Your small or mid-sized business (also known as SMB for short) likely has a lot it needs to accomplish in 2023. Whether 2022 was a struggle, as it was for many businesses, or whether it was your most successful year yet, you want to ensure things move upward for you in the year ahead. But what’s the best approach to take to accomplish that?
Some of those growth strategies will stay consistent from year to year, while others will depend on business trends specific to right now. The best plan for your SMB takes both strategies into account. With that in mind, here are eight things your business should think about for 2023.
1. Revisit Your Purpose
This is something you should do at the beginning of every year: Take an hour or two to consider your why. Why did you establish this business? What was your goal? Whom were you planning to serve? Think about how that vision evolved or changed in the time since you opened, whether that’s one year or several decades. Maybe your mission has changed—you’re more focused on a new aspect and you’re less focused on another, for example. Consider how all aspects of the plan you’re forming for the year ahead support the mission or purpose you’ve established for your business.
2. Consider The Industry
Second, take a critical look at your industry. How has it changed? Consider what you need to do to keep up with the industry, or ways you can continue to set yourself apart and fill a need that your fellows in the industry are neglecting. Create a SWOT analysis of your business within the context of the greater industry: How are you stronger than your competitors or weaker than your competitors? What opportunities are there that your competitors aren’t meeting, and what threats do your competitors pose to you that you need to overcome?
3. Set A Goal
Ask yourself what your goal is for the year ahead. Remember to develop your goals using the SMART method—a goal should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Break down what steps you’ll need to reach every month or every quarter to reach this goal for the year.
4. Consider How Your Operations Are Running
When you’ve been running the day-to-day activities of a business for years, it’s often easy to lose sight of what’s effective and what isn’t. Take a critical look at your operations and determine where resources—including time and energy—are being wasted. Maybe it’s something as simple as canceling a weekly team meeting that isn’t as productive as you hoped it would be, thus giving your employees an extra hour to focus on timely projects. Examining your operations also means looking at team members who demonstrate leadership skills and who might be able to take on a more influential role within the company’s structure.
5. Set The Right Budget
Based on what you spent last year compared with the profit you made, you might be able to afford to invest more money into your business (with the expectation you’ll bring in an even greater profit). On the other hand, if your profit margin was not as large as expected, you might need to cut back on some expenses. In an ideal world, your 2023 budget would allow you to spend more money than in past years (after all, a growing business is going to spend more), but given forecast problems with the economy, this might not be possible.
6. Expanding Your Social Media Presence
Social media continues to be a crucial part of any business and one of your best tools for marketing and reaching your target audience. In 2023, you should aim to be more active on social media, interact with more people within your niche, and to even join a growing platform like TikTok if you’re not already on it.
7. Make A Point Of Networking
Along the same lines as expanding your social media presence, you should also be networking in person to form valuable business-to-business contacts within your industry.
8. Update Your Technology
Finally, the most important thing you can do for your business: You need to invest in tech upgrades. Technology is continually changing and developing, offering you greater opportunities to do more for your business. It’s a way to streamline your workflow, accomplish more, and serve your customers better. Consider transferring important storage to the Cloud for easy sharing and backup, using online invoicing for the convenience of your customers, and even using a CRM to keep track of all the people your business serves. Of course, updating your technology will help you accomplish the aforementioned other goals. Better IT infrastructure will help you run your operations better, and using a CRM will help you stay on budget. You’ll be amazed at what a game-changer updated technology can be.
Interested in having our team be part of your technology upgrades for 2023? We’ll walk you through the most important decisions you need to make. Reach out to our team at Gryphon Consulting by calling 301-789-1029.
