How I use my brand to plan my year: a yearly Brand Plan

Many of us like to begin a new year with plans and goals, and I’m no different. It’s important to me that I make plans that I know I can handle alongside my day-to-day work and ones that are actually going to get me to where I want to be in my business.

We’ve looked at why a yearly review is important for your brand, So what’s the step after that?

Over my last 5 years in business, I’ve crafted a straightforward way to approach planning my year and setting projects to focus on which I want to share with you.

Your brand plan is the yearly tool to help you get there.

How to create your Brand Plan

I base my Brand Plan on the concept of a 90 day plan. The idea is to focus on a different project for each quarter of the year. This makes it easier to complete the projects because I’m not being pulled from pillar to post.

So let’s take a look at how to go about creating one:

1. Your business goals

What do you want to achieve this year in your business? What’s the focus? Things may change throughout the year but your goals are there to keep you focused.

I asked Antony Ackers, for his top tips for coming up with your yearly goals.

Dream forward.

I like to do this activity when out for a walk. Take a notebook and pen, and find somewhere peaceful where you won’t be disturbed. Imagine yourself one year in the future – you’ve just had an incredible year. Write down a journal entry from that day.

Consider: Where are you? What are you doing? How are you feeling? What are you saying to yourself? What have you achieved? What obstacles have you overcome? What have you not achieved? What’s missing?

How does this vision make you feel? Excited? Despondent? Underwhelmed? Is it what you really want? (if not, try the exercise again!)

Think about your wider strategy.

How does this fit in with your dream? Is it getting you to where you want to go? If not, why not? Can you change course? Are you on the right path?

Come up with 5 or 6 goals that you absolutely need to achieve for next year’s vision to be true

For each one, make them as detailed as possible. These can’t be vague. Instead of saying ‘I want to make enough money to be comfortable’, work out an actual £££ figure. They need to be clear enough so you know exactly when you’ve achieved them. I like to use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound) or Acceptance Criteria (specific conditions that must be true to know you have achieved your goal).

2. Decide on your focus for the year ahead

I like to decide on a focus for the year as gives me direction. Things always change within the year, so deciding what you want from the year gives you something to focus on if you have to change your plans. I then decide on the projects I’m going to work on with that focus in mind. After all, there’s no point doing things that send you in the wrong direction.

I set my yearly intention with a word. When you’re faced with a decision whether to do something or not this year, your word can help you to decide. I like to see it as a mini vision for the next 12 months.

Choose a word that describes what you want from the year. Perhaps you want clarity, visibility, growth, stability? If you’re struggling to decide on a word, think about how you want the year to feel. Describe why you chose the word as it helps to know whether it’s right and gives you clarity over the meaning.

If you’ve got any specific goals this year, you’ll want to list them here too.

3. Choose your projects for the year

With your word of the year and goals in mind, write down the projects that will help you achieve them. (The others can sit on a ‘someday’ list). Your projects will be things like ‘create a new website’ or ‘develop a marketing plan’ and if you started with a Brand Review you’ll already have an idea of what you want to work on this year as they’re the things you highlighted as needing improvement.

4. Split your year into quarters

This is where the 90-day plan starts to come into action. Take the projects you’ve chosen to work on this year and group them into projects that sit together. Alternatively, you can order them from the greatest priority to the least. I like to focus on one area of my business in each quarter so I can really focus on it. It also stops me from getting overwhelmed by everything else that ‘needs’ to be done.

Last year, my focus was on projects that would enable my business to become more steady and consistent. I broke my quarters down into:

January - March: Services - I wanted to write and launch a group program to give me more time and consistent income, while enabling my business to grow. I had to revisit all of my services with this in mind.
April - June: Systems and processes - I needed to get up and running with a CRM that would enable me to automate more and make tasks such as sending out terms and tracking leads much easier
July - September: Marketing - this was about getting into a good rhythm with my marketing and launching my group program
October - December: Finances - ending the year looking at how everything is working in regards to my business finances (I even gave myself a pay rise!)

I purposefully put them in this order because certain things needed to be in place before I focused on others. Each year your quarters will look a little different, but by breaking them down like this it can help you to properly focus on what you want to do. There may be just one project in certain quarters and 2 or 3 in others.

5. List the steps to get you there

To make the projects feel less overwhelming and easier to complete, list every step you need to do to get you there. These should be simple things such as ‘list out all processes as a step-by-step list’ or ‘put processes into Trello’.

Hannah from Hi Communications shared her top tips for listing the steps to reach your goals with me. They are:

Make each of your tasks as small as possible

When you have your projects, try to make each of the steps as small as possible so you can’t talk yourself out of doing them. To make it even easier you can also estimate how long each task will take and add that to your list.

Breaking each project down into smaller steps helps to stop the overwhelm of starting a project where the goal is to ’set up a new system’ or ‘build a website’. It gets you started, plus, who doesn’t love ticking things off a to-do list?

Try and make it enjoyable

There are some parts of our work that we enjoy and others that feel difficult and mean we are more likely to procrastinate.

If you know there are tasks on your list that you’ll put off and stop you from reaching your goals, try and attach them to a positive habit. It could be writing your social media posts while you listen to your favourite playlist, or teaming up with a friend to do admin tasks. Make it fun and you’re more likely to get it done.

Predict where the blocks will be

The reason we have goals for our business is so we can move forward, but it means there might be some challenges that come up along the way. If you can predict where these will be, you can do something about it before they happen.

We can’t do it all, so this might mean knowing that if you’re focusing on one area of your business you need to free up time by hiring an accountant or a copywriter. It could mean thinking that you want to change your branding or your website and you’ll need to use someone else’s skills, start the conversations now so you are prepared for the moment when you reach it.

6. Check in regularly

It’s all well and good having a Brand Plan for the year, but it can be difficult to stay on track and keep yourself accountable. Get the projects and steps into Trello (or whatever system you use) and get some dates added to them.

In my Trello Yearly planning template, I have a review set up every 90 days. It’s great to recognise what I’ve achieved, see if I’ve given myself too much to do (so I can make some changes), and to know whether I need to change anything. Circumstances can change throughout the year so having a review at least every 90 days gives you time to reflect on your progress. It’s okay to re-jig your quarterly projects or rework the tasks if things change.

Remember to schedule time to work on your business

Monday’s are my day to focus solely on my business, and since I implemented this rule I’ve achieved so much of what I wanted to do this year. It’s important to prioritize your own business as well as the day-to-day work, otherwise you can end up feeling stuck and falling out of love with it.

The tasks you’ve broken each project into shouldn’t be big or overwhelming so you’ll quickly see things being ticked off if you give yourself time to do them.

Working on your business can feel overwhelming, but with a realistic plan that’s broken down into small steps it becomes much more achievable. Having a simple plan in place will move you forward in your business and in your Brand Review next year you’ll look back and celebrate all the progress you’ve made.

If you haven’t done a brand review for this year yet, check out the replay of my workshop. It’ll help you look at your brand objectively so you can prioritise the projects that are going help you hit your goals this year.

This approach is taken from the book Traction.