About the Author
Corey Morris is the President and CEO of VOLTAGE, a search marketing and website agency for expertise-driven organizations. He has spent more than two decades in digital marketing and SEO, and he wrote the book on the Digital Marketing Success Plan® (DMSP), the planning process VOLTAGE uses with clients. Corey has published more than 150 articles and expert contributions across Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and Forbes over nearly a decade, and he still writes regularly for the first two. His Search Engine Journal articles alone have been read nearly 1.7 million times. He has spoken at SMX, Digital Summit, and SMPS. He's also a sought-after podcast and media guest, with more than 75 speaking, podcast, and media appearances. He served as an officer on the board of the global search marketing trade association, founded a Kansas City search marketing conference, and was named the 2019 KCDMA Marketer of the Year.
When people hear the word “plan,” their minds often jump to large teams, long meetings, and complex decks. Strategic planning gets branded as something big enterprises do, something that requires extra time, resources, and headcount. That’s a myth, and it’s one that holds a lot of small marketing teams back, including teams where marketing is one of many hats that one or more people wear.
Smaller teams need strategic planning just as much as their larger counterparts, and maybe even more. When you don’t have unlimited time, staff, or budget, the cost of wasting effort on the wrong tactics is even higher, and every move has to count. For small teams, planning is a lifeline and far from a luxury.
Small teams skip planning, and it hurts them.
In fast-moving organizations, planning often gets deprioritized in the name of “getting things done.” You’re writing copy, launching ads, building reports, and trying to keep the marketing engine running.
When you’re that busy, planning can feel like a slowdown. The paradox is that skipping planning to move faster usually leads to lost time, misalignment, and underwhelming results.
Without a plan, small teams often run into:
- Conflicting priorities from different stakeholders
- One-off campaigns that don’t connect to the bigger picture (see Campaigns vs Systems)
- Channels and tools being selected without clear strategy
- No shared definition of success
- A constant feeling of “Are we doing the right things?”
Teams end up busy but not necessarily effective, and leadership starts to question the return on marketing, because no one aligned upfront on what success looked like or how to measure it.
Small teams need strategy more than ever.
When your team is lean, you can’t afford to waste effort, and every campaign, post, or project needs to support the broader business goals. Strategic planning brings three major benefits that small teams especially need:
Focus gives you a filter.
What you need is a filter for choosing the right ideas. A documented strategy gives you permission to say no to distractions and yes to the efforts that move the needle.
Clarity builds trust.
A clear plan helps your team, leadership, and other departments understand what you’re doing and why. That transparency reduces friction and builds trust.
Alignment keeps everyone pulling together.
A plan creates alignment between marketing and business goals, between leadership and execution, and across all your tactics and channels. It becomes the north star that keeps everyone pulling in the same direction.
Planning for a lean team can be compact and actionable.
Planning doesn’t have to be a months-long project or an over-engineered slide deck. Done right, it can be compact, focused, and immediately actionable. Here’s what a good marketing plan includes, even for a small team:
- Clear marketing goals tied to business objectives
- Defined audience and a prioritized list of tactics, channels, and platforms
- A list of the key assets, tools, and technology needed to activate your plan
- A framework for tracking performance, reporting outcomes, and learning from results
- A shared document, ownership of tasks, and a calendar for rolling out the plan
Importantly, it should be written down and shared. A plan that lives in someone’s head is more of a hope than a plan.
Planning enables agility instead of rigidity.
Some teams worry that planning will box them in or make them less responsive, but the opposite is true. When you plan intentionally, you free up mental bandwidth, and you’re no longer scrambling to figure out what to do next or how to explain your decisions. That gives you more space to react to changes, because you know what you’re pivoting from and why.
Strategy creates structure so you can move faster, smarter, and with confidence.
Small teams can own strategy too.
Big companies don’t own strategy, and small marketing teams don’t need to stay in reactive mode. When you invest a little time to build a clear, actionable marketing plan, you gain focus, reduce noise, and start building momentum toward measurable outcomes.
If you’re on board with this concept and don’t have a place or framework to start with, I encourage you to check out my framework. Developing successful plans is exactly what the Digital Marketing Success Plan® (DMSP) is built for. If you lead a lean team or you are tired of flying blind, the START Planning Process helps you define the right goals, choose the right tactics, and set a course for growth.
You can explore the process and get free resources at https://thedmsp.com, or check out the full book to guide your next 60 to 90 days of strategy. You can also learn how VOLTAGE guides clients through the process, because planning is about being intentional, whatever your size.