Can you believe that we’re already at the end of another year?! I don’t know about you, but these last few years are kind of a blur and time seems to have become more elusive.

As another year comes to a close and we prepare for the beginning of a new marketing year, it’s important to take an inventory of this current year so you know what worked well and what needs improvement for this coming year. Here are some areas we recommend taking a look at:

Your Business Goals

Take a look at your business goals for the upcoming year and assess how they differ from this year’s. Remember, you want to set SMART goals — specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-oriented. Make a note of important ROIs that you will need to monitor in the coming year.

Any Important Dates

Besides the obvious holiday campaigns, you’ll want to make sure you have other important dates on your calendar as well to incorporate in to your marketing plan. Are you launching a new product this Spring? Will you be offering a Summer Savings? Or planning something different for Black Friday?

We also recommend placing any national holidays that are relevant to your business on the calendar as well. ie: maybe you’re a dentist and want to incorporate National Smile Day into your social media or marketing efforts.

Your Budget

In order for your marketing plan to be effective, you need to make sure that your goals are realistic and that you have a budget that allows you to support those goals. We recommend taking an audit of your current budget, advertising, and ROI to analyze what needs to be improved. Throwing more money into a method or system that is currently not serving you well won’t fix the problem. However, if there are areas that are currently working for you, increasing your budget in key those key areas should only further improve those results on your ROI.

Your Brand

Take time to re-evaluate your existing brand. Are there any areas that need to be refreshed? (Think: position in the market; your core messaging; brand elements; etc.)

Your Website

Is your current website still serving you well and putting your best-foot-forward? Think about it: your website acts as an online storefront and is open 24/7. Is it doing a good job at inviting people, letting them know what you have to offer, and effortlessly guiding them through the buying process (or the process of working with you if you are a service-based business)? If not, it may be time for a refresh there too.

Our recommendation would be to look at your analytics to see if there are any pages you are consistently losing customers at in their journey and start with those.

While you’re looking at your website, we also recommend that you take a look at your SEO and implement any changes there as well. SEO is an often underrated, yet critical aspect of sustainable business growth!

Your Digital Marketing Platforms

Perform an audit on all of your digital marketing platforms (social media, email, SMS, etc.) Note the top performing pieces of content (we recommend looking at the top 3-5) for each. What do you think made them so successful? Were they designed well? Were they timely (current events or a trend)? Did you target a specific audience? Allowing yourself the opportunity to see what’s worked well will allow you to replicate it in the future.

It’s been said that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting different results.” Hopefully this entry gives you some helpful tips on how to assess what’s worked well and what hasn’t for you, so you can adjust your strategy moving forward.

Need help developing a comprehensive digital marketing plan for 2023? Check out our Content Strategy Embracive — we are now accepting applications for early 2023 so you can hit the ground running and walk into the new year prepared to start seeing results that will support your business goals in a way that is manageable, sustainable, and authentic.