Time to get planning for 2024

The summer holidays have ended, and reality has returned as you get back into work-mode. It's time to start thinking about your marketing plans for a new year that will be here in just a few months.

Now is the ideal time to revive those ideas and thoughts and get proactive about your marketing activities for 2024. In this blog we look at how to develop your marketing plan that focuses on winning and keeping customers.

Look back before looking forward

Before you start to develop your plan, the only way to think about the future is by learning from the past. So, before you draw up a list of tasks, take a look at your marketing activities from the past year and assess where you're at, what went wrong and right to repeat proven successes, and where you want to go.

A good place to start is by asking yourself if your target market is still the same? Were you able to stay within your marketing budget this year? Are there any areas you need to cut costs for the coming year or invest more budget for the coming year? The answers to these questions will play a key part in building your annual marketing plan for the next year.

Support business objectives

Once you know where you’ve been and where you want to go, you’ll need to figure out how to get there through your marketing plan. With that in mind, you should align your plan to your business objectives and how your marketing efforts can support them. Otherwise, there's not much point in working in a silo if you’re not heading in the same direction as the business.

Quality over quantity

To help make life easier, make your marketing goals specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic and time-based (SMART). It may sound obvious, but if you don’t have any goals, then how can you expect to achieve anything?

Think quality over quantity. Lots of detail and a 50+ page plan may cover all the bases, but, as we all know too well many people are time-poor and it’s not realistic for those who you need to buy in and approve your plan will have the time to read a novel. Use bulleted sections, and get right to the point.

Identify your ideal marketing mix

This is the heart and soul of your marketing plan. To create the ideal marketing mix that focuses on the customer, you’ll need to understand which media and channels your target audience turns to for information. The important thing is to identify all the potential channels that will help you to reach your audience when they’re most receptive to your message.

Typical elements in the marketing mix include:

· Advertising (print and/or online)

· Branding and graphics (promotional giveaway items, photography, video, infographics)

· Collateral (sales literature, brochures, whitepapers, eBooks)

· Social media (networks, communities)

· Website (search engine optimisation, web development, content)

· Public relations (press release distribution, media engagement)

· Events (trade shows, webinars, networking)

· Direct marketing (email, newsletters, list generation, promotional incentives/contests)

· Research (focus groups, surveys)

Define your marketing strategies and budget

Once you know which elements you want to use, then think about all the potential strategies and metrics that you'll need to track to measure your success. Each will need to have an allocated budget and your plan should capture your total budget, actual spend and budget variance so that you can track throughout the year and make any adjustments as needed. This is an ongoing process and should be flexible to adapt, so you should revisit regularly to help you evaluate your success before the year is over.

As an example: Marketing – Website

Strategy #1 – Drive traffic to website via search engine optimisation

Tactic # 1 – Google Adwords for keyword phrases

Tactic #2 – Add relevant, rich content regularly to your website

Tactic #3 – Link building from trusted sources

Metric #1 – Use Google Analytics to find out your most popular pages and visitor demographics, average page views per visit, pages per visit, average time on site, bounce rate, exit pages, traffic sources (direct, organic, referral, campaign), and the rate of return visitors.

For people to choose your brand, it all starts with a plan. Planning ahead puts you in control of your marketing so you can maximise its impact. As the saying goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail”.

To find out more about how your business can benefit from developing a marketing plan, call Helen on 07568 460669 or email hgcommunications@outlook.com