Not sure how to create your marketing plan for 2022? Follow these seven steps to make a marketing plan that will help you reach your goals quickly.
Did you write a marketing plan for 2021? Dust it off and review it as a team. Although we aren’t out of 2021 just yet, you should have enough data from Q1, Q2 and Q3 to make educated decisions. What did you do well?
2. Define (or Redefine) Your Audience
Marketing should revolve around your audience’s needs. If you haven’t already, define your audience with buyer personas. Even if you already have buyer personas, use this as a chance to review them as needed (you might even need to add a new persona to the mix).
3. Conduct a SWOT Analysis
Your SWOT analysis will definitely change from year to year, if not month by month. Be sure to include an up-to-date SWOT analysis in your 2022 marketing plan. This will help you identify internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats.
4. Set SMART Goals and KPIs
After reviewing your 2021 plan, learning more about your audience and conducting a SWOT analysis, it’s time to set goals for 2022 marketing.
Instead of choosing a vague goal like “I want to bring in more customers,” set SMART goals. This will make it much easier to understand if your marketing team was actually successful.
5. Choose Your Tactics
What marketing tactics will support your SMART goals? For example, if you need to see a 20% lift in brand awareness by February 2022, which tactics will get you there most efficiently?
6. Create a Budget
You can’t measure your return on investment (ROI) unless you know how much money you spent marketing yourself. That’s why it’s so important to create a budget annually as well as per-channel or per-tactic.
7. Hold Yourself Accountable with Project Management Tools
At this point, you’ve probably documented your marketing plan on paper. That’s all well and good, but a Google Doc isn’t nearly as actionable as project management software.
If you really want to implement your marketing plan, plug it into PM software like Asana, Monday or Trello. This is the best way to ensure your team actually acts on the marketing plan.
Read Nikki’s entire blog here.
