As you think about the last year of your business, are you satisfied with its results? I hope so. I’m proud of what you accomplished and you should be too! Are there any goals that you didn’t quite reach? If so, you are not alone! Being goal oriented and putting in the effort is part of being an entrepreneur. But for a variety of reasons, sometimes you miss the mark and don’t get the exact results you were looking for.
Fortunately, achieving your goals and creating your version of success is available to you with a little planning, organization, and consistent effort. Whether you’re looking for more customers, more visibility, or more revenue in your business, you can achieve all of these goals by creating and sticking to a marketing plan.
If you’ve had trouble with your marketing efforts in the past, you might be wondering, “Sydni, where do I start?” The answer is simple.
Based on what you have accomplished so far, what would you like to accomplish next? And what is the gap between where you are now and where you want to be? Once you are clear on the gap, you will want to determine exactly what you need to do to close the gap. While it’s good to think “I want to increase my income by $ 1,500 each month” or “I want to attract six new clients,” you will never see those goals accomplished unless you have a marketing plan to back it up.
Consider these questions when planning your marketing activities for the coming year:
• What would you REALLY like to achieve? Setting clear and SPECIFIC goals for the coming year is the first step in filling the gaps in your business. You need to know exactly where you want to be next year to describe the steps you will need to take to get there. If you didn’t meet your goals from the previous year, that can be a good starting point for the next year.
• What are you currently doing to market your solutions? Look back over the past year and review the steps you have taken. Does your marketing plan support your goals? What kind of results did you get from your marketing activities in the past year? Using your current plan (or lack thereof!) Is a good starting point for developing a new plan. You can see exactly what went well and what didn’t based on your past results.
• What will you do differently next year? Identify opportunities to make changes to the way you do things so that you can be more consistent and effective with your marketing. For example, you can use a tool like Postling.com to schedule your social media updates. You can create a content calendar to make it easy to put together blog posts each month. You can hire a virtual assistant to take care of some of your follow-up activities or take care of the administrative tasks so that you have more time for marketing.
Spending some time answering these questions and formulating a new plan NOW will help you generate more profit in 2012. What goals are brewing in your head for 2012?
