18 Weeks Remain.

We don’t want to alarm you, but over here at H2 we’re thinking about 2027. We started thinking about 2027 because, frankly, our media team starts getting antsy about avails. But dwindling 2027 inventory isn’t even the biggest challenge when you’re trying to plan ahead.

The hardest part is often knowing where to start.

Our suggestion: start with the result you want, not last year’s marketing plan.

After all, next year won’t be last year. Your customers, competitors, category, channels and business priorities will all have changed. And these days, change is happening faster than ever. What worked before may no longer be relevant, effective or even possible.

So copying last year’s plan, moving some budget between channels and hoping for a different result isn’t really planning. It’s repeating yourself and expecting the context to stay the same.

Instead, start by figuring out what you actually need to change.

Here’s a simple way to do it.

1. Name the new result you want.

What needs to be different about the business at the end of 2027?

More revenue? Better retention? Lower cost to serve? More market share? A healthier mix of customers or products?

Start with the result, now add the customer:

2. Ask what people would have to do differently to create that result.

This is where things get more useful. Think about the actions your customer might take to create that result.

Maybe customers need to buy more often. Decide sooner. Stay longer. Use your product more. Require less support. Choose a more profitable service. Refer more people. Choose you without needing a discount.

In a pinch try finishing this sentence:

For us to get the result we want in 2027, we need our customers to __________.

Now you have something to investigate.

3. Figure out why they aren’t doing it today.

Maybe not enough people know you exist. Maybe they don’t understand why they should choose you. Maybe your price is getting in the way. Maybe the buying experience is a pain.

And sometimes, what you discover won’t be a marketing problem at all: Influence of a new competitor, a change in laws, a surprising cultural moment, even bad weather. That’s useful to know too, because while it might not be a marketing problem, it might be something marketing is well suited to understanding through customer data and research. That understanding can benefit the team that can tackle the problem, like engineering, customer service or product development.

4. Build the plan around changing it.

Only now should you start deciding what needs to happen in 2027.

That might mean a different strategy, new creative, a change in media, a better customer experience or something else entirely. The point is that those decisions are being made because they can help produce the result you identified at the beginning, not because they happened to be in last year’s plan.

2027 is in 18 weeks. You don’t need to have next year figured out today, but you can figure out where to start. 

And we’d love to help.