As we kick off the New Year, some of you will start 2015 with personal resolutions; others, perhaps, have made business resolutions to do “blank” in 2015 to grow your business. Resolutions are a good start; but how do you do it? How do you make your business truly grow? You need a plan. And to have a plan, you need to know your goals, short-term and long-term. Defining what matters – defining your goals – is where you start. In the book, Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan, Francesca Gino, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, takes a look at the motivating factor of “temporal landmarks” such as New Year’s. The turning of the calendar motivates humans to reach their goals because the landmark event makes those goals “salient in our minds,” writes Gino in a recent HBS blog. Why? “Because these landmarks trigger reflection and thus can potentially highlight the gap between our current behavior and our rosier, desired future behavior … As mounting evidence suggests, we often choose what we impulsively want over what we should choose given our long-term goals and interests.” Write it down, says Gino. Research has found that those who plan out their goals, actually writing down their short- and long-term goals, are more effective in “bringing their actions in line with their expectations.” Print it out, fill it in, post your goals on your office wall: Short-term goals: 1) 2) 3) Long-term goals: 1) 2) 3) Here is why goals are so absolutely important. If, for example, you are physician who wants to be the next “Dr. Oz,” your platform would need a national strategy. That national strategy begins with a local strategy such as local speaking engagements that grow into national engagements and local PR to build you up from a local media/community resource into a national “talking head.” Conversely, if you wanted to be “Best of…” next year (most “Best of’s” come out in January and you’ll need a strategy to win 2016) in your city’s top-rated magazine to increase your patient load, your strategy would be different, more localized. If you are retailers, do you want to be the best retail enterprise in your community or do you want to expand and become a national franchise? Asking yourself – and more importantly answering – “what’s my goal?” is key to designing the right strategy for 2015 and beyond. Once you have defined your goals for 2015, you can start asking yourself these next questions:
- Do your verbal and visual messages (your brand) speak to your target markets?
- Do you know where your target market is hanging out? Are you engaging them in a way that reflects the essence of your business?
- What is your marketing plan for 2015?
- What is your PR plan for 2015?
- What’s your social media plan for 2015?
- Do you have a strategic plan that works within your business cycle supporting growth and sustainability by incorporating a “Trifecta” plan of action, i.e. a marketing, PR & social media plan in which all three parts work powerfully together to promote your biz.
- Does your website have a call-to-action? Is your content up to date?
- Do you have a blog to support your SEO strategy?
- Do you even have an SEO strategy?
If the answer to any of these questions is, “no,” or “I don’t know,” you need to go back and redefine what matters to your business so you can launch 2015 with a more effective growth and sustainability strategy. Check out this link to our Executive Development Programs and Social Media Tutorials and make 2015 your year. Our programs include:
- PR, Marketing & Social Media for business growth
- Start-ups: Brand to Launch
- Social Media Tips & Tricks
- 21st Century PR
- Modern Marketing
- Organic SEO
