2022 is nearly done - it’s time to plan your marketing for 2023!

The end of each year and the dawning of a new one is often a time of reflection and making new resolutions and it’s an exercise worth doing in your business as well as your personal life.

And yes, this applies to planning your marketing for 2023 as well!

Why marketing matters

Marketing matters because your business and what you do in it matters. Without marketing, you can’t drive the growth that leads to success. You can’t share your purpose with the world and help as many people as you can.

To grow a profitable company, you need a process in place to continually attract more of your ideal client, and that, my friend, is marketing.

The benefits of a marketing plan

Clarity + focus = less stress

In the vast majority of cases, my clients find that having a marketing plan takes most of the stress out of marketing their business.

When you sit down and consider where you want to take your business and work out exactly what you need to get you there, you’ll have clarity on the end result you’re trying to achieve, and you’ll know what’s truly important to move your business forward.

You can then develop the plans and tactics that will get you to your goal.
When you have a plan, it’s easier to focus on what you’ve decided to do and get it done, rather than wasting time and money playing with other options that don’t move you towards your end goal in the most effective manner.

How to develop a marketing plan

Review what’s working and what isn’t

The first part of any planning process is to review where you are now. In marketing, that usually involves a marketing audit, so you can easily see what is and isn’t working and identify areas for improvement.

Have a look at where your business is coming from and see what it is possible to scale up if you are seeking growth. Website and social analytics will give you good insights into who is interacting with your brand and how many of them are becoming customers from each channel.

I offer a free digital marketing audit here. This will give you insight into how search engines see you and identify ways to increase your online profile.

Set new or revised goals for 2023

You may have very precise goals for your business in terms of revenue, profit, clients, etc, or you may not. If you don’t, I encourage you sit down and work out what success looks like for you, both in terms of income and lifestyle factors such as hours worked.

If you set up your business to give you more time to spend on other things, your business is going to look very different to someone who has set up their business to sell it off in 5 years’ time for the maximum amount of money.

Work out what is important to you and build your business accordingly.

Now set some goals for 2023 that will help you achieve, or at lease move you towards that end goal.

Work out where the gaps are and how you’re going to fill them

Now you know what success looks like, you need to work out if what you already have in place in terms of your how you deliver your products / services, how you market your products / services and you run your business is enough to get you there or if there are gaps that need to be filled.

A gap analysis sounds technical, and it certainly can be, but it is possible to do one without massive systems and spreadsheets. For instance, if you want to work in your business during school hours, while earning a six-figure income, then you’re going to need a team or a lot of automation to help you get there. Selling your time by the hour is unlikely to meet these goals, so you’ll need to offer automated products that can be scaled up without a lot of extra work for you. Or you need a team to deliver your products / services.

Whichever path you choose, you need to identify what you have, what needs to be set up, and create a plan to deliver on it.

Develop a plan that will work for you

Marketing can often feel overwhelming if it’s not the core offering of your business. Although truth be told, even marketers struggle with prioritising their business’s marketing needs because of the sheer number of options available to them! Plus, most marketers like the ‘shiny and new’ things on offer and get distracted by them. Avoid that. Really. Shiny and new is great if everything else is set up and running smoothly. If it isn’t, don’t go there for now.

I recommend developing a quarterly marketing plan so that it’s manageable and allows you to review and assess your results and few times a year, rather than running campaigns for 12 months and then discovering they didn’t really hit the mark.

A 12-week marketing plan will allow you to ‘chunk it down’ and focus on one or two key things each week that will move to you towards your goal, without feeling overwhelmed by all the options available to you.

This means less stress about working out what to do and when each week. Instead, you’ll have your plan to work to and you’ll be able to tick something off the list each week, which is always satisfying (surely that’s not just me?!).

Plan to succeed

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail"
~ Benjamin Franklin

This quote is used so often because it’s true. Particularly in business.

In any business, you need have clear goals It’s so that you can set up your systems and processes, including your marketing, accordingly.

Then you develop a plan that will deliver on those goals.

Your plan may not work out exactly as you wanted, which is why to need to review it regularly and rework what isn’t giving you the result you want until it does.

And even if you plan isn’t perfect, it’s still better than running your business without one!

If you need a hand developing a marketing plan for your business, our 12-Week Marketing Roadmap could be just the ticket! You can find out more here.

We wish you all the best for an amazing 2023!