A Different Look at New Year's Resolutions...for Your Marketing

Are you a fan of New Year's resolutions? I'm not sure I'm a fan -- more like a dutiful participant.

Every year around this time, I make resolutions about exercising more, eating better, watching less TV, yadda yadda yadda. Add a splash in there of some stuff like, 'being more present for my kids.' But mostly, it's doing stuff. And as any happiness expert or habit-changing coach will tell you, if you just focus on the thing to be done, you'll get nowhere. It's only when you focus on the point -- the larger goal, the deeper purpose -- that you can actually change that habit or make that New Year's resolution stick past Jan. 2.

And this got me thinking...Are you doing this same thing to your marketing?

Here's what I mean. Are you focusing on what you're going to do, rather than focusing on why you're doing it -- the result you want to see?

If I don't keep in mind that I want to watch less TV because I want to be more present in my own life, I'm not going to cut back on TV. What's the point? There are so many shows to binge on Netflix. There has to be a worthwhile reward for me to do the work and do it well and consistently.

If you decide you're going to redo your website, without understanding that you want to do this because you want to refresh your brand in order to appeal to a specific person, you'll be very busy and you might even redo that website. Or you might go round and round through 30 drafts because you're not sure what you're doing or why you're doing it. Or you might launch that site and then be super frustrated that you put all this time and money into a new site that didn't grow your business a bit.

So, in the spirit of the new year and all those wide-eyed hopeful resolutions crashing and burning (or, alright, soaring to new heights), I'd like to challenge you to apply the same introspection to your marketing and your business that you have to your life since ringing in the new year.