Welcome to a new decade!  With the start of 2020 now is a good time to take a look at your marketing and practice development efforts from past years and analyze your performance. You might find that your practice has grown or may need a change of direction. Now is good time to review your processes and services to determine any modifications you need to make for effective results.

Put a solid program together with clear goals and objectives.

This is important! We all get caught up in what we’re working on and overwhelmed with everyday tasks. It’s imperative to get your ideas on paper in front of you so you can map out a marketing and business building scenario. Take a little time to jot down your priorities.

Define Your Goals

What do you want to achieve in 2020? Define your purpose based on the answer to this question. Compare these goals to last year’s and see if anything has changed.

Your goals might simply be to gain more clients.  But you can also include goals like reaching out to your connections on social media at least once a week, updating your office management processes, researching and utilizing new technology or apps to make working with your practice easier, connecting with previous clients, starting a blog, cleaning up your database, updating your website, refreshing your profile on social media, subscribing to marketing, practice development, and entrepreneurship podcasts, attending more seminars/webinars, or more.

Review Your Target Markets

Marketplaces can change.  Sometime slowly, sometimes quickly. Keep a close focus on your primary and secondary target markets.  Has anything changed?  Are they starting to prefer on-line resolution platforms, have they become more sophisticated in their use of social media, have their gatekeepers remained the same or changed?  Also note what has remained the same since last year.  Are your clients still primarily concerned with quality over price?  Do they still value traditional face to face connection more than social media? 

Now is the right time to re-evaluate who your clients are, what they want, and how they want it.

Analyze Your Competition

Check up on your competition and see what they’re keeping the same as well as what they’re introducing into their practice.  What makes your competitors successful? What strengths help them stand out?  And most importantly, how can you set yourself apart from your competition?

Organize and Prioritize Your Marketing Initiatives

Now that you’ve defined your goals, you’re ready for the more creative part of your yearly planning.

Set a date to achieve all of your goals and objectives so you can start your course of action. Break the year into quarters. Don’t let these tasks intimidate you; you’re not wasting your time. On the contrary!

Think about how you’re going to execute all of the above. The imperative tasks that need to be done away should obviously be at the top of the list.  But the smaller things can easily be peppered throughout your calendar so that they don’t ignored.  Remember, it’s the cumulative effect of all the big and little things together that will make the difference. 

The New Year brings change and soul-searching for improvement, especially when it comes to marketing and building your practice. Now’s the time to preview the year ahead and make the necessary adjustments for the best performance of your business initiatives.

Your practice is constantly evolving so it needs to be constantly monitored and updated. A new decade is a good excuse to re-energize your marketing efforts with a fresh new start.  If you have any questions, concerns or requests about how to best go about marketing and building your practice, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Natalie Armstrong-Motin | Executive Director

Marketing Resolution | Phoenix, Arizona & Normandy France

Coaching | Consulting | Campaigning since 1995

Natalie@HowToMarketMyMediationPractice.com | www.twitter.com/MarketingADR www.HowToMarketMyMediationPractice.com  | www.linkedin.com/in/marketingresolution www.facebook.com/HowToMarketMyMediationPractice |  +33 (0)6 42 92 28 24