Organizations are planning for 2024 – which we recently covered in our Strategy and Planning for 2024 blog post – and should start to evaluate the last 12 months using a data-driven approach to better understand how they will operate come Q1. In this blog post, we provide a Q4 communications checklist that covers a few critical areas that comms companies and departments should focus on to help give them a successful start to 2024.

Financial Review:

This should be one of the first items that organizations review since it affects every part of the business. By prioritizing a thorough financial review, you’ll gain valuable insight into your business through meticulously examining performance, analyzing revenue, assessing expenses, and inspecting profits. The objective is to clearly understand financial health and pinpoint successes and challenges. Determining what campaigns or projects have contributed to your company’s health will give you visibility on how to serve as a better steward of your company’s money moving forward.

Performance Evaluation:

Conducting a performance evaluation toward the end of the year is critical because it allows you to assess the effectiveness of the communication services you offer and the impact of your campaigns. For example, this would be a great time to put together a survey and ask your clients to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Analyzing past strategies can inform your future campaigns or initiatives. Similar to your financial review, the results from this audit will enable you to spend time and attention on activities that have proven to perform well.

Employee Training and Development:

Most small and medium-sized communications companies or departments rely heavily on their employees, so investing in their continued training and development on hard and soft skills is time, money, and energy well spent. Also, consider the goals you have in place for next year and how these professional development sessions can help further them. While areas of opportunity are often encouraged first, make sure to foster their strengths as well. In a digital age where AI is becoming more powerful and impacting the communications field, ongoing professional development is critical.

Infrastructure and Tech Stack Assessment:

Lastly, assess your current tech stack. The digital age is advancing at an incredible rate, and your technology must be kept up to date. Perform an audit on the technologies and platforms you use consistently, such as your CRM and CMS, and spend time researching if these digital environments are helping you or holding you back. It’s not uncommon to find that new services or software can alleviate tedious manual labor that your team is still executing across reporting, data entry, analytics, and other efforts. With that said, implementing new technology can be expensive and comes with a learning curve, so do a cost analysis of the spend vs. how much time your team will save with the new solution. If you have the means, consider bringing on a marketing operations manager who’s tasked with overseeing the company’s technology and automating wherever possible to increase efficiency within the organization.

Communications organizations must reflect on the past year’s performance and strategically plan for the future. The outlined focus areas—financial review, performance evaluation, employee training and development, and infrastructure and technology assessment—are key pillars to improving your business and further bolstering its foundation for success in the coming year. To learn more about our Q4 communications checklist and how Press Record can help your company in the new year, follow us on Linkedin or contact us with any questions.

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