As the finish line for 2021 approaches, marketers are feeling the pressure now more than ever to push through and meet year-end goals. Many marketers may be familiar with the Q4 panic, but this year brings a whole new level of pressure. 

In the last 16-months, many businesses paused their marketing objectives and goals to address the environment at hand; and now, it’s time to get back to business. Organizations are either rebooting all together or pushing to increase their marketing activity, dealing with leaner departments, limited resources and tighter timelines to get to market and get results. So, how do we prepare for 2022? By getting back to the basics. 

Serve the Strategy

A solid strategy is the foundation of eliminating reactive marketing tactics. 

Start there. Develop a strategy that you can turn to when developing tactics and metrics. This will keep you from approaching tactics in a one-and-done type manner that we can often resort to when time is tight and the pressure is on. 

A strategy allows you to map out your steps to directly see how they support your main goals; and you can develop systems around it, which will maximize everyone’s time and leave breathing room for the spontaneous ideation marketers love.

Develop Holistic Systems

Developing holistic systems that serve your strategy will save you from getting stuck in a never-ending loop of operating reactively and reinventing the wheel. Move all of your tactics through the same system, approach all of your projects through the same strategic lens. While a solid system will help you achieve execution and results smoother, it will also help you identify gaps faster. 

Chunk it Down 

Too often, businesses throw out their big vision and then get stuck trying to execute. Breaking projects down into smaller chunks is key to successful execution. Break things down as much as possible. Start with something small you can deliver in 4-6 weeks. Bringing things onto a more manageable scale allows you to create a foundation, ideate, improve and grow.

Keep Those Platforms Clean

Focus on cleaning out and maintaining your CRM. Your CRM should be able to provide you with everything you need to know about your audiences, so you can craft your message and delivery. This seems like a no-brainer, but we all know that CRMs can get messy fast without proper upkeep and lead and customer management. 

Get Out of the Silo

It’s more important than ever for marketing and sales to collaborate to achieve revenue growth. Marketing is no longer simply driving leads; it’s driving business. Working in sync with sales to clearly determine how marketing tactics move will help you find clarity in an environment with limited resources and higher expectations for results.

Bring Everyone In

When it comes to delivering a project to market on timelines that are tighter than ever, marketing teams can’t afford to have gaps of understanding and buy-in from their team. The key to developing an agile and quick marketing team is to bring the strategic lens to the ground level, right down to the associates that are executing on projects. 

Get Creative

Tightened resources call for creativity. Creating a solid strategy, chunking things down, keeping up your platform and collaborating with sales will give you the time and bandwidth to get creative. Look at core principles: tweak your messaging, pivot to a different medium, try something totally new. Look for solutions and opportunities to explore new territory. 

The basics are called “the basics” for reasons. They are tried and true practices to help you do what you do best as markets evolve and demand grows in a world where businesses are rebooting, realigning and recharging and expecting results. 

Need help with your marketing strategy for 2022? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.