You don’t need to have every campaign, ad, or piece of content planned for 2027 yet, but you should know the direction you’re headed.

In this episode of Kickstart Your Week, we’re joined by Jessica Federman, Marketing Director at the Battleship North Carolina Memorial, to talk about how businesses can use Q4 to start building the foundation of their 2027 marketing strategy.

Jessica breaks the planning process down into four key areas that will help guide everything you do next year: understanding your audience, choosing the right channels, defining your messaging, and deciding how you’ll measure success.

We also talk about identifying what makes your business different, using customer feedback to strengthen your value proposition, learning from campaigns that don’t perform as expected, and why your marketing plan doesn’t have to be complicated—it just needs to be written down.

Your Action Item for This Week

Before Friday, start your 2027 marketing plan by mapping out these four things:

- Define your audience: Who are you trying to reach? If you have multiple audiences, write each of them down.
- Identify your channels: Where does each audience spend their time, and which marketing channels make the most sense for reaching them?
- Clarify your messaging: What makes your business different, and what matters most to each audience?
- Choose your KPIs: Decide what success looks like and what numbers you’ll use to measure whether your marketing is working.

You don’t need a polished, 20-page marketing plan by Friday. Start with a piece of paper or a document and get these four areas out of your head and written down. That foundation will make it much easier to build your campaigns, content, and budget for the year ahead.

About Our Guest

Jessica Federman is the Marketing Director at the Battleship North Carolina Memorial, where she helps share the stories, programs, experiences, and history of the Battleship North Carolina Memorial and World War II. With a background in communications, organizational development, and change management, Jessica brings together strategy and storytelling to help organizations grow while staying connected to the audiences they serve.

Kickstart Your Week

Thanks for spending part of your week with us on Kickstart Your Week. We hope this episode gave you one practical idea you can take action on before Friday.

If you found this episode helpful, follow or subscribe to Kickstart Your Week wherever you listen to podcasts, and connect with us on YouTube and social under Kickstart Collective for more marketing tips, behind-the-scenes content, and resources for business owners.

We'll see you next Monday for another episode of Kickstart Your Week.

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Kickstart Your Week is brought to you by Kickstart Collective and recorded at Kickstart Studios, Wilmington’s video podcast and content studio for creators, business owners, and brands. Whether you’re launching a podcast, recording interviews, or creating social content, we make it easy to show up, record, and walk away with professional content you’re proud of.

Have a great week—and get this one done by Friday. If this episode helped, follow or subscribe, share it with a business owner friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Meet your hosts and learn more about Kickstart Collective at kickstartcollective.co