Another year full of potential promises is about to begin. For most of us handmade business owners, it’s time to start thinking about what we want our companies to accomplish in 2023. Maybe these goals include launching new products or continuing to build on the success of existing ones. As entrepreneurs, we are always ambitious and often question if we need to reinvent our business’s brand and online presence. All these reason and more, is why it can be so important to set new year resolutions for creative business owners.
2023 is here. Current economic predictions and market conditions are the first things that we need to take into consideration to list our priorities for the new year. We must find ways to attract leads, retain customers, and improve efficiency. Despite the challenges this year may bring, establishing goals now can set you and your business up for success.
Let’s discuss some resolutions for small business owners to pursue this year.
Set New Growth Goals
As being small business owners, we need to keep moving forward to stick around for the long haul. We know progress and growth isn’t always spread evenly across our businesses. Sometimes growth objectives are concentrated on a particular activity. Such as marketing, product development, or sales channels. The important thing is to determine what you want to do to take your business onto the next level. While also configuring how you’re going to get there.
Perhaps, you’re planning to create more brand awareness. To achieve this goal you will need to create a growth marketing campaign with informative online content about your brand. You do this in order to get the word out about the information you’re wanting to share whiling simultaneously gathering more leads.
You will also want to obtain a presence on social media. To achieve this, you may open a YouTube channel to create more traffic. Thus, bringing your brand to different channels. Write down the very specific steps that you’ll take to achieve each one of your goals. This will help you have a clear, defined path. Your chances of completing these goals by creating a list will drastically higher your chances of completion.
Growth objectives often become opportunities to serve customers better and bring innovations to your market. These objectives demonstrate you’re persistence. Which, ultimately, can contribute to more effective outcomes.
Improve Business Efficiency
The phrase “work smarter, not harder” usually applies to increasing efficiency or productivity. Efficiency improvements go hand-in-hand with using your resources in a more effective way. Some processes and workflows that you currently have in place can be improved by using software that have automated functionalities within them.
For example, using an inventory tracking system like, Inventora for your Inventory management can streamline your workload vastly. Inventory management is one of the most common bottlenecks for handmade businesses. This is because we don’t always actually have the best practices for it. Therefore, relying on a system that can automate your inventory tracking process, and gives you accurate data about how your business is doing, will make you achieve higher productivity. This will inevitably help you be able to scale your business, which is why it’s a great standard for new year resolutions for creative business owners.
You should also be considering ways to improve your business’s efficiency with your employees. Consider holding a staff meeting to get direct and productive conversation flowing about what works and what could be done better. You should be holding quarterly reviews for your team members, in addition to having group discussions about productivity. Allow opportunities for growth by letting your staff know in private, one-on-one discussions, what their personal strengths and weaknesses are for the business.
Organize Internal Business Functions
Let’s dive deep into how Inventora can help you improve efficiency this new year. We know your the bread and butter to your business starts with raw material tracking; a feature Inventora automates for you. Inventora will automatically deduct when you make a product. You can also have the accurate cost breakdown per piece once you input the materials that you use to make each one of your products.
With this being said, your process of production is going to be more efficient. The process of creating a new product is going to be faster now, because Inventora gives you your COGS, and all the calculations you need in order to have an optimal profit margin.
Not only will you receive those perks and benefits, but Inventora is the all-in-one system. The system prioritizes your need to keep track of your sales, customers, supply orders, production, financial reports, and more. Therefore, avoiding having everything on different spreadsheets, and helping you save time!
Upgrade Online Marketing Strategies
A good portion of our budget every year goes to our marketing efforts. While setting new year business goals, you should put this in high consideration. Surveys show that 57% of marketing budgets are invested in digital campaign activities. This number is expected to go up by 16% in 2023. However, adding more money into digital strategies does not always bring the return that you expect. You must first learn how to optimize your marketing efforts.
