Like most people, I’ve worked for years trying to get into a good diet and exercise routine. I’ve tried many different diets. I’ve worked with personal trainers. For a while, I did reasonably well. I would lose some weight and exercise for a while but would fall back into old habits.

Five years ago, I helped my Dad move from his home to another. At that point, he had been using a mobility scooter to get around. At first, transfers for him weren’t super hard. They progressively became harder. He had health issues that meant he would be on a downward spiral for the remainder of his life.

While most of the issues were out of his control (such as cancer), there were some things that had been in his control. I realized that (being only 25 years younger than he was) I needed to take better care of myself. At a minimum, I needed to make sure that if something was in my control, I did everything I could to stay healthy.

I’ve come to realize that there are many parallels here when it comes to business and marketing health, as well. As such, there are things within our control that we can take charge of. Let’s look at what those are and dig into the motivating factors that can get us to where we want to be.

Taking Control of Your Business Health

The start of a new year is a great time to reevaluate the health of your business. You may have already started to ask and answer the following questions about your business going into this new year. If you haven’t, take time now to do this:

• How well did your business perform against your goals?
• Did you hit all of your business objectives (finance, customer service, operations, etc)?
• Did all of your activities support your business growth?
• Was your personal behavior and performance reflective of a good steward for your position?
• Have you set meaningful goals that are achievable for the coming year?
• Are you willing to do what it takes to hit those goals?

Your Marketing Health Relating to Your Business Health

When you think about those business goals, you can also apply them to your marketing goals. Don’t forget, your marketing goals should support your business goals. If they don’t, then your marketing goals will quickly become irrelevant.

Evaluating your marketing health and how well you’ve met your marketing goals can come down to the following questions:

• Did your marketing efforts drive new business growth through Marketing Qualified Leads?
• Did your marketing efforts support your sales team by producing Sales Qualified Leads?
• Did you measure metrics that drive performance (social, search, email, etc)?
• Did you adjust your plan as you found things that didn’t work in favor of things that did?
• Did you make meaningful improvements to your website and then test to make sure they really worked as expected?
• Did you set up automation and test to see if it actually worked?

Oh, there are a wide variety of additional questions you should be asking yourself to evaluate your marketing health. There really can’t be one set of questions. Each business and each market is unique, so your evaluation of your marketing health has to be unique to you. But, these questions can at least get you on the right track.

Motivation Is Required to Improve

The start of the new year is filled with lists and ideas of how to make things better. You see it in health apps. You see it at gyms. You see it in businesses. You see it everywhere.

What you don’t commonly see is help with motivation. Of course, some try. But, for motivation to be real, it has to come from within. When you identify your core motivations and how they drive you, you can be exponentially more effective at reaching goals.

So, the most important question you need to ask yourself is, “What is your motivation?”

If you just want to make money, your motivation is going to be pretty weak. If it’s something more meaningful, like taking care of your customers, helping your employees, creating the best product, etc., then you’ll likely find increased success.

Whatever your motivation, make sure you understand it. Make sure your entire team is on board and marching in the same direction.

A Final Thought on Motivation

Sometimes your motivation wanes. I certainly haven’t been perfect in my health journey in the last 5 years since I made my decision. The Covid pandemic certainly caused issues. You’ll have the same issues when thinking about your motivation in your business and marketing goals. If you need to find a new driving motivation—do it. If you need to change something to become reinvigorated—do it. Just make sure you take the time needed to ensure you have clarified your ‘why.’