A marketer's guide to annual planning

Marketing tips for a successful 2025

This is always a busy time of year—in more ways than one. For my team specifically, we’ve been busy helping our clients build out their 2025 strategic marketing plans. While this process is unique to each business or destination, there is a general framework which can be applied and then tailored to meet the unique challenges for each team.

Start by defining clear goals and KPIs

The first step in crafting an annual marketing plan is to set clear and strategic goals, a foundational practice that aligns your team’s efforts with the broader business objectives of the company. I always start this process by reviewing the previous year’s performance—taking data from GA4, Salesforce, digital media platforms, etc., and then identifying learnings and insights, as well as surfacing key trends and areas for improvement.

Here are some questions you can ask to help identify key insights and patterns:

Which platforms (e.g., Meta, TikTok, programmatic channels) performed best in terms of engagement and conversion?
How did your audiences move through the marketing funnel—where did they drop off and which touchpoints were most effective?
Which channels delivered the highest ROI and which didn’t perform to expectations?
Which channels resonated most with your audiences by CTR, CPC, and engagement rate?
Were video, static ads, blog posts, or another format most impactful?
Which messages, offers, or campaigns had the highest resonance with your audiences?
Were there any times of year or events where content performed exceptionally well?
Which customer segments contributed the most revenue or had the highest lifetime value?
Were there any segments that did not respond well to campaigns, and is it worth a reassessment?
Were there any campaigns, CTAs, or offers that consistently converted well?

From there, outline your organization’s strategic priorities and elevate your focus toward drafting financially-oriented goals that align marketing with growth and profitability objectives. For instance, if a company-wide priority is revenue growth, your marketing goal could be “Enhance customer acquisition and retention strategies to increase annual revenue by 15%”.

As you draft your team’s goals, it’s important that you’re meeting with your counterparts across product, sales, and customer success teams to review and ensure a unified approach to achieving the business priorities.

Once you have your goals finalized, confirm that each is measurable and assign expected outcomes. Identify which KPIs you’ll track and how often. By focusing on financially-oriented metrics such as revenue growth and return on marketing investment (ROMI), you can shift the narrative from operational metrics to strategic results that truly reflect your marketing team’s value within the organization.

Incorporate research and emerging trends

Take a look at where the industry is headed and conduct market, audience and/or competitive research to identify areas for innovation or differentiation. Below you’ll find a few examples of how an industry trend might impact your marketing strategies:

The rise of AI overviews: the introduction of AI overviews on the search engine results pages represents a new and seismic shift, shrinking page-one results into a single, automated summary – and forging a new position to covet in the process. Check out more about the opportunities and challenges marketers are facing with AI overviews here.
Video content’s increasing ability to capture audience attention: platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts have proven to be very effective at generating engagement. At ENV, we consistently see stronger results in our A/B tests for static vs motion. Ready to take your efforts up a notch? Captivate your audience through engaging videos.
The prioritization of first-party data (and importance of compliance): as privacy restrictions continue to tighten and reliance on third-party cookies phases out, first-party data becomes even more important for personalization, segmentation and delivering targeted experiences. Make sure you have strategies around how to securely capture and use this data in 2025.

Outline your target audience and their unique needs

This is quite possibly the most important part of your plan. Knowing your audience and how to tailor your marketing strategies, messages, and approach to each is key.

As a busy mom, I’m often reminded when I serve any meal, just how important it is to know your audience. For example, my three kids range in age from 5 years old to 12 years old and they are definitely all unique—from personality to needs and preferences. And these translate to a different approach in both experience and communication.

As an example, I shuffle them through breakfast each morning, serving my oldest daughter dry cereal because she doesn’t like it with milk, ensuring my youngest has her favorite spoon to avoid a meltdown, and tossing out ‘gentle’ reminders for my son to make sure he puts his bowl in the sink afterward.

Personalized marketing is no different. You must first outline your audience and their needs. Then, leverage what you know about their needs and preferences to tailor your marketing and communications approach, meeting them where they are in the journey.

You can create different customer profiles based on shared traits, like:

Demographics: Age, gender, location, income, education.
Psychographics: Interests, values, lifestyle, motivations.
Behavior: Purchasing habits, preferred platforms, engagement patterns.
Pain points: Challenges or needs your product/service solves.
Goals: What the customer aims to achieve or improve.

Develop an integrated and strategic approach

Once you have an understanding of goals, KPIs, your target audience and the landscape, you can move into the creation of a strategic roadmap, which outlines the key initiatives needed to achieve your desired outcomes. Here’s a few tips:

Engage your integrated teams within this process to identify innovative ideas across PR, creative, SEO, paid media, and content.
Develop a marketing calendar that spans the entire funnel—from awareness to retention—incorporating a blend of proven tactics and new initiatives based on market trends.
Start with what you know – map out new product launches, key tentpole events, annual campaigns – and build out from there.
Meet with the sales team to review and refine their top targets and adjust your account-based efforts accordingly.
Map everything (from marketing channels to content topics) back to the needs and preferences of your audience.
Outline timelines and establish methods for tracking effectiveness for each initiative proposed.

Map your budget to the plan, prioritizing ROI

Marketers are often tasked with doing more for less and according to industry analysts, 2025 will be no different. According to Forrester, in 2025, B2B CMOs don’t expect growth to come from budget increases—only 35% expect investments to increase by 5% or more. This will require a strategic focus on results in order to drive the biggest impact with your dollars.

So, as you outline your budget, consider brand/creative costs, advertising and media spend, content creation, events / sponsorships, your marketing tools and technology, as well as employee salaries and agency fees. Prioritize digital marketing channels where you can evaluate performance, assess ROI and pivot easily based on results.

Success in 2025 will require a blend of innovation, adaptability, and strategic foresight. By setting clear goals, surfacing emerging trends, and deeply understanding your audience, you’ll craft a strategic marketing plan that sets the organization up to thrive. And remember, it will not be a set it and forget it approach. Your plan will evolve as you adjust and optimize based on performance results vs goals.

Do you need a strategic partner to help take your programs to the next-level in 2025?

Let’s talk.