How You Can Prepare For Your Best Business Year Yet In 2024

As the year comes to a close, you might be looking back at a business year that hasn’t been what you had hoped. Perhaps you haven’t met certain goals, or you haven’t grown your customer base, and you’re feeling a little deflated.

The close of the year can sometimes come with feelings of worry for the year to come, but in 2024, it doesn’t need to be like this. If you’re disappointed with your progress this year, or you want to make even more improvements next year, we have you covered.

In this comprehensive guide, we have offered advice and guidance on how to get your business shipshape and ready for growth and progress in 2024. We’ve used our knowledge of the Australian business landscape to guide you toward a year where you meet your goals and achieve all you dreamed of when you started your business. Learn more below now!

Take Some Time to Reflect

Whether 2023 was your best year yet, or you just want to move on from the last 12 months, it is imperative that you do some reflection first. As the year has not entirely come to an end yet, you have some time now to take a look back.

What went well for you in 2023? Did you grow your customer base? Did you improve your social responsibility initiatives? Did you grow your workforce? Make sure that you spend some time thinking about these successes. Not only will it make you feel more positive for the future, but you can also consider how you created this success and how it can be used in the year ahead.

You will also need to look at goals you didn’t meet and places where not enough progress was made. This might be revenue that has fallen short of predictions, places where you went over budget, or even poor customer relations.

The idea of looking at areas for improvement is not to make you feel bad about missing some goals, but to help you assess where you went wrong and what can be done to rectify these mistakes. In some cases, you may find that factors outside of your control, like dips in the market, could have impacted your goals.

While you’re doing your own self-reflection, you could also ask colleagues and employees to fill out questionnaires and give feedback. You may even want to extend this to your customers. Getting feedback from the outside may help to shed light on areas you haven’t even considered, and it can set the stage for a fresh start in 2024.

Set Clear Goals and Objectives

Now that you have done some reflection, it’s time to get serious about what you actually want to achieve in 2024. You might have decided to rein in some of your goals from last year and strive for modest success and a solid year in 2024. Equally, you might have decided that 2024 is going to be your year. Whatever you want to achieve, it is essential that your goals follow the SMART acronym.

Specific: To begin with, you need to make sure your goals are clear. This means that rather than setting a goal of ‘Improve social media following,’ you should aim for a specific number, i.e., ‘Reach a following of 1000 on Instagram.’ This goal is much more specific; it sets a follower goal and which platform you want to reach said goal on.

Measurable: Next up is measurable. Following on from the example above, the first goal, ‘Improve social media following,’ is much less measurable than the latter, ‘Reach a following of 1000 on Instagram.’ With this very specific goal, you can see how far off or how much you surpassed your goal.

Achievable: Your goal has to be achievable. This doesn’t mean you should always aim lower, but if you set a specific goal for your revenue and you, yourself, know it is unattainable, you have set yourself up for failure already.

Relevant: This refers to the relevance to your business, company culture, or customer base. Make sure that the goal makes sense within your business. For example, if you have never used TikTok before as a business, and your customer age range doesn’t use the platform, there is little reason to set a goal to start using it.

Time-bound: Lastly, you should always set time-based goals. This could be for the year 2024 or more long-term. We’ll go on to that in the next section.

Long-term Vs. Short-term Goals

Your goals can be easily split into two sections: long-term and short-term. Long-term goals are goals that tend to reach further into the future than a year. They could be five or ten-year goals, and to achieve them, you may set smaller, incremental goals. Setting these smaller goals can help to keep motivation for long-term goals.

Short-term goals can be anywhere from one month to a year. You may build short-term objectives within your long-term goals, as addressed above, but you can also set short-term goals that exist on their own. For example, if you currently have 2.5k followers on Instagram, you may look to boost that to 3k within the following year. This would, obviously, have an overall impact on your social media marketing, customer base, and reach, but it is a goal that you can achieve within a shorter time frame.

Create a Strategic Plan

Strategic planning is the first step to reaching your goals. With your goals in mind, begin assessing industry trends and market conditions that could affect your ability to achieve these goals. Consider changes you can make to ensure that you meet them with this analysis.

With this research in hand, set out a plan for each one of your goals.

