You’ve spent a long time working through your marketing plan. Everything seems to be in order. You’re all ready to present it for approval. So the last thing to do before you walk into that meeting is…

Make a flow chart. Yes, time to brush off those circle and line drawing abilities because if it’s not visual, it’s just words on a page.

I find it useful to draw out all the channels, lines of connection, and examples of content that drives those connections for people to see. That way everyone understands what you mean by “the Twitter feed will drive traffic to the blog.”

Besides being a helpful tool for explaining your plan to others, it’s also a great way to check that each channel has a purpose and goal that has some measure for success. It may be low-tech, but it may save you from a high-tech blunder.

Quick scenario: Your marketing budget is frozen, no new initiatives are to get approval, and everyone is looking at you to make things happen. What do you do?

One idea is to look at your current marketing plan and ask what its original purpose was. Was there a larger strategy into which it fit? Were there clearly defined, measurable and obtainable goals outlined before its creation?

If your looking at the current marketing plan and scratching your head trying to answer these questions, then it is time to go back and start fresh with a new strategy. Make sure that strategy includes clearly defined metrics and measures of success. Once you have that, create a new marketing plan that fits into this strategy.

Present both the strategy and the marketing plan to others in the company to gain buy-in. If this new plan makes sense, you might just find your marketing budget freed-up to enact this new plan of attack.