The marketing year has once again sped into the annual post-Thanksgiving b-l-u-r. Now, every business leader needs to thoughtfully prepare next year’s plan. But all the things you need to do to execute today’s activity, close out the year, AND deliver a budget and plan for next year may leave 2024 getting the short-shrift – just like last year, the year before, and the year before that…
Are you ready to make next year less like “same $%@!, different day”? It’s increasingly harder to capture the attention of and engage with today’s consumers. It’s time to stop this “definition of insanity” death-spiral – so here are some steps to take to create a plan that does more than provide more of the same.
- Use 2023’s data and insights for actionable lessons learned
I’ve written before that a marketing plan shouldn’t be just a ‘one-off’ – instead, it should feel more like an episode of a continuing story. But how can you move to a new chapter if your characters don’t learn from the last one, and grow and progress?
Ensure you’re digging into data from the year’s efforts to derive useful and actionable insights. Take stock of what worked well, and where your efforts were less effective – and seek to understand why. Chart your progress against goals you set and evaluate your performance. Only then can you begin to set appropriate objectives for the year – and optimize how you deliver on them. - Purposefully identify core objectives
Naturally, any business leader wants to drive growth. But just saying your goal is growth isn’t helpful. Instead, ask yourself why you’re not growing as fast as you want to be. What are the hurdles, issues, challenges that are getting in the way? Once you have broken this down, you can then identify the aspects of growth that you believe will most contribute to success, e.g., increasing conversion rate, driving up customer value, or growing penetration or leads.
And fight the urge to list several, disparate objectives, unless you can afford plans to address each. For example, a single plan would be hard pressed to appropriately address the objectives of growing penetration AND increasing loyalty – so don’t even try. - Document your customers’ challenges, needs, and journeys
No company ever had too much customer understanding – it’s foundational for operating and growing any business. But having that understanding isn’t enough – it must be distilled and documented into usable tools for the organization, like Personas and Customer Journeys. These tools help the broad team speak the same language and work off the same page (literally). And, once you have them, your planning will become more intentional, relevant, and impactful. If you don’t feel like you know your customer well enough to create these tools, make that a priority for your 2024 plan.
In addition, be choiceful in your audience targeting. Rather than trying to appeal to everyone, instead define your target more precisely. This will help your activities resonate more powerfully. - Choose your tactics based on your goals and your customers – and not the other way around
Too often marketing plans list the tactics they’re using without clarity around why. Instead let your objectives and your knowledge of your customer journey drive tactic selection – and be ruthless about including only those that fit them well. - Bake strategic rigor into your execution to ensure success.
You may do all the above – but without appropriate executional rigor, your plan can still go awry. So, make sure you brief your projects appropriately, stating purposes, goals, customer insights, and KPI’s. Create documented strategies for things like Social Media plans and content marketing – if it’s not documented, then there is no strategy.
Next year’s marketing plan should be more than just “rinse & repeat”, so ensure you approach it purposefully. Because before you know it it’s going to be December 2024 – and you don’t want to say once again “wait until next year…”
*Originally published in MediaPost’s Marketing Insider 12/4/23
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