Start simply. Maintaining a website and sending targeted emails are crucial parts of online marketing strategies. Therefore, are having a social media presence and engaging with audiences through such platforms is a great way to create such awareness. Consider checking and updating any SEO from the pervious years. Keep what’s working, and change what isn’t. You’ll need to do your homework to understand what people are looking for when they go to search engines.
Performing these activities alone won’t get the job done. You must have a good background of data analysis, experimentation, and a deep understanding of your audience. Designing and implementing strategies that produce results, means you must move away from what you think you know about your audience and start relying on the data.
You can do this through your social media platforms and google analytics. Gathering all of this data you can improve open rates for emails, online conversions, and organic website traffic.
Practice Running A/B Testing
If you aren’t already familiar, A/B testing is when you run two similar tests, usually within a marketing campaign, to analyze the results you receive from each variation. This can help businesses learn so much about what techniques are working vs. what techniques are not working. As well as understand a deep level of information about who their customers are, where they are, what they like, and so on.
If you’ve not already practiced A/B testing, the new year is a great time to start! Especially if you already have a year of business under your belt. However, A/B will work for any stage of business. It is, though, better to fine tune if you already have an idea about who your market is and what goals you’re wanting to achieve. A/B should not be ran without intent and research.
Not only can A/B testing give more purpose to your marketing efforts, but it can better your business in a way by understanding what your customers want from you. A/B testing can help you diversify your brand and allow you to only spend time doing what you already know works. This should be a higher marketing priority for new year resolutions for creative business owners.
Diversify Your Income Streams
There are several things that you, as a small business owner, can do to increase your company’s revenue. While also increasing the chances of success regardless of any external factors. This should be a key factor while setting new year business goals.
Selling your products online is one way of generating income, but there are plenty more methods available to consider. For example, contemplate if it makes sense for you to teach what you know by opening an online course, or trade shows. You could even start using affiliate links from the tools of businesses that you would love and recommend. Think outside the box when it comes to generating income this year. There are lots of options available, so explore them all and have fun while doing it!
Diversifying your small business’s income sources is crucial to your success. Necia Boston, Founder of BAABS Beauty, says, “Diversify your offerings and streams of income…give your business the longevity to sustain itself.” Excessively relying on a single product or service can leave you vulnerable when sales or new opportunities dry up. In a business, this can happen overnight, so regardless of how great things are going right now, you can never get comfortable.
Focus on Networking
Networking can be one of your best tools as a small business owner. The best thing you can do for networking is befriend those in your niche. Start from within. Who are the other small business owners who are local to your area. Befriend them! This is probably one of the most fun new year resolutions for creative business owners.
Send a friendly hello on your social media accounts, or even take a stop in their store and introduce yourself. You should also always be in the know for local markets and popups. It’s great to attend for networking, learning, and scoping who your competition is.
A simple goal you can make is to connect with one new person each week through social media, and at least two new in person contacts a month. Make yourself accountable. Remember that this should be fun! Take is seriously, but have a good time while doing it. These are your peers! If anyone knows stress and frustration like you do, it’s them.
Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
Getting out of your comfort is the best way to achieve growth. Ask yourself what parts of being a small business owner continue to make you feel uneasy. Is it putting yourself on camera in front of your online audience? How about markets? Do you attend them? If you attend them, do you try to stand out, or blend in? These are the questions you should be asking yourself if nothing immediately comes to mind.
If you find yourself needing help with markets for small business owners, we have already written some helpful articles on how to get started.
You should also be giving yourself a personal assessment as a business owner. Have an honest conversation with yourself. Be realistic about your strengths and weaknesses. Write down what you believe you can improve on. Similarly to how you write out your business plan, write out a self improvement plan for how you’re going to better yourself as as business owner in this 2023 new year.
Closing Thoughts
Making new year resolutions for creative business owners creates growth and improvement in their business journey. In order for a business owner to be proactive they must set achievement standards and have a plan for how they will reaches their targets. These new year business goals also help you monitor and get ahead of trends or changes that may impact your business. Don’t wait; start planning today, and make those goals a reality!
Download our 2023 New Year resolutions for creative business owners below!
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