Going back to the social media goal from the previous section, how could you set out a plan to ensure you reach your new follower count? What content can you create that draws people in? 

You could make a plan to create shareable content that adds value to other users, create captions that encourage people to share your content widely, and even add incentives. Could you conduct giveaways for your followers to win discounts or vouchers? Could you target key hashtags that potential customers follow in your niche?

Set out the next steps for each goal, taking into consideration outside factors that could impact this growth, and then get going!

Consider Your Marketing and Branding

Another aspect to consider when trying to make 2024 your year in business is your marketing and branding. 

Consider your brand identity and the marketing output you have created in the past year. Has all output been consistent with your identity? Does your identity still reflect your values as a company, or could it do with an update?

If you’re considering updating your branding, then take your time to ensure you’ve found the right colours, tone of voice, and more for the values you have now.

In addition, you may want to look at your marketing if you’re trying to attract a new customer base. Are you targeting younger customers? Consider what social media platforms the people in your target age range use. Digital marketing is an incredibly valuable tool that you should exploit as much as possible.

Look at Your Operations

Next, look at the way things are working internally. Are your operations as smooth as possible? Is your supply chain operating at its best? These questions should help you to get started on streamlining all business operations and ensuring everything is not only running smoothly but is as efficient as possible to keep up with demand and keep your costs down.

You should also consider investing in new technology to automate processes and speed up operations where possible. You may want to set a budget for technological investments so that you can continue updating throughout the year.

Prioritise Talent Acquisition and Cultivation

The old business adage of always being the dumbest person in the room can benefit you in more ways than you think. While the phrase has been attributed to a whole host of CEOs and business entrepreneurs, who it came from doesn’t really matter.

If you’re looking to make 2024 your best year yet, then make sure you prioritise talent acquisition and cultivating those in your workforce that you see potential. Surround yourself with people who have key specialisms and talent in areas that you don’t to push your business in the right direction.

Some great ways to acquire new talent include:

• Making use of social media sites like LinkedIn
• Using staff training and team-building days to seek out underdeveloped leadership or talent
• Offering growth and development opportunities internally to help your employees grow

Consider Your Customer Relations

Your customers and clients make your business what it is. This means that ensuring they are happy is one of the best ways to improve revenue and customer loyalty, two metrics that can help you progress as a business.

Evaluate how your customers see your business and how they have experienced your customer service in the past year through questionnaires and reviews. You can use this feedback to implement new strategies that encourage loyalty and retention.

Take Some Time to Assess the Risks

With any plan, it is essential to take risks and challenges into account. You should consider aspects, including market trends and the economy and implement crisis management and business continuity in the worst-case scenario.

Building risk mitigation into your plan before the fact can improve the outcomes and ensure that things don’t fall apart. Being over-prepared is always better than being under-prepared.

How DealXchange Can Help You in 2024

DealXchange is a business buying and selling platform created by Eden Exchange. It consolidates all you could ever need for expanding your business, merging with another business, buying a new business, or selling your business into one, easy-to-use platform.

In 2024, it could be your key to growth.

Whether you have set aside money in your budget to franchise your business and open new locations with franchisees, or you want to invest in an entirely new business, DealXchange is here for you.

With a dedicated and secure lead room, automated generation of leads, custom matches with qualified franchisees and seamless connection with business sellers, this is business expansion made easy.

The platform can be customised entirely to your needs and integrates easily with a wide range of other business management tools, so you’re not chopping and changing between different platforms as you try to grow your business.

If you’re interested in taking a closer look at the DealXchange platform, book a free demo now.

Final Thoughts

Whether you’ve had a lacklustre year in business or you’re just looking to capitalise on the success of 2023, 2024 is the perfect fresh start that you need. Follow our tips and tricks for planning out the best year your business can have in 2024.

If you’re looking to expand your business this year, then why not check out Eden Exchange? With a network of thousands of business sellers, buyers, brokers, and franchisors, you’re bound to find a business opportunity among our listings.

Contact the team now for more information.

Who we are

Eden Exchange is an integrated multi-channel platform, simplifying business buying and selling. We match, refer and connect business buyers, sellers & brokers in an ecosystem that facilitates frictionless franchise, business and finance transactions. Visit www.EdenExchange.com and connect with our engaged and multidimensional transaction network today.