Why this is a great time to plan your 2024 marketing

Gaj Rudolf/123rf

Now’s a great time to think about what you want next year to be like.

OPINION: I strode into 2020 with confidence. I was on a mission, I was organised, and I was ready to take on the world.

We all know how that panned out. Like so many others, I had to tear down what I’d planned and created and rebuild as I went, madly trying to place a new content brick here or there to stop everything from falling down.

I love a plan. I suspect that’s more than fitting considering most of my work is helping other business owners develop plans for themselves. I know I’m adrift without structure and totally at the mercy of “following my bliss” which sometimes works, but often just ends up leading to overwhelm and a pile of unfinished projects.

The events of 2020 and the following few years turned me off having a plan. I was winging it, and it was ok, but it was also stressful. So last year, around this time, I started to build out a new structure for my marketing, and bravely decided to restart a few things in my business that I’d had to put aside since the pandemic.

Having a plan this year has saved me, and helped my business grow. Did I have to adapt the plan through the year? Absolutely. Did everything in the plan happen? Not in the slightest. Did I see growth and success and sales from having a plan? Completely.

I’ve been working with my coaching clients this month to help them start planning for 2024. It feels early but this is the best time to plan for your small business if you want to go into the New Year ready. We’re about to have an election, then all too soon after that it’s the lead-up to Christmas, then it’s summer, and for many of us, we’re in the doldrums of January lethargy, that we know is both one of the best and worst parts of Kiwi small business psyche.

SUPPLIED

Rachel Klaver says she'll be grateful next year for work done now.

This is the time we’ve got our head in the game. We’re still in normal operations so we know what we can and can’t achieve. We’re able to think about what we want to slow, grow, and say no to next year. We have time to nut out those marketing campaigns that might take a bit more forethought.

During the year I note down areas of my marketing that didn’t fire as I expected. I also note times of the year, events and activities I wanted to be more involved in. During this time I look at the list and check if these are still moments I want to capitalise on the following year. Sometimes there’s one-off marketing collateral I’m going to need to create, including print materials, or automated nurture sequences. This sort of work is then scheduled to be ready well before the time it’s going to be needed.

I start with a calendar that has all the school holidays, public holidays and other significant events blocked out. For some businesses this is peak work time. For me, as someone who works with small business owners, these are times to avoid any events, as either the business owner or their team members are often juggling extra responsibilities so will be less likely to attend.

Then I take a look at my strategic growth goals for the year and think about what sort of marketing activity I need to reach them. There’s a mix of consistent activity, from my emails, and the post types and frequency that I structure out per platform. I’m not thinking about specific campaigns at present, more just planning out what it’s going to be my base content, with what sort of content will go out on specific days (for example promotional posts, testimonials, or authority building content. )

I also take a good look at my existing messaging and check it’s all still valid. This is when I plan any updates to my websites, and check what themes, and messaging I want to have as my core messages for the upcoming twelve months.

From that I note any friction points, such as what I’m still doing that I could get one of my team to help me with, and check if I need to create some detailed handover briefs to make that possible.

I’m not doing any in-depth content planning at this point. One of the mistakes I made in 2019 was working too far ahead and then having to delete a lot of my work. I’m still feeling pretty bruised from that so I’m just working out the structure and how it will fit into my plans.

Once I’ve got the base activity sorted, I start looking at the “big activities”. I run both in person and online events through the year as part of my marketing, and these require a long list of pre- and post-work. Once again I note areas I could have improved in the process from this year and make a list of one off tasks that will help make everything easier.

My clients also need to factor in other activities such as expos, retreats, conferences or product or service launches. All of these take huge amounts of energy, and resource and the earlier we map it and and work out how it will fit into our existing marketing, the easier it is to ride the highs and lows of the year.

I plug into my plan when my events need to be promoted and which of my planned scheduled posts I’ll use for that. I also note down when any paid advertising will be turned on or off, and also when I’ll need to brief people in my team to do everything. I also schedule time into my calendar, blocking out time for creating content, and briefing my team

Once this is done I scope out the approximate budget, and also add in a buffer for the areas that I have forgotten (it’s inevitable), and a little extra for the surprises that coe along the way.

I am then ready to head into the last quarter of the year, knowing that I’m not going to be scrambling to sort out the activity for next year. I’m going to be able to use my New Year energy to push into my marketing, and I’ll be so thankful for September Rachel’s time making my 2024 work life easier