Pickles and George

I don’t know about you but I love making New Year’s Resolutions! I think it is a great opportunity to plan your diary ahead thereby acting as a discipline to carry out self made promises. I find on occasions that I may not be able to fulfil all my hopes that particular year or even the year after but it remains on my ‘to do’ list until an opportunity arises that enables successful completion.

This year I have a wish; to continue with weekly personal training and to get fit as a fiddle! So far so good. Personal Training takes place on a Tuesday morning and my trainer, Arron Whalley, can be quite unkind. Not that I am complaining (he he). He is after all a former South African Olympian of the 400 metres sprint distance (a distance which needs very clever pacing indeed). So, of course, I am in good hands...

This leads me to introduce ‘Pickles Marketing’ with whom I attended a session on Linkedin last week. I wasn’t sure what to expect but it turned out to be jolly good fun! The young lady, Lisa Chaffey, who conducted the class of 6 individuals was super charming and managed to field our plethora of questions competently. We shall return for a follow up session as part of the package after we have completed our homework(!) in order to ensure we have refreshed and spruced up pages.

The woof you see on the opening image is called ‘Pickles’ the delightful company mascot who apparently arrived after the formation of the company and was a welcome presence throughout our visit. I shall update you on my LinkedIn progress in a subsequent article. In the meantime, I enclose below an inspiring article submitted by Pickles Marketing which is definitely a worthy read and pursuit;

Where’s your business heading in 2017? You have to press the pedals and steer the wheel

10 Jan 2017 by picklemarketing

Has anybody been telling you to set some goals for 2017?

Of course they have.

The world and his wife are frantically shouting at you to have reachable outcomes in mind. If you don’t you’ll get to December 2017 and look back, only to discover that your business didn’t make the strides forward you intended.

All because you didn’t have a destination in mind.

Graham in the Pickle team tells us that when he was very young his family used to get in the car for a day out and when he asked where they were going the reply from the front seat would be ‘Let’s see where the car takes us.’

And it used to drive him mad, because even as a tender little lad he knew full well that the car wasn’t capable of going anywhere without his Dad pressing the pedals and steering the wheel.

Even now, with driverless cars a reality, you still need to tell them where to go.

But it’s amazing how many businesses will lurch into the new year without a plan for where they’re going or what they hope to achieve.

There’s only one way to ensure that this year ends with happy memories and increased profits and that’s to go out and create some, in the form of doable actions aimed at reaching plausible goals.

And it’s worth bearing in mind that a good year need not necessarily be epitomised by an ever-rising arrow on the business sales graph.

Two things about that…

1. It’s no good increasing sales if revenue doesn’t go up or unless costs come down – or both
2. And it’s no use having goals unless you have systems in place to ensure you stand a chance of scoring

There are so many things that need to happen for goals to become a reality, but don’t leave your marketing and social media to chance by just drifting along and hoping for the best.

Get some focus, set some achievable goals, and put systems in place to ensure you stand a good chance of reaching your targets.

If either of those aspects of your business are taking a back seat your revenue will suffer.

You might think you have the staff with the skills to dabble a bit in their slacker moments, but is that good enough for you?

Do you really want to leave key strands of your business to chance?

The offices of Pickle Marketing are based in Goring, Oxfordshire. On my return I stopped by to pay homage to George Michael RIP whose home was literally around the corner. I have every respect for this artist (as well as for some of his songs) as he was one of the first big names to take mega Sony to court back in 1993 to be released from their horrendous contractual tie-in rendering him a ‘pop slave’. However, he went back to them on his terms in 2003. Some photos in memoriam;