What do the coming weeks hold for you and your business? You’ve just about survived Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and now it’s a full-on onslaught of Christmas marketing, gift guides, last-minute shopping and delivery deadlines, before it all starts again for the sale period, then at last – time to relax! Even if you’re not a retailer, it’s often a busy period before the wind-down into the longed-for Christmas holidays, and then a slow start into the New Year before you even think about your next strategy.
Forward Planning
And then what? For many businesses, the constant pace towards the year end and staff preoccupation with all things festive means that they are well into January before planning for the year ahead really begins. This is particularly prevalent when it comes to a marketing strategy – while you may be fully up to speed with your operational and financial plans, have you stopped to consider how you’re going to promote your business and brand in 2018?
The Forgotten Strategy
It’s often the case that marketing is at the bottom of the pile when it comes to forward planning, especially for businesses not in digital industries. Yet your marketing strategy encompasses everything you want to achieve as a business:
- Enhancing brand awareness
- Improving customer and client engagement
- Driving revenue
- Promoting your business reputation
- Generating new clients and customers
So doesn’t that sound like something you should be taking some time to think about?
Building a marketing strategy
Think about what your business goals are in the coming year, and what digital and marketing tools you have to achieve them. What’s your budget? And do you have staffing resources to allocate to your activities?
Next. Plot your key diary dates – they might be industry events, national holidays or times of the year you know are busy. Then you can start planning your campaigns around them, creating content that syncs your campaigns across each of your digital channels. We’d also recommend creating a content planner to plot and keep track of the content you’re creating and using.
Need some help?
If planning a digital marketing strategy doesn’t come naturally, why not let us help? We specialise in creating digital content and can help increase your brand awareness, making you the first choice for your customers, every time. Get in touch today to discover how we can enhance your digital strategy for 2018 and beyond.