Is Your Marketing Strategy Ready for 2022?
2021 was a crazy year for brands with all the unknowns thrown at us. But through it all, I feel as marketers we have learned how to be even more resilient and to go with the flow. Now that we’re almost a month into 2022, we can take what we learned about adapting to the times and apply it to our 2022 marketing strategy.
Does creating a 2022 marketing strategy seem like a daunting task? Where do I start with my 2022 marketing strategy you ask? Follow these 7 steps to establish a marketing strategy to help your company not only reach your goals but blow them out of the water.
1. Review Last Year
Did you create and follow a marketing strategy for 2021? Sit down with your team and discuss where you currently stand.
- What were your goals for the year?
- Did you achieve them?
- What did you do well?
- Do you have a good idea of who your customers are and where they are?
- What didn’t work so well?
Taking a step back and evaluating what worked and what didn’t this year will help you establish an honest assessment of your current state and how to move into 2022.
2. Define/Review Your Target Market (Personas)
A persona is a semi-fictional representation of your current (or ideal) users based on market research and real data about your existing customers. Personas can be created by talking to users and segmenting them by various behavior, demographic data, and psychological characteristics and traits, such as values, desires, goals, interests, and lifestyle choices.
Benefits of Personas
- Creating personas will help you to understand your users’ needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals.
- Creating personas can help you to recognize that different people have different needs and expectations, and it can also help you to identify with the user you’re marketing to.
- Personas make the marketing process less complex, they guide your marketing processes, and they can help you to achieve the goal of creating a good user experience for your target user group.
- Personas are extremely useful to grow and improve a business; they help uncover the different ways people search for, buy, and use products, so you can focus your efforts on improving the experience for real people and use cases.
Personas should be at the core of building your strategy and marketing should revolve around your audience’s needs.
3. Establish New Goals & KPIs
Identify what your business goals are for the year. Your goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (S.M.A.R.T.). This will help your team understand what they are working towards and if they are reaching their goals.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) should also be set for each of these goals for each person or as a team. KPIs provide targets for teams to shoot for, milestones to gauge progress, and insights that help people across your organization to make better decisions.
4. Brainstorm Tactics to Achieve Goals
Now you have your goals, so let’s brainstorm on some tactics you think will help you achieve those goals. Each goal will have its own list of tactics you think will get you to reach your goal.
For example, if you need to see a 20% increase in brand awareness, here are a few suggested tactics:
- Organic social media
- Paid social media
- Public relations
- Search engine optimization
- Google Ads
- Content marketing
- Video marketing
5. Consider Your Time and Resources
Now you have outlined all these fantastic business goals and tactics to achieve each of them. Now we need to outline your budget to implement your marketing strategy. You may not have the allocated funds to do everything you outlined, but by reviewing your target audience, your goals, budget, time, and resources you have available, you can narrow your focus to the outlined tactics that are realistic for your business.
Unless you know how much money you spent marketing yourselves, you will never be able to measure your return on investment (ROI).
6. Write Out Your Marketing Strategy
Now you need to take those goals and tactics and outline what you want to achieve and when. Are certain goals dependent on certain times of the year? Do you have new products launching at a specific time? Who from your team will be involved?
To help you visualize how many different marketing activities you’re committing to take on each month, I suggest writing out each month of the year at the top of a list and then listing the tactics you plan to employ during the month under it. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself or your team. Make sure to clearly outline what responsibilities belong to each team member.
7. Hold Yourself & Your Team Accountable
So far, you have probably written your 2022 marketing strategy out on paper or even maybe documented in a Google Doc right? Great job, but a Google Doc or piece of paper is not as actionable as project management software.
To ensure your team is acting on your marketing strategy and plan, we suggest implementing your strategy and plan into a project management software that fits your team’s needs.
Now you feel like a marketing strategy pro, right?
Creating a complete marketing strategy for 2022 isn’t something that can happen overnight. To ensure you are reaching your target audience, it takes time, hard work, and dedication. My best piece of advice is to be resilient and stick with it. As we saw these past couple of years, your marketing plans can change overnight. It’s ok to update your plan as the world changes.
For additional tips and tricks or help developing your 2022 marketing strategy, visit www.systemaxsolutions.com to learn more about our team.
Author Info
Hello! My name is Hanna O’Brien and I am one of the Strategic Marketing Directors here at Systemax. I work hand in hand with clients creating strategies for growth, brand awareness, customer retention, etc.; ultimately with a goal in mind of increasing their revenue. I have spent the last 20 years in the marketing and advertising industry. Outside of work, you can catch me coaching my 3 girls in basketball and enjoying time with family & friends.