Marketing Plan Do‘s and Don’ts for 2022
Have you planned your marketing for the new year? It can get away from you.
Here are some “Do’s and Don’ts” for getting and keeping your planning on track. Before getting started with your marketing plan, here’s a reminder:
Do you have a strategic business plan in writing? If so, review and update and use this as a base for your marketing plan. It may seem redundant, but all plans business, marketing and financial should be living, breathing plans that are revisited and revised quarterly. If not, you are shooting arrows without a target.
Do’s and Don’ts
| DO base your marketing plan on your business plan | Do you have a strategic business plan? If not put aside your marketing plan and start here. |
| DO get executive input | Planning can’t be done in a vacuum. Without the strategic insight of executives, your plan will lack depth and likely be unachievable. |
| Do know (and divulge) your budget | Whether using vendors or working internally, be honest about your budget. It’s clear the amount you can get done depends on the budget; both monetary and time. If you have $100 a month to spend on marketing, you will not get the same results as if you were spending $100k a month. Be realistic about your expectations. |
| Do create an editorial calendar for social, paid and earned media. | Don’t make this ad hoc. It takes time. Think of all the events, awards, tradeshows and speaking opportunities your business will be involved in over the year and note them on the calendar. These can be three different spreadsheets or use your preferred project management tool. Once the year is complete, go back and craft the materials. |
| DO get down to the details | For social, which hashtags are most relevant and searched. For media, research each publication’s editorial calendar. Pro tip: The software tools say they do this, but they aren’t done well. Ping the reporters to see if anything has changed since the calendar was published. |
| DO your research | Take the time to review what you did last year. What worked, what didn’t work as well as expected? This is the time to nix the time wasters. |
| DO look forward | You looked backwards, now look forward. Are there events you wished you could do but haven’t? What would be the Golden Egg if you got it? Check those out and see what the requirements are to get in. Even if it’s not this year, it’s good have on the radar. |
| DO choose your weapons | If your business is large and you have staff and marketing & PR departments, of course, you’ll want to be hitting all cylinders. If not, you may want to choose the weapons in your arsenal. Do you love Instagram but hate twitter or vice versa? Focus on a few tools and do them well. |
| Don’t expect an intern to run your marketing | Interns or entry level staff members can be helpful for executing simple tasks. Recognize they will need training. Do not expect them to have the expertise that a seasoned professional will bring. Errors will happen, accept it. |
| Don’t expect your assistant to do marketing in their “free time”. | Recognize that marketing is an actual function and should be treated the same as HR, sales, or finance. Put some umph behind it and watch things happen! |
| Don’t do all your social media on the fly | Sure, sometimes you’ll do some posts on the fly. But even social media posts should be strategically planned and consistent in look and feel. This takes time. If you are doing a push take the time to plan it out. |
| Don’t expect results overnight | Marketing is trial, error and adaptation. Try something, adjust then try again. |
Planning your marketing is important and will result in more relevant. Once the structure is complete, allow creativity into the mix. It’ll be exciting to think about making noise and making things happen.
