Business Goals for the New Year

The excitement of a new year can quickly turn to stress and anxiety if these new opportunities don’t turn into real outcomes for your business. Setting some new business goals is a great way to maintain this momentum and make sure that your salon or beauty spa is starting the year the right way!

Planning to plan

Many business owners get bogged down in the day-to-day duties and don’t have the time to look at the bigger picture. The new year is a great time to step back, take a deep breath, and decide what you want for your business in 2020. By taking some time to think about, research, and implement some concrete business goals, you’ll be able to catapult your business to the next level!

Setting the right goals

It’s important that any goals you set for your business are both achievable and impactful. We’ve all drawn up a long list of New Year’s resolutions only to see that same list crumpled up in the bin before the calendar flips over to February. Setting yourself business goals that can be achieved in an incremental and realistic fashion, means you’re already on the way to achieving them.
When setting goals its always important to remember the acronym S.M.A.R.T – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. If you honor these five principles when setting business goals you will ensure that you are focusing on the right targets and not wasting your time on vague and unachievable goals that do little to help your business.

Set some financial goals for 2020

For any business owner, considering the financial reality of their business can be a daunting prospect. Many salon and spa owners for example will focus on broad financial goals that do little to improve the health of their business. With well considered business goals however, it will be possible to work towards to demonstrable growth. The new year is a great time to conduct an honest assessment of where your business stands and decide what specific targets will help you reach the next level. These goals could be increase revenue by x amount, increase spending per client by x, or decrease costs by a targeted amount per month. It’s important to be specific when setting these business goals, so that you can track your progress towards them as you go.

This is also a great time to contact service providers like business advisors or accountants to see if there is anything they can be doing to help you achieve your business goals. With a little expert knowledge and some concrete targets your business will be on its way to a financially healthier 2020.

Give your social media presence a makeover

Developing a memorable and engaging social media presence is a great way of driving new clients to your business. Create engaging content that authentically reflects your brand and values. This gives your clients a meaningful way to engage with you outside the salon while ‘tags’ and ‘shares’ provide a great way to attract new business.

Satisfied customers are the best marketing tool for a small business, and social media is the perfect way for them to share their satisfaction with their friends. Setting up a simple follow-up message is a great way to encourage your clients to leave a review on your Facebook page, which will then be seen by their friends and followers.

Focus on simple goals like creating regular, high quality content in a medium that you are not currently using (maybe a short video for Facebook or Snapchat) that highlights a point of interest about your business that clients might not know about. Offering a promotion on social media targeting the friends of established customers is another great way to gauge the effectiveness of this strategy.

Embrace new technology

Implementing new software or hardware can be a daunting prospect, but deploying an innovative piece of technology can be transformative for any business. Unfortunately it’s far too easy to concentrate on your daily activities and write off new innovations as ‘not worth the effort right now’. The problem with this way of thinking is that if you’re hearing about these new innovations in your industry, chances are your competitors are already using them.

The latest tech doesn’t just make things easier for you as a business owner, it makes things easier for your clients as well.
Embracing new technology gives you the potential to upgrade every area of your business. Bookings, customer service, point of sale, reporting, and even productivity can all be improved with new technology. With the right attitude and the right innovations your business can be revolutionised in ways you never thought possible. Setting new business goals for the year provides the perfect opportunity to research new technology that will not only track your performance towards these goals, but help you achieve them.

By taking the time to carefully consider where your business stands now, you’ll be able to develop a set of business goals that will drive your growth throughout the next 12 months and let you map out your most successful year yet.