Not to add to the end of summer scaries…but Q4 is coming. The final months of 2025 are a time to reflect on what worked well, recognize opportunities that were missed and start building a stronger marketing foundation to guide your company or cause through 2026. And, while looking back through a year of performance metrics can be daunting, careful analysis and a thoughtful refresh can pave the way for a more impactful marketing program that helps to propel your organization forward. Where to start? What to consider? Here we go.
Look for the standout moments
If you had to distill a year’s worth of marketing into five key moments, what would they be? Did you conduct a research study and release a landmark report? Did you launch a recruitment campaign (staff, board, volunteers) that achieved significant results? Did you finally convert your email marketing program into a lead gen program?
Success looks different for every organization and marketing successes are no exception. When you look back at the year, focus first on the defining moments. Can they be replicated? Is there a next chapter of that strategy or tactic that would serve you well? Most importantly, what made the marketing so successful? There are countless variables within a marketing campaign, so it’s worth isolating what you can when trying to determine which were the key drivers of success.
Analyze the data
What story does the data tell? Did you take a previously underperforming tactic and turn it into a high-value component of your marketing program? Was there a significant uptick in thought leadership media placements as the result of a concentrated PR program? Did an outdated website that delivers a less-than-ideal UX dampen key performance metrics?
While the data is only one piece of the story, it plays an important role in guiding resource allocation and helps to identify strategies, platforms and tactics that could benefit from a refresh.
Revisit your messaging
Organizations evolve. Sometimes this means rapid growth, service expansions, new locations, and an aggressive focus on talent attraction and retention. And, sometimes this means a careful audit of the organization and a refinement of offerings. Either way, these changes will inform tweaks to existing messaging and identify some new messaging that should be crafted.
Ensuring your marketing messages are current – not to mention compelling and concise – is an investment in maintaining brand clarity and recall. While muddled messages, inconsistent tone and subtle shifts in positioning are common occurrences, an annual – or semi-annual – refresh can help to avoid unnecessary confusion.
Examine your digital footprint
The popularity of digital platforms ebbs and flows, as does the volume of content organizations can produce for a specific medium. For example, a major capital project may have generated significant video content for your organization in 2025 but, without a big build on the horizon for 2026, this content well may become a bit dry. Similarly, a targeted advocacy campaign may have inspired numerous blog posts, whitepapers and op-eds – but the priorities for 2026 may look less like advocacy and more like talent attraction.
As goals and priorities shift, examining the strategies and tactics at the core of your marketing program is key – as is ensuring the digital footprint you’ve built reflect the current priorities. This means not only producing the right content for social channels and email marketing, but ensuring there is adequate, optimized content on your website so interested parties can easily find your organization via search.
Let’s talk about the competition
Marketing budgets, in-house resources and overall bandwidth varies widely across companies – but it is still important to keep an eye on the competition. Understanding what your competitors are prioritizing, where they shine and how they are spending their marketing budgets is valuable data to help inform your own marketing strategy.
For example, if your primary competitor’s annual media buying budget is 10x bigger, can you really compete in those same places? Are there other channels where your more modest budget can have an outsized impact? Has a competitor stopped marketing (and possibly offering) a service area that you are looking to grow? Should you shift some extra marketing resources behind seizing this opportunity?
Marketing is a fluid process and shifts in the competitive landscape can inform everything from minor shifts to major redirects. As always, organizational goals should drive the focus.
As you start building your marketing strategy for 2026, focus on replicating successes and reallocating resources for under-performing efforts to those more likely to make a mark on the bottom line. As always, remaining authentic and audience-centric is pivotal for further building brand equity and maintaining a clear stance ahead of the competition.
