How to Set Your Business Goals for the New Year

January is like a fresh start. It’s an excellent time to turn your attention to how to approach your company this year. As a small business owner, constantly benching goals and staying focused on them can generate results for growing your business.

In this article, we discuss some examples of great business goals to tackle in 2022. Additionally, the post explains a process for achieving these goals.

Examples of good business goals for the new year

Social media and blogging

Social media and blogging are on the back burners of many small business owners’ minds. You know how powerful a viral social media post can be. Or how many leads you can generate through search engine optimization (SEO) and consistent blogging. But it’s tough to push yourself to execute these tactics when you have suppliers to speak to and bills to pay.At the same time, you know your company would benefit from more clients and customers. This is why social media and blogging are great goals to add to any company’s new year’s resolutions — it’s a proven way to more clients and customers.

This might mean making regular video content for social media, as this is what’s popular on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. In contrast, blogging can be written content and infographics, podcasts, or videos. Consistently posting on these platforms is the most crucial part.

One video every other month won’t do much. But consistently posting twice a week can turn into a significant number of leads in the long term.

Related read: How Fitness Professionals Can Prepare for New Year’s Rush

Document your process

Your clients and customers want a consistent experience. If they visit your business one day and receive a fantastic experience and the next time they don’t, they might not come back a third, fourth, or fifth time. People often want an experience that they’re used to with few surprises.

Documenting your processes, like customer service or payments, can ensure consistency and keep people returning to a predictable service.

For example, suppose you run a spa. The first time a customer visits, they’re greeted by the receptionist, receive a fantastic treatment with a glass of wine, and payment is fast and convenient.

The second time, they walk in with no receptionist in sight. They yell if anyone is there, and the receptionist finally arrives after frantically running around. The client needs to wait for their treatment, and there’s no glass of wine. Worst of all, the credit card machine is down, and it takes a whole 20-minutes to pay and leave.

You can remedy this situation by documenting that a receptionist should always be at the front desk and the steps to take if the credit card machine fails. This can solve issues before they begin and keep customers returning to a predictable experience.

Better yet, documenting the process means it’s easier to delegate tasks. Even when you’re not at the store or office, you’re on vacation, or busy with something else, your employees know exactly what to do.

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Design new products or services

The entrepreneur in us always wants to do something new. The saying is that if you don’t innovate, you die. As an acupuncturist, you may consider selling health products as a new revenue source. Or, as an IT professional, adding cyber security services may cross your mind.

Designing and launching a new business product or service is an excellent goal for the new year. This goal can help you diversify your revenues as well as increase it. Additionally, you may find opportunities to service new clients and customers or upsell old ones.

How to get started with your plan

Review last year’s goals

Before you jump right into the new year with new goals, review the ones from last year. If you realize you never accomplished your previous year’s goals, adding half a dozen new tasks might be a waste of time.

For example, you may want to start posting consistently on your business blog. But if you left last year’s idea of mapping out a digital marketing process unaccomplished, you should take a step back.

Figure out why you never reached your prior goals. What obstacles were in your way? Without understanding these problems, you’ll likely hit the same issues this time around.Additionally, a review of last year’s resolutions can help you tie up loose ends.

Suppose you planned to implement new software last year. You purchased accounting software and a customer relationship management system, and they’ve worked terrifically. However, you still need to implement an employee scheduling program.

Instead of only working on new goals, you should continue to finish last year’s first.

Figure out your larger objectives and drill down

It’s important that goals aren’t arbitrary and made for the sake of making goals. If you already have more leads than you can manage, a social media goal to generate more leads might not be ideal.

Instead, consider your larger objective and how you can reach it. If your goal is a better brand, think of the steps to building this better brand. It might be more community involvement, consistency in your designs, copywriting, and operations, or it may be redoing your entire marketing strategy.

List what you want to accomplish this year

After all this thinking, it’s time to make a list and check it twice. Sit down with your business stakeholders and jot down your goals.

But don’t stop at the list. Further, contemplate how to achieve these goals and a timeline. You don’t just want goals — you want SMART goals, which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.

A goal to get more sales is vague, and such vagueness may not materialize into anything attainable. Instead, an intelligent plan might be to upsell your five accounting clients on your lesser-known bookkeeping services. Additionally, aim to do this by April. This upsell can ultimately result in more sales.

This SMART goal is more easily achievable than anything vague. A SMART goal comes with a plan and a timeline and is realistic and achievable for your small business. You can also set multiple, smaller SMART goals that are more attainable. For example, you may need to sign up for an accounting software for startups before you can sign up your clients. To make this happen, you could create a SMART goal that requires you to research accounting software and sign up for one by the end of the week.

Prioritize

Prioritizing is critical to setting goals. You can’t do everything at once. You might choose first to tackle a website redo followed by a new product line. The website could be more critical to facilitate e-commerce sales, and that’s why it takes priority.

Again, this step should be a conversation with key stakeholders to decide where to put your efforts and capital first. If you try to do everything at once, you’ll spread yourself and resources too thin, and you may fail at it all!

A new year is a fresh start to achieving business goals. Take this time to meet with your co-founders, investors, and employees to see what you want to accomplish this year. Make sure you layout how you want to reach these goals and consider their priority amongst each other.

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