Plan marketing & branding campaigns early will save your business time and money. Planning early also gives you time to gain the insight needed to create effective campaigns. Try our Top 3 Planning Tips and get your business ready for 2025.

If you don't plan ahead and get your business ready for the future you'll be constantly behind the game (and your savvy competitors). Not only that, but it can be an expensive way to do business. Creating marketing and promotional materials at the last minute usually leads to higher design, print and delivery costs.

Thinking and planning ahead is the way forward as it allows you to make better business decisions, understand your market and give yourself enough time to order promotional products, like reusable bags, pens, or mugs.

A great way to plan for the future is to assess the success of past marketing strategies. Knowledge is power. If you don't know which marketing strategies worked for your business, how can you improve on results? Conversely, you'll also spend time and money on strategies that are ineffective for your business.

Take note of what's worked in the past (and what hasn't) and use it to make plans for 2025. Learn how to value the marketing data you already have and start making the most of it!

Our Top 3 Marketing Planning Tips

1. Talk and Collaborate

Grab all relevant stakeholders and get their feedback on the past year and ask them what they envisage for the year ahead. Marketing plans shouldn't be created in a bubble - marketeers should be talking to the sales team, product development and customer services for their insights. Getting feedback from your customer-facing staff and production teams is key to the process and your plans should reflect any important feedback.

Keep communicating at all stages. Go back to stakeholders once your marketing plan is complete and get their thoughts. Can they foresee any potential problems with the plan and does it work with their processes? Good communication will improve your colleagues trust in the marketing team and make them more inclined to support your marketing efforts - making the best recipe for success!

2. Use Historic Marketing Data

Think about what you learned in the past and apply it to the future. There's no point in making the same mistakes!
You should have a mine of marketing data available to you (such as Adwords results, Google analytics, sales data and customer feedback) to help you make informed decisions on the effectiveness of previous marketing strategies.

Look at data from any trade shows you've attended. Which shows were most successful? How many people came to your stand and what most attracted them? Use this information to book the same (or similar shows) again. Stop attending shows that aren't giving your business any value and start focusing on the right events.

When you attend conferences, events & trade shows, order enough promotional materials for the show and make it easy for customers to connect with your business after. Promotional giveaways should clearly show your business website address and details of any special offers to entice them back for more information.

If you run a retail store that hosts seasonal events, look at how well they are working. Are these events popular with your customers and do they lead to extra sales in the long/short term? Perhaps the events generated valuable PR and helped to improve brand reach. Identify what your business gained/lost from each activity and the results on sales, leads and brand exposure. Then use this data to work past successful strategies, into your marketing plan.

3. Get Processes in Place and Review Them Regularly

Where could your marketing efforts improve? What gaps do you need to fill? Audit your current assets and work out what else you need. This will help you work more smoothly with other departments such as sales and customer services.

• Get regular feedback from all stakeholders - they could have valuable customer feedback that you otherwise might miss.
• Create a process to get this feedback - this could be via regular meetings, quarterly reporting or a way to submit suggestions. What do they need in order to sell to customers more successfully?
• What do you already have? What assets can be re-used or reworked to save time and money?
  
  

If you haven't started planning for 2025 yet, start making plans and identifying the urgent and important tasks going forward. For example, some promotional products (like our reusable bags) have a lead time of around 12 weeks. So ordering early is essential for most economical delivery costs.

And there we have it - three ways you can get your business can get ready for 2025. Keep reading for helpful links that can help you with more ideas and practical advice.

Save Money with Early Planning

If you haven't planned a marketing strategy for 2025 yet, it's time to get going. Leave it too late and there either won't be time to create exactly what you wanted or it will cost more if have to choose express service to get delivery on time.

For example, custom-printed event bags take around 12 weeks to be produced and delivered via economy sea delivery. Those same bags can also be delivered in just 3-4 weeks by air, but the delivery costs will be significantly higher.

Read: Bag Your Brand with Smartbags and Protect Cash Flow