While many may not believe in the concept of New Year’s Resolutions, it’s always a good idea to specify your aims and to define your intentions for the coming 12 months.

The same goes for running a business. By December, the year’s lessons in marketing are ripe for review and come as an opportunity for businesses to make targeted improvements.

Nevertheless, there are some aims that apply across the board, no matter the size or type of business. In whatever circumstance, adhering to them would be especially effective in light of how the pandemic has forced us to reconsider the way we work and think.

1. Resolution #1: Optimize your marketing funnel

HSBC recently surveyed 200 Malaysian businesses for their report ‘Navigator: Now, next and how’ and found widespread optimism for growth in 2022. A good 74% of them projected growth throughout the year, exceeding the regional average of 60%.

This comes hand-in-hand with internal changes. 74% of Malaysian companies have also switched up how they operate to be more collaborative and forward-thinking as they poise themselves to pounce on opportunities for growth.

Given that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make up over 97% of the country’s business establishments, that’s a lot of change going on for small businesses.

If you’re thinking of making changes for your business, one that never fails is to optimize your marketing funnel. That is: how you generate leads, then nurture those leads, convert them to customers, and then retain them.

What does this optimization look like? Basically, at every stage of the customer’s journey with your business, there is a system in place and nothing is left to chance. This looks like having an SEM optimized website, active social media, a robust CRM setup and so on, depending on different stages of the customer journey through the funnel.

2. Resolution #2: Be kinder to your talent

The Great Resignation of 2021, a movement from the US that has seen a great wave of job resignations, seems to have impacted Malaysia too.

Employment Hero, in their 2021 Employee Movement and Retention report, revealed that 61% of Malaysians plan to move on from their current jobs in the coming year.

The biggest reasons for leaving? The feeling of being neglected by their employers, seen in reasons like not getting enough acknowledgement at work and not being given the means to grow.

Employers who want to keep their workers, particularly the competent and high performing ones, would need to pay more attention to how they are treating their employees. It’s not enough to say that they don’t abuse their workers; neglect is also pernicious to employee satisfaction.

That’s because the pandemic has brought about a lot more financial strain. The 2022 New Year’s Financial Resolutions Study from Fidelity Investments in the US found that among younger people, saving more and spending less have become more pressing priorities.
As a business, it’s not enough to just pay your workers what they’re owed in order for them to stay. What can you do to take care of their mental health? How can you lead with assurance that you have their financial welfare in mind too?

3. Resolution #3: Have a plan to prepare for the worst

The series of movement control orders (MCOs) in Malaysia has seen the country go in and out of lockdown one too many times in less than two years. Each one brings confusion, and as citizens resurface from lockdown they often find the businesses they knew gone.

As things stand, the outlook for 2022 is rosy. Many businesses project year-long growth. However, it only takes one deadly variant to emerge and all plans go out the window.

It took less than a year since the pandemic started in 2020 for about 30,000 businesses to shutter indefinitely.

There have been too many commercial casualties for any current business to believe that they could get by without a longer-term plan to survive the vagaries of the pandemic.

The worst part is it doesn’t stop with the pandemic. All it takes is freaky weather for flash floods to come unannounced and wreak havoc on businesses.

How much would you be putting aside for ‘acts of God’ emergencies so that you can insulate your business from total loss and protect your workers too? What are your plans for going both online and offline with your business, so that you can continue selling even when the whole nation is cooped up at home?

Have you taken aim for 2022?

Not all resolutions are fulfilled. In fact, it’s normal to fall short of goals and even scrap them along the way for better ones. The sure-fire way to find disaster is to take on the year without at least one big aim, because we can only plan if we know why and what we’re planning for.

Do you agree with the list? What are your business New Year’s Resolutions for 2022?