December in DFW means holiday parties, Cowboys games, and—if you're smart—getting your marketing house in order before 2026. While your competitors are coasting through the holidays, the companies that win next year are doing the work right now.

Here's your no-fluff checklist to close out 2025 strong and hit January running.

Before you plan anything for 2026, you need to know what delivered results in 2025. Not what felt good or got likes—what actually drove revenue. Pull your Google Analytics 4 data and identify your top 10 traffic sources. Cross-reference that with your CRM to see which sources produced actual customers, not just visitors.

Look at your cost per acquisition by channel. That paid social campaign that felt successful? Check the numbers. Many DFW businesses I work with discover their "best" campaigns were actually their most expensive customer acquisition channels when they dig into the real data.

If you can't answer "what was our customer acquisition cost by channel this year?" you've got a data problem to fix before anything else.

Your CRM is probably a mess. December is the time to fix it. Remove duplicate contacts, update job titles for your key accounts, and tag contacts who've gone cold. If someone hasn't engaged with your emails in 12 months, either re-engage them with a specific campaign or move them to a suppression list.

Review every marketing tool you're paying for. Are you actually using Semrush, or did you sign up for a trial and forget to cancel? How many seats are you paying for on tools where half your team never logs in? I've helped DFW companies cut 30% from their martech spend just by eliminating unused tools and redundant subscriptions.

Document your integrations while you're at it. When your marketing coordinator quits in March (it happens), will anyone know how your lead forms connect to your CRM? Write it down now.

For DFW businesses, local search is still the highest-ROI channel most companies underinvest in. Check your Google Business Profile—when's the last time you updated your photos? Added a post? Responded to reviews? Google rewards active profiles.

Verify your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency across your top 20 citations. If your Yelp listing shows your old Plano address while your Google profile has your new Frisco location, you're leaking local rankings. Tools like BrightLocal or Moz Local can audit this in minutes.

Collect those end-of-year reviews while clients are feeling grateful. A quick email asking for a Google review during the holiday goodwill season consistently outperforms the same ask in February. Make it easy—send them a direct link to your review page.

You already know what's happening in Q1. Tax season. New Year's resolutions. Budget planning. Super Bowl (and if the Cowboys make a run, capitalize on it). For B2B companies, it's new budget allocation and vendor reviews.

Map out your January and February content now while you have time to think strategically. What questions will your prospects be asking in 6 weeks? Answer those questions with content that's ready to publish on January 2nd while everyone else is still recovering from New Year's Eve.

If you serve other DFW businesses, remember that Q1 is when companies are evaluating their agency relationships. Create content that positions you as the obvious choice when they start shopping.

If you're still using last year's budget with a 5% bump, you're planning to lose ground. Your competitors who embrace AI tools are getting more efficient while you're paying the same rate for the same output. Your paid media costs went up 15-20% this year—did your budget?

Build your budget around revenue goals, not last year's spend. Work backward: if you need $2M in new revenue and your average customer acquisition cost is $500, you need budget to acquire 4,000 customers. Simple math that most companies never actually do.

Allocate at least 10-15% for testing new channels. The DFW market shifts fast—TikTok Shop is exploding for local retail, AI-powered search is changing how B2B buyers find vendors, and your "tried and true" channels may be declining faster than you realize.

When's the last time you actually read your homepage? Your About page? If your team page still shows employees who left in 2023, fix it. If your case studies are all from 2021, update them. Outdated content signals an outdated company.

Check your page speed scores. Google's Core Web Vitals matter more than ever, and that hero video you added might be killing your mobile performance. Run your top 10 pages through PageSpeed Insights and fix anything scoring below 70.

Review your conversion paths. Click through your site like a prospect would. How many clicks to request a quote? Is your phone number clickable on mobile? Is your contact form actually working? You'd be surprised how many DFW businesses are leaking leads through broken forms no one checked all year.

Don't wait until January 3rd to start building your Q1 campaigns. Write the copy now. Design the creative now. Build the landing pages now. When January hits, you should be optimizing campaigns that are already live—not scrambling to launch.

For DFW businesses with seasonality, Q1 is critical. HVAC companies—your tune-up season is coming. CPAs—you've got 90 days of peak demand. Fitness businesses—resolution season is your Super Bowl. If your campaigns aren't ready to deploy January 1st, you're already behind.

Set up your tracking before you launch anything. UTM parameters, conversion tracking, attribution models—all of it. Launching campaigns without proper tracking is like driving to Austin without a map. You might get there, but you won't know how.

Most of your competitors will do none of this. They'll coast through December, scramble in January, and wonder why Q1 results were weak. The DFW companies that dominate 2026 are doing the work right now, while everyone else is at holiday parties.

You don't have to do everything on this list. But pick the three items that will move the needle most for your business and actually complete them before New Year's Day. That alone puts you ahead of 90% of the market.

If you're looking at this list and thinking "I don't have time for any of this," that's exactly why fractional CMO support exists. Sometimes you need an experienced marketing leader to drive these initiatives without the cost of a full-time executive hire. That's the work I do with DFW companies every day.

Have questions about your year-end marketing priorities? Let's talk.