As 2023 winds to a close, now is the perfect time to reflect upon your marketing efforts of the past year so you can move forward with creating a plan for 2024. What worked and what didn’t work? Just as importantly, what great ideas either did not get properly implemented or never made it off of your “to do” list at all? 

Creating a plan is only the first step 

One thing I’ve seen is that we all have the best intentions when we create our marketing plans. What we tend to forget is that creating a plan is just the first step. It’s not enough to establish a list of goals and plans. If you want to meet these goals you also have to make time to implement your plans! 

The best way to ensure that this happens is to schedule it. Literally. Put your plans on your calendar. 

Make the commitment 

Putting things on your calendar makes them concrete – a commitment. It also stops you from putting your marketing plan away and forgetting all about it. You should add your marketing plans to your calendar and schedule automated reminders to pop up at all the appropriate times. 

Don’t just schedule the final due dates 

This is another trap that people fall into. Say you want to send out a newsletter on the first Monday of each month (and for some reason you don’t want to simply hire me to do the writing and manage the project for you). Don’t just put “send monthly newsletter” on your calendar on the first Monday of each month. You also need to schedule time to do the work. 

Working backwards from the final due date, you need to schedule time to:

• Create a list of topics that you will be writing about during the year.
• Write the articles.
• Find and purchase stock photos to illustrate the articles.
• Get the articles set up in your newsletter template.
• Have the appropriate people on your team review and approve the newsletter.
• Schedule the newsletter to be sent out.
• Also recommended: Post the newsletter article on a “blog” page on your website, and then post “teasers” on your social media pages that entice people to click through and read the article on your blog.

In short, if you want to ensure that your marketing plans get implemented in 2024, you must schedule time to make things happen.