We’ve all had enough talk of new year’s resolutions, and anyway, who keeps them for more than a few weeks? Professionally, it’s always more sensible to set new year’s goals, and I’d like to suggest one which we could all try in 2013: to ensure that by this time next year, we’re measuring everything we do better than we do now.
If you’re running off a report every month showing your website visitors, introduce a report looking at the “quality” visits instead. If you’re advertising in magazine A rather than magazine B, in order to “get your name out there”, organise some research to see what your target market actually reads. Indeed, if you’re about to sign off a purchase order on anything, never forget to ask yourself if you have the data to back up the decision to spend that money …and even if you do, consider if there are ways in which you can make that measurement more effective.
But if you prefer new year’s resolutions, at least resolve to stop spending money on gut feeling or because you’ve always done it that way.