As we enter February, firstly well done, you made it through the longest month EVER! And secondly, now you've had a chance to catch your breath, it might be time to start productively planning the year ahead.

We’ve settled into the year now, the post-Christmas and back-to-work fog has cleared, and it's time to get the marketing wheels in motion. When thinking about your marketing, it can be overwhelming to know where to start in terms of planning, so here are 5 things to consider and guide you along the way.

Setting goals

Before spending time and hard-earned money on your marketing, it’s important to first consider and understand your goals for the year, both for the wider business and the marketing. What do you want to achieve?

Your goals will inform other components of the plan, so start by determining measurable, reasonable goals that allow you to outline the path you need to take to reach them. Although influenced and underpinned by your business goals, your marketing goals will ultimately be tied to specific marketing tactics, telling you where to focus your time and money.

Reviewing the data

Before jumping into your 2023 marketing and trying out every trend to hit each social platform, take time to review your previous marketing content and campaigns. It’s important to be aware of what has and hasn’t worked in the past.

So, how did 2022 go for you? What went well? What flopped or didn’t go as well as you’d expected? Look at your previous goals and results, did you achieve them? Ask yourself why or why not, and how you can replicate the positives going forward. 

Identify what marketing efforts worked well and eliminate the ones that didn’t, it’ll give you more opportunities to explore new tactics and try new ideas too.

Knowing your customers

While considering the data, it’s also important to put your customers and your community at the centre of your marketing. Get into the mind of your customer and what resonates with them. What content are they receptive to and what problems or questions do they have? Like with reviewing your marketing past, if you’ve been able to generate success with your customers before, how can you replicate this going forward?

It’s important to consider what matters to your customers as well, such as ethics and attitudes. How can you relay this in your marketing? Now more than ever, trust and transparency are at the forefront of customers’ minds.

Make use of social media as a customer service tool too, as more than a quarter of marketers use direct messages (DM's) to provide customer service. But, think proactively rather than just reacting when customers approach with a query, for example, providing answers to queries through social media content or having an FAQ section on your website that customers can access. 

Doing more with less

For many of us, time is short and it’s important to make use of the precious little time we have. So if there’s an opportunity for you to work smarter, not harder, you take it!

That’s why it’s key to get as much out of the content you create, with a divisible strategy content strategy. Create a single cornerstone piece of content, then spin that single asset into multiple pieces of content. 

Written a blog? It doesn’t stop there! Pull it apart and ring out the piece and its information to make as many other forms as possible, you could share a link on your social media channels, film a reel summarising the key points, pull key quotes into social graphics, create an infographic to share with your email subscribers.

Video, Video, Video

Although Instagram are working to find a balance between content and have committed to giving photos more focus in 2023, video is still a key component in most marketing strategy, 

Short-form video has taken the internet by storm and it's likely to continue through 2023. It clearly pays off too, as 90% of marketers already using short-form video will increase or maintain their investment in 2023. And if you’re only just giving it a go, you’re not the only one, as 1 in 5 marketers plan to leverage short-form video for the first time in 2023. 

We hope these considerations for 2023 have given you something to think about, and hopefully make your marketing planning much simpler! Do remember that marketing is a process and your plan can evolve and be altered as time goes on, shifting as the business develops and trends change. 

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