One of my goals for my business each year is to have the most successful year yet. And, I think that’s true for a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners. Every year, we want to top that last year. We ask ourselves, what did we do last year – and, how can we make next year more successful?
So, when do you start to look at your next year and begin planning? For me, it’s right now! Right at the end of the summer. It just makes sense for me to tie it right into prepping for the new school year. I know that seems crazy, it’s only August and the 4th quarter is still two months away!
The reality is this, the 4th quarter is chock-full of opportunities for your business. If you let it sneak up on you, it’s easy to get bogged down in all of the holiday hustle-bustle and miss out on those major opportunities for sales and growth.
What I’ve found in my own business and in helping my clients plan for their businesses is that if we start planning for the 4th quarter in the summer, we can create momentum and also hit those goals we’ve set for the year. So, how can you get started planning for the 4th quarter?
Here are 3 steps you can take to begin planning for the 4th quarter:
1. Look back
Look back to look to the future. Assess where your business is right now to see where you want it to go. This will help you to determine what it is you need to do to close out the year strong. You still have plenty of time left in the year to hit your revenue goals.
However, you won’t know if you need to make changes to your strategy or pivot unless you look back at what’s happened so far this year. Looking back allows you to assess what is going well and what is not.
Action step: Right now, pull out your profit and loss statement. Then take a look at your revenue numbers for the last six months and assess if you are on track to hit your revenue goals for the year.
Once you’ve looked back and assessed if you’re on track to hit your revenue goals for this year, it’s time to plan your marketing strategy. It’s no secret that marketing for the 4th quarter can be daunting – there’s a lot that goes into it. The thing is, it only becomes daunting if you wait until the last minute.
You can’t wait for October to plan for October.
Action step: Take a look at your marketing strategy for the past year, assess what’s worked well, and plan to do some more of that. What didn’t work well? Can it be tweaked?
Think about what marketing initiatives would be most beneficial for the 4th quarter. Maybe plan a Black Friday sale. Maybe plan a new product, service, or program launch for the 4th quarter.
Be sure that whatever marketing efforts you plan will produce good, quality leads.
2. Create a budget.
If you don’t have a budget for your marketing, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re leaving money on the table. Marketing is an investment in your business. When you invest in your business, you gain a return on your investment.
Having a marketing budget as you head into the 4th quarter is going to be super helpful. The reality is this, the 4th quarter is the most expensive quarter to advertise in. If you’re planning to run ads, you need to make sure you have the budget to support that. Ad costs will go up in late October and they will not come back down until January.
Action step: Look at your revenue and begin to create a marketing budget based on that. If you already have a marketing budget, make sure you’ve accounted for those additional costs to run ads in the 4th quarter.
3. Develop a strategy.
Take a good hard look at what channels are working best for your business. Maybe it’s LinkedIn, YouTube, or Facebook. You need to know which channels are working best for you and which channels aren’t working at all.
Action step: Create a marketing strategy around the channels that are working well for you.
Sit down and map out your marketing strategy for the 4th quarter. What is it you want to do, on what channels, when do you want to do it, and how will you execute it?
Why Now?
The truth is, the 4th quarter is a really hard time to launch a new product, service, or program to a cold audience. If you want to launch during the 4th quarter, you need to be generating your leads right now. Keep in mind that your marketing efforts generally pay off around the 90-day mark If you start generating leads right now, in 90 days when you launch, you will have a pool of people to launch to. This type of planning will save you time, money, effort, and frustration in the future.
Planning now will lead to you feeling less overwhelmed and anxious later!