When I look back at the businesses I have worked with and for there is always evidence that the ones that invested in marketing, even when times were tough, managed to grow.

Of course, marketing isn’t the only ingredient for growth, you also need a motivated skilled team and an entrepreneurial culture. But you can’t create that unless you have a vision. What will the future look like and how will you get there? Good times or bad, you always need a clear picture of where you want to take your company.

Without it you don’t have a believable story to tell your team, or your customers, and I think it’s a united belief in the art of the possible that will be one of the most critical success factors in the coming year.

The vision will then come to life through the plan the team builds and commits to, and the actions people take. But there are five things to layer on top, especially when it comes to marketing.

Powerful Creative. This should have a central role in your marketing plans. But it can’t be along the lines of what you’ve always done. It must be imaginative, inspiring. A little different. Being creative doesn’t mean you have to be ostentatious or boastful. You should, however, connect your target audience emotionally and rationally with your brand values and core message.

I’d also add that powerful creative doesn’t need to be expensive. Often, it’s the simplest concepts that can be the most compelling and successful in getting people to think and engage with your brand. I admit it can feel brave to do ‘simple’ but, in my experience, it pays off and creates long-term brand equity.

Personalised Customer Experience. With a plan and powerful creative you can then establish how you will generate demand. Over the last few years, I’ve seen marketing teams throw huge sums at marketing automation. The reasons have always been well-founded. But the outcomes have not always been forthcoming. Let me explain.

HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot are perhaps three of the most well-known marketing automation platforms out there. But there are actually around 10,000 marketing technology vendors to choose from, all of whom claim they can help generate sales and deliver the perfect personalised message.

But after years of steep investment in technology it’s clear that something isn’t right. At the nub of the issue is the unavoidable truth that firstly, automation won’t work unless there’s a strategy and skilled team behind it, and secondly the automated approach is wearing thin with customers who have high expectations related to who they give their loyalty to. In a nutshell, they want to know you are directly speaking to them.

The argument is valid - personalisation isn’t personalisation if it neglects the more human and individual aspects of communication. Making a real personal, and even emotional connection is what matters now.

Now is therefore a good time to rethink how best to engage with a customer, how this reflects in their overall experience and the skills you need to get automation working well. Be warned though, making a human connection should be predicated on a deep understanding of the audience and some basic behavioural psychology principles. What is it people really want and how they prefer to buy or access service must be fed into the process. Answer this and you have a powerful insight around which to design your customer experience and personalised marketing efforts.

It's also worth looking out for a new breed of AI-powered marketing tools to help with this. They will take your carefully crafted messaging and content and deliver it to the customer in a highly personalised way. It’s likely to be one of the biggest areas of investment next year.

Demand Creation not Lead Generation. Understand this: no one has the patience for endless streams of nurture emails or ebook downloads anymore, and companies that persist with this strategy will fail to reach their potential.

Instead, the strategy should revolve around sharing ideas, knowledge and experiences with potential customers through new channels such as podcasts, videos and social sharing. Some of the best companies doing this are getting their own employees to be the face of the campaigns.

Above all, recognise that it’s vitally important to create a conversation with potential buyers so they are motivated to contact you to find out more or buy directly. It’s a great way of building an audience of brand advocates and future buyers - when someone is already engaged, then higher conversion rates, shorter sales cycle, and higher deal sizes come as a natural by-product.

Marketing Attribution – the pathway to irrelevance. Studies are showing there’s little correlation between the volume of content someone consumes and their intent to buy. Intent is generally created outside of normal channels now - by listening to a great podcast by an unrelated expert or hearing a parent recommend a product at school pick up for instance.

This is an important lesson to apply to marketing plans. Marketing budgets have skewed to spending in channels that are measurable, such as Pay Per Click (PPC). But that’s changing. The term ‘Dark Funnel’ emerged this year, as a way of describing all the different places where buyers are engaging and making decisions, places that can’t be tracked or attributed by actions taken by the business.

I think there will be a greater move towards this form of demand capture. The actions a prospective customer takes on your site will be more valuable than the steps they took to get there - someone requesting a sample is a higher indicator of intent than someone who finds your site after using a search engine.

I’d strongly encourage asking prospects how they got to learn about you. If they are actively engaged and interested in your solutions, they will give you an honest answer about what drove them to your site.

Avoid the tactical tailspin. Every marketing plan should have a balance of activities that will deliver results in the short-term and the long-term. But when customers delay purchase decisions it can be very easy to fall into the trap of the ‘tactical tailspin’ and simply do anything to get a sale in.

Turning to PPC can be a knee jerk rection but if it didn’t work when times were good, why would it be any different now? Instead, look at who is buying and why. What can you learn from them and apply to other customers? Nurturing your existing base will be vital for growth. Their loyalty will win other customers and there’s no substitute for recommendation in a recession.

Another classic tactical reaction is to invest in promotions. Econometrics expert, Les Binet, would say they rarely drive incremental revenue. Actually, what happens is that revenue you would have won anyway is subsidised.

So how can you avoid tactical tailspin? Under pressure it’s unrealistic to say the business will never respond with short-term tactics. Staying agile and competitive should still be a viable option when the market shifts.

But remember, if nothing has fundamentally changed in the strategic plan, then stay with it. Do more of the stuff that is working. Generally, I would advise to keep 80% of the plan in place. That way 20% of the resource and budget can be used as a buffer for more reactive ‘fire-quenching’ campaigns. But beware - too many short-term tactics running concurrently over a lengthy period can de-stabilise the rest of the marketing programme.

Final thoughts are to make sure your partners, suppliers and agencies are all still relevant to the plan you have. How can you work differently to maximise the mutual value each party brings to the relationship? Ask how they can solve bigger problems you face, such as providing a flexible solution to closing a skills gap.

Orla Murphy is managing partner of Seeblue Marketing.