A new year can mean a fresh start for
business owners, with holidays presenting not only a time to rest and
recuperate, but also a time to plan for the year ahead. If you want to make
sure you don’t miss your targets in 2015, keep on reading!
Use Christmas holidays to plan
For those of you who are lucky enough to
have holidays, they present a great opportunity to plan. Use this time to
review the year that was – look at the goals you set, analyse your financial
position and set new goals. Don’t have time to plan over the holidays? We can
review your business for you! A great way to kick off the New Year is a
Business and Marketing Health Check. Click here for more information.
Try something new
A new year presents the perfect
opportunity to try something new. Freshen up your store, or introduce new
products or services to your range. Have you thought about selling online, or
utilising social media as an additional selling tool? Why not embrace digital
technology and launch a new website, or start a blog. The options are endless.
Review your website
Speaking of websites, when was the last
time you updated yours? For those of you who said within the last month or so,
kudos to you! We would always recommend keeping your website not only up to
date, but up with the times! If your website is looking a little drab and outdated,
why not give it a face lift? We specialise in what we like to call,
“re-skinning” websites, it’s a cost-effective way to utilise your current
website content and present it in a more contemporary way. Check out the
website comparison below.
Before
After
The PJL Group website was not particularly outdated, but the information was repetitive and the images and content made the website very slow to load. We re-skinned this
website, giving it a more contemporary look and feel, as well as updating and
summarising the content to present a less cluttered look. Click here to see the new website.
Automate your systems
Running a business is about working
smarter, not harder. With the advance of digital technology, many systems have
been automated to allow for more time to be spent on the more important things.
Take cloud accounting for example. Our lovely clients, Yates Baker Mclean,
introduced us to cloud accounting around 12 months ago, and it has literally
changed the way we do business. Not only can we view our accounts in real-time,
we can set monthly targets, automatically allocate transactions and produce
reports at the click of a mouse. And for payroll? An absolute breeze!!
Market your business effectively
Whether you use traditional media such
as newspaper or new media such as social media and the internet, marketing is
one of the most important actions you should take if you want to grow your
business. Depending on what industry you are in, how you market your business
will differ. It doesn’t need to be expensive, it just needs to be effective. Click here for information about our marketing services.
Leverage partnerships
One of the biggest learning's for us to
come out of 2014 is to leverage those partnerships. Setting strategic alliances
with key stakeholder groups and industry influencers is gold. Like the old
saying goes – it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Think about people or
other businesses you know offering a complementary product or service. Have you
thought about networking events or cross-promoting? Talk to us today!
