Maisie Lloyd
Maisie is the Digital Content Manager at Intelligency, handling all things creative for the agency. Her experience centres around the production of digital content, pertaining to graphic design, writing copy, and video and audio content.
Getting your business ready for the new year and first quarter of 2026 is essential to putting your best foot forward. Being prepared means you and your business are ready to anticipate the natural ebbs and flows that are bound to happen throughout the business cycle.
Pre-planning provides a structure informed by the previous year’s successes and challenges. One that allows you to measure and grow, with goals defined, ready for you to make headway in that process.
Take a record of your current attainment
Assess your annual performance for the current year; this will allow you to set goals that are based on real data. This makes achieving your results tangible and also allows for natural growth rather than expecting radical change without delivering.
Taking note of the following metrics will put you in the best position to set the preceding year’s goals:
- Return on investment (ROI) – The overall profit you make allows you to assess whether you’re making revenue from your marketing efforts.
- Conversion rate – The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action compared with your total traffic.
- Bounce rate – The percentage of visitors who leave your site without engaging. A high bounce rate can indicate a poor user experience. Using heatmaps and session recordings helps you understand what’s not working.
- Cost per lead (CPL) – Calculated by dividing the overall cost of the campaign by the number of new leads.
- Customer acquisition cost – Is calculated by dividing the marketing and sales expenses by the number of new customers acquired.
- Click-through rate – Is the number of people clicking on such as an ad or a link. It is compared with the overall impression to give your insight into the effectiveness of your content, assets or copy.
- Engagement rate – The number of people interacting with a piece of content, i.e. liking, commenting, sharing.
Utilise key performance indicators to assess your current attainment, and then forecast realistic and relevant goals for your business.
Perform competitor audits
Taking stock of what other competitors in the market are doing, noting any changes in their strategy, allows you to anticipate and combat competition. Understanding where you perform against your competitors and analysing content gaps and opportunities keeps your business equipped to compete.
Looking at their content, site experience, social footprint, and overall SEO rankings will give you better insight into where to adjust your strategy. The aim isn’t to copy but to identify opportunities and gaps so you can outperform.
SEO, technical and content audits
Checking performance is crucial. It allows you to get an accurate starting point. If your site speed is low, conducting an audit will allow you to identify areas for improvement.
The same principle applies to SEO and content audits: identify what works and what doesn’t. The things that do work should be assessed, identifying what is making it successful, and then utilising that insight to set your business up for success. Equally, analysing poor-performing content, site features allows you to remove or adjust as needed so that it serves your customers.
Set goals by the quarter
Setting goals for each quarter accommodates natural growth and staying agile in a competitive market. Quarterly goals give you the flexibility to adapt and accommodate new campaigns as opportunities arise. Marketing continues to evolve, so working on a smaller scale allows for easier real-time adjustments that flex to the ever-changing needs of a business.
Taking a proactive approach to your year’s marketing strategy allows you to set expectations, iron out the logistics, and utilise a considered approach that is shaped around your business’s short-term and long-term goals.
Before January arrives, outline your campaigns and ensure your business has the capacity to deliver. This removes the guesswork and reduces unnecessary pressure
