It’s the beginning of a new year! There is a mixture of excitement, ambition and optimism for the year ahead – you might be feeling a mixture of all three or something completely different if you have been busy working away in the hospitality, tourism or accommodation sector which many of our clients are in.
This blogs talks about strategies to help keep you aligned and on track throughout the year. What planning tasks do you use to start the year with?
Over the years of working with various business coaches, there are a couple of key actions that I have found to be very useful. These help to start the year off heading in the right direction, but most importantly keeps the business on course throughout the year.
- Annual Planner
Highlight the school holidays, public holidays, staff annual leave dates and GST / Tax dates. The holiday dates are then entered into our electronic calendars and shared with the staff. - Business Plan
A simple 1 page plan to align personal and company goals. Set financial targets and goals that will make the biggest impact across each part of the business. - Strategic Plan
A simpler version of the Business Plan to involve the team with the annual goals. These are broken down into quarterly targets with their associated rewards when each one is achieved.
By keeping the documents concise and on 1 page they can be easily displayed on your office wall and be a visual reminder to keep you and the team on track.
The annual planner dates are added into our electronic calendars so that our clients can book meetings into available days – saving the need to contact and re-book because you forgot to block out a public holiday (we’ve all done that). The team are required to print and display the Company Vision, Values and Strategic Plan on their office walls. We all work from home so these visual aides are important for us to keep front of mind.
Here are our top 5 marketing tips for 2023
1. Nurture and love your existing clients
The best way to get sales is to look after your existing client base. Yet time and time again we get caught up in the thrill of seeking new customers instead of looking after the ones we already have. Even if you don’t have an offering that clients re-purchase you can still call and ask them if their product/service is working as expected. This will make you stand out and give you the opportunity to ask for a referral. Working with clients that already know, like and trust you is proven to be more successful and more cost effective.
2. Get crystal clear on your brand messaging
Can you say in one sentence what you do, why you do it and what your point of difference is? And if you’re struggling to get clear on this yourself, then how on earth are your potential clients meant to understand why they should buy your service. Brand Messaging is a highly under-utilised resource that we, as business owners, don’t prioritise. Clarifying this will see magical results across all marketing avenues and will attract more of your ideal clients to help grow your business.
3. Know who your ideal clients are and what they need
Do you know your customers? I’m talking really knowing your customers – what their needs and wants are. What are their goals and what is stopping them from taking the next steps to achieve their goals? Information is king and the more you know about your clients the better you will be able to profile who your ideal clients are and therefore attract more of them. Imagine a business that attracted nothing but your ideal customers – is it worth a shot?
4. Have a marketing plan
There is nothing worse than doing your marketing on the fly. Typing up an email newsletter the day you want to send it out under pressure and then making a vital mistake or missing an important point! Actually there is something worse and that’s not doing any marketing at all! Marketing can be overwhelming, where to start and what to start with? If you have your brand messaging and ideal client profiles in place than marketing will feel easy across all platforms. Have an annual plan and work out what marketing will be done each quarter, month and week.
5. Gather rave reviews from your clients
If you feel like you have all of the above on track (bravo!) then working your existing client base for reviews is where your focus needs to be. These could be Google Business reviews, Facebook, or Trip Advisor for tourism based operations. Or your could take a deeper dive into your clients success stories and create case studies on the best ones to really showcase the results that you have helped to create for your clients. These also become a very effective sales tool to attract more of the same clients.
If you need help with any of the above the let us know. We want to help you plan for success and have a network of expert providers that will roll out the red carpet for any of our clients right throughout NZ.
