Two absolute “musts” for structuring your 2024 marketing plan

Buyers’ preferences for where and how they get buying information are constantly fluctuating. These shifts can be dramatic. It may be why some marketing strategies that worked really well for you in 2022 may have flatlined in 2023. If you have questions about structuring your 2024 marketing plan, start by following the advice below.   

1.Always start with strong foundational elements.  

Without careful preparation, a single shift in a platform’s popularity may cause your entire campaign to crumble. But once certain elements are in place, you can take your plan in an infinite number of directions. That means you’ll be able to pivot more efficiently as the marketing environment changes. 

Ask yourself: 

• Do I have a clear understanding of basic marketing concepts and principles? You should know enough about marketing to collaborate with your marketing team, and not be bamboozled by terms and analytics you may not understand.   
• Do I know what I want to communicate and to whom? You should understand who is most likely to buy your product and what would motivate them to choose your product over your competition’s. 
• Do I know where to communicate with people who are most likely to buy my product? For 2024, the emphasis will be on owned channels, especially your website, blog, social posts and emails. Trade media remains a strong channel for many B2B industries. Your website is your marketing hub. Media Relations Agency offers a free competitive website analysis to help you identify immediate and long-term areas of improvement designed to improve your bottom line.   
• Do I know how often I should communicate with prospects? How much of your budget will you spend on each promotional channel? If you sell multiple products, what percentage of your budget will be earmarked for each one?
• Have I established content guardrails to ensure everything is on point? As the creative elements are developed, you need a way to ensure that you don’t lose sight of your audience and messaging.  
• Does my team have the skills needed to perform the various tasks? Marketing is complicated. Even if you have an in-house team, having ties to a full-service marketing agency such as ours can be your lifeline when things get hectic. The right professionals can ensure your campaign maintains momentum. 

Our best-selling marketing book, “The CEO’s Guide to Marketing”, is a step-by-step guide to walk you through each of the above elements.  We will send a free copy to you after your initial consultation with us.   

2. Treat your product like a celebrity. 

Celebrities are well known and have loyal fans. We think our clients’ products deserve to achieve celebrity status as well. (Hence our tagline: Publicity.com, where products go to become famous.) 

How is that accomplished? Here are a few highlights of our strategies. 

• Make sure your product is discoverable. People searching for a solution to their problem should repeatedly see your product pop up in their organic search results. Also, make sure you’re using your market’s preferred platforms and formats. That may mean a carefully curated mixture of video, media articles, blogs, social posts, emails and infographics. 
• Be relevant. Post fresh, unique content unlike anything that can be found elsewhere on the internet. Pay attention to your market’s pain points and provide clear, honest solutions.  
• Boost the trust factor. Become your market’s source for useful information related to your product category. Not everything should be promotional, but it should always be insightful. 

Here’s a shortcut for creating your 2024 marketing plan 

Ask us what we would recommend. We can evaluate your starting place, and design a marketing plan to help you get where you want to go in 2024. 

You’ll quickly see that we put a lot of thought into our recommendations. Since we’re a full-service agency, we have an impressive breadth of services that extend far beyond those of traditional digital marketing agencies. 

Do you have questions? Call us at 952-697-5269. Or if you are ready to learn how we can help your product become more well known in 2024, complete this form to get a proposal.

Written by Heather Champine, COO/Partner at Media Relations Agency