Creating an Annual Marketing Plan for Your Good Food Brand

Good Food Marketing with The Virginia Foodie

It’s a fact, defining goals without creating any supporting actions means your targets will never be attained. If you are reaching for steady sales, you need steady marketing to pull those opportunities toward you.
Like many of you, I own a small business and all too often the urgency of day-to-day operations takes priority over my own marketing. Having your marketing calendar set for the year helps turn marketing into daily and weekly practices, and not a last-minute rush to hit that promo deadline.
In today’s follow-up to my goal-setting episode 69, I’m sharing five steps to creating an actionable marketing plan for the coming 12 months. I’ll start with an update to my own goal-setting work, then walk you through steps you can take to calm the chaos of your own good food marketing. And I’ll close with a preview of some coming attractions for Good Food Marketing in 2023 with me, The Virginia Foodie.
Virginia Foodie Essentials:

• We all struggle with the constant issue of operations getting in the way of marketing. By operations, I mean the day-to-day running of a business, a department, or even your primary job description within a good food brand. - Georgiana Dearing
• Most of the information I share stems from mistakes I’ve made in my work and the lessons I learned to avoid making them again. - Georgiana Dearing
• The beauty of setting smart goals for yourself is that you'll still make progress, especially if you're checking in on your strategic plan regularly. Sometimes the progress you are tracking is reflected as refinement, and that's okay. - Georgiana Dearing
• It is lovely to have a mission-based business, but not one of us should be so altruistic that we will do all of this work for free or low pay. - Georgiana Dearing
• Content buckets are the underpinnings of your brand messaging, and for good food brands you have four natural buckets to start with: your mission, your products, your products in use, and your community. - Georgiana Dearing

Key Points From This Episode:

• Goal setting should be comprehensive, specific, and as succint as possible.
• When creating your list of goals, you should start with a clear description of the end result you want to achieve.
• After clearly defining your goals, the next step is to create an action plan to help you hit your targets.
• To create your annual marketing plan, start with these 5 steps:
  • Step 1: Create a marketing calendar
  • Step 2: Block in your marketing tactics
  • Step 3: Set your brand holidays
  • Step 4: Create content themes
  • Step 5: Define your content buckets
• If you are interested in more guidance, pre-register for my QUICK START: Social Media Calendar. I outline the Annual Marketing Plan because it’s the foundation for a year of content planning, too!

Follow The Virginia Foodie here:

• VA Foodie website
• The Virginia Foodie on Instagram
• VA Foodie Instagram
• VA Foodie on Twitter

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