With 2021 just around the corner, many people are planning their New Year’s resolutions. Some may be thinking about learning a new skill or getting in better shape for the coming year, but what about your business? If you want to continue growing your small business in 2021, consider implementing New Year’s resolutions to help focus your efforts and energy on new goals and reaching new heights. Keep reading as we’ve put together four New Year’s resolutions every business should make.
ENHANCE YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE
Providing outstanding customer service is essential to any successful business. While you may already have excellent customer service, it’s crucial that you continue to work on ways to improve to ensure you’re keeping your customers happy for years to come. After all, investing in new customers is up to 25 times more expensive than investing in existing ones, according to Harvard Business Review.
How to improve? Entrepreneur informs us that most consumers have come to expect 24/7 customer service in recent years. Because of this, many businesses have already begun implementing chatbots on websites to answer customer questions. Also, many companies have started providing customer service on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. If your business hasn’t done this yet, make a point to do so in 2021 so that you can keep up with the competition and enhance your overall customer service experience.
REVIEW AND UPDATE YOUR BUSINESS PLAN
Crafting a strong business plan is essential for every small business. And what better time than the new year to reevaluate your business needs and goals by implementing them into a new strategy for the coming year. You can start by evaluating your results from the previous year and seeing what changes need to be made. It’s vital to make sure goals have actionable, concrete steps that can be accomplished. Remember, your plan is likely to change throughout the year because adaptation is part of owning a successful small business. However, it’s still important to review and update your business plan as needed so that you can go into the New Year with a clear, concise idea of how to achieve your goals.
INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
Many business owners wish they had more time in the day to get things done. So, why not make a New Year’s resolution to increase productivity in your business? To make your business more productive, you don’t necessarily need to become faster or multitask more (although it helps); maybe all your business needs is a few extra automations.
Automation can be a bit of a buzz word and can mean many different things in different contexts, but the key thing to consider when looking into these streamlining services is, how is it freeing up time and resources? What are you doing in the day-to-day running of your business that is taking away from performing the actual services of your business? Is there an automation platform out there that performs a task that allows you to focus more time on being a professional?
Over the last few years, Automated Marketing systems have become incredibly effective at allowing marketing professionals to perform a variety of services at once, streamlining a system that used to require an extreme amount of time and effort. Automations are an efficient way of creating marketing strategies to reach the right people with the right message at the right time without having to do the work every time. With some of your most time-consuming tasks automated, you and your team members can spend time operating your business efficiently.
BOOST YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS
With each year comes new marketing trends that all small businesses should be aware of. If you don’t keep up with marketing trends and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly, you’ll likely lose out on customers because you won’t be able to capture users’ attention online. Take a look at your marketing strategy from 2020 and analyze what worked well for your business and what didn’t. Then, begin replacing the tactics from 2020 that didn’t work out with new strategies to reach your audience in 2021 more effectively.
These New Year’s business resolutions are designed to help any size business grow in 2021. However, whatever business goal you decide to implement this coming year, be sure to give yourself the best chance to achieve them by making them specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (SMART). Smart goals will prevent you from losing sight of your New Year’s resolutions or overall giving up, and instead, you’ll achieve your resolutions and become even more prosperous in 2021.