Here’s why every business should have a marketing manifesto for 2025

You know how every election season, all the political parties release a government manifesto that says: “This is what we want to achieve, and here’s how we’re going to do it”? Well, that’s what you need to do with your marketing.

Having a marketing manifesto can make or break your campaigns.

It sounds wanky, but it’s really just about getting crystal clear on the results you want this year. What do you want to do? How do you want to do it? Does it produce results? What’s it worth to the business? And how does it justify how much you intend to spend?

Once you’re clear on that stuff, you can work backwards.

What’s your marketing budget? How much is each new client going to cost you? What margin do you have per client, and how many clients do you need to make all of this tick?

“I just want more customers”

Figure that stuff out before you start speaking to marketing agencies, freelancers or your team. Because without those parameters, you won’t have a clue whether your marketing strategy is failing or succeeding.

Your manifesto also helps you define who you’ll target, what you’ll target them with, and how you’ll target them. So many people will go into this year saying: “I just want more customers.”

Great, so who are they? And what are the core products that you’ll push in front of them? Get really f*****g clear on these things because when you do, marketing becomes so much easier.

“Shiny new object syndrome”

It’s not enough to have a marketing manifesto, though. You also have to see it through.

We had clients last year who quickly lost interest in their own plans because they got distracted with ‘shiny new object’ syndrome. Even if quantum computing becomes a thing and you think: “Actually I should be doing that”, the fundamentals won’t change so much that you can’t plan in advance.

If you’re straying all over the place, you’ll never have reliable data to make a decision.

Because doing something once or half committing to it, and then saying: “This seems to work for everyone else but not for me”, suggests you’re the problem, not your tactics.

That’s happened to us recently.

Someone said: “Oh, I’m not making any sales but I think it’s because of the economy, or my marketplace, or people spending on Christmas”. It’s hard for us to have to say: “Well, out of X many other clients, you’re the only one not making sales.”

“How many leads become enquiries?” 

So how do you put your plan into place and what metrics should you use?

The first thing to do is audit your current marketing strategy. How many leads become enquiries? And how many enquiries become sales?  Until you know that, you don’t know how many new leads you need or what your marketing budget is.

The free calculator on our website will help you run those numbers, by the way.

As well as new leads, enquiries and sales, you can also track metrics like database growth and follower growth.

“Winky face, lightning bolt, spark”

Followers are crucial because you can engage with every single one of them, especially since no one else does. Even if it’s just: “Thanks for the follow. What was the last electrical disaster you had in your house?” Winky face. Lightning bolt. Spark.

The other thing to consider in your plan is; at what point does marketing become sales?

A result for marketing isn’t necessarily a result for sales. That might sound like something a marketing agency would say, but you need to know this.

Are you getting leads? Do you pay the right price for those leads? And are those leads becoming enquiries, and then sales? At what point do you credit that effort to your marketing budget and team, or to your sales budget and team?

“We didn’t make any more sales”

They’re closely aligned but separate disciplines. You might have a great result from marketing but be let down by your sales team. Or you might have poor marketing but an amazing sales team converting everything they get.

You can’t just come up with a plan and say: “Well, marketing didn’t work because we didn’t make any more sales.” That could be down to sales, conversions, internal comms or the leads not being passed to the sales team; it might not just be a marketing thing.

For example, Meta attributes anything to marketing if someone clicked on your ad and bought something in the last seven days. You can change this attribution setting, but typically, that’s how they measure it.

“It’s very annoying”

We had a client run a webinar between Christmas and New Year. I built two landing pages – one for Meta ads and one for organic – to separately track the traffic.

But because of Meta’s seven-day attribution, half the people who came through the organic page were still attributed to the ads, even though they signed up organically before clicking one.

It’s very annoying.

Anyway, here are your actionable takeaways. Write down what you want your marketing to achieve in 2025, then break it down into how you’re going to do it. You might not know the how, but you’ll know the vehicles to use.

It could be ads, direct mail, webinars, live events, speaking from stage, podcast appearances, organic reach-outs, writing a book, DMs, knocking on doors, or buying a megaphone.

Whatever it is, put that plan into action and see it through.

Don’t miss the next episode of Stay Hungry – we’ll dive into straight-talking insights on business marketing, growth mindset, and the realities of running a business. And if you want to take the hassle out of your marketing, we’ve got you covered with our done-for-you service.