a moment where brand and marketing need to lead, I’d love to help.
👉 Email me directly: andrews_samantha@hotmail.com
👉 Or message me on LinkedIn: Samantha Andrews