EIGHT NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS IN 2022

Posted on December 31, 2021 | by panconsultants

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.

SWEETEN YOUR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION WITH YOUR COMPANY’S BRAND VALUES

Posted on October 31, 2021 | by panconsultants

Sweeten Your Strategic Communication with Your Company’s Brand Values

What is Strategic Communication?

Over the past couple of decades, strategic communication in business has become a popular way to establish brand awareness. Communicating strategically involves candidly disseminating your messages while keeping your brand’s image at the core. Your brand is your unique identity. It tells a story, and customers trust your brand because they identify with it. You can deepen your relationship with customers by capitalizing on the intangible differentiators that create an emotional bond with them.

A highly effective way to capture the attention of customers is to build a strong, recognizable, and credible reputation for your brand through strategic communication, which is often used in financial, human resource/employee, and organizational management communications contexts, some of which are considered below.

How do you deliver a message candidly? Consider your audience, and communicate to your target audience directly through the channels to which they subscribe. Delivering your communication with strategic intent requires formulating a succinct, captivating message to your targeted audience, keeping your brand pure by sprinkling identifiable brand values throughout your messaging, and dovetailing the message with your organization’s specific communication goals. Success is measured through metrics that illustrate whether the message has swimmingly spread throughout the designated communication channels and met your organization’s communication goals.

Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing has worked with clients in project-based arrangements to prepare important strategic communication assignments for their corporation, company, or organization. Many of our projects involve corporate identity, and the corporation’s identifiable brand values, mission, vision, branding, package designs, and all-embracing elements of the brand’s personality are sprinkled throughout its strategic communication, including sales and marketing materials. We are your “go-to” resource for preparing company annual reports (ARs) and your most significant strategic communication.

Many Fortune 500 companies view their company ARs as the best vehicle to promote their most enviable business success. The AR has a dual purpose: it summarizes past successes and lays the groundwork for the future. Therefore, the AR is a forward-looking strategic document that embodies the company’s brand identity; reputation; commitment to corporate social responsibility in the communities they serve, and its well-planned vision for the future. Many companies think the complete AR document can be a justifiable business expense because it champions their company’s future growth aspirations and is teeming with information about its organization, company, or corporation’s legacy of success.

The complete AR, although beautiful in print, is expensive, and it has successfully evolved into an online format. There are also the condensed 10K wrap and company summary report, which are quick reads that can effectively deliver information to build a strong, recognizable, and credible reputation for your brand. Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing can work with you to help you achieve your organization’s communication goals. Contact us at https://savvyswan.com to discuss an affordable package that works best for you.

Strategic Corporate Communication

In the book, The Business Case for Corporate Citizenship, Arthur D. Little explains there are eight areas of business activity that various studies have shown to have a correlation between a company’s reputation and its financial performance. Those areas are investor relations and access to capital, employee recruitment and retention, risk management, reputation management, market positioning and competitive advantage, operational efficiency, learning and innovation, and license to operate. As CEO of your company, corporation, or organization, you want to be sure to emphasize these performance areas in your AR.

In 2002, The Corporate Responsibility Index implemented in the United Kingdom became the framework for what corporate responsibility entails for the four key areas related to the community, marketplace, workplace, and environment. For example, if your company’s clients have a strong inclination toward environmental sustainability, a tangible document such as a case study in the form of a print communication is pictorially beautiful and a strategic way for your company to tout how you put your environmental principles into practice.

Moreover, an online, condensed form of a case study is the perfect strategic communication channel to attract like-minded clients to your website and stimulate more business from an environmentally friendly customer segment. Besides the AR and case study, other company, corporation, or organizational strategic communications through which your company’s story shines in both online and printed forms are brochures, newsletters, e-books, infographics, white papers, and similar resources listed below.

Types of Strategic Communication

FINANCIAL COMMUNICATIONS

AR
Board meeting minutes
Company financial updates
Company stock news
Industry news

HR COMMUNICATIONS

Employee benefit information
Employee directories
Employee handbooks
Employee newsletters
Employee insurance information
Employee engagement
Employee surveys
Workforce training

ORGANIZATIONAL MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATIONS

Brand guidelines
Change management
Company private intranets
Corporate announcements
Corporate social responsibility
Crisis management and media relations
Event management
New policies or procedures

When you prepare your communications strategically, you sweeten it by adding your company’s most identifiable brand values and intangible differentiators. You should remind your customers of the benefits they can accrue from having a relationship with your company as opposed to the competition, and periodic, strategic communication with your customers helps magnetize your bond with them.

