4 New Year’s Resolutions You Can Make for Your Business This Year

Resolutions. People either love them or hate them. January 1st is just another day to many people, much like a Monday. Regardless of how you feel about fresh starts on the first day of the year, revisiting your business goals annually (semi-annually and quarterly as well) is vital to business growth. 

2020 was hard on a lot of small businesses. Changing your business model to keep up in the digital age is not easy, however, making the pivot in 2020 wasn’t optional. It is very likely that December 2020 looked vastly different than the previous January. I hope you feel proud of how far you have come. We cannot even begin to measure the survival skills you have gained this year, and in the long run, you are stronger for it.

Now that you have a better understanding of what your business looks like in the time of COVID-19, let’s regroup and make sure we are on track to reach those goals for 2021. Use this checklist to determine if you are headed in the right direction for your business. This does not take the place of goal setting, but resolving to make changes in your business so that you and your team are more efficient will make your company more profitable and help you reach those business goals.

1. Start a blog

Surprise! Blog content is not going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, it's the best way to attract your target audience online and provide value to your potential customers before you have even started a conversation with them. Did you know nearly 81% of buyers search online before making a purchase? The more content you put out, the better. Here is an idea of the different types of content creation that creates clients. If you only have two blog posts on your website and they are three years old, this will tell your buyers that you are either outdated or too busy to bring on new clients. Providing fresh weekly content will assist in your searchability online and expand your digital footprint.

We help our clients attain this level of content production in many ways, including: strategizing and creating a content calendar, researching the best ways to attract our client's target audience, writing and publishing their weekly content, or optimizing our clients' blogs.

So whether you have a lot of information to share but not enough time to write it, or have the time to write but cannot get those ideas onto paper, a creative agency can help you get this done.

2. Build a website that works for you

Many businesses have what is called a “brochure website.” This is literally the equivalent of creating a pretty brochure and leaving it on a table somewhere hoping that the right person will pick it up at the right time in their buyer's journey and call to buy from you.

Doesn’t sound very promising, does it? These are the same companies who build their website, go live, and then don’t touch it for two to three years. This is the broken model of traditional website design. Let me introduce you to Growth-Driven Design.

Growth Driven Design is intended to incorporate continuous improvements with real time data from the user. When you follow the data, you can use A/B testing or implement improvements so that your website is bringing your potential customers along their buyers journey and converting them into customers. If your website is not providing you leads then it is not doing it’s job the way it could be. Curious how you can generate more leads through your website? Let’s talk!

3. Focus on your email marketing

Even though there is speculation that emailing will become obsolete in the future, it is still a highly effective way to engage with your prospects and buyers. You can use automation to send sales emails to leads or maybe this is the year you want to start a weekly newsletter to provide value to your customers. Email marketing is a great touch point between you and your buyers.

(By the way, did I mention the Sauciety Spotlight is a jammin' place to get the latest tips on technology, tunes to work to, and good news in the world?)

4. Adopt automation

I can’t stress this enough. In the past, I worked a sales job with no technology except an email address and a desk phone. That was rough. It took a lot — I mean A LOT — of my time to follow up with leads and much of that time was spent on “tire kickers” who were not a good fit.

Contrast that to my work today where I can use HubSpot workflows, email snippets, and templates to save hours each week to connect with clients or prospects. Time is money, and you can’t afford to waste yours on the tasks that eat up the most time and are the least fruitful.

Make it a resolution to conduct a time audit and ask yourself which tasks can be automated. If you do not use a software that includes automation, you might consider checking out HubSpot. Feeling overwhelmed? As the only HubSpot Gold Certified Partner in Memphis, we can help!

Cheers to 2021!

It's good to allow yourself to be hopeful about 2021 and the direction it is going, but you still need to take the steps necessary for your business growth. If 2020 was a year of purging the non-essential, let’s have 2021 be the year we focus on how we can continue to evolve in the best way possible.