If you’re diving into planning this January there’s a few things you need to know about your business to make sure that your plan:
- Capitalises on what you did well
- Makes sure you avoid making the same mistakes twice
- Gives you the maximum opportunity to hit your financial goals
So…whilst there’s a lot of things to consider when you think about your business plan, here’s our top 5 things you need to delve into the detail with:
Marketing
We’re sure you spend a fair amount of time, or money, posting on social media, running ads, maybe attending networking events…. but what’s your return on that investment? Here’s some fact-finding recommendations that you can use to plan where to focus your energy in 2023:
- Dive into your client list – where did most clients come from? Where did your best clients find you? And which channel or marketing tool isn’t yielding you the right results…. use this to decide which is your primary focus area for the next stage in your business.
- Which posts work best for you – look at your insights – which posts get the best reach, the most engagement and the most clicks through to your profile or website – your clients show you what’s relevant to you through the actions they take when they see your marketing…make sure you’re listening
- Is one of your platforms lagging behind the others – slow audience growth, a lack of traction – ask yourself why? Is your ideal client actually hanging out there and could you maximise the return on your social media if you re-directed that effort to your hardest working platform?
Product structure
Here’s the truth!
Your products need to make sense to clients.
Your business offering needs to enable clients to buy from you more than once if you want to build long term success.
So… look back at your clients – how many bought more than one thing from you?
What’s the logical purchase journey? For example if you sell a power hour, is a place in your membership the next logical step…or is it a deeper coaching package? Once you’ve worked out what works best, then you can:
- Focus your marketing on the product that you know helps you to upsell from to streamline your message and avoid confusing your clients
- Build nurture sequences or touch points to help clients make that leap from one product or service to another
- Create offerings that connect so that your clients stay with you for longer
Pricing
You need to get your pricing right, and yet most of us don’t have a clue where to start! Ask yourself how you decided your prices…. did you:
- Choose an ideal hourly rate for your work – if you do this, remember that all the hours count, not just the ones where you are with clients. So, to do this well, you need to have a really clear understanding of how long it actually takes to serve a client – including prep, write ups, travel etc.
- Have a daily income target. If you do this, ask yourself how many hours of the day are realistically going to be client facing if you’re a service-based business. Then, ask yourself what passive income products you can build into your offering to avoid you capping out on what you have the potential to earn because of the limit on available hours in the day.
- Look at competitors to base your prices on the ‘market rate’ for your products or services. If this is you, re-visit those competitors – are you moving with the market? Additionally, we’d always suggest that you are unique and that you can add value or expertise to any product or service to sit right at the top, or even above, the market rate!
- You might use a cost-based matrix where your prices alter based on your costs, for example where you want to pass on bulk savings to customers in a product business – if you do this, make sure you’re focused on winning the most profitable business in 2023…remembering that one big sale may take a lot less time to make than 30 smaller ones…
Profitability
Business owners can have a tendency to focus on income over profit…and then when profit is considered it tends to be a monthly or annual figure.
We’d recommend looking at profitability at product level – which products make you the most profit? Which ones make the most profit per hour? Which have the highest and lowest costs associated with them.
Consider this – if you’ve ever been told to have three offerings because most people will choose the middle one… that’s not just because people like to pick a medium range offering in most cases. Done right, the middle offering can become what we call a ‘no brainer choice’ for the client… the ideal scenario being that the customer gets really great value compared with the entry level offering but it is actually more profitable per customer for you….and there’s lots of ways to make that happen.
- You could add in passive products that have zero or very low cost to serve but which deliver great value for the client giving you an instant profit boost and the client the best experience.
- You could offer payment plans for your mid-range offering to make it affordable whilst ensuring that profitability wise it works well for you.
- You could raise the price of your entry level offering to make it less attractive in comparison to the mid-range – this is especially helpful where you want a lower ticket item to attract interest but it’s less profitable for you than the mid-range offer that you want the client to choose.
When you look at profit at product level in this way, you give yourself a deeper understanding of what’s driving your business growth – and you can focus your efforts at making that happen for you!
And finally…Joy
Don’t under-estimate the importance of loving what you do – you are self-employed – you get to choose and we forget that all too quickly sometimes!
So, what brought you joy, grew your business, delighted your clients and made absolute sense?
Make sure that doing more of those things is a key part of next year’s plans. Map out your ideal first quarter. Think about what your best week ever would look like and build a plan to make that happen.
This is where looking back is so important – do you remember what you were doing in your business 6, 8 or even 11 months ago? It’s all too easy to forget things we did that we loved as we get caught up in the next thing and the next. Look back through your diary and your reviews…and find the things that you can’t wait to do more of.
We love to help business owners to plan for success and to make it happen through mentoring sessions, expert consultations and through hands on business operations support. Don’t worry if you know you need ‘something’ but you’re just not sure what….
Book a call with me and let’s chat,
Natali
