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This Holiday season – with 2 short work weeks in a row, many of us will be taking time off, or, if you are sticking around the office, will focus more on improving internal processes, and infrastructure rather than looking for growth. That’s right. Sometimes it’s good to pause and work with what you have, rather than constantly looking ahead, focusing on growth opportunities. Growing is awesome, don’t get me wrong – it’s kind of our raison d’etre – so let’s see how pausing affects your business’s growth.
1. What have we achieved this year?
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
It’s easy to get caught up in “‘what else needs to be done” and “how can we grow more”, however, unfortunately, this mentality overrides the “wow, we’ve grown so much”. The latter though, gives you the boost to do more and as a result to grow more. The “what else needs to be done” depletes your energy and your focus, because, guess what – there’s always so much you can do, and especially on the marketing front.
This Holiday Season, pause and acknowledge the growth, you’ve achieved. And even if you’ve done a few mistakes, or misjudgements in 2015 – I bet they are great marketing lessons for 2016. And that’s GROWTH, right?
2. What internal processes must go?
Strategy is awesome. Processes (almost) save lives. Although, naturally, when we create marketing or business processes, there’s a tendency to over-analyze or over-process. This December, look at your internal marketing and business processes, reports, or policies, and see if there’s something that needs to be retired? What stays, and what goes?
We certainly will be doing just that ourselves this month, to ensure our monthly marketing reports to clients don’t just have numbers, but have a story about how marketing impacts their business. Definitely something that needs to be revised on a regular basis, as more and more platforms are being added to the marketing mix every year. By making our reports actionable and reflective (by benchmarking all data year over year), we are able to keep it all fresh and growth-oriented. Ahhh…
3. How will I grow my brand in 2016?
Transparency in business is critical these days. Consumers know what they want, or rather, they will do their research before purchasing and comparing your product and services to your competition, until they know what they want. That’s why branding is becoming more and more important, as it adds more credibility, and stability to your customers purchasing decision before they are ready. As you know, branding doesn’t happen overnight, so taking calculated steps year over year will bring you to your desired destination of having a strong, trusted, reliable brand, that contributes to your sales.
So think, what 3 (new) marketing activities are you going to add in 2016 to contribute to that long (branding) process? Already have something specific on your mind? Do share with us on Facebook, we’d love to hear from you!
As always, drop us a line, if you have ANY marketing dilemmas hanging over your head these days. Happy to chat marketing any day! Call us or stop by our Marketing Greenhouse in Vancouver, we always have chocolate!