New Year's Resolutions for Your Business
New Year's Resolutions for Your Business
With 2020 newly arrived, many of us have made some New Year’s resolutions. But, has anyone thought o make resolutions for your business?
Here are some helpful tips to creating resolutions that can help you stay on track. Make a note to check in with yourself in March to see how your goals are coming along.
1. Provide exceptional customer service
Providing outstanding customer service is essential to any successful business. While your customer service may already be great, it’s important that you continue to work on ways to improve so that you can keep your customers happy for years to come. Investing in new customers is much more costly than keeping current customers.
Consider the ways you could improve service to your existing customers. How well do you know your customers? Find out what make your customers happiest and try to find a way to provide it. Also, find out where your customers struggle and try to help address that concern.
Become familiar with Google Analytics and all the information it has to offer. You will know how your customers found your business, and where they click on your website. Make this the year of the customer, and your business will thank you!
2. Increase marketing efforts
Experiment with placing ads in different places like Facebook, Google, local print publications, tv, or radio- anywhere that your target audience may see you. You may find that even a small business with a small advertising budget is able utilize these options. Many local companies are willing to work with you to help provide a cost effective package that fits into your budget. Remember - to them, YOU are the customer!
Monitor any mention of your business on social media or other websites. Both positive and negative mentions are very relevant because if you can find them, so can your potential customers. You can use tools such as Google Alerts. Google your business name and then filter for results within the past week. You can also search your business name on Twitter for any recent tweets about you. Share the positive mentions on your social media channels to boost credibility, and do your best to diplomatically respond to the negative ones.
3. Increase productivity
How often do you say "there just aren't enough hours on the day..." or "I don't have time for...."? I think it's true that we all get caught up in the cycle of answering endless email and succumbing daily distractions. You may be able to simplify some mundane and tedious processes like invoicing, social media scheduling, email marketing, and invoicing. Some of these tasks can be automated, giving you and your team members time to work on bigger and better things. Think about the tasks you do each day. Is there anyone else on your team that could help with those tasks? You may be able to delegate some duties on to someone on your team, offering an opportunity for a team member to learn something new. It also may be more cost effective to hire a freelancer to handle tasks like social media marketing, copywriting, email marketing and so on. Hiring freelancers will allow you to get work done on an as-needed basis rather than having to worry about accommodating new full-time staff members. It also keeps your most valuable resource-YOU- free to concentrate on the BIG PICTURE.
5. Make your goals Achievable
Make sure that you give yourself the best chance at achieving goals by making them SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
Setting SMART goals will prevent you from giving up on your New Year’s resolutions and help you prosper in 2020!
