New Year, New Goals: How Successful Do You Want To Be In 2015?

With the New Year upon us, and being nearly halfway through the first month, if you have not already done so it may be a good idea to take stock in last year’s performance and set some goals for your business in 2015. It is important to have objectives as they keep you focused, give you something to compare results to, and help you to move forward.

If you are not moving forward, you are either moving backward or staying the same. Determine where you want to be over the next few months and develop a plan to get there. (FYI on Jan 15^th, the year is already about 4% OVER!!!)

Set Marketing Goals for the New Year

Establish quantifiable marketing goals. This means goals that you can turn into numbers. For instance, your goal might be to gain at least 30 new clients in a month, or to sell 10 products per week, or to increase your income by 30% this year. Your goals might include sales, profits, or customer satisfaction. Obviously, this will be in scale to your current business.

Goals should be S.M.A.R.T – (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time Sensitive)

For me, making an annual goal and then breaking it up into monthly amounts makes it a little easier to go after.

Monitor Your Results

Test and analyze. Identify the strategies that are working.

• Survey customers
• Track sales, leads, visitors to your web site, and percent of sales to impressions.

By researching your markets and competition, and determining your unique positioning, you are in a much better position to promote and sell your product or service. By establishing goals for your marketing campaign, you can better understand whether or not your efforts are generating results through ongoing review and evaluation of results.

Be sure to use your plan as a living document. Successful business owners continually review the status of their campaigns against their set objectives. This ensures ongoing improvements to your initiatives and helps with future planning.