What is a marketing roadmap?
Roadmaps are for product teams, right? This seemed to be the case for a long time — that roadmaps were a core focus of product management only. But marketing teams can benefit from roadmaps too. After all, a roadmap is simply a visualization of a plan. It lays the groundwork for consistent communication and collaboration of all the marketing efforts needed to grow a business.
A marketing roadmap visualizes your marketing programs, campaigns, and activities on a timeline view. It should be oriented around your marketing strategy. The example below displays schedules of work divided across the different functional areas of product marketing, digital marketing, and content marketing. You could also organize a marketing roadmap by programs, campaigns, or customer segments.
Here is a more detailed breakdown of what teams typically include on a marketing roadmap:
Goals: The objectives that you want to achieve as a team and the business value of those efforts.
Initiatives: Areas of investment or themes of work that will help you accomplish your goals. For instance, a marketing goal to be recognized as a thought leader could be linked to an initiative to introduce a new content program or event series.
Programs or campaigns: A more detailed look at the buckets of work across different marketing groups — such as digital advertising, content, communications, and sales enablement.
Activities: The actual work items that need to be delivered to achieve a program or campaign. These could include things like an individual blog post or digital advertisement.
Timeline: The time frame for reaching certain milestones or deadlines. Many teams create a high-level, year-long roadmap and then a calendar-driven schedule to track the activities along the way.
Building an effective marketing roadmap requires you to know exactly what you want to achieve and the steps you will take to get there. But if you have not worked this way before, it can be challenging to get started. Read our complete marketing guide — with expert tips on marketing strategy, roadmaps, marketing launches, and more.
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