The start of the year is traditionally a good time to map out your marketing goals for the months ahead.

To help ensure your plans do indeed become a reality this year, we have jotted down some success influencing tips.  They come from having helped many businesses and professionals over the years devise marketing, business and personal plans that do get achieved.

Ensuring a decent chance of success – our top 5 tips

1. Only have one very broad goal for the year – anything more than that and may struggle to achieve it. Of course if you do achieve your goal ahead of schedule, you can always set another to pursue.  The key is to only have one broad goal on the go at a time – otherwise you may be spreading yourself too thinly and fail to get any of your goals accomplished.

2. Break down your broad goal into small and manageable targets – this then lays out the step by step roadmap you need to follow. Ensure your targets are achievable and give them a realistic timetable, which factors in all the other things you have on the go. This will ensure you give yourself a fair chance to complete them.

3. Be very focused on who your audience is for each target. The more you understand that audience, the more your action, communication, promotion etc can be made to resonate with them 100%.

4. Be clear about the resources you need to accomplish your goal – consider the insight, skills, people, budget and time you need to achieve the things you want. If you don’t identify these and factor in how you are going to gather those resources together, your plan will stumble.

5. Build in review points along the way – this helps you to assess progress and keep your plan’s implementation on track. Don’t forget to investigate causes of missed deadlines, plan actions which rectify any unnecessary deviations and also celebrate successes.

And finally…

…Adopt the mind-set and build in the expectation that the completion of your goal and its targets will be a journey in the months ahead.  Whilst there may be quick wins (and it’s good to build these in to the plan), it is likely you will be moving at a slow, but hopefully steady, pace to be where you want to be.

The trick is to have perseverance, patience and a degree of flexibility so, whatever this year brings, your goal is certainly achieved and achieved well.

Find out about our work in supporting businesses with their marketing planning or contact us for more information.