Why Most New Year Marketing Plans Start with the Wrong Question
January planning has a familiar feel.
New year. Fresh budgets. A quiet sense that this is the year marketing finally sorts itself out. So, teams sit down, open a doc, and ask what feels like the sensible question.
What should we do this year?
More posts. New campaigns. A website refresh. Maybe a new platform if someone’s nephew mentioned it over Christmas. The list grows. The meeting ends on time.
Everyone feels oddly relieved. And that’s usually where the problems begin.
Not because the ideas are bad. They’re often fine. But because the first question is the wrong one.
The question that feels productive but causes trouble later
“What should we do?” sounds decisive. It creates motion. It fills the silence. It also helps everyone avoid the slightly awkward moment where someone asks, are we actually clear on what we’re trying to achieve here?
That question assumes clarity already exists.
Clarity about who the buyer really is.
Clarity about the problem being solved.
Clarity about what decision the marketing is meant to support.
In most businesses, that clarity is patchy. Everyone has a version of it. Few people realise those versions don’t quite match until results start wobbling.
So, the plan fills up with activity instead.
What gets skipped when tactics come first
When action leads the conversation, a few things tend to slip through the cracks. Not out of laziness. Out of habit.
Teams don’t fully agree on who the primary buyer is. Messages try to speak to several audiences at once, just in case. Content explains what the business does, not why it matters. Success gets measured by output because it’s easier to count.
None of this stops work going out. It just makes the work harder to land. Marketing stays busy but buyers slow down.
A familiar manufacturing example
Picture a UK manufacturing company. Around 40 staff. Solid reputation. Long-standing customers. Growth has slowed a little, but nothing feels urgent enough to overhaul everything.
January rolls around and the conclusion is straightforward. Marketing needs to do more.
The plan comes together quickly. More LinkedIn posts. Campaigns around capabilities. Website headlines sharpened up. Someone floats a light rebrand and everyone nods, because that feels like progress.
Three months later, activity is up. Content is consistent. The website looks busier. Sales conversations still start with long explanations. Prospects keep asking the same basic questions. Enquiries haven’t really shifted.
Nothing’s broken enough to cause panic. Nothing’s clear enough to unlock momentum.
Now imagine the same company starting from a different place.
Instead of asking what to do, they ask what’s unclear. (This takes longer. There’s a pause. Someone sighs. It’s still worth it.)
They realise different teams describe the business differently. The website tries to speak to multiple buyer types at once. Content jumps between industries and problems without a clear thread.
So before touching tactics, they make a few decisions.
One primary buyer for Q1
One core problem they want to be known for solving
One decision they want that buyer to feel confident making
Only then do they look at content, campaigns, and pages.
The outcome isn’t more marketing. It’s less noise. Messages sharpen. Sales conversations shorten. Prospects arrive with a clearer sense of what the business does and whether it’s right for them.
Same budget. Same team. Better traction.
How internal confusion turns into buyer hesitation
Buyers aren’t sitting there analysing your messaging like a dissertation. They’re reacting to it.
When messaging feels vague or inconsistent, buyers slow down. They reread pages. They delay replies. They say they’ll come back to it. Sometimes they genuinely mean it.
That isn’t disinterest. It’s self-protection.
Unclear messaging forces buyers to do extra work to understand the risk of choosing you. Most people avoid that work altogether. They just postpone the decision and move on with their day.
Marketing plans that start with action often bake this problem in early, then try to fix it later with more output. Louder output, usually.
A simple January clarity reset you can use this week
This isn’t a strategy offsite or a whiteboard extravaganza. It’s a reset you can run in under an hour.
Start by writing down the question that’s currently driving your marketing decisions. Write the real one, not the polite version.
It’s often something like:
What should we post this month?
How do we get more leads?
Which platform should we focus on?
These are execution questions. They matter. They’re just being asked too early.
Now replace that question with this one:
“What does our buyer need to understand before they can confidently move forward?”
Answer it in one sentence. If it turns into a paragraph, clarity isn’t there yet. Once you’ve got a sentence, stress-test it.
Would everyone in the business answer this the same way?
Does the website support this understanding?
Do recent posts reinforce it or quietly contradict it?
If this feels uncomfortable, good. That’s the bit most plans skip.
Only after that do you look at tactics. When that sentence is clear, decisions get easier. Content topics stop feeling random. Website pages know their job. Sales conversations stop looping back on themselves.
You do less. It works harder.
Why this matters for the rest of Q1
Plans that start with clarity often feel slower in January. They’re quieter. Less showy. Fewer slides.
They also compound.
Plans that start with action feel fast at the beginning and frustrating by March, when effort is high and progress is still being “reviewed”.
If Q1 matters, the starting question matters more than the tactics that follow it.
Clarity doesn’t kill momentum. It stops you having to keep recreating it.
