“New Year’s resolution: A promise that you make to yourself to start doing something good, at the beginning of the year”
As a new year dawns, many of us will have predictably woken up with good intentions, ready to improve the efficiency of our businesses. Here are a few business New Year resolutions to help your company to grow that you will thank yourself for in years to come.
Refine your business plan, goals and objectives
So what goals should businesses have for the New Year to enjoy new success? Make a clear strategic plan, the first step is to decide on what your aim is for the new year. Is it to build your brand, generate more press, or maybe to increase sales? Whatever your goal, align it with your actions to improve results. If you want to build your brand, you’ll need to be organised to make sure you reach the kind of success you want. A business is not a business if it is not making a healthy profit. This year, focus on building your profit margins, and keeping them. If that means outsourcing parts of your marketing, then so be it. Having constant profit growth will be encouraging and motivating and is critical to keep a business alive.
Create a solid team around you
Having a solid team is important for your business to fulfil goals. If you want to run a successful business, regularly discuss strategy and potential decisions with your team; after all, they understand your business and their input could be invaluable.
Never stop evolving and adapting your business.
With ever changing technology and changes within the market place, time forces us all to rethink our strategies. Once you have achieved your first goal look to achieve the next one and never stand still.
Make Your Website Mobile And Tablet Friendly
The shift from the use of desktop computers to smartphones is changing and so is the interaction customers have with companies. 55% of people use their mobile phone to surf the web and this number is predicted to rise throughout 2014. If you haven’t already done so, you need to invest in making your website mobile and tablet friendly. This will improve your rankings in the mobile search results and will ensure your website is ready for even stronger mobile growth.
Write More Quality Content
Content is one of the most important parts of your online strategy and you need to be producing it so that your customers engage with you. The first step toward ramping up your business’s content marketing strategy this year is putting a plan in place, its not all about SEO. Email marketing, social media posts, blogs, articles, and news updates keeps your company’s online presence active. When writing articles understand that people are searching for relevant content that suits their search purpose, you’ll need to be providing it; if not your competitors will be.
My top tip – ENGAGE In Social Media
I can’t stress enough the benefits of social media (if you do it correctly with lots of imagination). I’m not talking about setting up Facebook and Twitter, randomly posting pictures with comments, but putting together a measurable strategy and implementing it. If you combine this with your goals and objectives it makes a powerful combination. Seeing first hand the added benefits of great sales growth, fantastic customer service and instant customer engagement through social media. I truly believe this presents a real and significant opportunity for businesses that want to grow. A lot of companies haven’t got the time to look after their social media as much as they need to, finding it labour intensive. If this is the case, then outsource a company to help you. Social media is very important for 2014 and is here to stay, so embrace it!
Show Customer Appreciation
Last but not least, customer appreciation efforts should be part of any business’s strategy. One way of doing this is to give out freebies or discounts which can be promoted through your social media pages, it’s a great way to get more likes, shares and retweets leading to new customers. Make it your new years resolution to build stronger relationships with your customers in 2014 improving customer satisfaction, referrals and therefore business profitability.
So, what areas would you most like to focus on in 2014? And, more importantly, how can you achieve your goals?
