With the holidays right around the corner, the New Year will be here before we know it. It’s important, now more than ever, to make time to plan for the upcoming year.
I know that planning doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Yes, I love to plan, but not everyone does. Whether or not it comes naturally for you, you really do need to start planning for your business in 2022, right now.
Here are the top three reasons you need to be planning for the future of your business:
Planning will save you time.
I know that by planning ahead you will save time. Instead of coming up with ideas and goals spur of the moment, you’re going to have thought-out plans so you know where you’re going. Because you’re not just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, you’re going to be able to focus on other tasks that will help you move your business forward.
If you have a team behind you, you can get everyone on board with your plan. If you don’t have a team built, having a plan will help you to assess whether or not you need one. Planning will also help you to avoid big mistakes. Avoiding big mistakes saves you loads of time!
Planning ahead will help you pivot.
Yes, the unforeseen happens. Remember the pandemic we’re still working through? Things happen that you could never have planned for. However, when you have a plan in place, you are able to more clearly see how you can pivot that plan to handle the unexpected.
Planning will keep you organized.
Having a plan helps to keep you organized. I don’t know about you, but I need that organization going forward to let me know what’s coming down the pipe. Not just project-wise or client-wise, but also to understand where my money is coming from. I want to know what the influx of revenue will be as well as the outgoing costs. Having a plan makes these things more clear for me.
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As you look at the first nine months of this year and start to plan for the upcoming year, there are some things you’ll want to focus on to effectively plan for next year.
Let’s dive into what you should be looking at when you plan for a new year in your business.
- Finance
- Sales projections
- New products or services
- Marketing
When I start planning for my business in the upcoming year, I like to start by looking at my overall vision for my business. Then I do a SWOT analysis (that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.) After that, I look at my analytics. Next, I analyze my audiences. Finally, I look at the specific marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you want to assess.
Here are the five specific marketing KPIs you want to look at:
- Lead Generation – Look at where your leads come from, if they are quality leads, and how long it takes to turn a lead into a paying customer.
- Website and Traffic Metrics – Understanding your website data helps you to understand who is on your site, how they got there, and what they are doing while they are on your site.
- SEO Optimization – SEO will tell you how high your site is ranking on search engines and helps you to understand how people are finding your website.
- Paid Traffic – My favorite topic! Here you want to look at your campaigns to see which were successful then analyze why.
- Social Media Marketing – This is all about building an engaged audience and turning that audience into customers.
If you’re ready to start planning your marketing for 2022, contact me today! For more about Planning for the New Year, listen to the latest episode of the Marketing Matchmaker Podcast! And, if you want to grow and scale your business to 6-7 figures, take the Profitable Scaling Quiz today to make a difference in your tomorrow!