With less than 50 shopping days until Christmas, it’s easy for us to get into the holiday mode and view the remainder of the year as the season filled with parties, celebrations, decorating and shopping. The question is always, what is going to happen after January 1? And that’s where our focus is at Oster and Associates for the next two months.

Fourth quarter is a time of planning. We plan for ourselves, but also for our clients. Because we know that making New Year’s resolutions on January 1 is not enough to be ready for the busy and prosperous year you anticipate in 2015.

Marketing planning involves evaluating many things you currently have in place. We need to evaluate the 2014 marketing program to see what was successful and what didn’t bring the results that we had anticipated. Is the messaging on everything we are doing appropriate for where the company is today and where we want it to go?

This is also a good time to evaluate the competition and the industry. Are things going up or down? Are there new competitors who have joined our market? And what are they doing to attract business? What trends do we see with the overall industry that we need to take into consideration?

Setting goals for 2015 is also an important part of developing your marketing plan. And while some of these goals may be broad reaching or general, some of them should be measurable so that you will know if the program was successful at the end of next year.

Once you have reviewed what you have and what the market is showing you, it’s time to develop a tactical plan that can be implemented throughout the year. The tactical plan should include what you’ll be doing in advertising, public relations, social media and all of your marketing tools for sales and customer information, such as your website and brochures. Only through planning each part of your marketing program, can you set expectations and budgets for each individual project.

This is planning season. It may seem busy with everything else that is happening, but the value you will find from putting together a strong marketing plan now is that your entire marketing program can operate smoothly until the end of 2015. What you do between now and the end of 2014 will save you lost man hours, frustration and, potentially, a great amount of money.

If you need help in the process of creating a marketing plan, Oster and Associates is here to help. Make this a painless and interesting time of year. Right now, your biggest enemy will be your procrastination.