4 Must Do’s to Ready Your Marketing Strategy for the New Year

Hard to believe it is already November. It won’t be long before the holidays hit and, before you know it, it is the New Year.  Now is the time to focus your marketing and business development strategies to pave the way for you to meet your goals for next year.

Setting your marketing goals and budgets.

Do you have you’re your goals, strategies and budgets set in place?  We all know that it is easier said than done, and getting out of the day-to-day grind long enough to step back and answer important marketing strategy questions is hard. Here are just a few to consider:

• What are your marketing goals for next year? Will 2018 be about increasing brand awareness? Driving market share? Lead generation?
• Are your marketing goals in line with your overall strategy?
• Do you know your target audience well enough, what they are looking for and what they deem most important?
• Is your brand message clear? Do your customers know your value proposition?
• Does your marketing plan address key market trends and uncertainties?
• Is there a more efficient way to allocate your precious marketing budget to get bigger bang for your buck?

Every game has a winner. Every winner has a game plan.

Having a game plan will give you a leg up on the competition and provide you with the greatest chance to exceed your growth goals in the upcoming year.

If you haven’t had an opportunity to review your marketing strategy, a good place to start is with a marketing audit.  Here’s what a marketing audit should include:

1. Marketing Strategy – A thorough review of your previous year’s marketing and business development strategies and initiatives to identify what has worked and what hasn’t worked in relation to the overall goals of the company.
2. Marketing Process – A look at process and systems of how marketing activities are planned, implemented and managed.
3. Market Reality – A review of external market factors that might be considered threats or present opportunities.
4. Marketing Productivity – A review of marketing expenditures, allocation to different initiatives and the ROI on those efforts.

It’s not too late! Even a high-level audit will yield insights and growth strategies that you may not have identified and will lay the foundation for a stronger, more effective growth plan for 2018.