EIGHT NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
TO IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS IN 2022
Over the past 12 months, your business has probably seen its share of ups and downs. The new year brings with it an opportunity to analyze your financials, review your company’s goals, and incorporate those goals into your business plan. Marketing is instrumental to sales, therefore, it is crucial to examine the marketing strategies that did and did not work well in 2021 to ensure expensive ones that weren’t highly successful won’t be repeated. Your company’s business and marketing plans are living, breathing documents that you must always review and revise throughout the year according to market trends and changes.
To coincide with your business and marketing plans, you should continually revise your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis; take advantage of your company’s internal strengths; minimize its weaknesses; and acknowledge outside threats that may affect it while looking for opportunities to grow in 2022. In this post, I present my take on important business resolutions to consider for 2022.
STARTING ANEW IN 2022
1. Revise your company’s business plan.
Your company’s business plan is always a work in progress, but the new year happens to be a perfect time to discuss what decisions worked well and which ones fell flat and were counterproductive for your company. Looking toward the future, consider what it takes to be successful in business in 2022. Professor Michael Porter of Harvard University has devised standard strategies that work universally, such as cost-cutting and differentiation.
By offering something unique and providing value in a product or service that competitors aren’t providing, you can become a market leader. Many indicators in your business plan this past year require prudent thought, beginning with your company’s finances, income statements, balance sheets, and cash flows. Look to the past and decide how this year’s decisions will improve your business in the upcoming year. Can you focus more intently on your core competencies? Are you in a position to offer rewards for customer loyalty? Can you scale your operation by forming partnerships or expanding into new territories?
What major trends are reshaping your industry and marketplace? What governmental, economic, technological, and cultural changes pose a threat to your company’s survival? Your decisions include risks, complexities, and new prospects, but a deep focus on your past financials, markets, customers, competitors, and operations should be at the crux of your business plan. The SWOT analysis tool provides additional business intelligence to support decisions and strategies that form the basis of your business plan in the new year. Feel free to use the SWOT I created in a previous blog post as an outline to create your own.
2. Revitalize your company’s marketing plan.
When reviewing your company’s marketing plan over the past 12 months, you may have noticed some marketing campaigns didn’t work as well as expected. Perhaps your marketing strategies weren’t successfully executed, or maybe certain customer segments didn’t accept them. Was your marketing message clear? Did you set aside enough funds to execute an effective marketing strategy so it reached your audience? Was your ad frequency too low to generate enough traffic to lead to a sale? Was your offer valuable, understandable, and relevant to your customers? Did your marketing advertisement grab attention and stand out from your competitors? Were the marketing channels used to broadcast your message relevant to your target customers? Here are some great strategies to consider when preparing or updating your company’s marketing plan. Marketing shouldn’t be puzzling. Sending your customers an online survey helps you understand their desires. With a brief survey and an incentive to complete it, you’re likely to get more responses and remove guesswork so you can provide customers with targeted content.
The professionals at Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing help small businesses create their own strategic business plan and marketing plan. If you’re interested in learning about our services, contact Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing here.
3. Clean up your customer databases, bounced emails, and mailing addresses.
If you send out Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other holiday e-cards and have noticed your email bounce rates have increased over the past 12 months, now’s the time to research and clean those lists. It’s easier to amend lists on a monthly basis, but the reality of running a lean business means there simply aren’t enough employees or hours in the day to prioritize this task. For some small businesses, the last week in December tends to be slower.
Many companies shut down, which gives you more time to research LinkedIn and Yellowbook to fix email errors and note physical address changes. In my small business, I find making time for this task at least triannually helps with accuracy and lessens the number of bounced emails and paper mail returned when I want customers to recall doing business with me. Customer relationships are vital. You want your customers to remember you as a valuable resource, so it’s wise to refine your databases, email addresses, and postal mailing lists before sending out annual holiday correspondence or e-cards.
4. Find more sales leads.
Selling goods and services is how businesses make money and stay afloat. How will you acquire more sales leads this year? You can begin by asking your current customers for referrals and offering a discount on their next order. Maybe you could ask for leads from business associates who have provided your company with services. Another great avenue by which to acquire services or potential leads from your existing customers is through hosting webinars or workshops highlighting potential solutions for those customers. Financial investment firms often offer free dinners; while dinner’s served, they present their service offerings, and you get to engage with them afterward if you choose to use their services.
In finding more leads this year, expand your social media networks to broaden your company’s reach and brand. Choose the platforms that are most appropriate to your business, such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook for Business, and Twitter.
Email marketing is still an effective and efficient way to reach potential customers. Remember to use sequential marketing emails for each step in the buying process and end with a call to action.
Using paid ads—or pay-per-click on Google—is one of the best ways to generate leads. Alternatively, you can earn free leads through organic Google search results if your website achieves a high ranking. To get a high ranking with strategic search engine optimization (SEO), you should pay an SEO company to build backlinks and try other SEO approaches monthly to help you climb in the most popular search engines.
Take advantage of the many free online directories in which to build a list of potential customers. Although online directories are broad, they’re worth exploring to determine whether you can exploit these leads for your products or services. Find an excellent list of online directories here.
5. Explore options for automation.
Automation is important in manufacturing and service-based industries. In all business sectors, automation is inevitable. The early adopters can enter new areas outside their core competencies, which could intensify competition, create technological leaders, and separate them from industry laggards. You’ve seen it in the automobile manufacturing industry, starting with Toyota and the hybrid vehicle, and now with Tesla and electric self-driving cars.
