Your 2027 marketing plan can't be last year's with the dates changed

It's tempting, at this time of year, to take last year's marketing plan, change the dates, and call it done.

I understand why. It's quick, it feels safe, and it worked well enough last time.

But this year, copying and pasting isn't just lazy (I know, I know, TikTok is all for making things lazy girl approved but marketing doesn’t work that way). It's risky. And it comes down to one thing that has genuinely changed: the way people search.

The way people search has changed

When ChatGPT and the like first arrived, people treated them as a novelty. Then they started using them to create things. Now, with AI mode built into Google, people are using AI for general searching, and it's becoming the standard.

I'll be honest, I can't remember the last search I ran that didn't involve an AI tool, an AI overview or AI mode. It's quicker, it's easier, and once you get used to that, you start to expect it.

That matters for your marketing, because it changes where you need to show up. Yes, someone might still run a standard search and work through the links if they don't get what they want straight away. But a lot of the time, people take that first answer and run with it. So you want that first answer to include you.

What a copy-and-paste plan looks like

A copied plan is easy to spot. You're focusing on the exact same things you've always focused on. SEO. Advertising. Short-term wins in terms of attention, rather than building your brand and making sure it's being cited in the places your clients actually look – directly, and when they ask a question of an AI LLM.

None of that is wrong, exactly. It's just aimed at a world that's moving on.

The one question to ask of every line

If you change one thing about how you plan next year, make it this. Ask one question of every single line in the plan: who is this targeting, and why would they care?

Every campaign has to be built around the person it's trying to reach. Is this a potential client? What are their pain points? What's happening for them next year? Because it's about them, it's not about you.

The end-of-year budget trap

Here's something I've spoken to a lot of people about lately. You get to the end of your budget year with a certain amount left, and you feel like you have to spend it, because if you don't, you won't get that budget next year.

So it gets spent in a hurry, on whatever is easiest to book, not necessarily on what actually works.

Imagine if, instead, you could put what's left towards next year's marketing and give that budget a boost. That's exactly why we launched BlueSky On Demand, and you can find out more about it here.