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The importance of entering awards
Planning your way to a successful 2023 in business
By Sarah & Toby – The Rural Marketing Company
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In business, as with anything, planning is absolutely crucial to achieve success. The end of the year, or early in the new year is one of the best and most natural times to plan. It’s when we all start to get reflective anyway. If you’re in retail, you’ll probably want to do this over January, once the Christmas and Boxing Day rush is over and done with. The same applies if you’re busy up until Christmas. However, if you’re taking a couple of weeks holiday between Christmas and New Years etc. – yes, you’ll want to rest. But I often find this rest time is generally when have the natural tendency to want to start planning for the year ahead. Rest gives me that time to slow down and really think about what I want – so if you’re similar take advantage of that.
You need to know exactly where you want to go – and how you’re going to get there.
Otherwise, you’re just stumbling around in the dark. Clutching at random straws. Chasing shiny objects with a scattergun approach that gets you nowhere. For some of us, planning can come quite naturally, and we do it without thinking. Particularly if you’ve had experience doing this in previous employment. If that’s you, fantastic! For many of us however, it takes a lot of conscious effort to think about putting plans in place, and then actually knuckling down to do it and put it all onto paper. This is often because it seems such a daunting process – and we just have no clue how. There are five main steps to planning what you do and when.
1. Review past activities and results 2. Set your goals 3. Create a clear strategy 4. Define your activities 5. Plan it all out into an organised calendar.
1. Review past activities and results
Looking back at past activities and data is really important. By reviewing and assessing what worked well and what didn’t, we can then make better future decisions. You’ll want to take a look at your main offers or business activities and how well they performed. You’ll also want to review your marketing efforts, to see how well they converted.
