Many business owners get lost in the day to day efforts of running their business that they forget to sit down and work on their business.
Reviewing Performance & Setting Goals
With the holidays quickly approaching and 2022 coming to an end, it's time to start the process of reviewing your business' performance for the year and setting goals for 2023.
A yearly review of your business is a good habit to get into, and ideally, will motivate you to setup quarterly, monthly and weekly check ins for yourself as well.
Start with Your Goal & Work Backwards
Goal setting might initially feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be! We find that the best approach is to start with focusing on goals for your business, and the goals for your marketing and website will follow.
We'll dive into this more below, but the idea is that once you have your goals in mind, you can then work backwards to establish what steps you need to take to make them happen. Then, you can further breakdown those steps into actionable tasks that you prioritize each week.
If you don't, you'll find that the year has a week of getting away from you, and before you know it, you'll be at your next yearly review wondering where all that time went!
1) Business Goals
In order to make your goals a reality, your business goals and marketing efforts and website goals need to go hand in hand. This means you'll want to get laser focused on what are your top business priorities, and practice not letting yourself get distracted when other things pop up.
As the owner of your business, you need to take ownership in the success or failure of your business. If you don't have a clear vision in place and aren't willing to make the time to work on it, how can you expect anyone else to know where you're trying to go?
A few goal examples are:
Increase your revenue by x amount (try to be specific)
Improve customer interaction (consider what you're doing now and what could be done better for an improved customer experience)
Become a leader in your industry (time to step out of the shadows and put a face with the name)
Increase passive income streams (this can be done by creating an online course, offering digital products, monetizing your blog, etc.
Grow your community on social media (pick one platform and post consistently before you set up several that end up sitting empty)
Increase brand awareness (this can - when done well, be done concurrently with other goals)
Once you've identified your business goals, write them down and put them somewhere where you'll see them often (post-it note on your monitor, in your digital planner, or set as a weekly reminder in your phone).
2) Marketing Goals
These will depend on your industry and offer, as well as the resources you have available (time and money). If you are not willing to take the time to implement your marketing strategy, or don't have the budget to run a paid ad campaign, you'll need to adjust your expectations.
The goal of marketing should be to start conversations. This can be done by sharing valuable content consistently, and you'll need a plan + blocked off time in your schedule to make it a reality.
Questions to Consider:
Where does your target audience spend their time - how can you best reach them to educate, provide value & connect?
What traffic source are you planning to focus on (SEO (search engine optimization), paid ads, social media, email marketing, in-person networking, etc.)?
How much time and money are you realistically willing to devote to this campaign?
Are you willing to make this campaign a priority to ensure it gets setup and that you check in on it weekly?
Block Off Time in Your Schedule
As the owner of your business, you'll find (if you haven't already) that your schedule has a way of filling itself up. More often than not, the things that take up your time now are not the things that will improve or make a lasting impact on your business.
This is one of the biggest pitfalls we see clients fall into. They recognize they're not where they want to be, want to make a change, and are excited about their goals, but when it comes to committing to the follow through, they lose their momentum.
Excuses start to come up that their content isn't "just right yet," or something else requires their attention and then time just goes by.
So, what can you do to follow through and prioritize the tasks that will have an impact?
First, identify what tasks you find yourself doing that could be delegated, eliminated or streamlined.
Once you know what's taking up your time, decide how you'll get those tasks off your plate.
This can be done by hiring an assistant, implementing a meeting scheduler (like Calendly or Wix bookings) to eliminate back and forth emailing for meetings, establishing better boundaries for yourself, and planning what your "perfect week" looks like.
Finally, get laser focused on your goals and don't let yourself get distracted. It's funny how the universe will test you - a new feature might come out, a design trend catches your eye, or a comment from a friend suddenly turns your head to something else. Don't let the distraction happen!
You'll start to find that if you keep reminding yourself of what you're working towards, and focus on making progress, you'll achieve so much more!
Need help creating a plan for driving traffic to your website? Request access to our free traffic planner guide here.
3) Website Goals
The goals you set for your website should be actionable, (ideally data-driven) improvements or updates you can make to your site. The best way to set these is to identify what you would like your site visitors to do while on the site in order to then accomplish your business goals.
Be sure to keep your target audience in mind, as it's easy to get lost making changes for the sake of making them, rather than with your ideal client or goal in mind.
Before Making a Change Consider:
What is your ideal client/customer looking to accomplish?
What actually matters to them?
Do you have data to back a change (or is this change more gut-driven)?
Has this been a change you've been wanting to make for a while, or is it a result of an off-hand comment from a friend or family member?
Will this change make your life easier, or complicate things for you?
Is there a way you can better highlight your customer's pain point & future state as a result of working with you on the site?
Make a Note of Major Changes
It's good to get in the habit of making a note of when you make a big change to your website, so you can go back and look at the data. If after the change was made you see improvements in your site's performance, great keep going.
But, if you see a drop in performance (increased bounce rate, less visitors to the site, decrease in engagement, etc.) you'll want to consider if the change you made might have impacted you negatively.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't make changes, but instead, that you should pay attention to what your data is telling you, so you're always making data-driven decisions!
Need Help Creating Your Goals for the New Year?
Book a free strategy session with our team, and we'll chat about where you are now with your business, and where you'd like to be!
