What Your Digital Marketing Should Be Doing Before Year-End

There is a habit I see in business that has never made a lot of sense to me. We get towards the end of the year, December becomes increasingly busy, Christmas arrives and marketing decisions for the following year are quietly pushed into January.

Then everyone comes back after the break and suddenly there is a rush to decide what the business is going to do with its marketing for the year ahead.

What content are we going to create? What campaigns are we going to run? Which platforms should we concentrate on? What are we actually trying to achieve?

For me, January is far too late to start asking those questions.

The final few months of the year give you a valuable opportunity to prepare. Not by trying to create an enormous marketing strategy that predicts everything you're going to do for the next 12 months, but by looking at what you've learned from the year you've just had and using that information to make better decisions about what comes next.

Start by looking backwards

Before deciding what you are going to do next year, take a proper look at what worked this year.

And when I say "worked", I don't simply mean which social media post received the most likes.

Look at the bigger picture.

What content got people talking? What brought people to your website? What generated enquiries? What helped people understand what you do? Which campaigns delivered something meaningful for the business? Which platforms justified the time you spent on them?

Just as importantly, look at what didn't work.

We can become very attached to particular types of content, platforms or marketing activities simply because we've always done them. But if something has consumed a considerable amount of time throughout the year without contributing anything meaningful to the business, that should be part of the conversation as well.

This isn't about abandoning something because one post or campaign didn't perform. It's about looking for patterns.

You already have months of information sitting in front of you. Your analytics, website traffic, enquiries, email results, social media activity and conversations with customers can all help you understand what deserves more attention next year and what perhaps needs to change.

What do you want to start January talking about?

Once you've looked at what has worked, you can start thinking about the content you want to kick off the new year with.

This is where preparation makes a huge difference.

Rather than arriving back in January and wondering what you're going to post on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram that week, you can already have an idea of the conversations you want to start.

What does your audience need from you at the beginning of the year? What questions are they likely to have? What problems can you help them solve? What do you want your business to be known for over the coming months?

You don't necessarily need every post written and every graphic designed months in advance. In fact, I wouldn't recommend planning things so rigidly that you leave yourself no room to respond to what is happening around you.

What you do need is direction.

There is a big difference between knowing the themes and conversations you want to develop and simply opening your laptop on the first Monday in January wondering what you should post.

Your January campaigns shouldn't begin in January

The same thinking applies to campaigns.

If you know you are going to run a particular promotion, launch a new service, hold an event or focus on a particular area of the business early next year, why wait until December or January to start developing the campaign?

Start thinking about it now.

What is the objective? Who are you trying to reach? What message do you want to communicate? What content will you need? Which channels are appropriate? What needs to be designed, written, recorded or prepared?

Starting earlier gives you something that is often missing from digital marketing: time to think.

It gives you the opportunity to challenge an idea, improve it, develop the creative, prepare the content and make sure there is a clear business purpose behind the campaign.

Leave it until the last minute and the priority often becomes simply getting something out.

That's a very different mindset.

The Digital Mentor Practical Tip

Before you start planning next year's marketing, put one hour aside and review this year's activity.

Look across your content, campaigns, website, email marketing and social media and identify three things:

Continue: What worked well enough that you should keep doing it?

Change: What showed potential but needs to be approached differently?

Stop: What consumed time or resources without delivering enough value?

Then use those answers as the starting point for your planning.

You don't need a 40-page marketing strategy to begin preparing for next year. You need a clear understanding of where you've been, what you've learned and where you want to go next.

That is why I think year-end marketing preparation should begin before the year actually ends.

January will arrive quickly enough.

If you've done the thinking beforehand, you can start the new year with direction rather than spending the first few weeks trying to work out what you're going to do.

Good preparation doesn't mean having every answer. It means giving yourself the clarity to make better decisions when the new year begins.

So before December becomes December, perhaps the question worth asking is:

What could you start preparing now that you'll be glad you did when January arrives?