How do you create a targeted annual plan for your local marketing?

It’s high time to start looking ahead to the coming year! As the saying goes, good preparation is half the battle. And we are happy to help you with that. But where do you begin? In this blog, we will guide you through five concrete steps to start your local marketing plan for 2025, especially for supermarket owners. At the end of this blog, you will find a free Local Marketing Annual Planner 2025 template, which will allow you to take immediate action. This way, you will enter the new year well-prepared with a clear plan for your local marketing in your supermarket!

Step 1: Evaluate the past year

Before looking ahead, it is wise to also look back at this year. Or perhaps you want to examine several years. There is much to learn from past experiences.

To gain insight into your local marketing over the past year, consider asking yourself the following questions:

• How did the year go in terms of local marketing?
• What went well? What could have been better?
• Did I set goals? If so, were these goals achieved?
• Which projects were successful? Why were these successful?

Write down the answers to these questions briefly and concisely. If you are visually oriented, here’s a tip: use markers to indicate different aspects. For example, mark positive points in green, learning points in pink, and areas needing attention in yellow. This way, you can easily make all the information clear and organized.

Step 2: What are the developments around you?

Great, you’ve made a recap of the past year. Fantastic! Time to move on to the coming year. The smartest approach is to work from big to small, from the big picture to the concrete details. This is what we will do in the following steps!

First, let’s look at the various developments. These can be trends in the supermarket industry, but also at a societal level. What do we see happening in the world around us? What will be central in the coming year? This outward look helps you to respond to these developments and add more relevance to your local marketing.

Step 3: What is the goal for the coming year?

Creating a local marketing plan is great, but without clearly defined goals, it can lack coherence. To ensure your plan is cohesive and effective, you need to answer the big question: What do you want to achieve with your local marketing? What will make it successful for you? Since these are broad questions, here are some guiding questions to help you come up with concrete answers:

• Do you want to attract new customers, retain existing customers, or engage current customers more deeply?
• What topic will play a significant role next year? Think about national core values or local pillars.
• Is there a specific product category that needs attention?
• What needs to be measurable at the end of the year to determine success?

By answering these questions, you can formulate a main goal and possibly some sub-goals. This will provide you with a framework to make the further details easier to outline.

Tip: Formulate your goals using the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound)! This will help you measure and evaluate your goals effectively.

Step 4: How can you touch the hearts of your customers?

In the previous step, you identified the goal for the upcoming year. In this step, it’s important to consider how you will achieve your goal. For this, it’s crucial that your message resonates well with your customers. But what makes up your customers’ profile? What do they value? What is happening in the community, and what concerns them? You probably receive a lot of information from the headquarters about who your customers are and what their profiles look like. You can integrate this information nicely with the local perspective of your customers. These two components together form the ideal mix of essentials to answer the question, “How can you touch the hearts of your customers?”

Step 5: What are the special moments in the coming year?