Key things for a 4th quarter review and for 2022
Aside from all the festivities that come with making the 4th quarter my favorite time of the year, as a business owner, it is a critical one. It is in this period that you wrap up the current year and start planning for the new year.
Planning and evaluation are necessary steps towards achieving business goals, especially as a solopreneur or a small business owner. The last few months of the year are not the time for you to fall of. Instead, it is time for you to finish the year strong and set aside time for reflection, evaluation, and planning; setting you up for success in the coming year. In these last few months of 2021 make sure among the celebrating that you set aside time for a 4th quarter or year end review and 2022 planning.
Key things to include in your 4th quarter review (you may need to include others pending your industry or your business structure).
Sales review: This entails reviewing your sales goals (projections) for the year v your actual revenue. What were your sales goals for each quarter? Did you meet them or fall short? Not only will this tell you what you did against your projections, but you will also be able to determine what factors enabled or hindered meeting your numbers. This will enable you to set new goals and effective means of achieving them for the coming business year.
Marketing review: What were your marketing goals for each quarter? It involves reviewing your metrics (impressions, click-throughs, downloads, etc.). If you run promotions, compare each promotion to the other. Assess if your clients/customers or followers are aligned to your target audience. Review what you have learned about your target audience over the year. Is your target audience actually your target audience?
SWOT Analysis: This is a great time to do a SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It allows you to examine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business. Check out this link (https://bit.ly/3vVyDvN) for a free guide on the S.W.O.T analysis.
Implementing the SWOT analysis, especially after doing a sales and marketing review, will make your 4th quarter review process even more accessible and quicker because it allows you to gather data and determine what worked and didn’t. These can potentially allude to strengths and weaknesses).
Budget review: This involves tracking all your expenses during the year. Did you overspend or underspend? If you overspent, you might need to determine if the pending expenses will offer you a substantive R.O.I. worthy of incurring further expenses. If not, consider moving it to the following year. And if you underspent, which is the better option, you can run another promotion, boost advertisement to help you meet your sales goals. Or you can convert those funds for the following year’s budget planning.
Vendor review: It is excellent to have vendors who add considerable value to your business, aligning with your business goals. Just like you review your business, they also do theirs. They may change their offers, raise their prices, etc. This is a good time to determine who you want to continue working with in the future and those with who you may decide to not renew.
Review and celebrate your accomplishments: This applies two-fold. The first part is to review what titles you added to your name. What certifications or awards have you been able to achieve? What new things have you done i.e. become a speaker? Have you been able to satisfy your customers’ needs?
The second part is celebrating all your accomplishments, no matter how little. You have worked hard and continued to show up. No matter how small the accomplishment or how much blood, sweat, and tears it took to get here you are here. So celebrate with you.
Audit your website: Your business website maybe the first contact a customer/client may have with your business. Hence, it should represent what your business stands for in the best possible way. Is your site current? The focus is often on adding new promotions, offers, etc., to the site and removing the old ones.
Now that you have taken a deep look into 2021 it’s time to plan 2022
Planning for 2022 is all about making plans to align with your business (both sales and marketing goals). It may even include aligning personal goals with your business, especially if you desire to make changes in your business like hiring a team to give you more free time.
The following are key things to include in building your 2022 plans:
Set your budget: You should have a business operations budget, a marketing budget and pending your business model a sales budget. In order to be profitable you want to ensure that your expenses are not exceeding your revenue. Your operations budget are the things you need to run your business i.e. utility bill, license fees, storage, your team, etc. Your marketing budget could include things like Facebook or Google ads, your website, promotional giveaways, your graphics, etc. Review your budget for 2021, and use the data from it in setting the 2022 budget.
Create your business goals: this could include hiring a VA or employees, setting better boundaries with clients.
Create your sales goals: This could be focusing on specific products/services, increasing your number of clients to increase your monthly revenue, raising your prices, etc.
Create your marketing goals: This may include growing your email list, rebranding, reaching a new target audience, increasing awareness or engagement, etc.
Once you have done the tedious work of crunching numbers and building budgets, the fun part can begin. This includes:
Determine your product offering: This involves determining what products/services are best for you to focus on. Will you be launching a new product/service, or do you intend to enhance already existing products and services? When is the best time to offer them? You can use the S.W.O.T analysis to assess any strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Are there any changes you need to make to better give you an advantage over your competition? Are you still solving your target’s problem? This will help you determine what if any change you need to make to your offering.
Evaluate your price: Based on your sales goals, you would have monthly, quarterly, or annual sales targets. Assess if you need to raise your prices? If you choose to raise your prices they should not exceed the value that your target places on the product/service otherwise they won’t purchase it. If you do still need to raise your price see how you can add in more value to your offer, this will help them to justify the price.
Build your promotional plan: Take each of the products/services, marketing goals you want to focus on during the course of the year and determine when you want to promote it, how many times during the year, what are you going to do to promote it. You don’t have to have all 12 months figured out in detail. But I do recommend building your plan including the details for Q. 1 and at least high-level details for Q2. Are you doing trade shows, social media, launches, collaborations, ads, etc. If you want to build awareness what is the plan that you are build trust and recognition for your brand? What is your plan for SEO, social media, how do you let people experience your brand i.e. collaborations and partnerships, podcasts, etc.
Set your Metrics: assign KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to each promotional channel you have implemented, to measure your promotional success. Your KPIs should be specific and measurable. This is so key and often left out. Your KPIs helps measure your success or how far way you are.
2022 is here, are you be ready?
