Believe it or not, the New Year is just around the corner, just beyond the hustle and bustle of seasonal activities and holidays. Is your business ready? Now is the time to outline your marketing plan for next year so that you don’t miss valuable opportunities to reach your audience.

Have you created your marketing road map for next year? If not, it’s okay – there’s still time. By developing a marketing and communications map now, you’ll be able to plan campaigns to meet sales goals and drive revenue during key sales seasons. A plan also enables you to manage your budget more effectively so that you don’t overspend or have to pass up a great opportunity because of a lack of funds (due to a lack of planning).

  1. Identify your business goals for the year. By identifying your goals you can develop actionable steps you’ll need to take to achieve them.
  2. Know your audience. Know why they purchase your product or service, research buying trends, and find out what mediums will reach them most effectively. From there you can begin to plan campaigns and build a media schedule.
  3. Evaluate marketing opportunities that you may do every year to make sure that they’re still a good fit. Just because you’ve advertised on the same radio station or run large ads in the phone book for the past five years doesn’t mean that doing so still reaches your audience and/or is cost effective.
  4. Explore new opportunities. If you haven’t run a paid-search campaign before, now might be the time to add it to your plan. There might be new publications or mobile opportunities that would be worth testing. Just remember to consider your audience first and select opportunities that will speak to them.

If you follow these few easy steps, you’ll be able to develop your plan now so that you can start the New Year off stress-free.

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