It’s time to think about your 2020 marketing plan

While planning and executing holiday campaigns will take center stage for many marketers at this time of year, it’s also time for another annual marketing project: creating your holiday marketing plan. next year. It’s always a time-consuming but worthwhile task to start the new year on the right foot. Having been through this cycle more than once, I have found several tactics to make the process smoother and hopefully lead to more effective marketing strategies over time.

Budgeting

Every company handles budgeting differently, especially for the marketing department. I’ve worked for companies with a strict budget process, involving multiple meetings and semi-negotiations with finance to get approval for a detailed budget each year. I’ve also worked with organizations where the marketing budget was fluid, allowing us to evaluate different opportunities as they arose, deciding to take on new expenses on a case-by-case basis.

If you are working with a more structured budget process, this probably needs to be started before the marketing plan itself can be addressed. One of the biggest challenges when working with a definitive line item budget is staying nimble enough to test new ideas or take advantage of unforeseen opportunities that inevitably arise. My main suggestion for budgeting is to try to include a discretionary amount that you can spend on new opportunities that arise during the year. This helps you maintain some flexibility in your marketing plan each year.

Review past performance

Many marketing teams begin each year’s marketing plan by replicating the previous year’s plan. Since no one wants to reinvent the wheel over and over, this approach makes perfect sense as a starting point for your planning process. However, this should only be the first step in your planning, rather than serving as an end model for next year. Otherwise, after a few years of cookie-cutter planning, you’ll likely find yourself including a variety of marketing tactics that used to work, but are no longer the most effective options.

So while it makes sense to use last year’s plan as a starting point, it’s important to review each initiative’s performance over the past year before re-confirming it for the next year. Next year. Review your performance metrics for each campaign or channel and make sure you’re moving forward with programs that have achieved results or that you intend to optimize to improve on past performance.

Brainstorm new ideas

This is usually the area that gets marketers excited about the planning process. Finding new marketing channels or tactics to try, new promotional ideas, or other innovative approaches to driving results is well within the reach of a marketer. We like to think of new ways to interact with customers and prospects and try them out in the real world.

A key here is to focus on the results you are looking to achieve. Try to avoid the “shiny, shiny object syndrome” where a new marketing channel (virtual reality!) seems so exciting that you have to include it in your plan, whether it really matches your product or service or ‘this is something your audience has no interest in. Remember, there’s a reason a channel like email continues to be so popular – it’s about performance, not just novelty.

Prioritize big projects first

Have you ever seen the demonstration where a pot is filled with stones and the audience is asked if the pot is full, then the process is repeated with smaller pebbles, sand and possibly water? It’s a great reminder that you need to occupy your time with the big, important stuff first, and then fit into smaller projects around those core activities. This approach can be beneficial when setting up your 2020 marketing strategy.

Once you’ve reviewed your past performance review and come up with new ideas to test, the next step is prioritization. Using the same principle as the full pot exercise, start by planning your foundational projects and initiatives. Then build around these larger initiatives with supporting and complementary activities throughout the year to complete your plan.

Editorial Calendar

This tactic is especially useful if content marketing is part of your marketing strategy, but it works in virtually any marketing plan. As you plan your various projects for the year, put them on a 12-month calendar. Put dates on those monthly email newsletters, planned product launches, major content promotions, and more.

This can be extremely beneficial in several ways, including ensuring that major initiatives do not overlap or conflict with each other. You can also get an idea of ​​how your team’s workload is distributed over the year. It helps to be able to identify potential issues where you could overload your team in one month, while another month is largely empty.

Industry Events Calendar

The importance of this step varies depending on your business. However, if attending, exhibiting or speaking at industry events is an important part of your marketing strategy, this calendar can be one of your most valuable marketing tools. You’ll want to highlight the events you attend, but it also makes sense to have a list of other events you’re just watching for possible involvement in the future.

Completing the industry’s first comprehensive calendar of events can be a big undertaking, but it’s one place where replicating the previous year’s calendar really is a huge time saver. You should keep an eye out for new events and delete events that have been discontinued or are no longer relevant. But, in many areas, there won’t be many updates to make every year.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list and much more is needed to develop your annual marketing plan, but these tactics can help you refine your process a bit as we prepare for 2020.