After four exceptionally busy quarters in 2016, the business world will essentially briefly shut down for a week over the Christmas period. Everyone will be back and raring to go in 2017, however, with KPIs to meet, budgets to set, and overhead to consider, it’s a time for a bit of assistance on how to keep everything pointing in the right direction.
The following tactics will help your business to keep on the straight and narrow, whilst also ensuring you bolster your productivity, conversion rate, and a couple of other key areas for the four long quarters which await us.
- Set realistic goals
Before you head into the year, don’t be too grandiose. Consider what you want to achieve carefully and set realistic expectations. There’s no point getting ahead of your and stating you’ll achieve things which simply aren’t possible. Be pragmatic and you’ll likely prosper as a result, and you’ll be more satisfied and less stressed.
So, in other words, don’t make outlandish claims such as “we’ll be as big as Google by 2018!” – be humble and the results will soon come your way.
- Consider progressive marketing
If you’re still using interruption-based marketing tactics such as cold calling, it’s really time to stop. It’s not the 1990s – it’s 2017 and there are a huge array of new possibilities available for your business.
Whether it’s social media marketing, content marketing, or PPC, these are great choices which can make a big difference.
There are also progressive tactics such as online lead generation which, regardless of your industry, can create high-quality sales lead solutions. If, for instance, you’re looking for financial marketing services you can turn to renowned agencies for assistance, alleviating the stress of meeting KPIs.
You may even take further steps to improve your marketing strategy by visiting a financial seminar from companies like LeadJig (additional info here), which will help sharpen your skills and marketing effort.
- Take advantage of SEO
Too many businesses are still terrified of SEO and its potential consequences or don’t understand what it is. Worse still, some still practice black hat tactics and the results can be disastrous.
2017 should be the year when you take complete ownership of SEO and scale Google’s search rankings. This SEO guide from Moz is a great way to go about getting a good understanding of the fundamental elements you need to make SEO work for your business. Thankfully, many research tasks you can perform are free!
- Go green
Making your office green is pretty straight forward – from tactics as simple as getting rid of your printer, to recycling all of your garbage, it’s not only a positive PR spin but you’ll also save money.
Ink cartridges, for instance, can wrack up a vast amount of costs over the course of 12 months. Much of it isn’t needed, of course. Do you really need to print all of those documents for a meeting? Or can you use a memory stick and a laptop? Approaches like this will save you a lot of money in the long run.
This article from Forbes on how to make your office green is a fantastic way to get the ball rolling.
- Use free software to your advantage
There’s a huge amount of free software you can take advantage of, so you can use this 14 free online tools guide to help you along. Whether it’s for SEO research, an in-email CRM, project management, marketing purposes (think social media), or a whole host of other options, you have the power to take advantage of other people’s kindly efforts to structure a brilliant marketing campaign for 2017.
It’s going to be a year of golden opportunities, so don’t be afraid to miss out on what’s available to you. By committing yourself to your business and thinking about your overhead issues logically, you can make the year a success.