It’s that magical time of year when blank slates abound, and optimism is high for the future. New Year’s resolutions offer a powerful impetus to improve your small business and foster the positive change you’ve long been planning. Alongside your own personal goals and hopes, here are some tangible improvements you can make to kick start your business growth plans for 2019.
New Year’s Resolutions for Small Business
Improve Your Website
With the day-to-day hustle of running a business, it’s easy to put off projects like modernizing your business website. After all, if you’ve got an existing site there’s likely several more important projects attracting your attention. Your website is your digital shopfront. It’s often the first point of contact for potential customers and we’re all aware of how important first impressions are. If you run a brick and mortar store you wouldn't accept garbage piling up around the place. Your website should be treated no differently. These days, beautiful websites can be crafted using services like Shopify, especially if you’re operating in the ecommerce sphere. GD Commerce is a Shopify partner and we’d love to chat about making your website vision into a reality. Contact us to find out more.
Start Content Marketing
You’ve created a beautiful website, now it’s time to attract customers through the door. The gold standard for achieving this business goal is to leverage the power of content marketing. For a small time investment on your behalf, creating a blog will allow you to tap into the power of search engine optimization and help make your website more “Google friendly.” Your blog should tackle timely, popular topics you have expertise in. What kind of questions do your customers typically have? What issues regularly crop up in your industry? Answering questions like these is the first step to creating content. Blogs are an amazing way to enable customers to find your website and fantastic fodder for sharing on social media accounts.
Consider Mentoring Others
Think back to the early days of your business. There were likely moments you keenly felt the challenges of entrepreneurship and the isolation those moments can bring. Who did you turn to for advice and mentorship? In 2019, consider offering your services as a mentor to an entrepreneur in your field. While it won’t have a direct financial impact on your business, acting as a sounding board for a fellow entrepreneur is a personally and professionally enriching experience. Helping others to talk through their issues may even give you a fresh insight into the difficulties you face with your own business.
Start Planning Long-Term
After coming through the busy festive period, there’s likely several things you’d do differently next time out. Why not devote some time now to prepare your business for the coming 12 months? Start by analyzing sales in previous years and planning stock levels for the coming year accordingly. How was your staffing level during the end of year rush? Allow time to bring on extra people resources for next year. Is your web hosting solution up to periods of high demand? Conduct stress tests on your infrastructure to make sure it’s bulletproof. Are you using a CRM to gather customer information in one convenient place? If not, look into solutions. There are a million small ways you can use this time to run a more efficient operation.
Delegate
As an entrepreneur you likely want to do everything yourself. We get it. That’s why you got into business and it’s the fuel that powers your success. However, this “do it yourself” approach can, if left unchecked, lead to burnout. Hiring staff inherently means you trust their abilities. Lean on them and empower them to take up a leadership role in your organization. Delegating tasks to your people is a necessary skill to learn (and it is a skill) for your own health and the long-term well being of your business.
Thank you to our GD Commerce Partners:
- Create Your Business Website Using Shopify
- Harness the Power of Drip CRM Software
- Set up Subscription Boxes, Recurring Orders and Payments Easily Using Bold Partners
- Boost Your Business Bookkeeping with Bench
- Learn How to Master Website SEO Using Mangools