How to crush your growth goals in the new year

A new year is coming (byeeeeeee 2020, don't let the door hit you on the way out) which is usually a great time to look at goal setting.

You might be setting goals for your personal life (like the "getting fit" goal I set in January and give up on in February), but your business needs some love too.

Strategic planning is something we do a lot of here at Creative Click, so I thought it might be helpful to put together a basic guide to help.

What do you want your business to achieve this coming year?

First and foremost, we need to figure out what you want to happen and what level it needs to get to in order to be counted as a success.

Brainstorm what you'd like to achieve, and get as specific as you can. The more specific the goal, the easier it will be to put a plan in place to achieve it.

An example of this would be aiming to grow your income by 20% in this coming year.

Then, take that goal and turn it into either monthly or quarterly targets or milestones.

Is this a realistic target?

Once you know what you're trying to achieve, you can assess how likely it would be to happen.

For example, a 20% increase in income might be fairly easy to achieve. But it could also be quite challenging. It really depends on your business and what you're doing to achieve those goals.

What's in the way?

Naturally, there might be things that could prevent you from making this all happen.

For example, if you wanted to grow your business by 20%, but your marketing is barely getting you leads as it is, you might need to change things.

Put together a list of potential issues or roadblocks that you would need to solve to be able to achieve that goal.

What do you need to start doing?

In order to overcome those issues or roadblocks, is there anything you need to start doing?

For example, you may need to add a new marketing channel, or improve an existing one, to get the leads you would need.

If so, what would that channel be? Is that something you can decide on your own, or would you need help?

Is there anything you can stop doing or get rid of?

A few years ago, I did a lot of in person networking which admittedly got me a fair few clients. But when I weighed up the time I was spending, including travel and meeting fees, it was one of my lowest returns on marketing budget. Plus all that time was affecting my ability to get work done.

So I stopped doing it.

Now I spend a lot less time and a lot less money to achieve better results. And when I want to grow even more, I can allocate the same money I would have been spending towards paid promotion.

In your business, there could be things currently draining your money or your time. Hint: it's usually stuff you dread doing and try find excuses to put off.

Figure out anything that you could get rid of that would help.

A checklist

To help you figure out and get clear on your goals, here's a quick checklist.

• Do you have a clear goal for the new year?
• Do you have monthly or quarterly targets or milestones?
• Are you clear on what tasks you'll need to do to achieve those targets or milestones?
• Do you have a list of potential issues, and a plan to overcome each issue?
• Do you have a clear and focused target audience for your messaging?
• Is your messaging clear? Is your brand messaging right? Does your website reflect what you are trying to achieve?
• Do you have appropriate marketing channels in place?
• Do you have any technical friction points that would prevent your customers or website visitors taking the action you want them to?
• Are you tracking your activity and results towards achieving these goals?

And of course, if you're stuck on your goals, or not sure how to achieve them, feel free to reach out for a complementary marketing strategy session.