At the beginning of the year, I’m always raring to go, setting my business goals for the year and getting my business and marketing plan up to date. I try to review my goals every three months, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes family crises or just life in general gets in the way. So it’s time to take a look at those goals I set and see how I’m shaping up. How about you?
Take a look
Reviewing your business goals is a good habit to get into and can really help you focus your efforts in the right place for the next quarter, or for the rest of the year. It’s also a fabulous feeling when you look at your goals and realise that you’ve achieved one or more and you can put a big, fat tick next to it!
What has worked well?
You may have achieved all your goals already – if you have, it’s time to set some more challenging goals, something a little harder to get to.
Of course, when you achieve any of your goals, you should feel proud of yourself and it’s always good to celebrate the wins, whether they are big or small. I find that celebrating the little things is highly motivational and spurs me on to want to achieve more.
If your business involves sales, then you may find that you have achieved a certain level, but would like to go further – brainstorm ideas to help you get more sales – would an end of year campaign help? Now is the time to think about setting a competition or challenge to customers to encourage them to buy more with you. Customers always like an incentive and competitions are popular, particularly if there’s a good prize. Alternatively you could set a challenge. For example, invite your customers to introduce five new people who buy a product from you by Christmas…in return they get a voucher for 20% off if they spend 100€. Some of the big stores do this in the UK and it works very well for them.
What isn’t working so well?
Is there anything that just isn’t working for you? Sometimes there is no answer other than to bin it for now…or put the goal on the back burner for next year. But before you do that, is there another approach you could take to achieve what you want? You may simply have been a little over-ambitious. If this is the case, could you break down that goal into smaller, bite-sized chunks? The goal will take longer to achieve, but giving yourself a little flexibility will help make the long term aim much more attainable.
Sometimes a goal can’t be achieved because of other influences. For example, if you decide you’d like to learn more about a particular subject, your goal might be to go on a specific course. But if your business is very busy and other family commitments get in the way of actually getting on the course, it won’t be achieved. This doesn’t mean you’ve failed, it just means you may have to postpone that particular goal…maybe for a few months, maybe for a year. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
Finally, if you do decide to change or set new goals for the rest of the year, make sure that you aren’t setting yourself an impossible task. Good luck with your reviews – let me know how you get on!
Images courtesy of Stuart Miles and David Castillo Domenici and Lekkyjustdoit at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
As the title suggests, having an online presence means that your business is ‘open’ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week….even when you are asleep. Information about your business, your services, what you sell, are there at your customers’ and potential customers’ fingertips. People are always looking online – they research products before they buy and if you have an online presence, and you happen to sell what they want, you could make a sale. If you don’t have a website, you are invisible….and in this day and age, you can’t afford to be.
Through your website, you can be seen as an expert in your field, and through the recommendations and comments from satisfied customers, you can be seen to be reliable, trustworthy and that your products are top notch.
Not only does having a website make you more credible, it also shows that your business is established and that you are experienced at what you do. Even if your competitors are stronger than you, a well-built, mobile friendly website can entice customers to choose you instead. You might operate your business from the tiniest desk space in the corner of your dining room, or make your products in your tiny spare bedroom, but when you have a website, your customers don’t see this. All they see is the power of your brand – size doesn’t matter!
products – you just add them online at the click of a button. You can include tons more information and images than you could afford to put into a brochure.
website, you may spend endless wasted time on the telephone or email giving people directions to where you are, giving details of the products you sell or the services you offer. Your website gives all these details in one, easy to access space, available 24/7. Not only does it give these basic details, it also gives more detailed information about your products. Then, when people do contact you, it’s generally about something more specific or to actually buy from you or use your services.
