Marketing in a digital world is complicated. When you factor in the needs of marketing, business development, social media, and public relations, it can get a little overwhelming. You can streamline your processes and align each with clear goals and objectives when planning for a new year. While planning, it’s important to remember that all these areas of communication should work together to support a winning brand strategy.

1. Identify your major goals and objectives. Revisiting your goals and objectives can be a powerfully simple step that can keep your business in the green. This is basically a review of your previous actions to see what worked and what didn’t, and if what you are doing is aligned with your mission and values. Of course, large businesses have less flexibility to shift these priorities; nevertheless, these should be assessed regularly. This part of the process is extremely important to drive your communications forward in a cohesive way.

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2. Review and refine your messaging. Once you have your goals set, it will be important to align your messaging with your updated objectives. It may change the voice or tone of what you are communicating to your audience. Even if you don’t change your messaging, now is the right time to make sure your communications strategy is still aligned with your business objectives.

3. Focus on what you’re undeniably the best at. Good business practice is to take heed of the fact that there’s just not enough time in a day to address everything. The good news is that there is a growing wave of skilled remote workers and freelancers, which provides you with access to more experts than ever before. Delegate more and have experts focus on the different elements of your communications program. With more expertise in niche areas, accessing support may become a game-changer for your organization, allowing you to get more done with greater expertise and efficiency.

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4. Develop a timely theme for your program. Thematic programs don’t last forever, but they can be a great way for you to create a timely theme and be in tune with what’s happening in the social environment. Theme-based programs will need to be revisited at least every six months to ensure that alignment with trends and your goals are still effective. Leveraging themes for your program can create impactful brand visibility and generate customer loyalty by showing that your business is in tune with the trends of the times.

5. Think of creative and out-of-the-box tactics. Try something new! As mentioned before, niche experts are at your fingertips thanks to the gig economy. Trying something uncomfortable may be the difference between standing out as a leader vs. blending in with the crowd. Be careful to take into consideration both the positive and negative consequences of “creative ideas.” But 2022 is a new year, so try something different so that you can get different results.

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6. Ensure your “call to action” is informative and useful. One thing that we continuously push in all of our public relations (PR) efforts within the agency is to have an effective call to action (CTA). It’s like putting an intention out in the universe so that you can achieve a positive result. You can have a shortlist of CTAs that map to your various communication channels or messages, which hopefully you will be measuring.

7. Create a measurable tracking program. The key to determining results is setting measurements in advance. Even if they are ambitious, having a gauge to measure your progress will make all the difference in planning for future programs. A few different tracking metrics include website traffic, sales, new deals, downloads, demos, phone calls, and pieces of published media. To move the needle forward, we try to be progressive and either reset the goals based on what was accomplished the year before or set them based on more aggressive or new objectives. This may change where you put your energy. For example, maybe last year you wanted to grow on social media but this year you want to grow your media presence. The tactics you execute and focus on in your new program will change.

8. Evaluate your progress quarterly. Working in the high-speed startup environment, it seems like we are evaluating our programs almost weekly or monthly. But anytime you have an especially creative or out-of-the-box campaign, make sure that you are keeping a close eye on it and measuring the progress at least quarterly. This will give you ultimate control and the ability to be nimble and tweak small things in the campaign if needed without letting it go too far in the wrong direction. Quarterly tracking is no small feat, so build it into your plan to give yourself the luxury of reviewing your progress in a more precise and direct way. It also helps support your end-of-the-year review.

9. Adjust and repeat the process. Wash, rinse, repeat, as they say. That’s essentially what this process is all about, just more frequently and for your brand. With a loud, complex, and growing online environment, it’s just smart to keep an eye on what’s happening in a programmatic and high-level way. Hopefully, you will have two different people in charge of these relative metrics. But if you don’t, don’t worry; just give yourself the time to check in and check out what you are doing from an audience’s perspective. Are you seeing what you want to present to your targets? If not, maybe it’s time to review again.

While change and trying new things can be scary, it shouldn’t stop your business from growing. A new year may just be the perfect time to try some new things and expand your brand presence. Leverage these tips in planning for the year ahead and do some creative brainstorming. Good luck!

About Author

Ronjini Joshua is the founder of tech communications firm The Silver Telegram.