With the end of the year only a month away and the frenzy of Holiday sales in full swing, you’re probably starting to think about ways to bring that “New Year, New Me” vibe to your business. If you’re a small business owner looking to grow your business, here’s a few tips you’re going to want to do to help prep your brand for the new year.

Review Your Data

• Now’s the perfect time to take a look back at your financials, analytics, and sales to see how your business performed. Reviewing your data can help you set up your business for success. Listen to our podcast episode on why tracking your financials is so important with our bookkeeper guest, Jen here.
  • What was your sales total?
  • Business Expenses?
  • How much did you actually profit?
  • What were your biggest months?
  • Were there any sales that did well?
  • What were the main categories I spent money on for my business this past year?
  • Which expenses can I get rid of? Pare down on?
• Take a look at your Google Analytics to see how much web traffic you’ve gotten over the past year. 
  • How long did people stay on your site? (session rate)
  • How quickly did people leave your site? (bounce rate)
  • What pages were most visited?
  • What pages were least visited?
  • Review your traffic demographics
  • Has your audience changed at all? (age, location, etc.)
• Don’t forget to check your social media analytics too. 
  • What posts performed the best?
  • How many followers did you gain?
  • Are your audience demographics different from your website ones?

Evaluate What Worked and Didn’t Work This Year

• Offerings:  
  • Are my current offerings in line with the mission of my business?
  • How are they performing?
  • How can I improve them?
  • Are there any I need to get rid of?
  • Are there any that I could potentially add?

• Marketing:
  • Which channels am I’m currently using to market my business (blog, email list, social media, etc.)?
  • How am I spending my time on each?
  • How can I improve my efforts on each one?
• Communication:
  • How am I currently communicating with my team/clients?
  • Which channels am I using for communication?
  • How can I improve communication with my team/clients?

• Time management:
  • What did my schedule look like this past year?
  • What boundaries do I need to put in place this upcoming year?
  • What can I pare down on to make more time in my schedule?

Plan Out Marketing and Launches

• We love working with our clients for longer than just the initial brand or website projects but a common issue we run into is receiving last minute or rush requests to design something for a sale, event, or marketing idea because of failure to plan ahead.
• There’s a reason people go to market in January for fall stuff and Halloween decor comes out in August, Thanksgiving in September, and then Christmas in September/October. It’s because customers and clients need time to make their purchases. And the preparation for all of that happens way in advance!
  • Print out a hard copy monthly calendar for the year and mark down all the holidays. 
  • Determine what sales you want to run and when you should do them.
  • Figure out if you want to take any time off. 
• Now that you have a better look at your overall yearly schedule for Holidays and promotions, you can start planning your marketing calendar.

Set Goals

• Financial Goals
• Any big investment goals like investing in website design or brand design or copywriter, etc
• Adding in new team members?
• Time management goals – do you want to cut back on your hours?

For a full breakdown of each of the points listed above, tune in to our latest podcast episode on how to prep your business for the new year. Tune in HERE for Spotify and HERE for Apple.