Advertising in your local paper, putting out your business cards and attending markets, conventions and networking events, are all brilliant ways of getting your products and brand out to a wider audience. However, with a website you literally have a worldwide audience. Business often comes from word of mouth and this is a great way to get local business, but in order to expand and reach customers that don’t know you, the internet is the way forward.
website, then why shouldn’t you have one? The joy of having a website is that it doesn’t matter how big or how small your business is, it will help you reach more people and increase your sales. Through your website, you can gather information about your customers. You can use your website to host an online survey to find out what your customers want and online forms can be used to easily contact you to request a quote or ask for further information. When you know what your customers want, you can develop products or services to solve their problems or meet their needs.
customers email addresses, and with their permission, can send them regular updates about new products. This makes them feel valued and valued customers will come back to you time after time.
achieve them. Having a 
What do you your customers like about your products? What do they currently buy from you, why do they buy from you and do they give you repeat business? If you’re not sure of the answers to these questions, it might be worth conducting a short survey to your customers and asking them. Give an incentive to reply, such as 10% off their first order of 2016. And a further 10% off if they recommend a new customer who buys from you. The more you know about your customers, your competitors and the business you’re in, the more likely you are to be successful
measure whether that particular goal and actions have been successful. By measuring as you go along, if you find something that is not quite working, you can tweak it so it works well. List what needs to be measured, for example, how many people read your Facebook posts or how many comment on a post. Then look at ways to improve this – it might be you monitor your posts and see what kind of post is the most successful and then figure out why. If you have success, shout about it! Your customers will feel reassured they are dealing with the right person
what you can and can’t afford to do and plan accordingly. At the very least, it’s a good idea to have business cards – maybe flyers and definitely think about Social Media and your online presence, such as a website.
experience for your customers; know what your customers want and give it to them; find solutions to your customers’ problems; position yourself as an expert; be different from your competitors and shout about how you are different; shout about your success; give excellent customer service; give special offers to customers who recommend someone new who buys something or uses your service….and above all, be yourself, smile and enjoy running your business – it will show!
So, you have your own business and you want to promote it – get your product or services out there. How do you go about it? Where do you start? It’s really important to have a content strategy….as this will help you structure exactly what the needs of your business are and what exactly is the right content for your business.
If you don’t send content out at the right time, then you are wasting your time. You need to firstly understand your audience or intended audience – what do your customers want? Do your customers or potential customers have questions that you can answer? Do you have solutions to your customers’ problems? If you are aware of these things, you can plan to put content out at the right time.
December and January is the ideal time for you to look at planning for next year. It’s time to take stock and look back over the last year – what worked well for your business and what didn’t work so well? Which way are you going next year?
If you haven’t asked for feedback, then why not do it now? Why not send out a short survey asking some questions to help you decide which way to go next year – get your current customers’ opinions and ideas – their input could open a whole new market to you.
Whether you choose to send your newsletter out in print format, or as an online version on e-mail, it’s important to decide the frequency. Most of my clients send out newsletters by email on a monthly basis, so they can be a bit longer than if you are sending out something each week. The most important thing is that the content is timely and relevant, adding some sort of value to your customer. For example, I send out a monthly newsletter for a garden centre – as well as including any news about new stock and special offers, we also include monthly hints and tips on jobs that need doing in the garden that month. We’ve also run a series of articles over a few months on planning the garden for 2014 – this encourages customers to take a good look at their garden, decide what worked well last year and what didn’t, and gives advice on plants and shrubs without doing the ‘hard sell’.
your website; increase engagement to your brand; create a buzz for a new product or service? The type of goals you have will help you create a more effective newsletter. For example, if you want to send more traffic to your website, you could include an excerpt from an article that will generate interest in your products and then direct them to the full article on your website, or you could just send an introductory paragraph from the newsletter, but keep the full newsletter on your website, so customers have to go to your website to read the full article. Similarly, you could give them a taster of a special offer, but point customers to your website for full details.
Of course, a newsletter is only one of the marketing tools you can use and it’s always best to use a variety of tools to engage your customers. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the role of newsletters. Do you use them for your business?
Measurable – to ensure that you attain your goals, they need to be measurable; then you can keep an eye on your progress and you will stay on track and reach your target dates. If you have a website for your business, one goal may be to push it further up search engines, so your business can be more easily found by potential customers. Questions you could ask yourself could be:
Timely – Goals always need to have a timeframe – if you don’t have a timeframe, then there’s no sense of urgency and it’s easy to keep saying ‘I’ll start that tomorrow’…and we all know that tomorrow never comes! If we go back to the weight loss scenario, if you say ‘I want to lose a stone’, but don’t put a time limit on it, it’ll never happen. But, if you give yourself a date (a realistic and attainable date), for example, ‘I want to lose a stone in three months’ – it’s more likely that you’ll succeed.
The Write Way 