Marketing Strategy 2022
As we anticipate 2022, it’s essential to start thinking about your marketing plans for the year ahead. As a marketing professional, you know that planning is required as you begin to wrap your year-end campaigns.
For many brands, 2021 has been a challenging year thus far due to supply chain issues, labor shortages, and adjustments to remote work. However, as you escape a tough year, capitalizing on what you’ve learned can help you create a concrete 2022 marketing strategy.
So, where should you start when producing a new marketing plan?
Assess Your Current Marketing Strategy
Evaluating your current marketing plan is key to working through the following steps. When assessing your 2021 strategy, you’ll want to consider what went well and what didn’t.
For instance, you should take a glimpse at the state you’re currently in and ask yourself the following questions:
- What goals did I meet?
- Am I satisfied with my current sales?
- Who are my customers, and where are they?
- Did my campaigns meet the expected return on investment?
As you take the time to examine those results, you can establish which areas you think will need improvement.
After uncovering your assessments, perform a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) to understand what aspects of your business you want to focus on in 2022. SWOT analysis, although an older analytical tool, still provide valuable insight into your current situation.
Redefine and Narrow Your Audience
Knowing your prospective customer is one of the most critical aspects of creating a solid marketing plan. Start by reviewing your customer persona and paying close attention to the buyer journey. To gain in-depth customer insight, start researching the following:
- Review your website’s analytics to understand how customers are finding your business.
- Utilize social media and survey your audience with questions about their needs.
- Look at your competitors and evaluate their strategies.
- Monitor conversations online and engage with your customers.
Once you create a customer persona, your next tactic is to decide which channels will be most effective to optimize your marketing efforts if you’d like to approach a new medium, market on a platform that makes sense for your business.
It’s essential to truly invest in building a solid brand image when you choose the proper channels. By providing quality service and reliable messaging, you can increase your brand awareness organically.
Set SMART Goals and KPIs
Now that you’ve taken time to reflect and redefine your audience, it’s time to start setting measurable goals. Instead of creating vague goals (e.g., make more sales), assemble objectives through the SMART method.
SMART is “specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.” This tactic makes it easier to keep track of your success. Here are a few examples of SMART goals:
- We need to increase the leads that come through our marketing funnels to 15% by the end of Q3.
- I want to expand our brand awareness in the second half of 2022 by increasing our number of influencers from 5 to 10.
- We aim to increase our sales conversions to 20% by optimizing our website and posting social media content by the end of 2022.
Once you have your SMART goals established, you’ll need to determine which KPIs (key performance indicators) you’ll use to evaluate success. KPIs are metrics that can help you stay accountable.
Suppose your goal is to generate traffic through social media. In that case, a good KPI to follow is the percentage of traffic you receive from social media.
Set a Budget
Creating an allowance will help you determine how much you’ll need to dispense for your marketing strategy. For your 2022 marketing plan, you should have an overall budget of how much you plan to spend in total. Then you can divvy your budget by funneling it through each marketing tactic or channel you plan to use.
In this scenario, you have a $30,000 budget overall. You decide that you want to allocate $15,000 to social media. The rest of the budget could fall within paid advertising if you choose.
Take Action
Now that your 2022 marketing plan is in order, it’s time to get to work by implementing it strategically. Consider creating a timeline for your marketing budget and activities. This method can help you evaluate your results accordingly.
Marketing experts recommend reviewing your plan each quarter to analyze your progress. If you see that a campaign isn’t working as well as expected, anticipate new changes. It’s imperative you know when to make adjustments, so you don’t overspend on your budget.
To achieve the desired outcome, you can always rework your goals, budget, target market, tactics, and deliverables.
Embrace Your Hard Work
Marketing may not be easy, but it’s necessary for business success. If your plan does need new changes, layout the adjustments you should make. Then you can reimplement the above steps so you can be sure to obtain your goals.
Guest Post Author: Zac Amos is the Features Editor at ReHack, where he writes about cybersecurity, information technology, and other tech topics.
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.
Photo by Paico Oficial on Unsplash
