11 Business New Year’s Resolutions for Female Entrepreneurs
Whether or not you enjoy making personal new year’s resolutions is absolutely up to you.
Some people prefer setting themselves specific goals, some others find it stressful and counterproductive.
Hey, you do you!
However, when it comes to your badass female-founded brand, business new year’s resolutions can make all the difference.
Screw unrealistic diets and all the new-year-new-me crap!
Let’s focus on actionable business goals that you can implement this year to grow your brand, increase your income, and simplify your working day.
1. Stop trying to please everyone: define your target audience
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (louder for the people in the back):
When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.
It’s an easy mistake as a business owner because you might be worried that fine-tuning your offer and marketing strategy will cause you to miss out on sales from other people.
Well, I beg to differ! It’s actually the opposite.
It’s much easier to concentrate on selling to the right person than to waste time and money with a random group of people that aren’t even interested in what you do.
Most importantly, your products or services should clearly solve someone’s problem. How can you do that if you don’t know who you’re selling to?
Start the new year by identifying your target customers and consider creating some buyers’ personas to keep them in mind more easily.
2. Create a strong(er) brand
Coca Cola, Nike, that little hipster café in town… Whether you like them or not, you can’t argue against the fact that they’re all strong brands.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a woman solopreneur selling services or a female-founded company shipping products:
for people to remember you and appreciate you, you must build a recognisable and memorable brand.
To accomplish this business new year’s resolution:
Remind yourself how you can help your target audience and make it crystal clear to them;
Revisit your website and logo: is the branding consistent, from colors to fonts and tone of voice?
What are your ethos? Why did you decide to do what you do? What is your business mission?
Create a brand story;
As well as your business website, is your branding consistent across all of your social media platforms, too?
And as for the last point...
3. Be social (on the right platforms)
You really can’t afford to miss out on social media anymore.
If you aren’t on any of them, find out on what platforms your target audience is most active and get on them RIGHT NOW.
If you already are but it’s not going well:
Stop seeing social media as a place to brag about your company’s accomplishments;
Instead, create an audience-oriented strategy that brings them value;
Remember the 80:20 rule: only 20% of what you post should be a direct promotion. The rest? Relevant content to educate and entertain your audience;
Post consistently and interact with your followers.
4. Switch from a newsletter to an audience-oriented email marketing strategy
If you haven’t got a subscribers’ list, this could be the year where you finally create one.
If you do but it’s an old-style newsletter with boring updates about your company, you might want to reconsider your strategy.
After all, be honest: do you (personally) enjoy receiving spam from tons of companies telling you all about themselves?
If you want to stand out, one of the best business new year’s resolutions is to turn your newsletter into an audience-oriented marketing strategy.
Sure, you can still send the occasional promotion, but you want to focus on bringing value to your target audience just like you do with your other content.
5. Remember the importance of work-life balance
This is vital both for solopreneurs and small businesses with employees:
a burned-out mind isn’t a productive mind!
If you work on your own, remind yourself why you decided to start your own business in the first place (I bet that ‘to be in charge of my time’ was up on the list) and set some boundaries. For example, no checking emails after 5 pm and no more overbooking yourself;
If you have some employees, stop texting them outside work hours unless the building is literally on fire. Respect their personal time and days off and encourage them to switch off whenever they’re not working. If you can implement or keep some working-from-home options even beyond the pandemic, I’d encourage you to do so.
6. Achieve the greenest version of your female-founded business
Personally, I have sustainability at heart and, since you live on my same planet, I hope you do, too.
Is there any chance that you can make your business more sustainable and ethical, this year?
While this should be a personal responsibility, I’m sure you won’t mind me telling you that 33 percent of customers take sustainability criteria into account when choosing what and who to buy from… and that this trend is only expected to grow!
And this goes beyond a product itself: it’s also about your company as a whole.
7. Make your business website mobile-friendly
Over 60% of all Google searches are performed on mobile: are you really gonna risk a Russian roulette by having an old-style static website that doesn’t adapt to smaller screens?
Instead, implement a responsive layout so that your business website looks just as good and user-friendly on phones as it does on larger desktops.
8. Up your SEO game
Social media and word-of-mouth are still important, but they’re not everything when it comes to attracting new customers.
If you want to be found by people who’ve never even heard of your brand but are looking for the products/services that you offer, you need to make your business website easy to find for the right keywords.
Simple as that.
Depending on your time, budget and current knowledge, one of your business new year’s resolutions could either be to learn or outsource SEO.
9. Subscribe to relevant blogs
If you want your audience to perceive you as a thought-leading expert in your field and to choose you over your competitors, you must be aware of what’s actually happening in your industry.
An easy way to do so is to subscribe to relevant blogs or Google updates. That way, you can be a step ahead of the game and be sure to write timely pieces of content.
10. Start blogging on your business website
Just like you’d go to other blogs for knowledge, guess what? So do your customers!
Not having a blog on your business website is one of the biggest mistakes you can make, but so is having one that’s all about blowing your own trumpet.
‘We’re delighted to announce…’
Well, we’re not delighted to read it. Soz.
Your blog should be a consciously created content marketing strategy where you blog about relevant industry-related topics to educate and entertain your existing audience.
Even better? To attract new customers! Did you know that websites with blogs generate 67% more leads than those without one?
Plus, having a blog will do wonders for your SEO, since each blog post is a new page that allows you to target a new relevant keyword.
Here are all the benefits of blogging for business.
Love the sound of it but...
Haven’t got time?
Not sure how to write SEO-friendly blog posts for your specific audience?
I can take care of it for you with my blog writing services.
11. Review your website copy
Now that you’ve identified your target audience, realised what problem of theirs you can solve and created a stronger brand, ask yourself: does my current business website reflect all this?
If it doesn’t, now it’s the time to change it.
You have 8 seconds to impress your visitors before they click away.
Your target customers must be able to immediately find out:
Who you are/what you sell
What problem of theirs you can solve with your products or services.
Obviously, your website copy must also be optimised for search engines.
Not sure where to start? Check out my website copywriting services.
There you go: 11 of the best business new year’s resolutions to start these 365 days with a bang.
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