Marketing is not static, it is constantly in motion. Yesterday’s measures may no longer be effective tomorrow and will be outdated the day after tomorrow.
It is therefore important to establish a permanent control and optimization process. You can learn a lot from process management. The PDCA cycle model is ideal for establishing your marketing success in the long term. How does it work? Let us explain to you…
What is the PDCA cycle?
The PDCA cycle describes the continuous process of controlling. It is a four-stage control loop that strives for constant improvement of processes. It consists of the following phases: Plan, Do, Check and Act.
These four phases are run through again and again and thus lead to the fact that processes are optimized. This allows companies to try out possible changes, see how they work in practice, and then make adjustments again. This makes it possible to never regard one’s own processes as a set but to review them critically and improve them again and again.
The history of the PDCA- Cycle
The PDCA cycle goes back to William Edwards Deming and Walter Andrew Shewhart. Shewhart laid the foundation for this in the 1930s when he was working in quality improvement at a Western Electric plant. There he developed a model that he published in the late 1930s as the Shewhart cycle. It divided the optimization into three phases: Specification – Production – Inspection.
The US physicist Deming built his own model on this. He expanded the circle by a further phase and made the model widely known. Although he himself continued to speak of the Shewhart cycle, in deference to Shewhart’s preliminary work, the model resulting from the initials of the four phases quickly became known as the PDCA cycle. Designations such as the Deming cycle, Deming circle, or Deming wheel are also common.
The 4 steps of the PDCA cycle
1. Plan: problem solution
The first phase deals with pure planning work. This is the focus of every action. First, a specific problem is localized and identified.
Based on this actual analysis, the process is dedicated to the development of hypotheses that should enable a solution.
Concrete goals are then formulated from these hypotheses. It is important that the goals are achievable and that suitable KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are set. This is the only way to record a potential success and/or to take further measures if necessary.
2: Do: implementation on a small scale
Once the problem has been identified and a goal has been defined from it, it’s time to implement it. In this case, a measure is taken, which in turn involves a change in the condition, e.g. a reaction of the market affected. Exactly what the Do looks like is not defined and depends on the individual plan.
It is important that the Do is not regarded as a final measure. It is more of a test phase than the permanent establishment of measures. In process management, the implementation often takes place initially on a small scale with a selected department.
The entire implementation of the problem solution is always documented for later evaluation.
3: Check: the success check
As soon as there is enough knowledge from the previous phase, the analysis begins. The results of the selected measure are now carefully monitored. Deming himself later spoke of the “study” phase in this context and thus changed the name to the PDSA circle. In doing so, he wanted to take into account the learning and researching of the character of the model.
At the end of the check, there is an objective consideration: Has the selected measure achieved the set goal and the problem solved? For this, it is important that suitable KPIs were defined in advance because these play a particularly important role in this phase.
4: Act: major implementation or new approach
Based on the analysis, a decision will now be made:
- Was the measure successful? Then it will be implemented more widely and then further optimized.
- Was the measure only partially successful? Then another test run follows to optimize the measure.
- Was the measure unsuccessful? Then a new plan phase starts.
This phase serves to reflect the entire process. Overall, this is followed by a new planning phase, regardless of whether the measure was successful or not. After all, if the measure was successful, it “only” eliminated a possible problem in the process.
A successful measure does not mean that the process is perfect afterward or that conditions cannot change again. Accordingly, the optimization starts again – just from a different situation and possibly with a modified or new problem.
An example of the PDCA cycle in marketing
You’ve probably already discovered parallels to marketing, haven’t you? To make the possible application of the PDCA cycle clearer, let’s go through a small example here.
Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a seller of office furniture. You are a medium-sized company that is mainly active regionally, but also nationally. Now let’s go through the different phases:
Plan: Marketing always faces the same problem. The three core topics are sales increase, reach, and image. If we go specifically into the topic of sales, we are faced with the problem of getting the best result with the existing marketing budget ) to want to achieve. Accordingly, we are making a plan: Due to the increased work from home, we see an opportunity here to tackle our problem.
So we set ourselves a specific goal: We want to increase our sales with the same budget by promoting home office needs (e.g. height-adjustable desks).
Do: We derive a specific measure from the plan. We shift a little budget and set up a landing page including Google Ads. We create different target groups and initially distribute smaller budgets. In short: We are testing whether this measure really promises to solve the problem.
Check: Now that the campaign has been running for a month or two on a smaller scale, let’s look at the numbers. How high was the ROI (return on investment) compared to other measures? Have we generated proportionally more sales from our budget? Or did we come too late with the campaign and all home offices are already equipped?
Act: Let’s assume that the measure was a complete success. Then, of course, we take more of the budget from other, weaker campaigns and roll out our home office campaign more widely. At the same time, we move directly to the next plan to further optimize the campaign. After all, the landing page could perform even better with expanded content, or there are still adjustments to be made to the ad groups and ad texts …
This example shows well that the process of marketing is never finished. Because after some time the campaign will certainly be in decline.
After all, at some point, all home offices will be equipped or people will increasingly return to the office. Then it’s time to come up with a new plan – and to optimize it again and again from scratch.
At the same time, a furniture store naturally always has more than just one thing going on. In most cases, a wide variety of campaigns run in parallel – and there are always new trends and approaches to get more success out of the given budget. But you can only do this if you see your marketing as a constant process. And the PDCA circle helps you immensely!
Marketing: PDCA cycle: the most important findings to go
- Think of marketing as an ongoing process
- Question existing measures and find new approaches
- Always look for optimization possibilities, for problem areas
- Use the processes of the PDCA circle to further develop your marketing
- The marketing problem usually revolves around sales, Reach or Image
- The goal is accordingly: To increase or improvement of sales/reach/image with the same budget
- Always stay on the ball, because what was good yesterday can be yesterday’s snow tomorrow
