Why A Conversation About Your Inbound Marketing For 2017 Needs To Happen Now

The leaves are golden, pumpkin-flavored everything has taken over the grocery store, and the last quarter of the calendar year is rapidly coming to a close. Now is a good time to get your team together and begin the process of mapping out your inbound marketing plan for 2017 so that you can start the new year off right. 

Updating your marketing plan every year should be part of the routine. Taking the time to evaluate what went well and where you will need to focus in the upcoming year will enable you to make better decisions.

1. Set SMART Goals 
   Clearly outlining your goals will help you to prioritize and ensure that resources are actually designated to achieving them. Documenting your goals also helps to keep everyone accountable by showing the team what they are working towards. Using the SMART methodology (specific, measureable, attainable, relevant, time-bound) to set your marketing goals will make them clear and actionable for you and your team. Once your goals are set and shared with everyone, they can be referred back to as a reminder of what your team is trying to achieve throughout the year.
   
   
2. Review The Data 
   Digital and inbound marketing relies on the information gained from data analysis. This starts with measuring the right metrics. The information you have gained over the past year allows you to track your progress month to month, but will also serve as a benchmark for the following year. Take the time to measure the success of your marketing efforts and ROI from the past year. If you don’t look at where you are right now, how will you know if you’ve made progress?
   
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3. Run A Content Audit 
   It is a good idea to run a content audit to determine what worked best for you this year so you can inform next year’s strategy. Your metrics should show what topics or formats worked best. Although you should be monitoring your content’s performance throughout the year, looking at the bigger picture will help you create your content calendar for next year.
   
   Not only should you see what content worked best for you, but you will also need to make updates. You can, and should, re-use the quality content that’s been produced, but before doing so, check to make sure all references and statistics are up to date. 
   
   You will also need to evaluate how your content stacks up at each stage of the buyer’s journey. The insights you gain from your data should help to inform if you should be focusing content production efforts on a specific stage of the funnel. Are you generating plenty of leads, but failing to convert them? Maybe your content offers for the consideration stage are not moving leads along their path to purchase, and this is an area where you need to spend some time.
    
4. Evaluate Your Buyer Personas 
   What have you learned about your buyer personas over the past year? Between your data analysis and content audit, did you see a channel that performed well this year that should continue to be used? Does your sales team have any new thoughts about what kind of information your leads are looking for? Your buyer personas are critical to your inbound marketing strategy, and keeping them updated will help you to create better campaigns next year. 
   
   
5. Mark The Calendar 
   Making plans for 2017 will take a big-picture approach in terms of things like goal-setting, but also needs to be broken down into smaller timeframes of what you want to accomplish. Think about your calendar for the upcoming year. Do you have any annual events coming up? Are there certain months or seasons that are more important for your company? Although now isn’t the time to break down every step of each campaign you will run in the upcoming year, it is a good idea to have an overview of planned campaigns on your calendar. Accompanying this with deadlines or check-points for every month, quarterly, etc., will help keep you on track. 
   
   
6. Check The Budget
   According to the Content Marketing Institute, over half of B2B marketers will increase their content marketing budget within the next year. All of the work and planning you’ve done will need to fit into your marketing budget. The SMART goals that are set will help you to determine where to focus resources. You will need to be realistic about your budget and your inbound marketing goals. If you have champagne dreams on a grape juice budget, your team will end up frustrated quickly by a lack of progress. Limitations are to be expected, so planning ahead will make the best use of the available resources. 

Taking the time to have a conversation, and make a plan, will guarantee that you have a successful upcoming year of inbound marketing. 

A little overwhelmed and not sure you can do this all on your own?