As we wind down projects and hustle to make the most money we can in 2022 to wrap up the year, in the marketing world, we’re already planning 2023. If you’re not planning for the year ahead, what are you waiting for?

When I look ahead to the new year for myself, and my clients I do a few things to make sure that we’re setting attainable and realistic goals, and that we’re looking at what worked and what didn’t. So often marketing is reactive, or fly by the seat of your pants, but I always go by the saying “failing to plan is planning to fail.” So that fly by the seat of your pants, or throwing spaghetti at a wall, does not need to be your reality. An outlined plan can still leave the necessary wiggle room for when things inevitably come up but you have your ideal strategies laid out based on your business and your goals.

Strategic planning involves looking far ahead. It’s something to do about once or twice a year. The purpose is to research, evaluate, and plan your future strategies. By creating a content marketing plan for the next year, you can streamline your activities and guide stakeholders. 

Review 2022

Before you start planning, it’s always wise to review the year behind you. Some points to look at

• 2022 goals - did you meet them? why not?

• What strategies garnered the best results?

• What resources did you have? What did you lack - what could have helped you get better results?

The more you deep dive into your analytics, the easier it will be to look at your KPIs and your overall success with a thoughtful eye. Break down your analytics quarter by quarter as well to get some helpful insights.

Audit your current marketing

Whether you’re a large team, or a team of one, look at your current abilities. Determine if you need to reevaluate the tools you use, and whether what you’re doing content-wise is working. For instance, if you’re doing a lot of digital ads but aren’t getting the results you want, what’s not working? Ad copy? Landing page? Other pieces to consider when auditing your marketing are:

• Website - how are your calls to action?

• What accounts are you utilizing? Do you have any unnecessary accounts? What needs updating (linktrees, account profiles, etc…)

• Where are you storing your customer data? Is your CRM up to date?

• What services or products are you offering/selling? Are they generating sales?

Reevaluate Your Marketing & Audience

Reassessing your ideal audience or marketing persona is worth revisitng each year when you revise your marketing strategy. Is who you’re marketing to the same people you had planned to market to last year? Do you need to expand? Check your demographics to know the makeup of your current audience. If it’s way off from who you thought you were marketing to, you may need to make some adjustments. Depending on if the current audience is a fit for your business, you may need to make some changes.

Set Your Goals

Brand awareness + sales = common marketing goals. Unfortunately, marketing is not so simple. Can you shoot for both? Yes. You can also have more sales by increasing your order size instead of simply “more sales.” The goals you set help guide your marketing strategy - from overall planning to setting your KPIs. Set primary goals as well as secondary goals, ideally quarterly goals as well as goals for the overall year. Some common goals are:

• How many new product launches?

• increasing sales by X%

• Increasing brand awareness

As you set your goals, make sure they’re SMART goals - strategic, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.

Set your KPIs

After you set your goals, determine how you measure progress towards those goals. A goal of increasing your brand awareness 20% by end of year could have a goal of Increasing social media followers by X% by June 2023. Or, increasing traffic by Y% year over year. Looking to increase sales by improving conversion rates? A KPI could be something about improving website conversion rates,

Know Your Competitors

What changes have been made in your industry? Knowing what your competitors are doing well and what they could improve on helps to keep your pulse on the market.

Set your budget

Once you know your goals, you’ll know what it’s going to take to attain those goals. If your budget is small, focus on your high ROI activities. If you sponsored events and got great results, you want to budget for those. If you need additional resources, budget for freelancers or outsourcing to an agency - this especially if you have a small team/limited internal resources. Other things you want to budget for could be software that’s utilized, and any digital ad spend.

Plan Your Content Strategy

We all know content is king and should be a component of any modern marketing strategy. Consider how you’ll use your content and what channels you’ll promote it on (social? Email? Paid?). Your content strategy should outline the types of content you’ll create (video? blog posts? social media? etc…), the frequency of posting, and how you’ll measure success (i.e. email traffic, organic traffic, etc…)

Remember, not every platform is going to be right for every business so this is why it’s important to know your audience and where they are online. Start with some keyword research alongside your market research to have a solid understanding of what may resonate with your audience.

Most importantly, as you plan out your marketing for 2023, remain flexible. You may choose to plan out Q1 and Q2 now and revisit the strategy in the spring months when you have some data to review to make sure you’re on track toward your goals.

Need help planning your content? Download our social media strategy planner to help you get some clarity on the key questions of your social media and/or overall content marketing strategy.