Hey Reader,

Happy Thanksgiving if you’re celebrating! If not, I hope you still take a moment to reflect on the things you’re grateful for.

It’s late November, which means two things:

1. Everyone and their dog is launching a “Yearly Planning Ritual.”
2. Half of those plans will live and die in a colour-coded Notion dashboard nobody opens after January 7.

Let’s not do that.

Instead of going super granular and trying to plan for every week of next year, let’s zoom out. Let’s figure out the basics and accept that you cannot control every week in the upcoming year.

Today we’re talking about the bare bones yearly marketing plan: something that will keep you on track and help you meet your goals WITHOUT sending you into burnout or assuming that you can control every damn week of the year.

We’ll get into that in a second. First, if LinkedIn ads are on your to-do list for next year, this report will show you what kind of results you can expect.

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Before you start planning, answer three questions:

• What are you selling? (Launching anything new or selling the products you already have?)
• When are you selling it? (What will you focus on for each quarter?)
• What’s the bare minimum marketing system that will support that without eating away at your brain? (Think hours and channels i.e. “I can spend 3 hours/week writing and promoting my newsletter”.)

Next, think in quarters, not weeks or months

Why? Because, in marketing, a week or a month is rarely enough to make something stick. Sure, some campaigns may even be shorter than that but that doesn’t mean they don’t need extra time for planning and putting together.

Also, consider a capacity reality check: What’s on your plate outside of work? Travel, caregiving, health stuff, existing client load. All of these will influence how much time you can realistically invest in marketing.

The 2026 skeleton: Q1 → Q2 → Q3 → Q4

Let’s sketch this out.

You need four decisions per quarter.

Q1 2026 — January to March

• Revenue focus: What number are you aiming for? A real one. Y
• Primary offer: Which offer do you want to be front and centre? The one you’d be happy to sell on repeat for the next three months. Are you launching something new or pushing an existing offer?
• Is there a launch?
  ​If there is:
  • What are the dates?
  • What’s the promise?
  • What’s the sales vehicle: cohort, workshop, 1:1, productized service?

If there isn’t: how are you consistently putting your offer in front of your audience? Where is the traffic coming from?

• Audience growth: which channel will you be growing the most this quarter? Yes, audience growth should be an ongoing thing. Still, adding a singular focus to each quarter will help you move the needle. For instance, when I planned a whole quarter around newsletter promotion partnerships, I saw significantly more traction than when I did them haphazardly.

Write it down. All of it. This is how you give your first quarter of the year an actual job.

Q2 2026 — April to June

Same questions, different season:

• Do you stay with the same primary offer and deepen it?
• Do you introduce something new?
• What role does this quarter play: building demand, selling hard, or shoring up systems?

Q3 2026 — July to September

Q3 is chaos for most solos. Holidays, kids at home, heat, travel, weird energy.

So instead of pretending you’ll be at peak output, build the quarter around that reality:

• Maybe Q3 is about selling a simpler, more “maintenance” offer.
• Maybe it’s about re-running something that already exists instead of “reinventing your entire ecosystem” from a sunbed.

Q4 2026 — October to December

Q4 is usually either panic season or power season.

This is where you ask:

• What do I want the year to add up to?
• What offers need a final push?
• What do I want the business to feel like by the time I close the laptop in December?

​Grab a quick spreadsheet to plan 2026 here. Click on File → Make a copy so you can edit it with your own data.​

Connecting this to your content so you don’t go back to random acts of content

Once you know what each quarter is for, then you can ask the “why publish this?” question again:

What is this email/post/podcast episode meant to do for this quarter?

​Full breakdown of mapping your content to your business goals here. ​

If Q2’s job is to fill spots in a 1:1 offer, your content has jobs too:

• Some pieces shape how people think about the problem (the “category” stuff).
• Some pieces show them how you work (behind-the-scenes, process, receipts).
• Some pieces answer buying questions (pricing logic, who it’s for, who it’s not for, timelines).
• Some pieces sell directly (doors open/close, reminders, social proof, urgency that isn’t manufactured nonsense).

No more publishing just because the calendar says it’s Tuesday. Every piece sits somewhere in that ecosystem, mapped back to the quarter and the offer.

Personal example: when I launched The Profitable Content Engine back in June 2025, all my newsletters talked about content for two whole months:

• First, I spoke about the importance of getting your content shit together to pre-suade my audience about why this is an important topic — and invited them to join the waitlist so they know when registration opens.
• Then, I moved on to giving actionable playbooks on how content works — again, there was an invitation to join the waitlist.
• Then, I talked about how I use AI (because The Profitable Content Engine comes with a custom GPT). By now, registration was open.

Because I knew what I was going to launch ahead of time, two (almost) magical things happened:

• I had the time to plan and distribute my content around my business goals properly.
• I didn’t spring a new offer on my audience out of nowhere. Everything they read was connected to that one offer — and they knew it was coming. In a way, it felt like they participated in building this offer (The IKEA Effect), which is known to increase sales, as well as post-purchase satisfaction.

This is how you stop committing random acts of content while still having room for spontaneity.

All of this boils down to one thing

What are you committing to for 2026 — even when it stops feeling exciting?

• One core offer (per quarter or for the full year) that you actually stand behind.
• One or two main channels you’ll keep showing up on.
• One review rhythm you won’t skip.

You can tweak tactics. You can experiment with formats.

But if you keep changing your mind about the core decisions every six weeks, no plan will rescue that.

Everything you do, from distributing your core message to selling, needs time. More than you anticipate.

This is why having a quarterly focus works best.

Want help turning this into an actual strategy?

Everything in this email lives in your head right now: quarterly focus, offers, channels, capacity, content that actually points to something.

The problem is, your brain is a terrible storage system.

You’re 414% more likely to report success (CoSchedule research) if you have a documented marketing strategy. Most people never get there because the process feels like pulling teeth.

The Guided Strategy Framework is your shortcut around that mess.

It’s a guided template that helps you:

• Turn your ideas, offers, and quarterly focus into a coherent, written strategy
• Get clear on who you’re talking to, what you’re selling, and where you’ll show up
• Map your goals, channels, messaging, and budget in one place instead of seven scattered docs

It’s built as a living document. You’ll know when to revisit it, what to adjust, and how to track your progress using the bonus spreadsheet that comes with it.

Plus, you’ll have me in your corner every step of the way, helping you fill it out with resources and prompts.

It’s the kind of investment that can come with serious ROI, as it did for Nevena:

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If you’re serious about making 2026 less chaotic and more intentional, start by giving your strategy a home.

​Grab the Guided Strategy Framework here​

🎙️ My podcasts, interviews, and more

How’s your 2026 content system looking? All done, or does it need some more work? On December 10th, I’m going live with brillian marketer Vassilena Vachalova to talk content systems for 2026 and how to translate business goals into content goals that actually map to revenue.

It’s a free livestream that you can join here.

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Quick question: have you met all your 2025 goals? Think you’ll meet them by the end of the year?

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I haven’t, and neither has my friend Susan Lee. So we’re hosting a pity party (December 18th) where we talk about that candidly. We don’t have anything to pitch or teach; this is an informal, bring-your-own-wine (or favorite drink) kind of situation. Join us here.

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That's it from me today! See you next week in your inbox. Here to make you think, Adriana ​

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