You weren’t always a business owner. Go back far enough in time and you can remember when you weren’t your own boss. Everybody’s first “boss” is a parent or a teacher, right?

At some point, your boss or teacher or parent said those dreaded words, “We need to talk.” (Or something like it.) What about? About your behavior.

About your performance.

The problem with being your own boss is that YOU have to be the person who starts conversations like that. Nobody else is going to do it for you. So …

When’s your next marketing review, boss?

Step 1: What have your goals been?

Everybody has goals, whether they know it or not. Your marketing goals over the past year or so may have been as simple as not spending more on advertising than what comes in.

But maybe you put some real goals down on paper. Maybe you told yourself you would:

• update your logo
• spruce up your website
• add to your mailing/email lists
• communicate with your customers once per quarter

Those are goals, even if you didn’t hold yourself accountable to a timeline to get them done. You had an idea of where you wanted to go. That’s a start.

Step 2: Have you been following the plan?

Look over your purchase records and determine how much you’ve gotten done. Chances are, if you didn’t assign a deadline for yourself, you haven’t done anything yet. You didn’t really have a plan.

Or maybe you did. You may have been more specific and wrote down that you would:

• update your logo to something similar to that design you saw that inspired you by DATE
• add certain functionalities to your website (contact & payment options, etc.) by DATE
• increase both your physical and email address lists by 20% by DATE
• send out one piece of direct mail and one email blast by the last business day of each quarter

Those are SMART goals (remember: Strategic, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely?) and if you set them you know without a doubt whether you got them done or not, and you’ll probably have a pretty good idea of why not.

What got in the way? Budget? Did you get too busy? Do you need an assistant to help? Those are questions you should be able to answer if you had previously set SMART marketing goals for yourself.

Step 3: What are your goals now?

Whether your goals have been SMART or … not … you have an opportunity now to take yourself aside and say, “We need to talk.”

Marketing is about remaining visible and relevant to people who need the products and services you provide. What have you done to achieve visibility and communicate relevance? What do you plan to do?

The marketing review is a time to focus specifically on these basic questions. You don’t always need a Grand Marketing Strategy. Sometimes you just need to talk out loud with someone who can help you get the things done you already know need to happen.

Hello! We’re that someone. Welcome to the Farmhouse.