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8 reasons why you need to plan your 2019 marketing now

4 mins read

You know the feeling when you walk into a meeting without a clue of what the agenda is, or when you have to scrap together a presentation the night before? This is just peanuts compared to entering the new year without a marketing plan.

Uncomfortable. Nerve-recking. Maybe you even feel a little ashamed that you weren’t more prepared? If you are one of those who always put things off until the last minute, here is eight reasons why you should start planning next year’s marketing now.

 

8 reasons why it pays off to plan for next year already

1) You will have more time to plan a strategy for the marketing activities

Before you start planning next year’s marketing activities you need a strategy. If you have no clear strategy in place when entering the office in the new year months might pass before you are ready to get started with the right marketing activities in order to attract and convert leads.

Why can you not just put this off until January? If you want a proper strategy you will have to set aside the time its development requires. If you wait until January there is not enough time for a thoughtful strategy.

At the beginning of the year, you will have more than enough to work on after your holiday break. The more you can get done now, the better.

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2) You have more time to create the content you need for each of the activities

If you start now, you might actually have the time set aside for each team member to contribute. Waiting until January might mean that everyone is too busy with their own things and there will be no one to help you. 

This way you end up having to do it all on your own, which can be both challenging and less efficient. You will be pulled away from any other thing that is on your plate.

Have a look to see if any of the content you already have can be used, re-purposed or updated. You might identify a topic that has given you more relevant traffic and leads than any of the others. Or maybe there is one campaign that has been more successful at leading prospects through the funnel. 

Repurposing content is a big trend for 2018, and it’s not surprising. The more content you have in your bank, the more traffic it is likely to bring you. According to HubSpot, companies that are publishing 16 blog posts or more each month get about 3,5 more traffic as companies that publish 4or less blog posts each month. 

3) Makes it easier to plan your 2019 marketing budget

Planning now will also make it easier to plan your 2019 marketing budget. How much needs to be set aside to enable the marketing department to do what they need to do to reach the company’s goals?

We can make you one promise: if you wait until January with presenting your budget to the management, there won’t be much money left. It’s like asking your mum for allowance when you finally tidied your room – two weeks after she asked you to. 

4) You have time to do your research and understand things before you implement

If you are thinking about doing something new in 2019 you have an even bigger incentive to get started now. Before you do anything you have to learn more about this type of marketing, how it works, who else has tried it and what results you can expect. 

You also have to prepare the arguments to convince the management that this is the right strategy for your company. It will also give you enough time to find the right tools and potential partners to make this a success.

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5) You have the opportunity to look at what worked this year, and what didn’t

Look at the statistics – numbers never lie. What marketing activities in 2018 attracted the most traffic? What activities converted the most visitors to leads, and then to sales qualified leads?

Consider the investments made in tools. What has been integral to do your job and reach your company’s goals? What has given the biggest ROI? Are there any tools or software that could be changed or upgraded to give you more value for money?

6) You can set new goals

How will the marketing department have to perform for the company to reach its goals in 2019? The simplest way to get a clear view of what needs to be done is to look at the overall 2019 goals, break them down, then work your way back. 

Start by looking at the number of clients. How many clients is the company looking to get in 2019? Then break it down:

  • How many leads do you need to get that many clients? What does the conversion rate from lead to client have to be to get you your client numbers?
  • How many visitors are needed to get that many leads? If you are looking to get 50 new clients in 2019, how many visitors do you need to attract to your website? Let’s say the conversion rate from lead to customer is 2 %. If you divide the number of new clients (50) by the conversion rate (0,2), you need a total of 2,500 leads to convert 50 clients.

Let’s look at the next step. To figure out how much traffic you need on your website to convert 50 clients, we divide the number of leads (2,500) by the conversion rate for visitors to lead (about 3%). Dividing 2,500 leads by 0,3 we can see that we need 83,000 visitors to the website to reach our goals. This is about 7,000 visitors each month. 

Can you not measure this today? Then you need to get the right tools in place.

7) You have enough time to figure out what clients you should focus on the coming year

Marketing is all about getting in front of relevant people and convincing them that they need your product. But what if you don’t know who the relevant people are?

In order to personalise your content to your dream customer, it is essential that you have developed personas or buyer’s profiles. These are your target audience or target companies. Those you want to reach. 

Trying to reach a big group of loosely defined people doesn’t work anymore. You can’t just throw something out there hoping for the best. Take the time to create a clear definition of the people and companies you actually want to have as your customer and stick to it. 

What is this person worried about? What are the challenges facing the company they work for? What goals do they have? What makes it difficult for them to reach these goals? How do they talk about their challenges? Are they technical? Do they know much about the products their company offer?

8) What events should you go to?

Plan activities to launch before, during and after these events already. During this planning you should find the answer to the following questions:

What is your goal with this event? Are you gathering leads or finding partners?
How are you planning to follow up with these leads after the event?

Having a clearly defined plan for what conferences, seminars and other events your company is taking part in makes it easier to plan marketing activities around this so that you are ready when those dates approaches.