A new year is upon us, and many have big goals for 2022. A great marketing plan can help you reach these goals, but what are the essential things to consider when creating a plan? This article provides a guide for taking your marketing to new heights this year.

To move forward, you have to look back.

1. Audit 2021 Marketing Efforts—The first thing to do is honestly audit your marketing program over the past year. What worked and what didn’t? How could have things gone better? Were your efforts consistent throughout the year? Having a good understanding of how this past year went is critical to creating a solid strategy moving forward.

2. Define How Marketing is Tied to 2022 Goals—What role will marketing play in helping you reach the goals? Do you need to reach more new prospects? Inform your existing customer base of new products or services? Improve branding? Whatever your business goals, determine what specific marketing activities align and compliment them.

3. Create a Plan—Once you have done the first two steps, you will be ready to put together a plan. By combining what worked over the past year with the objectives for this year, you can chart with activities, content, frequency, platforms utilized and a measurement collection system. This outline should have a fair amount of detail and specificity but leave room for modification as the data feedback loop indicates progress.

4. Execute the Plan—Now, start doing the things defined in the plan. Be consistent. Be honest with yourself if you are not carrying out the plan. The best-laid plans can fall flat if they are not followed. Moreover, if you are not consistent in how you carry it out, you cannot know whether the data is being impacted by quality or how it is being carried out.

5. Measure the Results—You have goals, a plan and are implementing it. Now what? You must constantly look at results and possibly modify the plan based on what the data tells you. Good marketing is like an ongoing science experiment. You “run the experiment” or carry out the plan based on the best information you have. Then, you watch the results. If the results are what is expected, continue forward. If not, tweak the plan and “run the experiment” again. You must constantly monitor and tweak as you get more information.

We hope this article gives you some steps to put together a solid marketing initiative for 2022. Any plan will only be as good as your dedication to carrying it out. I wish all of you the very best this year as you pursue your 2022 goals.