The dawn of a new year brings fresh opportunities, and for business owners and marketing managers, that means crafting a marketing plan that promotes growth and ensures success in the year ahead. But how do you get started? If you are looking to create a forward-thinking marketing strategy tailored to the unique challenges of your business and the trends we will see in 2024 this guide is for you.
But, First Take A Look Back to Move Forward
Reviewing your 2023 marketing plan and its high and low points is the perfect starting point when creating your new marketing plan for 2024. To help you get started, take a moment and answer these questions as you reflect on last year:
- Did your business grow last year? If so, was there a distinct point where you saw improvement? If not, was there an obvious reason for this?
- What marketing channels were the most effective? Reviewing your past successes, evaluate your marketing channels. Which ones had the most impact?
- Have your long-term and short-term goals changed? If you were targeting growth last year, are you now looking to maintain your customer base? If your goal was to establish your brand, do you now wish to focus on sales?
- What is happening in your competitive landscape? How have your competitors’ sales done this year? What have they done that was successful or unsuccessful?
- Has your target audience changed in 2023? Have you seen a shift in your demographics to a different age/location/interest or have your customers stayed the same?
- Are you facing market saturation? Are there too many people competing in your market? Is there room to grow or should you focus on a different area?
- What was your customer feedback over the past year? Were your customers satisfied or did you face criticism? Is there a particular area you need to address or a place where you can build on the strength of your product or service?
Building Out Your Marketing Goals
Before you can build your strategy, you need clear goals. What does your business want to accomplish? Look back on your marketing goals for 2023. Were you successful or do you have some work to do as you haven’t quite hit them yet? Maybe you were a bit optimistic when you set your sights for last year or perhaps you decided on modest, easily achievable goals.
There’s no reason you can’t focus on the same goals as last year so long as you shift the goalposts just a bit – sometimes it can take years to reach them. However, if your goals seem unreasonable – like aiming for a 10% sales increase when the market is only trending at 2% – you’re only setting yourself up for disappointment.
These are a few common marketing goals that you might want to aim for:
- Increase brand awareness.
- Generate high-quality leads.
- Acquire new customers.
- Increase website traffic.
- Establish industry authority.
- Increase customer value.
- Boost brand engagement.
- Increase revenue.
Goals are there to provide clarity, purpose, direction, and vision. They are what lead to success. Focus on two or three goals and rate them in order of importance. Then give each one a key marketing metric that you can use to measure success. These will help you measure and track the performance of your marketing activities. Once you’ve established your marketing objectives for 2024, it’s time to start planning.
Deciding Where To Focus Your Marketing in 2024
Now that you’ve decided on your marketing goals, it’s time to look at strategies. There are many ways you can achieve your goals, these are our top recommendations.
1. Looking for New Customers? Focus on PPC and SEO
Investing in PPC (like ads) and SEO (getting found on Google) is a smart move for your business. If you have a fixed budget, consider using some of your ad money for creating content and improving your Google search results.
Think of ads as giving you steady growth, while showing up in Google search results can bring you even more growth. As your business gets bigger, ads become a reliable way to get noticed through online searches.
If you’re spending money on ads, keep an eye on how much it costs to get each new customer and how much money you make from each customer. This helps you figure out if ads are still a good investment for your business.
2. Want to Enhance Your Brand? Be Present on Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool for businesses that want to improve their brand’s perception or connect with their customers. The downside is that using social media takes a lot of time, and time is money.
To use social media successfully, you can’t be an “absentee landlord”. If you post once every 6 months, your brand and customer experience will suffer. It’s also a popular customer service tool where your followers can reach out to your brand directly which requires constant monitoring.
Managed properly, social media can showcase your business to show that you really care about your brand. If brand-building is your goal, social media is essential.
3. Aiming To Be Top-of-Mind To New Customers? Spend Money on Brand Awareness
There are many options when it comes to spending advertising dollars. You can invest in outdoor, radio or TV ads that will reach a broad spectrum of clients. However, digital advertising has advantages over this approach: it’s cost-effective; measurable; lets you target customers; reaches people at all stages of the buying journey; lets you make changes on the go; and improves conversions.
Whether you’re using display ads through Google or Amazon, or social media ads through Meta, X or LinkedIn, these ads help build market share, especially in saturated markets.
4. Don’t Count On Rapid Growth When You’re Starting Out
Many startups and small businesses are consumed with thoughts of “going viral.” Ideas of TikTok videos that end up with millions of viewers or celebrities who fall in love with and endorse their brand are pipe dreams. Innovative marketing tactics can help businesses build visibility and, if successful, these short-term solutions can drive up website traffic and social media followers.
However, this visibility is fleeting and does not necessarily result in sales. If you fail to build longer-term customers through more established marketing channels, your business may decline and your followers disappear as quickly as they came. A good email marketing strategy, strong website design and solid social media presence can push these initial touchpoints further through the sales funnel.
Putting Together Your Plan
There are many more marketing tactics that you can use to achieve your marketing goals including: Lead generation, email, video, blogs, events, website, product marketing, public relations, customer marketing, and influencer marketing. Choosing the right tactics depends on your marketing goals, your target audience and your budget.
Do you have key selling periods, product launches or sales promotions that you need to focus on? Be sure to allocate the bulk of your marketing budget to those events with a plan for maintenance all year. Make sure your existing marketing tactics – your website and your social media – are current and functioning properly and there is a portion of your budget allocated for keeping them that way.
You’re Ready to Execute! What’s Next?
Now that you’ve got your marketing plan in place, it’s time to put it into action. Whether you’re doing everything in that plan yourself or are working with a marketing agency like ourselves, be sure to monitor each marketing vehicle on a regular basis. If something’s not measuring up, it’s time to optimize or pivot so you don’t fall short of your goals at the end of the year.
Want help putting together the perfect marketing plan for 2024? Or do you have the plan but, need the team to execute it? We can help with both! Book a free consultation now by clicking here or call us at 647-250-1494 and let’s talk options, strategies, and more.
