As we enter a new year, with shining aspirations and purposeful intentions, one of the most critical steps for any marketing team is to develop a robust strategic plan. Without a clear roadmap, even the most talented teams can find themselves going in circles. Let’s explore why strategic planning and goal-setting are essential, how to lay down the foundational building blocks, and practical methodologies to ensure you’re on track for success.
Why Develop a Strategy?
Strategic planning is more than just an annual exercise – it’s a foundational element in driving positive business outcomes and long-term success. As marketers, we’re constantly faced with shifting consumer behaviors, new technologies, and evolving market dynamics. Having a clear, concise, data-backed strategy in place fosters:
- Unifying Vision: A well-defined strategy ensures everyone on the team understands the long-term vision and is aligned in their efforts. It acts as the guiding North Star, especially when faced with tough decisions or challenges.
- Prioritization: Not all opportunities or projects are created equal. A robust marketing strategy allows you to prioritize high-impact tasks that drive business growth, helping you focus your time and resources on what matters most.
- Resource Allocation: Having a good marketing strategy makes it easier to allocate resources (budget, personnel, time, etc.) efficiently, ensuring every dollar and hour spent is contributing towards your goals.
- Purpose & Inspiration: A clear strategy inspires your team, giving them a sense of purpose and direction. When people understand how their work contributes to larger goals, they’re more engaged and motivated.
- Team Goals & Individual Goals: While a unified vision is crucial, it’s important to break that down into team-specific and individual goals. These should align with your broader strategy but also allow for personal growth and accountability.
Foundational Building Blocks
Building a solid strategic plan starts with understanding the market, your current performance, and your business objectives. Key building blocks to develop your marketing strategy include:
- Data & Research:
- Previous Performance: Your own data is one of your best resources. Review last year’s data to understand what worked and what didn’t. Dip back into your quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and monthly reports, ideally leveraging easy-to-digest dashboards that enable you to view different slices of datasets for optimal comparisons. Past performance is the best indicator of what to improve or scale.
- Market Trends: Research industry trends and shifts. What’s influencing your target audience? What environmental, political, social, technological, or economic factors are impacting your business or industry? How can you adjust your strategy to meet these trends head-on? Check-out leading-edge market research and insights from major players like the American Marketing Association, McKinsey, Forrester Research, Gartner, eMarketer, AdAge, Think with Google, and more.
- Influencers & Leaders: Follow thought leaders and industry influencers to stay up-to-date with innovative ideas and emerging strategies. Leverage sources like LinkedIn Top Voices to identify leaders and content that resonates with your specific focus areas or topics of interest.
- Business Initiatives, Objectives, Goals: Understand the broader organizational goals. How does marketing fit into the overall business plan? What are the critical goals and initiatives for your organization in 2025? Your strategy should directly support the achievement of business objectives.
- Leadership/Manager’s Objectives: Ensure alignment with your leadership’s vision. What are your manager’s expectations? At the end of the day, your goals must also help achieve your leader’s objectives, and the more you can help them, the greater value you can drive for your organization – and for your own growth. Additionally, these objectives will help keep your team on track and ensure their efforts align with company-wide goals.
- Growth/Stretch Goals: Don’t shy away from setting ambitious goals. Growth and stretch goals push teams to innovate and strive for excellence. While these should be challenging, they must also be achievable with the right resources and focus. In addition to the must-have objectives to meet the current mission this year, give yourself some space to tackle a few big ideas or new ways of thinking that might feel a bit uncomfortable but could reap major rewards. These may end up going beyond this year but multi-year thinking not only expands the current aperture but provides room to scale longer-term initiatives.
Research & Planning Methodologies
Now that you’ve gathered the necessary information, it’s time to choose the right methodologies for creating your strategy. Here are three widely used approaches:
- SWOT Analysis: Analyze your team’s internal Strengths and Weaknesses, as well as external Opportunities and Threats. This analysis will help you identify areas to leverage and potential obstacles to overcome. HubSpot has some excellent templates you can use as a starting point.
- NOISE Framework: An alternative to SWOT, the NOISE methodology helps marketers evaluate factors like Needs, Objectives, Ideas, Strategies, and Execution. It’s a holistic approach to planning and executing strategic initiatives – and utilizing the NOISE framework can help avoid the common pitfall of focusing too internally or letting bias get in the way of honest situational analysis to inform your strategy. Here’s an in-depth overview for how to conduct a NOISE analysis.
- Value/Impact vs. Effort/Cost Matrix: Evaluate potential strategies based on their expected value and impact versus the cost and effort involved. This will help you prioritize high-impact initiatives that require less resource allocation. While it may be difficult to accurately estimate effort – and value – this useful heuristic to map out key priorities.
(Savio also offers an in-depth overview of the pros and cons of the Value vs. Effort Matrix)
Putting It to Work
Strategic planning only works if it’s put into action. Here’s how to make it happen:
- Simplify: Don’t overcomplicate your strategy. Break it down into simple, actionable steps. This ensures that everyone on your team knows exactly what’s expected and can follow through.
- Communicate & Advocate: A strategy is only effective if it’s communicated clearly across the team and stakeholders. Bring your team into the planning process and equip them with the key rationale underlying your 2025 strategy and objectives. Develop a streamlined version of your plan for your manager and leadership. Regularly advocate for the plan and keep everyone aligned. Transparency ensures that everyone understands the “why” behind decisions and gets behind the actions needed to bring the strategy to life.
- Operationalize: Transform your strategic plan into clear actions, timelines, and accountability. Make sure you have the right tools in place to track progress and adjust as necessary. Leverage a project management tool – or even just a tried-and-true spreadsheet – to maintain a clear view of daily, weekly, and monthly tasks and how they roll up to your 2025 strategy and goals.
- Eisenhower Matrix: This time-management and prioritization matrix, also referred to as Urgent-Important Matrix, helps you prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance. Focus on what truly moves the needle for your business and delegate or eliminate tasks that don’t. This process can also help overcome procrastination and improve your day-to-day schedule, setting up your best chance of fulfilling the strategy you’ve worked hard to develop.
- Report: Regularly monitor and report on your progress. Are you hitting key milestones? Are there unexpected challenges that need to be addressed? Continuous reporting helps you make data-driven adjustments to stay on course. Create a habit of crafting and presenting quarterly business reviews to your leadership and key stakeholders. Develop dashboards that make it easier to track month-over-month key performance indicators (KPIs) and present to others. Power BI, for example, is a great choice if you are already using Microsoft products. Google’s Looker Studio is another free/low-cost option. These tools will not only make it easier for you to track and report on progress but will also be crucial to next year’s planning process. Remember: your strategy should be set but not static. Let data inform optimizations, enhancements, and even changes as necessary to achieve your goals.
In 2025, strategic planning and goal-setting are not just tasks—they are critical components of success. By aligning your marketing team with clear objectives, leveraging data and research, and using proven methodologies, you can navigate the complexities of the year ahead with confidence.
Remember, a solid strategy is the foundation for growth, and a well-executed plan can turn ambitious goals into actionable results. With the right approach, this time next year you will be looking back at your accomplishments and leveraging meaningful insights for an even better 2026!
Amber S. Messersmith, Global Head of Digital & Performance Marketing, LHH
