The holiday season is officially over. The Christmas tree is back in storage. As you sip that Monday morning coffee, a thought comes up: What’s next?
While the end of the year is all about reflecting, the start of a new year is prime time for planning.
In this article, we’ll talk about how to approach monthly planning in content marketing. Let’s get to it!
Step 1: Run an end-year retrospective in your team
Before you start planning your marketing efforts, it’s important to take a step back and figure out where you are right now. You want to make decisions that are more than just gut instinct, right? Ideally, you’d base them on what’s actually worked in the past—on the results you’re already seeing.
Here’s the thing: most teams do track their marketing results... sometimes. The SEO team has their reports, the content team has theirs, and so on. But often, no one’s really pulling it all together to get a clear, big-picture view. There’s no one focusing on marketing analytics as a whole.
And that’s a problem. Why? Because so many teams fall into the trap of trying to do everything at once. They target multiple ICPs, spread their efforts across too many channels, juggle a bunch of messages, and run endless experiments. In the end, they’re so scattered that nothing really sticks—and all that effort doesn’t pay off.
What you really need is something solid. Something focused. Something you can actually scale.
That’s where this retrospective comes in. The goal of this activity is to help you figure out:
- What’s working: ICP, channels, and strategies that are delivering results.
- What’s not working: Where resources are being drained without meaningful returns.
- Where the opportunities are: The areas with the most potential for growth (your most promising experiments or something you know will work)
- What to focus on next: Defining your priorities for Q1 or Q2 2025 so you can move from experiments to scalable efforts that deliver impact.
Open a Google Spreadsheet and start putting it all together:
🕺Team output:
- Marketing audit document
Filling out this document might seem easy, but trust me, it’s one of the toughest things you’ll do. When there’s a lot happening in your marketing, it’s so easy to get lost or slip into autopilot. This exercise is designed to help you stay focused and keep your thoughts from scattering in a million directions.
Here’s my advice: don’t rush it.
Break it into smaller steps over a few days. Take your time, revisit it, and let your insights settle. You’ll likely need to look at it multiple times before you reach clear conclusions from your retrospective.
And once this is done, you're ready for the next step ↓
Step 2: Define your marketing focus for Q1 2025
Your focus will shape what you'll be working on during the first 3 to 6 months of the coming year. Don’t try to take on too much—set realistic expectations for yourself and your team. Concentrate on a limited number of ICPs, channels, messages, and strategies. The goal is to master those areas. You don’t want to fall short simply because you spread yourself too thin and couldn’t achieve excellence.
Here’s how to define your focus:
1. Define your ideal customer and key messaging for Q1.
This step is all about narrowing your focus to the customers who bring the most value to your business and crafting messaging that resonates with them. Here’s how to approach it:
ICP analysis (who your best customers are)
Start by analyzing your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Look at the data to identify who your best customers are:
- What industries, company sizes, or demographics do they belong to?
- What are their business goals and buying triggers (key events prompting them to seek a solution)?
- How do they engage with your brand (their buying patterns, engagement with your marketing channels, and how they move through your sales funnel)?
Focus on the segments where you’ve already seen success, and prioritize those who align with your business goals for the quarter.
Messaging insights (resonating themes, pain points, and benefits)
Next, refine your messaging. Think about what truly resonates with your ICP:
- What topics or ideas catch their attention? Are they more interested in innovation, cost savings, or something else?
- What challenges or frustrations are they dealing with that your product or service can solve?
- What solutions are they currently using to solve those challenges?
- What outcomes or results do they care most about? Highlight how you can deliver those results.
🕺Team output:
- ICP profile
- Q1 messaging framework
Many marketing teams skip this step, thinking it's all bla bla bla. But honestly, defining your ICP and messaging is the most important part. If you're not clear on these, pretty much everything else you do in marketing is set up to fall short.
2. Select priority channels and define success metrics.
The next step is to focus your efforts on the channels that will have the biggest impact on your goals.
Decide which marketing channels to prioritize based on where your ICP spends their time. For example:
- Organic search (SEO/Content): If your audience is actively searching for solutions you provide, organic search can be your priority channel.
- Paid media (Google Ads, LinkedIn): If you need immediate reach or are targeting specific decision-makers, paid ads can provide a quick boost.
- Social media (YouTube, LinkedIn): If your audience is highly active on social media, these platforms can help you build awareness and engage with potential customers.
- Email marketing: Great for nurturing relationships with prospects and converting them into leads or customers.
Once you've selected your channels, set clear metrics to track and measure success. These will help you understand what’s working and where to optimize. For each channel, focus on three key stages:
Awareness:
- Impressions: how often your content is displayed to your target audience
- Reach: the number of unique users who have seen your content
- Website visits: the volume of traffic coming from each channel.
Engagement:
- CTR: the percentage of people who clicked on your ad or content after seeing it
- Average session duration, likes, shares, comments: interaction with your posts, reflecting interest and engagement.
Conversions:
- Leads: potential customers who have shown interest in your offering
- MQLs: leads that are deemed more likely to become customers
- SQLs: leads that are ready to buy
- Sales, or revenue: how much revenue or how many sales are generated from your efforts.
