While our co-hosts Laura and Julia focus on a specific year in their podcast episode, Where to Go Big: The Strategies Worth Doubling Down On in 2026, much of the marketing they review is timeless. Know what else is timeless? Planning your marketing for next year this year. If you’re having trouble starting, then this blog is for you. We’ll go over three places you can start planning, including diving into marketing analytics, balancing the budget, and looking at lead generation.
1. Review Your Marketing Data
Your first step should be to review all current marketing analytics to see what has and hasn’t worked. Most platforms you use should collect and share marketing data with you, but here’s a quick rundown of what to look for:
- Website: Depending on how it was built, you may have analytics built in, but we recommend Google Analytics for a deeper understanding on where traffic comes from (especially from Google). Installation isn’t too hard, but data gathering only starts after, so get started!
- Social Media: Every social media, from Facebook to LinkedIn, has some sort of analytics installed. This data is useful for tracking what types of social media content drive engagement, from copy to pictures to video, so you can focus on what works.
- Ads: Digital advertising always comes with metrics, whether you’re doing it on Google Ads or social media, and reviewing them is vital to make sure you’re not throwing away money. Look at CPC, Conversions, and more—just don’t obsess over a single metric.
2. Figure Out Your Marketing Budget
Speaking of ads, it’s important to figure out your marketing budget for the next year, not just in terms of money, but also the time you’re willing to devote to the marketing efforts you’re thinking about and the skills you’re willing to learn (you need to balance all three). Many of our clients got to this stage and reached out to us to outsource their marketing—it was simply a more efficient use of their resources. Regardless, you can’t make big marketing plans without budgeting resources to support them.
3. Adjust Your Sales Pipeline
When it comes to goals, marketing and sales are joined at the hip—one of the major goals of marketers is to set up leads for sales to bring them over the finish line. The landscape of marketing and making sales is constantly shifting; you need to make sure your sales and marketing teams are communicating and collaborating, which might mean changing how you generate leads, from marketing copy to how your sales teams follow up on prospects.
About the enVisioning Success Podcast
This article is based on topics discussed in enVisioning Success, our weekly podcast hosted by Vision CEO Laura DiBenedetto and COO Julia Becker Collins. In it, they discuss all things business and marketing. Find us on PodBean to download from your platform of choice, watch us on YouTube, or subscribe to our mailing list to get new episodes and more delivered directly to your inbox. Interested in supercharging your own marketing? Download our Marketing Strategies Playbook, learn more about our services, and contact us today.
