In this column, Darryn Le Grange encourages business owners to plan for the year ahead
The beginning of a new year always brings renewed energy, focus and determination, especially if you have just returned from a relaxing and enjoyable year-end break. January is a great time for business owners to plan for the year ahead. It is critical to set adequate time aside to plan before you get stuck into the daily operational grind. We encourage our clients to plan their year by making use of the following planning tools:
1-Day Strategic Planning Day
For as long as I have been in my own business, I have always hosted a 1-day strategic planning day with my team in January of each year. This has proven to be an invaluable tool in examining our past year’s performance, identifying areas for improvement, plotting how to improve in these areas, and assigning responsibility to team members. The exact content and agenda of this 1-day session will differ from business to business, but here are some common agenda items that will apply to most:
- Assess actual performance versus targets and goals for 2018.
- Review customer information: new clients gained and clients lost during 2018.
- Review tactics or strategies that didn’t work in the previous year and understand why they didn’t work.
- Identify specific areas for improvement in 2019 and plan how to achieve these improvements.
- Review marketing performance and stats from 2018: which marketing strategies or campaigns delivered the most, which ones didn’t deliver as expected, etc.
- Set 2019 goals and targets.
Annual Marketing Plan
I am a firm believer that marketing is one of the key secrets to business success and therefore believe in the importance and value of producing an annual marketing plan. Marketing is the function of educating and communicating with your target audience. The marketing plan we produce in our business works on a weekly and monthly format, allowing my team and I to see all our planned marketing activities for each week of each month for the entire year at a glance. This plan takes out the guesswork when it comes to when and how to market during the year. Once the plan is complete, it needs to become someone’s job to deliver on the plan and as the business owner or manager, your job is to hold that person accountable.
*For a free copy of our marketing plan template, email adminkloof@actioncoach.com
darrynlegrange@actioncoach.com
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