How to End the Year With Your Marketing in Better Shape (Plus How to Plan for 2027)
There’s nothing that makes me feel like a year is flying by quite like measuring a year in quarters. How it’s already Q4, I have no idea, but what I do know is that you’re probably feeling a bit like you’re running out of time. You’ve been busting your ass all year, trying to meet quotas and reach goals and also somehow keep your personal life in some sort of order. You’ve thought about marketing a lot, and maybe you even signed up for a course or sent out a few e-newsletters. But with three months left in the year, you’re realizing that time is almost up to make 2026 the year you actually get your marketing to a place you’re proud of.
If this sounds like you, keep reading! I have some ideas that will help you end the year feeling energized instead of like you let another year pass without making any progress.
1. Make the most of Q4
Here's the good news: three months is plenty of time to make real progress, especially if you focus on a few small, doable wins instead of trying to overhaul everything at once. Pick one or two of these to knock out each week, and you’ll find yourself in way better shape to tackle next year with gusto.
Tidy Up What You Already Have
Give your Google Business Profile some love - This is one of the most underrated tools for local businesses, and most people set it up once and forget it exists. Update your hours (holiday hours especially!), add a few fresh photos, and respond to any reviews you've let sit. It takes about 20 minutes, and it's often the very first thing people see when they search for you.
Click around your own website - Pretend you're a brand new customer and click every button, link and form. Is your phone number right? Does your contact form actually send to an inbox you check? Are your team photos from three haircuts ago? Fixing the small stuff now keeps it from costing you leads without you even knowing.
Refresh your social profiles - Update your bio, make sure the link in your bio still goes somewhere useful, and swap out any profile photo that's more than a few years old.
Use What's Already Working
Ask for reviews while you're top of mind - Think about the customers you've loved working with this year and send them a quick note asking for a Google review. Include the direct link so it's easy. Most people are happy to help, they just need to be asked (and maybe reminded).
Revisit your greatest hits - Dig into your social insights or email stats and find your top 3-5 performers from the year. What did people respond to? Reshare them with a new caption, or turn a popular post into a blog or newsletter. You already did the hard part, so let that content work for you twice.
Collect your wins - Screenshot nice comments, save kind emails, and jot down any milestones from this year. Drop them all in a folder. They'll come in handy as testimonials and social posts, and they make a great confidence boost when you sit down to plan next year.
Lean Into The Season
Plan around the big dates - Small Business Saturday (November 28) and Giving Tuesday (December 1) are built-in reasons for people to support local businesses and nonprofits. Even one simple post or email tied to those days can go a long way.
Send one heartfelt email - If your e-newsletter has been collecting dust, December is the perfect time to bring it back. A simple year-end thank you with a few highlights and a peek at what's coming in 2027 is easy to put together, and your people will love hearing from you.
Each of these is small on its own, but together they add up. And checking a few off now will give you momentum (and some breathing room) heading into the bigger task of planning for next year.
2. Get your plan together for 2027
The reason you’re ¾ of the way through the year and you still haven’t gotten your marketing in order is because (hello) you have other things to do. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you haven’t found the time to plan your social media or think of blog topics, because that time doesn’t actually exist. You need to carve it out, and you need to do it before you’re in the thick of the next year.
Start With The Big Picture
Map out your year - Sit down with a 2027 calendar and map out all of the important dates in the coming year. If you’re visual and tactile like me, try printing out the free monthly calendars by Print-A-Calendar for a whole year so you can scribble all over it. Write in all your important dates (sales/specials, holidays, anniversaries, etc.) and be sure to note any vacations or time off you have planned.
Pick your channels - Decide which channels you’ll be focusing on. If you need somewhere to start, check out this post. Come up with some quantifiable frequency goals (like sending 1 e-newsletter/month, posting 3x/week on Instagram, etc.) and write them down on something official that you can access easily.
Choose your themes - Using your brand guidelines, come up with overarching themes/goals for each month, and (if you’re feeling wild) break those themes down even more for each of your marketing channels. If you don’t have any sort of brand guidelines in place, that’s okay! Using your Mission, Vision and Value statements as a guide is better than shooting in the dark.
Organize Your Toolbox
A blueprint for a house is kind of useless if you don’t have the right tools in place to build it. Same goes for your marketing plan. Here are the tools I recommend having in order to make plan execution easy peasy:
Your media library - Create a folder on your desktop called “2027 Marketing Media” and start compiling all of your best photos and videos.
When to call in help: If your folder ends up feeling a little thin, consider hiring a professional. If you live locally, Kayla Nicole Studio is my go-to for branding content! She knows how to deliver galleries that will make putting together your marketing content a joy instead of a chore. And if you end up working with Kinroot on your socials, we also have a content plan that will keep your feeds feeling fresh all year long.
Your branding - Create another folder called “Brand Assets” and make sure you have all of your most recent logo files (in the appropriate formats for your chosen channels) ready for a quick grab.
When to call in help: If your logo is something you hide away in shame vs. display proudly, it’s probably time for a rebrand. A good brand designer will not only leave you with all the versions of a logo you could possibly need, but also supporting brand assets like icons, patterns and guidelines for how to use it all.
Your website - If your marketing is an ecosystem, then your website is the Tree of Life. It is the hub that all your other channels network back to, which means it’s super important to keep it healthy and thriving. Make sure all of your info and imagery are up to date, and that it’s easy for your audience to understand why they should work with you, and then ultimately take action.
When to call in help: If your website feels cobbled together or it just doesn’t represent who you are anymore, it’s 100% worth the investment to get it in better shape. And when you work with a web designer who knows what they’re doing, you’ll also end up with valuable content that you can use in all other parts of your marketing.
Your platforms - Remember when you picked the platforms you want to focus on? Make sure everyone who needs access to them has the logins they need. If you hate your e-mail platform or you need a refresher on how to put together an Instagram reel, set some time aside for those things.
When to call in help: If you literally don’t have the time to meet your individual channel goals or the idea of making a reel makes you want to barf, consider that it might be time to hand off some or all of your marketing tasks.
Whew! If that felt like a lot, it’s because it is. But putting in this work up front will save you HOURS of your life next year. Put your plan in a folder or a digital doc of some sort, and reference it often. It’s okay if you don’t 100% stick to the plan every month, but having all of these decisions made ahead of time will absolutely save your bacon when things get hectic.
You don't have to do all of this perfectly, or even all at once. Knock out a couple of quick wins this month, block off an afternoon in November to start your 2027 plan, and you'll walk into the new year feeling ready instead of behind. That's a pretty great way to close out the year, if you ask me!