We’ve focused intently on the AR in this blog, but everything in your company’s repertoire must consistently represent your company’s brand. Your communications are not disconnected documents gathering dust; they are engaging pieces of marketing communication meant to transparently spotlight your company’s relatable values. In the above example related to environmental sustainability, demonstrating what you’ve done for environmental causes in video format can be valuably effective because it is the best marketing medium for transparency.

Your company, corporation, or organization isn’t static; it’s reactive and responsive each day. Your communications must convey to readers and business prospects that your business is buzzing with activity and—as part of your strategic plan—that your company is constantly in motion. While your company constantly moves, you must also move to prepare for emergencies that may wreak havoc on your company’s reputation. A crisis communication plan is an important strategic communication document that should be accessible for communicating with your employees and key staff during a workplace emergency. Preparing ahead allows you to speak in an articulate and timely manner with clients and the media, which helps mitigate stories that become convoluted when reported from the wrong perspective. Take control, prepare your crisis communications plan now by contacting Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing.

Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing not only creates new strategic communications but also revises and renews existing ones. We’ll provide a brand audit to ensure everything you’ve published represents the purest form of your brand. Some CEOS fail to notice their brand identity becomes corrupted over time. How does this happen? It’s simple. For example, your original marketing hire may have moved on from the company, and the new marketing hire doesn’t select the same color blue as you’ve previously used. It may be a subtle change, but this change can mutate and compound over time.

Suppose you’ve moved to another location and hired part-time employees to assist the marketing department, or you’ve acquired another company and interspersed these newly acquired employees into your marketing department. Will they use your brand colors and fonts based on an original document, or will they refer to an iteration from several versions later? Can you see how your brand identity can wither over time? It’s your brand, it should remain consistent and pure. Consider reinforcing your brand standards in a brand guideline document.

A brand guideline document is part of strong strategic communication strategy that the talented staff at Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing prepares. Everything from your packaging to logo icons, colors, tone of communication, brand voice, specific fonts, taglines, slogans, and other assets in your brand guideline document are verified.

The brand guideline document is the cornerstone of your company. Whenever a new hire is onboarded, they are trained to use the brand guidelines, which can be accessed from the company’s general drive. From a simple company picnic flier to a more elaborate proposal, your employees will understand your company’s brand guidelines are standardized. No matter how insignificant the communication may be, all forms of communication in the company are strategic communication and must be unambiguous.

Take note of the iconic company Coca-Cola. Companies across the globe have used lessons from Coca-Cola to establish their own brand guidelines. The company has had a recognizable presence for over 130 years, and there’s a reason their brand has endured. They make no bones about their stringent brand guidelines, and you can read about it here. There’s another interesting read about the company’s brand identity here and in Wikipedia,

Secure Your Corporate Identity

In one of my previous blogs, I reflected on our own brand identity, which you can use as a baseline for establishing some brand guidelines of your own. Read that article here: https://savvyswan.com/8-distinctive-essentials-to-make-your-brand-identity-stick/. I highlighted the importance of preserving your company’s brand identity and how brand guidelines help keep your brand consistent, recognizable, and memorable for your target audience.

Contact Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing for all your strategic communications. We prepare financial, human resources, and organizational management strategic communications. We have worked with companies on preparing their Crisis Communication Plan, and we have specific packages that can fit nicely with your budget either on an à la carte basis or in a project-based arrangement.

By Patti Kondel, CEO, Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing , MBA from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and MA from Emerson College, Boston. Patti is a business and marketing specialist, brand booster, lover of the arts, yoga practitioner, content creator, and cookie connoisseur—the sweet variety—and for marketing consumption, Internet cookies too! Let me help you trumpet your business to the world! Contact me today!

Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing is available for business opportunities around the globe. We also welcome related news, contributing article submissions, and helpful blog tip posts from our kindred community. If interested in submitting compatible content, please email info@savvyswan.com.