Most of us have a lot on our plates this time of year. There are halls to be decked, gifts to be gifted and merriment to be made. Your 2025 marketing plan might well be the furthest thing from your mind this holiday season — but it shouldn’t be!
Only a couple weeks remain until we enter a brand-new year full of potential. And if you can storm in with a strategy for success, you’re well ahead of the curve on the marketing front. We’re here to help!
Tips for Creating Your New Marketing Plan
Start With a SWOT
It’s nearly impossible to create a roadmap for success if you don’t know where you’re starting from. A SWOT analysis shows you where you are right now so you can figure out where you want to go next.
SWOT is an acronym for:
- Strengths: What does your business do particularly well?
- Weaknesses: Where are you falling short?
- Opportunities: What prospects do you have? Are you able to take advantage of new technology, capitalize on a new trend, or develop new products and services?
- Threats: What do you see working against you? Are you losing business to a competitor, facing economic hardship or trying to recover from controversy?
List all of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, then invite others on your team to do the same. The more perspectives you have, the better.
Set SMART Goals for 2025
Now that you have an accurate picture of where you stand at the end of 2024, you can start setting SMART goals for 2025 based on that.
A SMART goal is:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Time-based
For example, let’s say your SWOT analysis identified phone wait times as a weakness. Your SMART goal might read “Decrease phone wait time from eight minutes to four minutes within 90 days by hiring two new customer service reps. Track and report average wait times on a weekly basis using call center analytics software.”
Build Your Budget
In a perfect world, every business would have an unlimited marketing budget. The reality is that you only have so many advertising dollars to spend, so you need to make the most of them.
According to HubSpot, B2C companies should allocate 5% to 10% of their total budget to marketing, while B2B companies should spend between 2% and 5%.
Once you know what you have to spend on marketing, you need to figure out how you’re going to divvy it up between different channels, such as social media marketing, email marketing, paid ads, video, etc.
Don’t throw good money after bad, however. If a particular strategy doesn’t work well with your audience, ditch it — no matter how “trendy” it might be in the rest of the marketing world.
Nail Down Your Content Calendar
Content is still king, and you’ll need plenty of it to get you through 2025. Do your future self a favor and start making a plan.
Creating a content calendar helps you see the big picture and make more strategic decisions about what gets posted and when. It also offers a higher level of consistency and lets you make better use of your resources.
It sounds like a daunting task, but even the smallest of steps can lead to plenty of progress. You certainly don’t need to have all of next year mapped out right this minute, but just having a rudimentary idea of what 2025 will look like puts you ahead in the game.
Let’s Make a Plan!
Your 2025 marketing plan is a roadmap to staying ahead in a rapidly changing world. Setting SMART goals, thoughtfully allocating your resources and creating a content calendar allow you to build the bridge between where you are now and where you’ll be this time next year!
Do you need some help creating a stellar marketing plan for the new year? Mischa Communications is ready to get to work. When can we talk?