Hi friend! 👋
How are your new year’s resolutions coming along? Don’t know about you, but I already broke a few, and the year just started. 😅 I guess this is a good time to talk about goals since that’s what New Years’ resolutions are about in the end.
When setting them, focus on the important parts: Start with a reachable goal that makes sense, make it measurable, and follow a well-mapped plan to make it happen.
A great way to make any resolution stick, right? ✨
Set yourself up for growth, not stagnation
What do I mean by that?☝️
For starters, resolutions without a proper plan are like lagging indicators. They lack progress measurements, focus on past/current performance, and are easy to break because they’re restrictive.
Measurable and reachable goals with a proper action plan, on the other hand, are like leading indicators.
They keep you focused on milestones ahead, are highly measurable, and give you space to pivot and try new ways of doing things without losing sight of the target — pretty much how we at Advance B2B like to do growth.
Now, let’s put that into perspective.
A bad resolution would sound like this: I will read two books a week in 2022.
Okay, but where does that lead to? Say you get busy and end up missing three weeks' worth of reading. That’s six books in total. Chances are, you’ll either “restart” the resolution or give it up altogether and hope that you’ll be able to read two books a week in 2023.
Now, what happens if you make that a measurable objective instead? Something along the lines of: I want to read 52 books in 2022, and I will follow a specific schedule that has been planned around my other activities to make it reachable.
That amounts to 1 book per week for the entire year (woohoo, KPIs!)
You can come up with ways to make that happen smoothly, for example by reading for 15 minutes during lunchtime and half an hour before bed, or whatever works for you.
Say you miss a week or two of reading. Here’s what you can do, depending on your schedule:
The list goes on. But as long as you keep experimenting with different ways of sneaking in reading time, you’ll eventually reach your goal of 52 books by the end of 2022.
The same goes for your growth targets. It’s so much easier to make things happen when you follow a clear and structured plan.
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Now, some link dumping ✅
Here’s a collection of our best online reads that have been shared on our #learning channel on Slack:
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What's happening at Advance B2B? 🎥 🎙 📝
A lot, as usual. We’ve been supercharging ourselves with rest over the holidays, at least, so we are full of energy. 🔋
But, since we’re on the topic of reading, we still did publish some awesome pieces of content:
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Customer Spotlight of the month: Shortcut ❤️
Shortcut is a project management tool sans all the management.
We started working together with Shortcut in January 2021. Our partnership started with a focus to fine-tune Shortcut’s customer acquisition process using content and paid channels and experimentation. We also supported them in their rebranding process in September 2021.
What went well?
Everything was smooth sailing from the get-go. Our SEO work and content cooperation were awesome and super smooth, and we also had a lot of room to experiment and test out new ways of doing things. As a result, we ran many successful campaigns with concrete results like new sign-ups, conversions, and customers.
What didn't go so well?
Our cooperation ended in November 2021. The reason? The in-house Shortcut team grew significantly, from two to a 10+ person marketing team.
While it broke our hearts to part ways, (💔) we’re also super happy to see them grow so fast! 🎉
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A key action for you 🗝️
Set measurable marketing goals, not marketing “resolutions” you have no plans of reaching.
Speaking of which, what are your growth targets for 2022? Let us know by replying to this email.
In case you don’t know it yet, we also really appreciate all your replies — greetings, ideas, thoughts, feedback. So, go ahead and hit that reply button! We'd love to hear your thoughts. 💌