Well, it’s that time of the fiscal year; the end of Q1. For marketing agencies like Power Digital, it’s our first glimpse at how the year as a whole is going to shape up in terms of goals, metrics, and client performance overall. More than just our own internal goals, though, as an agency we need to be cognizant of the fact that our client’s goals may shift in accordance with the start of Q2 as well.
Some examples of this might be shifts in marketing budgets, changes in metric benchmarking, and seasonality trends to be aware of (like summer breaks, holidays, etc.) that may have an impact on consumption and engagement trends.
A great way to get yourself prepped up for this immediately following you’re the end of the first quarter is to have a meeting with either your department, or entire company to assess where your team is at internally. At Power Digital, we hold a company-wide meeting recapping wins, areas where we have the potential to improve, and in general just getting the team motivated and mentally prepared for the start of Q2, which as mentioned earlier can be a huge potential for shifts in client priorities and KPI’s.
The biggest question becomes, though, how do you keep the momentum of a successful Q1 moving into Q2 with so much opportunity for these factors to change? And further, how do you come off a positive meeting like a quarterly re-cap and capitalize on that momentum and energy to create future successes for yourself and your team?
In my admittedly short experience, I’ve found that often times when people meet in unison like during a company-wide quarterly meeting, a lot of good ideas are thrown around and the motivation that people have is extremely palpable. What happens in organizations or companies that are poorly organized, though, is that they leave that fire and that drive at the meeting and never take any action on it. In the spirit of that, here are a 3 tips that I have put together to help you take that motivation and sprint into Q2 with it.
Set New Quarterly Goals For Yourself Immediately
Like I talked about in a previous blog post, setting goals for yourself to benchmark your successes is imperative and crucial, as well as a great exercise for orienting your priorities for a given time frame. Coming off that Q1 meeting, capitalize on the motivation and positive energy your have by immediately sitting down and writing down what you want to accomplish in Q2.
This way, even when that euphoric sensation of being motivated and feeling accomplished from Q1 inevitably wears off, you have written down exactly how you want to leverage what you were good at in Q1, as well as work on what you need to improve upon, for the second quarter. Doing this immediately will keep that momentum going, and keep all of that positive energy focused in the right areas.
Meet With Your Coworkers And Agree To Hold Each Other Accountable
Once you’ve set your goals for yourself, the next step is putting measures in place to ensure that you stay on track. Like I said, it’s all too easy to stay motivated for the 30 minutes following a quarterly recap, but what can you do to ensure that you capitalize on it long-term? Setting goals is a great start, but having people hold you accountable is the next step.
Related: Tips for Staying Committed to Your Goals (Even When You Want to Quit)
Capitalize on the fact that others are feeling that same level of momentum that you are, and create a pact with 1-2 coworkers that you respect and get along with so that you can all share your goals and hold each other accountable. There will be days where you don’t feel like charging forward, but that’s when you need to fall back on your support system of coworkers to keep you progressing forward so that your Q2 is just as successful (if not more so) than Q1.
Create A Tracking Document For Your Q2 Goals
This is the tip that I personally have found to be the most useful. As marketers, everything that we do needs to be trackable – even the goals we want to accomplish for ourselves! At the start of the year, I created a tracking document that outlines all of the initiatives and goals that I want to accomplish for the year. From there, I broke them down into quarterly initiatives, and assigned a quarterly numeric value that I want to hit for each initiative.
Related: How to Talk to Your Boss About Your Career Path
As is best practice with goals in general, once the tracking doc is completed I featured it prominently on the wall next to my desk. When I knock out an initiative, I mark it on my tracking document. This way, my coworkers who are supposed to hold me accountable for reaching my quarterly goals can stop by anytime and gain real insight on how close I am to hitting them, and if there’s anywhere they need to prompt me to get more motivated or focus more of my time. This also helps feed into my 2017 goals.
Wrapping Up:
Look, I know that this kind of thing sounds cheesy. I’m more skeptical than most people think. That being said, I’m speaking from my own personal experience on these tips. When you have a rally meeting, like a quarterly or yearly company review, it’s all too easy to let that motivation and energy go to waste.
Use these tips and best practices to instead capitalize on it and propel you forward, so that you sprint from Q1 into Q2, and achieve the best results that you can for your clients due to the fact that you’re internally organized!