2024 Year-End Marketing Checklist

This blog is the third in a series to help you with your marketing planning for 2025. The first article, “9 Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing Program”, is available here, while the second, “2025 Marketing Planning: Strategy Comes First,” can be found here. Both are four-minute reads packed with practical advice.

As the year wraps up, you’re likely balancing many priorities. That’s why we created this concise end-of-year marketing checklist to help you kick off 2025 with confidence.

This checklist is about the 3 P’s essential to your 2025 marketing strategy: People, Performance, and Partners.

#1: PEOPLE.
Your customers and employees are central to your success.

Understanding your customer – their wants, needs, shopping and buying behaviors, and online habits – is crucial to an effective marketing plan. When was the last time you conducted qualitative customer research? I don’t know about you, but my shopping and buying habits have changed a lot over the years. If it’s been more than a couple of years, adding conducting customer research to your 2025 plan could be essential.

Understanding your employees is also important. Are the right marketing professionals tasked with the right marketing initiatives? Do your marketing team members have strong working relationships with colleagues in sales and product development? Does your marketing team understand its role in supporting business and sales goals?

#2: PERFORMANCE.
It’s time to scrutinize your marketing results against your goals. While you may review them regularly, now is the time to assess your 2024 performance to inform your 2025 planning.

Your review should include an audit of the following:

• Website performance
• Social media impact
• Email marketing effectiveness
• AI utilization
• Content needs, development, and output

#3: PARTNERS.
What about your external marketing partners? Does your digital marketing agency have the expertise to meet your 2025 goals? Are they bringing innovative ideas to you?

With a shift towards niche agencies, it’s now possible to find the exact talent needed for specific projects. However, this may require managing multiple agency relationships.

Before the ball drops in Times Square, evaluate your agency partners’ output. Do they have the expertise needed to support your 2025 goals? Don’t hesitate to reassign projects; achieving your goals may require different skill sets.

Consider your software partners too. Is your customer relationship management (CRM) software robust and integrated with your email marketing software? Are you using all the features offered by Google Analytics? Do you need to add or upgrade search engine optimization (SEO) or social media management tools? Is your software integrated to form an effective marketing stack?
Before you finalize your 2025 marketing plan, use this checklist to ensure success next year.