10 Business Goals to Grow Your Small Business this New Year

My Business Goals for the New Year

Once again, it’s the New Year.  For me, the New Year presents itself as a time to reflect what I have and have not yet accomplished in my life and business. Every year I spend January first reviewing my past year and writing out my future goals. On January 2nd, I wake up raring to go!

One of my business goals every year of course is to do more frequent blog posts. So here goes! 🙂

Since we became a SharpSpring Partner in 2016, we have new goals in place regarding setting up new workflows to automate our marketing and sales.

Another important goal is to make better use of my networking events by getting there early, bringing my name tag, remembering the names of the people I connect with and following up with them afterwards.

 

Here are 10 other great business goals to help grow your business.

1. Organize your office – It’s always nice to start off the year fresh with a clean desk. Enter all those business cards into your database or at least put them nicely away and hire someone else to enter them in.
2. Set up a customer relationship management system – whether it’s a manual whiteboard or a web-based tool, getting a grip on your sales funnel will help you better follow up on leads, stay in touch and provide better customer service. Our platform has a CRM, email workflow automation and lead tracking.
3. Make business planning part of your daily or weekly routine – Schedule in time for writing, reviewing and adjusting your goals. Write out manageable sub-goals and break them down into actionable task lists. Have a system to view and remind yourself of tasks.  I’ve found the resources of David Allen’s Getting Things Done® Methodology very helpful over the years.
4. Delegate more – Write out the list of tasks you can delegate and try to find someone to do them. Remember you should be working on your business rather than getting lost in it.
5. Make marketing your business more consistent – Determine the most effective marketing strategies and add them to your routine business tasks. Try testing out a new lead generation campaigns and measure the results. I’ve had many clients pleasantly surprised after testing Google AdWords and Facebook ads.  If done well, and captured in a nurture campaign, you can have a quick source of new leads added into your sales funnel.
6. Develop a content strategy that captures and nurtures leads – By now, most small businesses are using social media and have built up a following.  Think strategically about what content will be useful to your client. Content posted on your website and shared in social media is also part of your organic SEO strategy, so it’s important to review what keywords are best for the posts. Is there a resource you can offer as part of a download so that you can capture their name, follow-up and add them to a nurture campaign? Proper planning at the start will help you save time and create an integrated content strategy, and campaigns that are more effective.
7. Clean up your website –Now’s the time to take a good look at your website. Keep in mind that your website has become your main marketing vehicle. Is your messaging still enticing? Have you added in any new services? Do you have new offers to promote? Are your pages optimized for SEO? Have you updated your worpdress and the latest security plugins? Do you need new captchas and social media widgets? Do you have a maintenance package in place and are doing regular back-ups? Have you tested your forms lately and tracking codes? Don’t forget to review your security processes to ensure cyber safety and to prevent any loss of data in your business. Make a list of all the edits, new features and updates you need done. Write out your wish list and get quotes for all your web work at once.
8. Streamline your business –Take a critical look at the services or products you are offering and eliminate those that are draining your resources and not adding to the bottom line.  This may not be overnight.
9. Automate and build systems – Look at what tasks you do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Try to turn these into regular procedures that can either be streamlined, automated or delegated. Research tools to make your work more efficient. Check out one of our marketing automation demos to see what capabilities are possible to automate your marketing and sales engine.
10. Learn something new – What do you want to learn more about to help your long-term business goals? Sign up for a course, webinar or buy a book. Learning adds to your skill-set and helps motivate you.

Finally, not everything is about efficiency & money.  I want to love the work I do and the people I work with. This year I made a list of clients I want to work with. Give me a call and let’s see if there’s a fit  🙂 

Sign up for a free strategy assessment to help you set your new business goals for 2017.

 

 

Small Business Goal Setting Resources: