As tempting as it might be to slowly switch off in the lead up to Christmas, any time or resources you invest towards planning for 2019 will be well worth it!

With the holiday season so close, try to utilise that last bit of stamina to put these next 3 weeks to good use. Trust us - you’ll thank yourself in January.

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Think about dividing your focus into:

• 2018 review - what worked, what didn’t, what were the key takeaways and important learnings

• 2019 planning - based on the above, what needs to be the key focus next year
  

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Once you have a good overall understanding of your 2018 performance, you can start to focus on the year ahead. Here are some key steps to get you started:

1) How can you take the highlights and key learnings from 2018 and use them to your advantage next year? Here are some examples of areas to analyse.

Channel/strategy specific:

• Organic social media growth and engagement
• Paid media performance
• Email marketing performance
• Lead generation tactics
• Content performance

General:

• What planning tools worked/didn't work?
• Where there any specific tools you wish you had but didn't? I.e a calendar or a plan?
• How much time did you spend on marketing each week?
• What ROI did you see on the time you spent?
• What feedback did you receive from the efforts you made?
• What did you see your competitors doing that you wish you had of done?
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2) Based on this,  devise your overarching marketing strategy for 2019

3) Create your 2019 marketing calendar highlighting the key marketing channels you want to focus on

4) What do you deem to be your primary content pillars? (for example, video, imagery, blogs, vlogs)

5) Have you mapped out the key topics/themes for each of these content pillars?

6) Do you have a plan around content creation to execute these plans?

Once the strategy and calendar are drafted, enjoy this festive time to get a little bit creative.  As you may have seen on our Instagram here, we are firm believers that this is the perfect time of year to work a little bit harder to really map out your Jan-June content for 2019.

Start a mood board, book that photographer and really try to plan some structure to set yourself up for January.

If you have a stream of exciting ideas flowing but aren't sure where to start or how to structure them, click here to say hello and grab some advice.
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Do you need help with strategic digital marketing for your business?

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