Can you believe it’s almost February? You’ve laid a strong foundation for your business using Brand Protection PR™ strategies during Q4 2020 for Q1 2021. Your hard work is beginning to pay off. Now it’s time to look back at all you’ve accomplished in January, benchmark the progress of your brand fitness program and look ahead to February!
You can listen to Move the Stairs CBD Brand Protection PR™ conversation each week as a podcast! Find us onApple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify.
Build your brand’s foundation through benchmarking
The entire month of January we’ve been talking about how you can start from scratch building your CBD brand fitness plan. It’s been four weeks! Time to measure your progress! As we discussed last week, at the four-week mark, you may not notice any physical changes in a typical fitness routine but most people feel better. The same could be said for your CBD business. You may not notice significant changes in the first four weeks, but chances are things are feeling better because you know you’re progressing toward your goals!
Before you write off January 2021 as a success or give up too easily and call it a failure, what are you benchmarking your progress against? Brand new fitness plans usually start with a fitness test, to baseline what you can physically do. If brand fitness is new to you, maybe you’re benchmarking January 2021 over January 2020? Or, December 2020 vs January 2021. Whatever makes sense for your business, it’s important to document how you’re moving the needle.
“Having goals gives everyday tasks more meaning and clarifies the reasoning behind company decisions” - Houston Chronicle. Without benchmarking goals what you may think is “progress” may be underwhelming when it comes time to evaluate all of the work accomplished in January.
It’s the old adage of getting 1% better every day. You won’t notice growth overnight, but over time, you will! This is why we hesitate to make any major changes to monthly goals, which support our annual SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) objectives, unless absolutely necessary.
Strategies to make your business successful by powering through the “plateau”
People who work out routinely are always changing their routines. Science tells us that the body’s muscles eventually get used to being worked out a certain way. When that happens, It takes a lot more time and energy to get a quality workout using the same routine. Eventually, you will not see any more results.
Reaching a plateau so early in your CBD brand’s goals after 3 weeks may seem unlikely but it’s important to evaluate at the end of the month to start creating that habit. You may uncover something about your goal that’s just not aligning with your current objectives. Before you toss it out, ask yourself the following:
Why is it not working? Were there external factors that prevented you from achieving your goal?
Let’s say you were planning a new product launch with a goal to sell a given number of units, however, COVID-19 caused a disruption in your logistics causing you to scale back shipments. You may not have met your goal for the month, but that’s because of extenuating circumstances outside of your control. Check your goal, make sure it’s Achievable, and go at it again next month.
Did something important occur forcing you to put your focus into other goals?
One of our clients had a large outdoor event planned for last year, then COVID-19 struck. Obviously, this event was canceled. That’s when we helped the client pivot by refocusing the campaign from an in-person event to social media. We repurposed video, photos, and written material into a beefy social media campaign that got lots of attention. Now when the client launches an in-person event hopefully this year, the social media campaign will have set the stage for a successful in-person live event.
At the end of your first month, your plan should be to revisit, evaluate and potentially update goals, not outright squash them. If you're looking for help developing goals, be sure to download our free event plan one-sheet!
Strategies to keep your CBD business Brand Protection PR™ plan momentum going!
Let’s face it. After 3 weeks of workouts and not seeing any physical result, it’s easy to feel disheartened. Sure, you feel better, but if there are no visible improvements, how do you continue?
One of the best ways to keep your foot on the gas is to take a granular look at all you’ve accomplished in the past month through a report. Write out everything you’ve done in support of that goal. Chances are it’s a lot more than you’re giving yourself credit for. Now, look ahead to the following month and everything you’ve laid out in your PR plan in support of your goals. Are you starting to see where you’ve added value? The needle is moving but you cannot always see it over such a tight timeframe.
Another great way to keep your staff motivated is by offering an incentive to complete projects in support of your brand’s goals. Athletes, bodybuilders, marathoners, etc… do this all the time with cheat meals. Maybe once per week, they can have an ice cream sundae - a far cry from bland broccoli and cauliflower rice. Studies show individual productivity increases by 27% when there’s an incentive offered. Group productivity goes up nearly 50% when an incentive is offered! Could this be a bonus? Maybe it’s an extra PTO day or two in a quarter? This same study suggests asking your employees what might motivate them to work a bit harder! This is a great option to keep in mind while working through options to complete goals and win some brownie points with your staff!
By integrating CBD Brand Protection PR™ into your business’s PR plan, you will build a strong business on a rock-solid foundation, be open to integrating the latest strategies in support of your monthly goals and ultimately meet your annual objectives.
Here’s the video recap from today’s episode: