Create strategy

New year, new strategy. Or at least taking the time to look at the existing strategy and do some evaluation! Here are a few easy steps for the beginning of the year to get you thinking about the strategy for your business and the goals and actions that follow.

  1. Give your website the once over

If you haven’t taken an objective look at your website in a while (maybe ever?) now is a great to do that! Google is constantly changing it’s algorithm. Check your website performance at https://web.dev/measure/ . If it’s not performing well schedule some time with your developer. Have you updated your blogs, events and newsletters? The search engines are looking for activity and new content. Does your website reflect your current business and talk to the right people? Google yourself. How well do you show up in the search engine ranking?

 

  1. Perform a competitive analysis

This can help you stay one step ahead of the competition. Who are the players in your industry? What resources do they have and how are they using them? What capabilities do they have that you don’t? Look at their websites and go back to step 1. What has changed with you market, customers or business in the last year? From all this, what can you learn and apply to your business?

 

  1. Pick one thing to improve

Take a look at your business processes and systems. Is there something that could be done better (from the employee or customer perspective), or more efficiently- cheaper, faster, easier? Every business can improve something and incremental changes can have a big impact in total. Pick the one improvement that will have the biggest impact and tackle that this year. If you’re struggling to find that one thing, get another perspective from a friend or peer to generate ideas.

 

  1. Evaluate your expenses

Take a hard look at where your money went last year. Do you have subscriptions you don’t need or are you paying for tools you don’t use? What percent of your revenue goes to expenses? Do a google search for your industry to find a benchmark for that key performance indicator (Expenses/Revenues). If you’re spending more than your peers look for opportunities to cut back on expenses.

 

These are just a few steps toward annual maintenance on your business to keep things running smoothly and improve performance in the coming year. If you need an objective perspective a peer, mentor or business coach could help.