What happens when things don't turn out the way you planned them? Do you have a contingency plan? In today's economic environment, it is important to have some flexibility to your business plan. It seems every day there is some piece of news that is another drag on any kind of economic recovery. It seems like making a plan, especially a marketing plan, is simply futile work with all of the changes that are happening around us. How can you even predict what the buying trends of your clients will be with all of the uncertainty in the marketplace? However, I would suggest that making a marketing plan makes all kinds of sense if you build some flexibility into it and keep your eyes and ears open.

Let's take a look at what a strategic marketing plan is. It is a guideline that lays out your marketing efforts in a timeline leading up to a point where sales will take place. It defines how you are going to go about making people aware of your company's offerings, how you will approach a prospective client to make a sale, how you will follow up with them, and so on. You might be planning for a trade show, for instance. Your strategic marketing plan would lay out the activities you will do before the show, during it and after it is over to attract business to your company. In our trade show example, that might take the form of finding out who has registered for the show and doing a pre-show ticket that gives them a chance to win a TV if they stop by your booth. This is a common tactic that appeals to people's need for pleasure. People love to win prizes that cost them nothing and they also like games of chance to see how lucky they can be. The whole idea is to entice prospective clients to spend some time with your sales staff, who will tout your products and services, give the prospect a brochure explaining your best features, and gather contact info on them. The day after the show is over, your marketing plan would instruct the sales staff to follow up on all of the prospects they had seen and try to close the deals as quickly as possible. But what would happen if the attendance at this trade show was drastically downsized the day before it opened? Let's say there is an announcement that the biggest employer in town is going to lay off up to half of its workforce. People aren't in the mood to spend money at a tradeshow any longer. No matter how good your come-by-my-booth-to-win-a-TV gimmick was, it will not work in this kind of environment. What do you do? If you are planning some flexibility into your marketing, you will have a contingency plan to deal with these kinds of roadblocks. First, find out what you do have to get your product offerings in front of the prospects. For instance, you still have contact information on the potential clients from the pre-show ticket. You have an avenue to make contact with them. Plan on using it. Secondly, change your strategy to flow with the times you are living in at the moment. If a lot of people are going to lose their jobs, discretionary dollars will be harder to come by. You won't be able to entice them with a chance to win a free TV any longer. Can you reposition your product offerings to be necessities of life? (See my article, The Essential Non-essentials) You might need to let them know how they can still have your products without paying everything now. Call it a layaway plan and take payments from them. Extend service offerings at no extra charge. Change your marketing tactics and the tone of your advertising to be one of survival rather than one of pleasure.

In reality, you cannot think of every little thing that might happen to alter your marketing plans. Granted, but I would suggest you come up with an "if/then" approach to your strategy. Come up with the best-case scenario, where everyone is feeling good and there is nothing blocking the way for your customer to buy from you. Next, ask yourself, "what would I do if there were some roadblocks for my customer? What would some of their objections be to making a purchase from me?" What might some of those roadblocks be? Could you remove them? If not, how could you navigate around them from a marketing perspective? This is where thinking through your marketing plan will help you stay afloat when things don't turn out the way you expected.