Marketing Planning – Things to consider for 2025

The end of the year is a great time to start to think about your marketing activities for the year ahead, but something we often hear is ‘where do I start’?

In this article, Account Manager, Ann-Marie Lowe provides some key considerations to help you get started with your marketing planning for 2025.

Find out what has and hasn’t worked

-To do this you will need access to any data that shows you how many enquiries your firm has had and where those enquiries have come from.

-Online marketing is much easier to measure as you can easily how many visits, clicks or enquiry forms have been completed as a result of your marketing efforts.

-If you use traditional media such as newspapers and magazines to reach a certain sector of your target audience, you can still measure the enquiries from those adverts by using dedicated tracking phone numbers on each advert that you place.

-It is very normal in the legal sector particularly for a large proportion of enquiries to still come via the telephone, so you need to make sure your enquiry handling is working, and that the people taking the calls are logging where the enquiry came from. This information is invaluable to marketing planning and is something that many firms still don’t get right. If you don’t think that your enquiry handling is working for you then you can always consider outsourcing this function to an expert provider such as Moneypenny.

-If you can clearly see from your enquiry handling where your new clients have come from then you are in a much stronger position to move in the right direction, investing in the marketing activities that really work for your business.

Find out what the strategic goals of the business are

- A copy of the strategic business plan, mission and vision are a really great place to start, but if you can’t get hold of this, then a business planning meeting with key individuals to discuss the strategic goals of the business would be ideal.

- Once you know what the business is looking to achieve in the coming year then you can assist by aligning the marketing activities to those goals.

- Plans may need to be made at an overall business/brand level and also at department level to help the individual departments or teams achieve their individual goals. Be sure to involve the key decision makers of the departments concerned as you will need them on board to achieve buy-in for activities going forward.

Starting your marketing plan

- Once you know what the business is looking to achieve you can go away and write a marketing plan.  This will take some time and a bit of research, but the result should a well thought out plan with clear actions.  A marketing plan should include, amongst other things, a SWOT analysis of the business as this can be used to develop some key tactics and marketing messages.  After all, you will want to shout about your strengths and target your opportunities. You can also talk to your team about how to stay one step ahead of your threats.

- As part of your research, it can be helpful to complete a benchmarking exercise of key competitors as this can highlight ideas and approaches that might work for you.

- Spend some time identifying who your target audience is and work out a plan of how to reach that target audience.  You will need to think about what they read, what events they attend, what they listen to, who they follow and if it’s a B2B target. Using your CRM system find out if, anyone in the business already has a contact there. If not, you’ll have to do a bit of detective work!  

 Write a marketing calendar with clear goals for each month

- Once you know what the goals are for the business, and you have identified who your target audience is and how to reach them, it’s advisable to write a monthly marketing activity calendar.  The calendar is a great way to identify and plan for any key industry events, business milestones, awards to enter and content ideas for that month.

- Most businesses rely on a regular flow of content for their websites and social media schedules, and it can often be a challenge to come up with the ideas for each month.  Identify any relevant awareness days/weeks/months that you can write about, along with any key seasonal dates that impact your clients.    You could also enlist some content champions and thought leaders within your business and ask them for ideas as well.

- If you struggle to write content or come up with ideas, then outsourcing that part of your marketing mix to an agency or content writer may be a worthwhile investment. This would then allow you to focus on other parts of your marketing mix such as client events and CSR.

- If you can establish some thought leaders in your business, who are also happy with public speaking, then you can also see if there are any PR opportunities for these individuals to speak at industry events for example.  If you are unsure on where to start with seeking PR opportunities then, again, seeking the support of a specialist marketing agency may be worthwhile to help maximise your business’s exposure in the sector that you are trying to target.

- If you think that some direct marketing through email newsletters may be another way to help to reach your target audience, then you will need to scrutinise your database of consented contacts and ideally cleanse and update your mailing lists before you start a campaign.

What gets measured, gets done

- Ensuring that your marketing efforts can be measured is important, so when setting up activities think about how your firm can measure the affect.

- Digital marketing is easier to measure but review the stats every month so that you can respond and react to any changes. 

- Monthly marketing meetings are recommended to keep your plans on track. In the meetings you can go through your calendar, set tasks, such as writing an article, or an award submission and agree timescales for completion.  Without this, your projects are likely to drift, particularly if you are relying on fee earning staff with busy caseloads to assist you.

If you require assistance in completing a marketing strategy, writing a marketing plan or help with any element of your marketing activity calendar then get in touch office@scalauk.com or call 0114 4070159.