Steps to Make It A Year to Remember
By: Steve Cranshaw
So it’s the start of another new year – a year following one that caused a lot of businesses to reinvent themselves and fast. Even a business with the best planning and foresight could not honestly say they were prepared for what 2020 delivered. Reading these first two lines could be difficult to revisit for many, but picking yourself and your business back up and attacking 2021 is what you need to do. But as with anything that is worth doing, doing it the right way is the best way. But finding the “right way” to do things is often times the most difficult part.
More often than not, we set ourselves up to fall short of our goals without even knowing it. This is because we didn’t take the proper steps at the start of the journey to set expectations and to create check points to evaluate progress. And then there are times where we simply need to allow ourselves to say “I need help” but we don’t use this as an option. You’re a business owner. You rely on yourself constantly to get things done. But maybe, just maybe, you need a refresher on setting new processes into action or even outside help to take on a new project or initiative to see the results you are hoping for.
These steps below will help set a frame work to take on any task in business and also in your life.
Start Small – In Your Goals, and How You Take Them On.
So you have that next great idea or improvement on how to make your business run more effectively or how to get your customers banging your door down. That’s great! But chances are if the idea is as good as it seems to be, you need to start small and possibly slowly to get it off the ground.
Starting small allows you time to run small beta groups or time to receive customer feedback from a small sample size – before potentially rolling something out from start to finish that hasn’t seen the light of day. Allowing for feedback will help you to pivot where necessary to accommodate for unexpected needs, resulting in a less frustrating experience had you just implemented it without ever testing it out first.
Starting small will also allow you to celebrate the early successes, keeping the enthusiasm alive for the remainder of the project or initiative.
Create Multiple Ideas and Goals
The new year sometimes brings pressure to come up with areas to improve or to at least see better progress than in years past. Start by jotting down areas or loose ideas where you know you could improve and where you feel your time will be best spent to deliver increased value for your business.
During this process, think openly, freely and without judgement. If an idea enters you head, write it down. There will be time for vetting, ranking and setting these potential ideas into action.
Make a Plan of Attack
Having multiple areas or ideas on paper, now is the time to follow through on what makes sense. Limit yourself to only a few items to take on and then create an intentional order that builds off the previous item(s). By having multiple goals aligned with each other, building out multiple initiatives that work in parallel increase your chance of gaining momentum as you move from goal to goal – or at the very least show you where change is necessary before moving to the next step.
Track Your Progress
A goal is nothing without having the ability tracking your progress. Constant evaluation of the steps taken, the results of the steps and how close it has gotten you towards your goal is critical for any process. The only way to evaluate progress (good or bad) is to benchmark where you are when you started. Having specific statistics (customer metrics, revenue, time spent, etc.) or a rooted idea (market perception of your business or product) makes the evaluation process measurable. Seeing positive results will give you encouragement. Seeing negative results will allow you to pivot. Both are results worth having and the insight is invaluable.
Where Do We Suggest You Start?
Promoting and marketing your business is something that even the most successful business are constantly reviewing and reinventing. Time and energy spent here produces results and can really be what takes your business to its next level of growth. Keep reading to learn key marketing areas that should be on your mind as someone who runs a business.
Audit Your Current Marketing Efforts
Ask yourself these questions:
How is your website? Is it accurate, up-to date and the best representation of your business?
Are your hours correct? With Covid impacting hours and protocols, there is probably a good chance you need to explain this to better set the expectations for your customers and how you are currently doing business.
Is your contact information accurate? Can customers easily fill out a form or find an email address or phone number to call that goes to the right spot? Customers like to know that they can reach you and being accessible and quickly responding to your customers can be the difference maker between landing or loosing a customer.
Is the content inviting, have a visually current look and have a user experience that is easy for your website visitors to navigate? Your website can easily add confidence in your business to your website visitors or it can just as quickly discourage and discredit your business equating to missed opportunities. If you have an old website that is not responsive (meaning it doesn’t view well or reformat itself fo mobile devices) you are doing your customers and Google a disservice. Customers will not have a good experience on your site and Google ranks non-responsive websites lower lessening your chances of being found by customers.
Is your website using proper (or any) SEO techniques? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it helps Search Engines (like Google) know what your website is about. When Google has a proper understanding of your website, it can place your site in front of customers who’s search intent fits what you provide (a services or product). SEO is far more than simply having a good opening paragraph on your home page that describes your business making SEO complicated, competitive and an ongoing task.
How is your social media presence? Could it be better?
Are you on the platform(s) that are best for your business? Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are just a few of the big ones, but not all are necessary for a business to compete in the social media world.
Find the best platform that works for you and start to build out or improve upon a business page that adds value to your target audience.
Then start posting. Add content early and often or at the very least in a planned and consistent way.
Are you capturing customer email addresses? If so, great! If not, here is an opportunity to get better.
Your customers (current/active and past) have email addresses and you should be asking for them to continue the conversation and to nurture leads.
Make sure your customers know you won’t be bothersome with emails but that you will be informing them about sales, promotions and learning opportunities.
Possibly even incentivize customers to hand over their email with a 20% off your first order promotion. This makes it easier to get in their inbox and could help you land a first sale due to the discount offer.
Use your website to capture email addresses. Pop-up blocks, newsletter sign-up forms and developing automations that add email addresses supplied during a form submission hit your email CRM platform. Also, have your sales staff make it a priority to capture email addresses whenever possible.
Need Help Planning for Success in 2021 – or at Any Point Really?
We’re here for you! Auditing, recommending, planning, assessing and actioning marketing tools and plans is what we do!
Think Websites, Email Marketing, Content Creation and Business Development to name a few – you know – those things that you might just need to ask help for to see improvements in 2021.
Contact us to learn how we can develop a plan and take on tasks for your business.