In this way, you ensure long-term perspective in your marketing department

Certainly, in the current crisis, in which the question is how the flag will be hanging in a month, ad-hoc marketing activities with a quick return are tempting for any entrepreneur. At the same time, choosing a course based on quick wins is not the drag line where marketing choices are made that yield much more in one or two years than today's quick choices.

7 signs that you can manage more in the long term

If you recognize yourself in one or more signals from this list, you can make a profit by steering more in the long term:

• The marketing budget determines what you do. The strategy does not determine the budget.
• You do not have a fixed internal marketing consultation, this only happens in the corridors.
• You have now registered dozens of domains and several websites are already up and running.
• You and your colleagues regularly, impulsively, put work aside because there is a new idea.
• You are mainly trying new things, you pay less attention to quality improvement.
• Optimizing the reports and measurements receives little attention.
• There is hardly any room for education and training for you and your marketing personnel.

How!? Google will show you

A long-term strategy does not have to mean less action. The difference is mainly in that choices are made in advance from a total picture about which marketing resources are used. One way to achieve this in your organization can be through OKRs: Objectives and Key Results. This system is used by Google, among others, and can also be combined with SCRUM. The idea is that you determine, together with your colleagues, 4 times a year where the company is going to move: the company-wide OKRs. Subsequently, each employee also has personal OKRs.

In concrete terms, you do it as follows:

• You hold an OKR meeting at fixed times, in which you as a team think about the course.
• You determine 3-5 Objectives throughout the company and per employee . They provide insight into the goal of the next 3 months, for example. An Objective can be: 15% increase in traffic via Google.
• 3-5 Key Results are then determined for each Objective . These are measurable results that lead to the objective of the Objective. For example: Writing 12 blogs with 3 search terms with a minimum search volume of 1500 p / m.

OKRs and SCRUM

The reason OKRs are often combined with SCRUM is because SCRUM has a lot of flexibility in it. As a result, the long term can be somewhat lost sight of. However, other reasons why your organization is focused on the short term can also be solved via OKRs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, of course, it is not about which method you use and whether you call it OKR or just objectives, as long as you do not lose sight of the long term and periodically look back to see if what has been done is in line with what you wanted to move towards beforehand.