Use November to plan

November and December are a strange time in the marketing world if you aren't in retail. 

Black Friday launches, Christmas campaigns are already underway and families spend money even when the budget is already tight. If you sell products, especially online, this is your season! If you don't you're bidding against those businesses for the same ad space and competing for the attention of your market who have already checked out mentally until they return to their desk in January.

That makes the back half of the year a perfect time to plan out your first half of the new year (or second half of the FY if you work to FY timings).  

What Feb looks like when you don't plan now

February can be slow to start for a lot of Australian businesses, your target audience are often just getting back from holidays, the kids have just gone back to school and they are getting back into routine. Not planning until the start of the year just adds to how slow it is. 

Promotion works like a tap. There's a delay between opening it and anything reaching the end of the pipe. A conversation started in January doesn't necessarily become an invoice in January depending on the complexity of the product and your buying cycle. It might not hot your bank account until March or April. 

If you wait to start planning at the start of the year, you're building the plan through January, producing assets to support it into February and then it's not in market until 3 months later. Conversations off the back of it won't start until April and depending on how long the sales cycle is, it might not close before June 30.

If you get your plan done before the Christmas holidays, hopefully you'll be having some conversations by February. GIving you more time to move deals through your pipeline before the end of financial year closes.

What planning takes

I see two thoughts here. Owners who don't come from marketing backgrounds assume the planning task is enormous. They put it off because it feels like a project they can't fit in.

Owners who do understand marketing make the opposite error. They don't give planning the time it deserves with the team. It doesn't get written down and distrbuted, so nobody acts on it and nothing happens.

The answer? It depends on how complex your business is and how much groundwork you have done already. One product, one audience, one go to market and a three hour workshop will get you through the quarter. No target audience prep, or multiple products, with mutiple audiences might need a larger strategy session. 

The point of planning is deciding what not to do

Often, the outcome of the planning session will outline what not to focus on. Two examples from recent conversations - all about prioritising where to spend time and money. 

One - business was generating numerous AI generated blog posts because they read they should do it and because they had access to a tool that allowed them to do it. However, if those blogs don't connect to what you are trying to achieve, it doesn't appeal to the audience you are trying to connect with or you are spending the only resource you have for the week producing this content and nothing else then it isn't going to help in the short or long term. 

Two - producing beautiful social media content with no thought behind who it appeals to while there is a database full of warm prospects untouched. Again, spend resource on where you are going to get your wins first. 

The reason the planning doesn't happen

Businesses don't leave the planning until February because they think it's a better time. It's because they just don't think about the importance of planning. 

SMBs run on a hamster wheel. Quote the work. Do the work. Invoice the work. Repeat. Marketing and lead gen only tend to get attention when there is a problem, which is a harder issue to solve. 

Where to start

If you business has one core offer and one audience and you know roughly where you are headed, a half-day intensive gives you three hours of focused work plus a written summary. 

If you have multiple products and audiences, or you are not confident on who the best customer is, that's a strategy job rather than a planning session. My marketing strategy package covers your audience, messaging, channels and customer journey.