Let’s face it. Personal New Year’s resolutions are made for one thing: to be broken. Only 8% of people are successful at achieving their resolution. The #1 resolution each year is to lose weight. The struggle is real when you are faced with eating a 3,500 calorie pizza for lunch and a wedge salad. Pizza. Always. Wins. Your business resolution, however, has a much better chance at success. In fact, this article will show you how to have a guaranteed 100% success rate in your business resolution for 2017.

You are far more likely to achieve your business goals if you have set one. And no, your goal shouldn’t be to get more customers or to increase my sales. That’s your overall goal, or rather that’s the baseline for any business. How you get there is your actual goal. Depending on your type of business, those inner-goals will be different. A restaurant for instance might want to acquire a new front of house system to make operations more efficient and offer online reservations. A landscaper might want to acquire new leads for landscape design verses the everyday calls for lawn maintenance. No matter what industry you are in, you need to define your goals and create a plan. That’s where a business resolution comes in. It’s safe to say that your 2017 business resolution is really your 2017 business plan.

Get started by downloading our business resolution template below and then follow along as we go through each step.
DOWNLOAD PAGE - Business Resolution Template

Before you start writing down goals you need to see what you have done in the past, what has worked and what hasn’t. We don’t need specifics here, but a general overview. Traditionally most SMB’s have use outbound advertising - that is, radio, tv, magazines etc. Digital marketing strategies have been scary for SMB’s to adopt, such as Google & Facebook Advertising or SEO. Mark down what you have used and what you haven’t to see your starting point.

Write down your objectives in this area of the template. What are the key objectives you want to achieve this year? Thinking of the restaurant business, maybe you already have a great FOH and you have busy lunch and dinner services. However the catering side of your business is suffering. You’re currently doing small catering jobs that are “just getting you by”. Your objective could be something like: Market my catering business to more medium sized businesses in my area to provide catering of 50-100 people. Set a clear objective here.

Using our catering objective, there’s many ways you can go about getting to that objective. Some are more attainable than others depending on your sophistication with technology and wether or not you have someone in place to aid you in these areas. For catering, one of your initiatives might be to raise brand awareness, grow social media, and get more quality leads. It’s going to be different for each business, but the end result is that you should do some different than last year or any year. The definition of insanity is doing the same action expecting a different result.

We’re getting closer. Now we need to figure out how will you actually get these initiatives. If one initiative is to get more quality leads, one way you might do this is by a) creating a targeted marketing campaign b) create a clear landing page for your campaign and c) measuring by your conversion rate on your landing page. A landing page inherently is very simple. It should immediately tell your visitor wether or not that page is for them. As long as you have crafted the perfect landing page, if they bounce that’s actually good - because that means they were likely not a qualified lead. If they fill out your catering contact form, then likely they are a more qualified lead for that type of service.

“A good plan executed today is better than a great plan that never gets executed.” This is single-handedly the most important step of them all. Even if your plan isn’t perfect, put it in place. You can always adjust your plan as you go along, and likely you will be adjusting it no matter what. Your aspirations of growing your catering business might get put on hiatus because your Valentine’s reservations and Easter reservations this year have been through the roof. Well that’s good because another area of your business is still growing. The key here is: Don’t give up on your plan. Don’t become one of those 92% of people who never achieve their personal resolutions. Remember to focus on getting back on track. Also, if one initiative is not working out, try another. Go back and redefine your initiatives. Maybe the goal was a little too much for your plate (all puns intended). Scale it back. If you can actually remember one goal from this: start with smaller goals for the beginning of the year. Accomplishing small goals early on will make you feel victorious instead of a failure. Keep building on the smaller goals that you achieve and work your way into world domination, or at least your local area.

Stuck on working out your plan? Not sure how to achieve them or measure them? We’re here to help. Get in touch with us through the link below. We offer a complimentary marketing analysis of your business and optionally can provide you with a competitive marketing analysis, gaining insight into what your competition is doing. We are digital marketing guru’s and can help guid you along your goals for 2017, whatever they may be. (Unless it’s staying away from pizza, because well, that’s just cruel)