Video Transcript

So today I’m going to talk to you about 2023, not how to put together a plan. We have other videos about that. Today is really just about key considerations that we are seeing as we’re looking ahead to next year.

One, make sure you’re really aligned with leadership. Whether you are getting information from leadership or you are on the leadership team, alignment is really important. If you are focused on brand awareness and your leadership team is focused on margins, that’s not going to work. That alignment is going to be really, really important for next year. And if you’re on the leadership team, it’s really important to make sure that you are being really honest about what it’s going to take to achieve the goals that have been outlined.

Brand awareness can be expensive. If everybody’s talking about how we want to be the next big thing. We want everybody to know us, but they’re really focused on margins. That’s a mismatch that needs to be discussed before you walk out of that room.

The second thing to keep in mind is there is a lot of noise out there. There was a lot happening in the news. There’s a lot happening in people’s day-to-day lives. So it’s really important that you have your story dialed in and you have your audience really narrowed. So once you feel really good about your story and you know who you’re talking to, it is about generating demand and it is about capturing that demand and your alignment with leadership on understanding whether you’re really going after awareness or margin or a new segment or a new product will help you know which side you’re leaning in more.

But it’s important to be focused on both. You might be in a place where you really need to focus on margin. You really need to keep it tight. That’s okay. Focus on capturing the existing demand, but don’t entirely lose sight of the fact that you need to be generating new demand as well.

The third thing is hiring. Hiring has been important this year and it is going to be even more important next year. You need to be thinking about things like what is your employer brand? Are you an organization that people want to work with? Do people know who you are and what you’re looking for?

You can see at Element Three we put content out for prospective clients and for future talent. It’s important for us that people really know who we are as people, how we work together, and our viewpoints on different things.

The other thing that we expect to see in 2023, more and more, is mergers and acquisitions. Companies are going to be gobbling up other companies and your employer brand, your recruitment strategy, the way that you bring those two companies together can often mean the difference between a merger or an acquisition going smoothly or not going smoothly.

So it is really, really important to be keeping that in mind. And if you’re having trouble hiring, knowing that recruitment campaigns, whether you put dollars behind them or you just start creating content and putting it out there in the places that you’re future talent is — super important.

The last thing is now is the time to invest in marketing infrastructure. Automation and technology can help maximize your people. They can make things that take hours, take minutes. And that is really important as you may have hiring freezes, you may have to do more with the people that you have, but you don’t want to just keep piling more work on them.

So consider the ways in which technology can really make the most of things. So these are just a couple of things that we see for 2023 that we feel are important as you are doing annual planning.