Why New Year is a great time to evaluate your marketing strategy

The notion of a new calendar year being a good time to start afresh and make personal resolutions for the year ahead is, of course, nothing new. However, in business, it can often feel like there’s never a good time to reflect on the past and make some decisions about the future. You’re generally too busy keeping things ticking over and fighting fires!

While taking some time to properly assess how things are going and make strategic plans for the future isn’t always easy, it’s essential to do so in order to ensure that you’re making best use of your budget, getting the best possible return and are using the right channels and tactics to reach and engage your target audience.

In this blog, we’ve outlined some of the steps you can follow to take stock of your marketing strategy at the start of the new year, and how spending a little time on this can help supercharge your next 12 months and beyond.

Use the data of past marketing performance to shape new strategy

Understanding what worked well in your previous strategy and how it translated to a return for your business is essential. Your specific KPIs will depend very much on what your objectives were and the nature of the activity, but it’s very common for businesses to not even check on how their strategy has performed at all; they just implement it and move on to the next thing.

Without having some kind of data to indicate success or failure in the past, you can’t confidently plan for the future of your marketing strategy.

Take a look at trends and new technology that’s now available

Technology can move quickly in many industries, which means that a year is a long time if it means you’re getting left behind compared to what your competitors are doing, or if you’re missing opportunities to jump ahead of them. Taking some time to do some research into what marketing trends or tech could be relevant to your audience, and therefore beneficial to your business, can be a good way to ensure you’re off to a great start in the new year.

Set clear marketing objectives that feed into wider business goals

When it comes to setting new objectives for what you want to achieve with your marketing strategy in the next year, it’s important that these are closely tied to your priority business goals. Keeping these objectives at front of mind when planning new marketing activity will mean that you’re not spending time or money on activity that doesn’t contribute to achieving your targets. Being purposeful in this way will help you get the best possible return.

Get help with specialist areas of your marketing strategy

Unless you have a large and established marketing team, with bags of expertise in every channel, the chances are that there will be marketing specialisms that you’re not fully equipped to deliver in. That doesn’t mean that you can’t include them in your marketing strategy; it means that you can outsource them to a trusted partner.

A good outsourced marketing agency will work collaboratively with you to plan and implement high-quality marketing activity that drives proven results. Your business benefits from their skills and experience without needing to recruit internally and you also get their fresh eyes and creative ideas to add to the pot.  

At Umbrella, we can help with any and all elements of your marketing strategy. From running a health check and auditing past performance to help you make informed decisions, or planning and implementing a brand new dynamic strategy in full collaboration with you, we’re here to ensure you get the best possible return on your marketing investment. Get in touch to find out more.