Automatic technology has been brought to many industries so that laborious, repeated processes function automatically, which reduces the toll on workers. You’ve experienced self-checkout at food chains and supermarkets, self-serve digital banking, and self-managed online hotel and flight reservations. Because of the pandemic, customers have flocked to contact-free businesses, which they’ve received particularly well in the hospitality industry.
Take the hotel service industry as an example. Before the internet, clerks had to respond to phone calls, answer customers’ questions, collect payments, and organize room data on multiple platforms. Now, service management automation software allows you to accomplish all these tasks, which frees up labor hours for staff to respond to more complex questions and provide customers with greater personalization. Where there are limited substitutes, unique customer information helps businesses create protective competitive barriers.
Customizable information provides a distinctive experience for customers that is tough for competitors to replicate. Superior customer service in the service industry truly matters because it fosters unwavering customer loyalty and recurring business. Automation provides convenient and cost-effective solutions to improve the customer experience, reduces labor and transaction costs, and increases profit margins. Although once completely face to face, the hospitality industry has found that a hybrid of direct-facing interaction and automation offers flexibility and the ability for lodgings to cater to a wide variety of guests.
In manufacturing, automation helps companies develop new products quickly, standardize processes, improve labor productivity, reduce labor costs, and increase the production rate as efficiency wanes. Frankly, repetitive processes are boring, exhausting, and irritating. Automating repetitive tasks increases employee job satisfaction, reduces manufacturing defects, and contributes to consistent product quality.
Human error lends itself to quality control issues that can lead to costly mistakes if not noticed immediately. For manufacturers, the benefits of automation are often intangible. Having a prestigious reputation in the community builds trust, and great labor relations help avert the high costs associated with employee turnover. Intangibles are often overlooked, but they are of immense worth in terms of competitive advantage.
6. Achieve a better work–life balance.
The ideal work–life balance varies from person to person, and having diverse programs in which you can participate either at or outside work is of benefit for both employees and employers. A poor work–life balance produces high stress levels, which have a profoundly negative effect on the body. Research has indicated that chronic stress can cause some of the following health problems:
- Weakened immune system
- Fatigue
- Heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure and stroke
- Sleep problems
- Weight gain
- Memory and concentration impairment
Studies have also shown that employees’ chief complaints about their work–life balance are caused mostly by the following:
- Work beyond standard business hours
- Rigid work hours
- Long commutes
- Being a parent
Yoga, Pilates, massages, mental health counseling, meditation, and other health modalities can help people with their emotional and physical health, and improved physical health increases employee morale and productivity, which benefits organizational behavior as a whole. When employees enjoy a healthy work–life balance, employers experience less absenteeism and reduced health-care costs (one of the steepest expenses for most companies).
If your workforce is truly your best asset, then tell them so. You can show your appreciation by investing in a flexible approach to employee wellness programs. With a happy workforce, you’ll have reduced turnover and hiring costs. That means you can invest more financial resources back into your business—and save on health-care costs.
7. Update processes and procedures.
Inefficiencies hide among your processes and procedures. When you tackle inefficiencies, you save a tremendous amount of time and money. Talk with your staff about repetitious tasks, inconsistent processes, eliminable loops, and obsolete or outdated procedures. Consider technology—no one uses floppy disks anymore. If one of your procedures describes a floppy disk, then it’s time to refresh your policies and procedures with your current method.
As the year ends, it’s a solid idea to schedule some time to revise your policies and procedures. Make sure all your policies and procedures comply with new innovations, technological changes, laws, regulations, and mandates in your industry. Legal matters may arise that call into question your policy and procedure guidelines, so it’s important to keep them up to date.
According to leading research and advisory company, Gartner, Inc., organizations will lower operational costs by 30% by combining hyperautomation technologies with redesigned operational processes. Keeping current with your industry’s latest regulations, technologies, and best practices saves labor and operations costs because you find efficiencies; help your business avoid legal hassles; and protect your company, workforce, and customers.
8. Write an informative article or blog.
An informative article or blog can educate your customers and set up your company as a credible expert in the field. Rich blogging content helps build your online brand and becomes powerful if it resonates with enough readers—especially when they share it with their social networks. Blogs can broaden your audience, build a reputable opinion of your company, increase your potential for expanding your customer base, and promote your company’s products and services along the way.
Blogs offer many opportunities for monetization and can be a great sideline, although there is considerable time involved in terms of researching, writing, and publishing them. To learn more about generating money from your blog, check out this excellent article from Forbes.
For a newly established business, part-time business entrepreneur, or sideline blogger, a blog is a great way to start the new year. Many platforms are free, but some have more features than others. To learn about available blogging platforms, here’s a fantastic list.
As you begin the new year, we at Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing wish you a wonderful and prosperous year ahead. Remember, you can contact us anytime with questions related to our areas of expertise: strategic marketing, brand management, marketing communication, and desktop publishing. You can learn more about us by visiting our website at https://savvyswan.com/.
Patti Kondel, CEO of Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing, has an MBA from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and an MA from Emerson College, Boston. Patti is a business and marketing strategist, brand booster, arts lover, yoga practitioner, content creator, and cookie connoisseur (the sweet variety—as well as internet cookies for marketing consumption). Let me help you trumpet your business to the world by contacting me today!
Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing is available for business opportunities around the globe. We also welcome related news, article submissions, and helpful blog post tips from our community. If you’re interested in submitting compatible content, please email info@savvyswan.com.