Proactive Marketing – Planning Ahead for 2022

As we approach Q4, it is time for SME’s to consider your businesses priorities for the coming year and how you will promote them alongside your brand marketing. Whilst work continues on fulfilling this year’s plans, now is the time to consider your 2022 marketing strategy. Acting now will enable your brand to take control of the marketing message and engagement with consumers. This article explores the benefits of getting ahead of the game and being proactive…

Five Benefits of Proactive Marketing

There are a number of benefits of planning ahead. Here’s our top five:

1. Hone Creative Marketing Ideas

You want your brand to be distinct from the competition and this cannot be rushed. When thinking of ideas on the spur of the moment, it is challenging to be creative, original and on message. With time on your side, it is possible to share, develop and evaluate ideas. Can the concept be honed to optimise impact, memorability and engagement?

A considered approach to marketing will significantly improve your results, ensuring that the right communication is being shared, with the right prospects, via the right channels. This helps to boost brand awareness and reputation in the most cost-effective way.

2. Use Insights to Inform the Marketing Plan

Great marketers respond to current customer requirements, as well as predicting what customers will want in the future. To achieve this, you need to learn from what you know, analyse data, research and harness the information to direct your marketing activities.

Data-led marketing takes time; when you start to research, there is so much information available. You need to evaluate what is relevant to your marketing campaign and business objectives. When your campaigns are driven by factual data over intuition, informed decisions can be made. These reduce risk and increase resilience.

When you have pinpointed the relevant data, keep an eye on it. This plays an important role in measuring and monitoring marketing impact; what’s working and what needs to change?

3. Prepare Marketing Resources

A clear marketing plan allows you to prepare the necessary resources. Are there skill gaps within the marketing team? Can these be filled through training, outsourcing or recruitment? Do you need to build your brand collateral? Is it time to build a portfolio of images to be used across digital channels and print media?

With resources at hand, marketing can be executed efficiently. This should free up time for social engagement, personalisation, upselling and generating fresh ideas.

4. Share the Marketing Vision

Customers expect consistency – inconsistency creates doubt; your marketing message has to be coherent in every interaction. With a marketing plan in place, the vision and goals can be shared across the team and discussions can be held around how this can be implemented across all areas of the business.

5. Plan to Avoid Bad Press

Marketing can be exciting and rewarding, yet a lot is at stake. Missed opportunities, bad timing, inconsistency, insulting messages can be costly to brand reputation, budget and employee wellbeing.

If the marketing team is constantly under pressure to come up with new ideas you’re unlikely to get the best from them. If they are under-resourced, lack essential skills or don’t collaborate, the risk of an ill-advised campaign is high. Once posted or printed, it is not easy to recall a marketing message.

In March 2012, Burger King was keen to use International Women’s Day to highlight the under-representation of women chefs. This was a great opportunity to promote their culinary scholarships which support females entering the profession.

Unfortunately, the message they posted was ‘Women belong in the kitchen’. This wasn’t well received. Despite deleting the message, apologising and explaining, the negative response and press are still widely available. If this message had been shared and considered, surely someone would have foreseen it was the polar opposite of their intentions?

A Shared Vision

Operating through a pandemic and Brexit has been a lesson in managing uncertainty. Not everything goes to plan, however, if we have one in place, it provides clarity and a shared vision. Whether working remotely or back under one roof, your team can be collective in their approach.

In next month’s article, we will offer key considerations to inform your marketing plan. These will help your business to hit the mark and optimise your marketing efforts.

Professional Marketing Services

Alison Page Marketing has the expertise and insight to support marketing strategy and planning. We undertake client profiling and market research to inform an achievable and measurable plan of action to match your business priorities, goals and budget. Our team also offer practical support with the implementation of the marketing plan.

If you are keen to get ahead of the game, take control of marketing activity and minimise the risk of poor planning, please get in touch with Alison Page Marketing on 07963 002065 or hello@alisonpagemarketing.co.uk.