So, you’re making your marketing plan for the first quarter of the upcoming year. Well, at least we hope you’re making your marketing plan in advance. We don’t recommend just winging it, that leads to marketing disaster– but that’s a blog post for another day!
What should be included in this marketing plan for the first quarter of the year?
Well, you should include marketing strategies that have worked well for you in the past but always should incorporate something new! Trying new marketing tactics will allow you to expand your reach and therefore your audience.
If you haven’t already incorporated video into your marketing strategy, now is the perfect time to start! Whether it’s getting your company started on TikTok or filming a company overview to share on YouTube and Facebook, incorporating video will benefit your company’s marketing outreach efforts.
When you’re making your plans for the first quarter (Q1), it’s important to incorporate video marketing. Why? Because it works! It keeps your current audience and clients engaged while drawing in new viewers and potential customers.
Why should I make a Q1 Marketing Plan?
You should always be planning your marketing strategy ahead of time!
It reflects not only on your brand’s image to post marketing content hastily, but it makes the job so much more stressful than it has to be. Making a plan helps you see what is working where and how to keep gaining marketing traction, and planning by the quarter of the year, or every three months, takes a lot of stress off of your and your employees’ shoulders and allows you to really create a seamless brand across all platforms and marketing paraphernalia that you put out into the world. There is absolutely no downside to making a marketing plan!
Some people may argue that the first quarter is one of the most important. It sets the tone for the entire year to come. Others might say that it doesn’t matter where you fit things in throughout the year. Both are right, to an extent.
The first quarter of the year really does set the tone for the whole year to come. Financially, it shows you how your marketing is either succeeding or failing and how you can improve for the rest of the year. You’ll want to be able to change a few things from quarter to quarter, too, depending on how your different marketing efforts perform.
Your first quarter is the perfect time to try something new! And videos are the perfect way to incorporate something new. If you haven’t already started using video marketing, now is the time to do it. If you have, it might be a good time to try creating a video type that you haven’t tried before!
Let’s take a look at how you can incorporate videos into your Q1 marketing plan this year:
1)Determine your goals for Q1
What are your marketing goals for your first quarter? What do you want to accomplish- more views, more engagement, and more sales, of course! And video marketing is the easiest and fastest way to reach those goals.
However, it’s important to remember that video marketing is just one part of your Q1 marketing plan. Your video should be based around your goals for the quarter and contribute to your overall business goals, but it’s still just one component. And you want every cog in the machine to line up and work seamlessly.
When developing your video strategy, think about how to fit it into your larger marketing plan! What does this mean? Think about things like: How will you promote your videos? What will be the final product of this video, and what is needed to get there?
Remember that video marketing is different than not only traditional marketing materials (like print or online ads), but it’s also different than regular social media marketing on platforms that aren’t video-only. You want to consider all three when developing your q1 marketing plan!
You should also consider your budget and how it will affect your marketing plan. You might not want to spend your whole budget in the first quarter, even if you’re planning to use some of the same content throughout the entire year, but you don’t want to go too cheap and not have great content to share to make the right impression. You want to make sure that you have some wiggle room to adapt your marketing plan for future quarters throughout the year.
2)Create a video (or several videos) around those goals
Now that you know your plan, it’s time to start creating your videos!
Video production can take a lot of work. It’s important to get every step of video production right so that your video is of great quality. These videos are introducing your company to the world and portray your brand and reputation as a company to everyone who watches. So, it’s important to get it right!
You might consider working with a professional video production company, like C&I Studios [link: ]. We know the ins and outs of video marketing and can help you with every step of the video production process. We can work with you to develop video ideas, produce the videos, and even do post-production editing if needed. You might need help determining which kind of video would be best for your q1 marketing plan, and we’re ready to get the ball rolling!
Or you can do it all yourself! If you have access to professional grade equiptment and have the time and talent and post production equipment to edit your footage to create professional videos, you can create amazing videos on your own! It’s not recommended to simply use a cellphone camera, even if they are getting better with time.
If you’re stuck on what types of videos you should be making, check out our previous blog post about the best types of videos for your industry. Every industry will benefit from using videos in their marketing.
3)Make sure it reflects the values of your company and brand
Does your content portray your company in a realistic and positive light? Does it make sense when compared with your other marketing efforts? Does it match the branding you’ve worked hard to portray to the world? If the answer to any of these questions is “no”, you might want to consider revising your work.
You don’t want to post videos that aren’t relevant to your company. You don’t want to have the wrong type of video posted at the wrong time to the wrong platform and risk it not doing as well as it should have done. You want to make it so that it fits into your Q1 marketing plan- or any marketing plan!
Video production takes a lot of work, and you should only post content that is worth it in the end. This means putting thought into your videos, and making sure you have done your research about how video marketing can help your Q1 marketing plan.
We all know that social media is important for every company, but did you know that not all platforms are made equally? Social media has several types of platforms- video only, photos only, and a combination of videos and photos. Knowing which one is best for your Q1 marketing plan is an important step in the video production process!
Make sure you’re posting to social media where it belongs- not all social media platforms are created equally! You want to make sure you’re posting to places that you know your target audience is hanging out online. It takes only a little bit of research to know where you should be posting.
Of course, don’t rule out posting to as many social media platforms as possible. You might find that you have an audience that you didn’t realize would take to your products or services. As long as they’re spending money on your company, there is no wrong audience for your business! But, you want to make sure you aren’t wasting your time, effort, and money on posting where your content won’t do as well.
5)Promote!
Promoting your videos doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, even though paid promotion is one of the easiest ways to get your videos in front of as many viewers as possible. Free promotion can be just as effective, though!
You should consider promoting your videos through all of your previously-established channels like social media platforms, newsletters, and anywhere else you can post a video!
You can also try making some teasers for your upcoming videos. Teasing your video is the best way to generate interest in your brand and get more people excited to tune in on its release date!
You should consider asking viewers to subscribe to your channel, too- that’s one of the easiest ways you can keep them up-to-date on new products and services that you post in the future.
6)Measure, measure, measure!
You want to make sure you’ve gathered all of the right data about how your Q1 marketing plan is performing so you can tweak it if needed in the future. How will you know if you’re on the right track with your Q1 marketing plan? You’ll need to measure it!
The best way to go about measuring a video marketing campaign is by using a combination of analytics and engagement. Some common analytics tools that are used for social media include Hootsuite, Google Analytics , Facebook Insights, Twitter analytics , and more. Engagement can be measured by looking at things like likes, shares, comments, retweets, etc. YouTube analytics are a great tool for gathering information about your q1 marketing plan- and they’re free!
The best way to keep track of these measurements is to track them as they come in and keep them up-to-date. It can seem overwhelming to track engagements, but it’s important to know what marketing strategies are working for your company and which ones you can switch out.
For example: if you’re spending a lot of money on making unboxing videos and product review videos, but only the unboxing videos are doing well, you know you can put out less product reviews for the moment, since that’s not what your current audience is looking for. Don’t completely throw out the idea of videos that don’t work for you- try tweaking them or just taking a break from posting video types that are stale among your audience.
Knowing how any marketing content is doing is incredibly important to all aspects of your business, so keep track of those measurements!
Now that you know how and why you should be incorporating video into your Q1 marketing plan, you’re ready to go out there and start planning, creating, and posting! But don’t forget to measure the engagement, too!
If you’re looking for more hands-on help, you can contact C&I Studios. We’re here to help in any way we can. We thrive on your success. You can look at our portfolio to get ideas on what we can create together.