🕺Team output:
- Prioritized channel list
- Metrics for success on each channel
3. Outline high-impact content strategies and address funnel gaps
This step focuses on refining and prioritizing content strategies that will have the most impact on your marketing goals. You’ll need to assess what worked in the past and focus on strategies that fill gaps in your marketing funnel. Here’s how to approach this:
1. Choose 2-3 strategies to prioritize for Q1
Start by looking at the strategies you tested in 2024. Which ones produced solid results, and which ones fell short? Analyze the performance based on metrics like engagement, conversions, and overall ROI. This will help you understand where to focus your efforts for maximum impact in Q1. Based on your retrospective findings, select the top 2-3 strategies that align with your goals for the next quarter. Consider these potential focus areas:
- Scaling high-performing strategies. If certain strategies have proven successful, such as SEO content that generates consistent traffic or leads, double down on them.
- Launching a new initiative. If you’ve identified a growth opportunity, such as a new audience or an underutilized channel, create a targeted initiative around it. For example, founder-led content on LinkedIn could resonate well if you’re targeting decision-makers.
- Improving conversion. If you’ve identified a gap in the funnel where potential leads are falling off, improving your conversion process is key. This might include rewriting your landing pages and making it easier for new customers to get started with your product or service. For example, providing “how it works” guides, offering free consulting sessions as a CTA, or setting up “lead magnets” at key touchpoints could significantly improve conversions.
3. Map the customer journey
Look at each stage of the customer journey and identify where leads may be getting stuck or dropping off. Once you’ve identified gaps, create a plan to address them at each stage of the customer journey. Here are some common areas to focus on:
Awareness
Are you reaching the right audience, or do they struggle to find you? Focus on building brand awareness and attracting more leads.
- Tactical content: Create blog posts, infographics, videos, or other shareable content that speaks directly to your ICP’s pain points.
- Ads: Invest in targeted ads (Google Ads, LinkedIn) to put your message in front of the right people.
- Influencer campaigns: Partner with influencers or industry experts to amplify your reach.
Lead nurturing
Are prospects engaging with your content and moving down the funnel, or are they losing interest? Nurture leads with deeper content and engagement.
- Webinars: Host educational webinars to address specific challenges or needs your target audience faces.
- Case studies: Share success stories from existing customers to build trust and show how your product works in real-world situations.
- Ebooks: Offer in-depth resources that provide more value, positioning your brand as an expert in the field.
- Comparison pages: Create landing pages that compare your product to competitors, highlighting your unique value proposition.
Conversion
Are your landing pages and calls to action effective at driving conversions, or are there roadblocks?
- Landing page optimization: Ensure your landing pages are designed to convert, with clear, compelling CTAs, and minimal distractions.
- Retargeting ads: Use retargeting to reach users who have engaged with your brand but haven’t yet converted. Display personalized ads to remind them of your offering and encourage action.
SQL (Sales Qualified Leads)
Are your leads fully ready to convert before passing them to sales?
- Onboarding flow: Improve your onboarding process to ensure that leads who are passed to sales are transitioned into customers.
- Offer personalized guidance to ensure they get the most out of your product or service.
Retention
Are customers staying engaged with your brand after their purchase, or is churn higher than expected? Keep customers engaged after the sale.
- Email workflows: Set up automated email sequences that nurture your customers with valuable content, product updates, or personalized offers.
- Customer success check-ins: Have your customer success team regularly check in with customers to ensure they’re getting value from your product and address any issues before they lead to churn.
🕺Team output:
- Content roadmap
- Updated customer journey map for Q1 initiatives
This looks like a lot of work. But it's also a really fun activity.
You're almost done.
Time to organize all this work and break it down into marketing campaigns or projects.
Step 3: Plan marketing campaigns
The result of the previous stage is a content roadmap and a customer journey map, showing where each piece of content fits within the customer journey.
But to make sure it's all doable and clear, you need to package all those content ideas into marketing projects or campaigns that have specific goals attached to them.
Your projects could look like anything from aiming for top-10 rankings for key money keywords, to running a series of webinars on something like “cost-effective software development,” or even creating “influencer-led blogs” where you align blog posts with influencers' interests, interview them, and have them share your content with their networks.
Don’t box yourself in—get creative! And always make sure to include a distribution plan and clear KPIs for each project.
For each selected project idea, fill out the following structure:
🕺Team output:
- Marketing projects
Finally, how do you manage all that?
Step 4: Organize your marketing work process
Few marketing teams pay attention to this important step. You need a place where you can manage your marketing projects, track results, and quickly show where things stand—especially if the CEO asks.
My advice is to use Notion or ClickUp for that.
Start by setting up your Notion or ClickUp workspace with clear sections, such as:
- Objectives: What are your goals and KPIs?
- Campaigns/Projects: The initiatives you’re working on, with key details.
- Tasks: The individual steps required to bring those projects to life. Your tasks are going to include specific content pieces you need to write to execute the projects.
Next, define the workflow for a typical marketing campaign. Break it down into stages so everyone knows what’s happening and when.
Also, take stock of the tools and processes you’re already using—whether it’s email marketing platforms, analytics tools, or project management software—and integrate them into your workspace wherever possible. This will help you create a central hub for everything marketing-related.
🕺Team output:
- Usable workspace to plan, track progress, and measure results
I really hope you can nail this marketing planning activity within a month, so in February, you're all set up.
Let me know if you found this roadmap helpful and how your planning sessions go.
And if you need help with content strategy, reach out to us.
