UPDATE: How I'm accomplishing my small business goals for the new year

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2020 is almost over! (I’m so glad.)

2020 has been troublesome for many, and we didn’t even start most of our goals. It seemed like a game of hot potato as we juggled responsibilities with our dreams.

At the end of last year, I set a few goals I wanted to tackle regarding my small business. I was able to address them all this year (amazingly), but I am not finished with any of them by any means. 

I learned from one of my mentors this year not to put a time limit on your goals. You might find that putting an end frame helps you achieve your goals, but it put unnecessary pressure on my peace of mind and decreased my quality of work in the end. 

As the year ends, I’m happy with the success that I’ve accomplished over the past year. I haven’t reached my expectations with my sales goal, but I’m still learning and able to say I’m pushing myself in a way that could be progressive in the future.

So, here’s what I’ve done to make sure I’m successful with my small business goals and how you can be too!

Small Business Goal 1: Define my Target Audience

I’ve made some significant strides in defining a target audience. I could and am doing more, but I know I’ve come a long way. 

I had to get some help with this in the last few months. I talked with Janet Soriano to get a clearer picture of who I wanted to work with. It took a few hours, but I felt better about where and who I could market my business towards without feeling so pushy about my services.

When I first started, I invested in CREATE, which helped me a lot. I was able to package most of my business strategy into one cohesive workbook without getting too distracted.

I still have a bit of homework to do in this category, but now I only have to narrow it down somewhat rather than start from square one.

Small Business Goal 2: Promote and Build my Services

With this business goal, I didn’t necessarily complete it. Instead, I was able to re-frame it.

The most significant change in this small business goal has been approaching clients and what I can do for them. Sure, I could offer everything under the sun, but that wouldn’t appeal to who I wanted to work with. 

Over the year, I learned that I could offer a few essential jobs that I was happier working on rather than everything I only felt like I could do but didn’t want to.

With my mentor, Crystal, I was able to narrow down my services and simplify my business model. I went from nearly 20 packages to about 5. It’s been an enormous relief managing a smaller amount of packages.

Small Business Goal 3: Pinterest Marketing Strategy

2020 brought a significant change in how Pinterest Marketing worked. So many people started complaining about being marked as spam or losing all their impressions. 

I did notice a drop in my impressions over the last few months. Still, overall, my Pinterest Marketing Strategy has held pretty steady. It did drop a bit but seemed to be yo-yo-ing rather than altogether dropping. Some of this had to do with Tailwind Plus, but rest assured, it was still helping rather than hurting.

I also had help in this area from Julianne Machen from Julsie and Co. We traded services for a month, and she had some great insights about my Pinterest Marketing Strategy. 

Throughout the next year, I’m hoping to increase my engagement further and link clicks for my Pinterest Marketing Strategy. 

Small Business Goal 4: Blog Editorial Calendar

I made some headway with my blog editorial calendar, but I kept up only about a month or so in advance. Executing my plan was more of a shortcoming than most of my other small business goals.

My blog posts suffered, as well. While I kept up thoughtful and similar content, I lagged when it came to actual posts. As the year has ended, it’s gotten harder to finish a blog post consistently throughout the week. 

I’ve been able to post every week; however, there was a brief stretch that I hadn’t posted in about 1-2 months. I tried not to be too rough on myself this year because most of us had other pressing issues to worry over when it came to March or April.

I’ve been looking at a few social media and Pinterest Content Planners for 2021, and I hope that these will help me stay on track with blog content over the new year.

Small Business Goal 5: Social Media Marketing

I feel like I progressed the most in regards to social media marketing. Even though I haven’t gained a bunch of traction, I feel like I’ve learned and stayed the course and learned different techniques throughout the year.

I knew I focused on learning about Pinterest Marketing Strategies, but I also concentrated on Instagram in 2020. I tried to focus on one social media platform at a time and not get too overwhelmed.

With Tailwind Plus, I was able to post to Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for many of the same posts. It wasn’t a cure-all, but it did make things more comfortable and more consolidated than learning about multiple platforms at once.

I know I need to expand on my knowledge of Instagram more than what I currently have. Still, it’s been a great learning experience.

Small Business Goal 6: Email Marketing Building

While I was able to create a schedule and templates to work with when it came to Email Marketing, I felt like I fell short in this regard throughout the year. 

I spent so much time learning how to do a specific function within Mailchimp when I could have done it another way with much simpler results. It made my life so much more complicated than it needed to be. 

Now that I’ve figured out some aspects of email marketing, I feel much more confident. However, my most significant factor has been keeping things consistent. My format might have stayed consistent, but not my execution.

So I hope that I can improve my output in regards to email marketing. Maybe I’ll learn or develop a few new tricks and freebies this year.

In the coming weeks, I’ll dive into more small business goals that I hope to work on and achieve during 2021. 

If you’re looking for more small business goals that might help your business, join my e-newsletter for more tips to do your successful business.