The New Year offers an opportunity to take an inventory of what you’ve accomplished throughout the year. Did your company meet its sales goals? Or maybe you fell short of expectations? Either way, the end of the year is a great time to take a look at your advertising and marketing efforts — what worked and what didn’t. You may even be unsure of the answer.
If you are happy with the performance of your advertising and marketing strategy in 2017, now is the time to consider how to improve upon those results in 2018. If you weren’t satisfied with the results, it’s time to rethink your strategy. Many people when thinking about their business strategy miss or rush through an important first step:
Setting Goals: What are your business goals and objectives? This is important because if you do not know where you want to go, then how do you know when you’ve arrived? I’m not talking just the general, “I want to sell more.” I’m talking about a more deliberate goal setting process. A great way to develop your list of goals and objectives is to use the SMART criteria. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.
What do your end of year number show? Let those analytics serve as a jumping off point to using the SMART goal setting criteria to set your business objectives for 2018. Your end of year’s numbers will depend on your current marketing strategy. Do you have a website? Are you running analytics to review your site performance? Did you run campaigns using Adwords? What about Social Media accounts?
Prepare a comprehensive overview of your analytics to point you in the direction of the best return on investment and highlight which efforts fell short. From there you can decide what to stick with, what to tweak or abandon. Maybe it is time to try something new. For most businesses a holistic approach to advertising is the best choice.
It’s time to think goals and strategy for 2018. Now, if you’re like most business owners, you want to spend your time and energy running your business. You might not even enjoy social media marketing, writing marketing content, or coming up with advertising campaigns. While these are important steps in driving customers to your business, you put them off. Instead of spending your time researching and trying to learn these skills through trial and error, contact us. We have team of marketing and advertising experts ready to make your goals a success.