How many times have you heard yourself say: “I can’t believe it’s December already, it doesn’t seem five minutes since Easter? I’m not ready for 2024.”
What with the Christmas countdown, the present buying and gift wrapping, the food shopping, the party celebrations and the decorations to go up, how many of us have even thought about taking stock of our PR and marketing plans before 2024 beckons? Not many I bet.
But if you take some time out now ahead of the festive break, or even during the Christmas Day and New Year lull, where none of us know what day it is, we’re still eating selection boxes for breakfast and turkey pie for dinner, it will save you time when you’re back at your desk full of the January blues.
To make it easier though, here are our five top tips to make sure you’re ahead of the game when it comes to planning your 2024 PR and Marketing schedule.
What Went Well This Year?
Have you carried out an audit or a review of what went well in 2023? Were their marketing campaigns that brought in more leads, or didn’t they work as well as you would have liked? If it’s the latter, why didn’t they work? Was the data you used inaccurate or was your messaging wrong? If you were getting in leads but they weren’t converting was there an issue with your sales process or the website page customers were being directed to? What steps can you put in place to make sure the next email marketing campaigns yields better results? If on the other hand, your campaigns absolutely smashed it, what improvements can be made to get even more leads in 2024?
Key Objectives for 2024
Any PR and Marketing needs to be fully aligned with your business goals objectives and in particular your sales goals. Before the end of the year can you get your team together to be specific around the main goals and objectives for the next 12 months. That way your PR and Marketing activity can be planned in advance and totally in line with what you are trying to achieve as a business.
What’s the Story?
When you are planning ahead – think about what might grab a journalist’s attention to get you media coverage. For example – if you are moving to a new multi-million pounds manufacturing site, which is going to create 100’s of jobs, make sure you plan a press release to get the news out there and don’t forget the press will want interviews, so make sure you’ve got someone prepped as part of your plans. Your company story could help win awards too – have a look at local, regional, national and industry awards that you could enter. They’re a great feel-good factor for staff, as well as being fantastic for your company reputation.
Social Media
Forewarned is forearmed. Many of us are guilty of being reactive with our socials. We don’t always have the time to be as proactive as we would like but a little preparation can save you lots of time in the long run. Have a look in advance at the key awareness days for 2024 – which key dates work for your company – which would work as a hook to pull together content for? Get graphics designed (Canva can help if you don’t have a design resource in house and there’s no budget to outsource) ready, get some blogs written so they’re good to go when the key dates come round.
Get a Schedule in Place
All of the above can be used to pull together a 12-month marketing and PR schedule. You can also add in key company dates or milestones (e.g., that company move we mentioned.) It might mean an investment of time now but in the long run it’ll make planning your PR and marketing so much easier and will help move you away from being reactive to proactive.
As you head towards the festive break – knowing you’ve got a schedule in place for 2024 means you can enjoy that Christmas Day Bucks Fizz even more and it’s one less job you have to do when you’re back at your desk come January.
To find out how we can help your business drop us an email: hello@pireddamarketing.co.uk or call us on 01538 764027.
