Spring is here, the best time to start something new, come up with a different strategy, or rebrand your business and image. But how do you do just that? Coming up with a whole new set of ideas isn’t always easy, which is why we’ve come up with a list of our own to help you get started. So go on: grab a cup of Joe and read our list – perhaps it will help nudge you in the right direction.
1. Introduce new products or new services
There are numerous reasons why you should continue to introduce new products, services or tools to your customers. First things first – new products and services mean more revenue, and perhaps, a new market that you haven’t targeted yet. Secondly, it’s a good way to show your current customers that you’re constantly improving, expanding and bringing new tools that may better suit them. But even if you can’t go big, you can certainly improve on a current product or feature you’re offering. Even the small yet noticeable improvements can make a big difference.
2. Try a new marketing strategy
If you’ve just been sticking to traditional marketing efforts (or solely digital ones), perhaps now’s the time to start expanding and trying something new. Even if you feel your current strategy is working for you, test some new waters and see if you can gain more leads to grow your business. Start with a small budget to test it out, but ensure you have a clear strategy. For example, if you haven’t marketed your business on social media, create a Facebook page and make the announcement on your website and in your company emails. If you’ve never tried direct marketing, and have relied solely on online ads and email marketing, why not come up with an interesting promotion to send to your customers? Just make sure you have a reliable way of tracking your new marketing strategy, so that you can evaluate your success.
3. Track your success
If you haven’t done so already, now’s a great time to evaluate your performance and sales against last year. Whether you’re measuring your overall profit, or your growing fan base, or the increase of following on social media, be sure to compare it to the years prior, to give you a perspective. While it’s always a good idea to dig deep into the specifics, if you’re short on time and resources, the very least you should do is get an overall picture of how far you’ve come in the past year. This will help you later on.
4. Simplify what you can. I mean it!
If you think everything is on track with your branding and business, why not try and simplify your life (or business procedure) a bit more? Are there tasks you’re doing (or your employees are doing) that can be cut out, expedited, or otherwise, done away with? In the spirit of a fresh spring cleaning, one shouldn’t just do away with items that are unneeded, but tasks too, as they take up much of our time, which can otherwise be spent on more productive things.
5. Pinpoint one thing you need to change and get started
I’m sure we all have a series of things we would like to see changed. In fact, we all probably have a list of new year’s resolutions that we haven’t even gotten to just yet. After all, getting to all of them is not only overwhelming, but time consuming. And often, this feeling of being overwhelmed makes you skip the process of doing anything at all, altogether.
So instead, narrow that list down and take just one step: think of the one concern that has come up in the past year repeatedly – and focus on a clear solution. If you’re overwhelmed and want to keep it simple to ensure it gets done, simply break it down into a few simple steps – don’t think of the whole strategy at once. Once you get started on it, additional steps will come to mind. By then, the ball will already be rolling!
