I find that this is one of the oddest weeks of the year. The new year is just around the corner. The old year is just about to finish. We are living in this very weird place between the old and the new. My office building is eerily quiet – most of the normal occupants have taken the week off. Rather than just taking a vacation, is there anything you can do during this week that will make your business better, especially as it pertains to marketing? Actually, there is.

Quiet around the office may be very unusual for you, but it offers marketers a very valuable space to do both some reflection and some planning. I am going to take you through a short exercise that will help you make your marketing more valuable in the coming year.

Effective marketing needs to take a look back over its shoulder every now and then to evaluate its effectiveness in three key areas: attracting attention to your brand, success in generating leads that become new customers, and retention of your current customers. What has worked for you in the past year in these three areas? What has failed to produce results? Make a list and set it aside for now.

Next, take a look forward. As far as you can see, what is the difference between this past year and the coming year from your customers’ perspective? For instance, do they have a bigger or smaller budget to spend this year compared to a year ago? Are they looking to expand or just maintain what they have? Are there influencers that are making them feel confident or fearful about the upcoming year? As far as you know, describe the biggest needs of your customers and their mood as they enter this new year. For instance, they may have a bigger budget, but they fear the recession in the economy will get worse. They may have a need but are holding the budget back in case the economy falls off more than it has.

Now take a look at your competition. Are they offering more, less or about the same products and services as they did at this time last year? How does this compare to what you are offering – are they better or worse?

Following this, take the list of the customers’ needs and mood. Compare it to what your competition is offering and what you are offering. Who is better at meeting the needs of the customer given their current mood? Where are you better than the competition? Where are they better positioned to reach your customers?

Finally, take a look at the first list again (where you had marketing success and failure in the past year) and compare it to the lists you just made. Where you had success with your marketing this past year, predict how your customers’ needs and mood have changed. If nothing has changed, do what you did before. But if there are changes in what they are feeling, you will need to tweak your marketing in order to be effective. Next, look at this list compared to where you are beating the competition to meet your customers’ needs. This should be your focus this next year. Stay away from areas where you are not competing well; that is unless you are fixing the problem and can make up ground on your competitors.

One more thing, don’t forget about the areas where you have failed in marketing. There are times when marketing should be scrapped because it has not produced desired results. However, there are times when marketing is ahead of its time. The mood of the customer determines this timing. If you had a good idea, but the mood was not right, you may want to try again when the temperamental feelings of your customers change.

This may be the quietest business week of the year. It is the perfect time to look back and look forward before you step into the new year.