The impact of setting an objective…

When faced with exciting ideas, new technologies, a limited budget or a struggling P&L, it is easy to become distracted and try every new idea that comes to mind to boost sales with your marketing. But in reality, this can lead to wasted resource, money and sometimes disappointing results because that activity may never have been suited for what you wanted to achieve. Decide what it is that you want to achieve, before you do anything, and you can avoiding these pitfalls.

I have just placed an order for Andrea Kates new book ‘Find Your Next’ off the back of Shawn Parr’s inspiring article here.

In his summary, Shawn hones in on the principle of identifying the one key metric that you will measure in your business, in order to both motivate your team, and make the business change you need. Thinking back to my days running brands in the global blue chip businesses I worked for, there was a lot of ‘key metrics’ – sometimes too many – but the best leaders gave clear direction on the prioritisation of these targets, and demonstrated what moving X metric by one percentage point actually meant, in order to motivate people. I think it is easy to fall into the trap of tracking everything, or wanting to shift everything to bigger, better, more – but small businesses can really gain value from this principle of ruthless focus and measurement.

Thanks to Shawn for an inspiring summary, and I look forward to reading the full book.

Written by Christina at The Nurture Network: The on-demand marketing department for start-ups and entrepreneurs – making expertise and resource available just when it is needed