Video Transcript

Do we actually I mean, I can put the apple somewhere else, like I’m not planning on using the apple.

Hi, this is Dustin Clark, I’m the senior director of strategy here at Element Three. And this time of year, lots of people are starting to think about 2022 planning what your marketing budget going to look like, what should your initiatives be? And one of the things I want to talk about today is some ways that you can maybe think around the corners as you’re planning for 2022.

So I’m sure that all of you are aware of the hiring crisis, the pandemic, remote work, and this has had a major impact on all of us in the industry. Something that I would kind of consider looking into 2022 is how does your culture match up to your hiring, to your talent retention rate? Talent is going to be everything. It will continue to be everything.

So thinking through from a marketing perspective, how are we talking to our HR team? What are we doing to move the ball down the down the field to make sure that our organization stands out from a culture standpoint, that we’re rewarding employees in the right way, that we’re standing out in our social media and the other communications look like an attractive place to work because that’s one of the places where you might be able to spend and plan a little. But the impact is going to be huge because your talent’s that important.

Another thing that I think through when I think about like what’s been going on this year, what’s going to continue to go on is the idea of like how much is changing and advertising. We’re going to go into the year with like media spends planned advertising budget and then there’s going to be yet another update from Facebook or Meta or whatever they’re going to call themselves these days. There’s going to be a new challenge on Tik Tok. There’s going to be a new social media platform that we haven’t even considered, and that’s before you even start thinking about what happens in the supply chain, what happens in what we’re producing, where a sales goal changes or we have to go after a new audience.

So when you’re thinking through your advertising budget, I would leave room, maybe 20, 30% unaccounted for. Like, we know we want to spend this, but we’re not going to allocate it just yet because there’s going to be a change in an advertising platform, in a medium, in some type of offer that you could get and you’re going to want that flexibility.

The last thing that I would consider really is technology. I’m going to speak about this later, but there’s a huge amount of things that go into your technology, even when you’re thinking about advertising. As we continue to march more and more towards a cookie less world and tracking is being minimized, personal information is being more and more protected. How are you going to track? How are you going to tag? How is your website and your analytics set up to recognize your ROI from your advertising efforts, from email, from organic? All that stuff has to be thought through intentionally.

And again, that’s a hard thing to solve in November of 2022 or 2021 thinking about 2022, but putting some thought towards that. What are the technology improvements? What do we need to get ahead of now so that when we get to our most important seasons, our tagging and our tracking is helping us recognize the impact that marketing is having.

So again, not maybe the big buckets that you’re thinking through, but thinking around those corners. Where are the things that are planned for that? We should maybe consider what we’re planning on 2022.