It’s the most wonderful time of the year! (And sometimes, the most stressful.)

Starting the year off right is crucial for businesses and marketers. You’ve got a blank slate in front of you, and while some may find it exciting, there’s a lot of pressure to kick off the year with a well-crafted Q1 strategy.

While we bet this isn’t your first rodeo with Q1 planning, we’re here to help you brush up on some of the dos and don’ts that add depth to your game plan and help build a targeted, data-driven, and prosperous path forward in the new year.

Do Gather 360° Feedback

As you start building your plan, make sure you find the time to speak with your clients about how they felt the last year went. Whether it’s in a meeting or sending out a survey, it’s essential that you gauge your clients’ temperature and understand what blew them away or left them less than satisfied.

More than just your clients’ opinions matter, too. Your employees are on the ground every day working with clients and can provide valuable input on their likes, dislikes, quirks, and marketing achievements or issues from the past year. Regardless of hierarchy, opening the floor to all your employees can help build stronger connections and camaraderie between your team members.

Don’t Brush Off Last Year

We’ve all been there: You set sweeping goals at the beginning of the year. Then, when you find yourself back in Q1, you realize your priorities changed, strategies pivoted, and you may not have hit the objectives you originally planned.

If you feel your year missed the mark, it’s easy to want to brush those results under the rug, justify what happened, and move on. But you’d be doing yourself a disservice. Missteps are filled with data, just like your successes. Don’t forget to look at them objectively and learn from them as you set the following year into motion.

Do Set SMART Goals

Don’t forget to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound.

We know that SMART goals are a foundational tactic for marketers, but admit it: Sometimes, the fast-paced nature of our industry makes it easy to overlook defining each of these features as we pitch strategies.

For your Q1 plan, you have the chance to be much more thorough than you would be coming up with marketing roadmaps and campaigns on the fly. Put in the work now to define the SMART goals for your clients for things like:

• Social media engagement
• Content engagement
• Advertising performance
• Email engagement rates
• Sales goals and more

Don’t Overestimate Your Bandwidth

This tip applies both to your Q1 strategy and your company culture. Turnover rates are still high, and employers are struggling to find and retain qualified employees. More than ever, people are setting boundaries for a better work-life balance. It’s vital that you don’t overestimate your team’s bandwidth as you’re planning your strategy, inevitably making promises to clients you can’t keep and likely burning out your employees in the process.

Thinking about bringing on new people? Q1 is also the perfect time to set benchmarks for the year that signal you’re ready to start hiring.

Do Update Your Target Audience Research

Your company is growing every year, right? That means you’ve likely outgrown the target audiences or buyer personas you set last year, the year before, or five years before.

When kicking off a client project, you wouldn’t rely solely on the demographic information they provide. You dig in yourself, bringing more robust research and data-backed insights to the table. Give yourself the same benefit! This way, everyone on your team gets on the same page for the beginning of the year on what you’re looking for in a new client.

Don’t Skip a Content Audit

It’s easy to get caught up in churning out blog after blog, post after post, and forsake your content strategy for consistency without a deep understanding of how they perform individually and overall. That’s where content audits come in.

Audits pull the numbers you need to know to analyze what subjects resonate or fall flat with your audience. It can tell you what platforms are best to focus on, point out opportunities for repurposing assets, and help you create a fresher, more relevant plan for your content calendar in the coming year.

A great place to start is with a social media audit — we’ve got you covered!

Do Brainstorm

Quarterly planning can’t succeed if it’s performed in a vacuum. This is the time to think bigger as opposed to keeping things status quo. Get your team together for a dedicated brainstorm designed to stir up new ideas, add more depth to your plan, and potentially create a creative framework for the year ahead.

With these do’s and don’ts, you can build a comprehensive, actionable, and ready-to-implement plan to launch you into a successful year.

Need a hand creating a Q1 (or Q2, 3, or 4) strategy? We’re here to help! Reach out to learn what our experienced marketing analysts and content creators team can do for your business.