We are only four days into the new year, and now is a good time to re-calibrate or re-focus your marketing efforts to achieve maximum success in 2018. To make the most of this opportunity, I am offering you four steps to get you on the right track.

<strong>Step 1: BENCHMARK</strong>

How do you know how far you've come if you don't know where you started? Benchmarking at specific intervals or times of the year is a great way to measure your progress (or lack thereof).  To do this, create a simple table in Excel or in Word. One column should be the indicators you want to track. Some possible indicators are:
<ul>
	<li>Revenue</li>
	<li>Social media likes/followers (broken down by channel)</li>
	<li>Newsletter subscribers/open rates</li>
	<li>Website bounce rate</li>
	<li>Website conversion rate</li>
</ul>
Input the numbers for the indicators you are tracking under a column with today's date. Add another column for the next date you will revisit these numbers. You could do this on a quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis, depending on your business plan.

<strong>Step 2: REVIEW</strong>

Look back at your marketing efforts in 2017. What did you do? List all your marketing activities, such as newsletters, blog posts, social media promotions, etc. Be sure to include specifics, such as what vendors and technology you used (e.g., Constant Contact or MailChimp, Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, etc.) You may also want to incorporate how much these activities cost you, especially with subscription based services.

<strong>Step 3:  ANALYZE AND ASSESS</strong>

Looking back at your efforts in 2017, what worked the best? What worked the least? Where was the biggest return on investment (ROI)? What vendors were worth it?

<strong>Step 4: SET 2018 GOALS</strong>

Now that you know what you did and whether it worked or not, you can decide what to continue and what to eliminate. Perhaps you want to add more budget/time to your email marketing. Perhaps you want to scale back your efforts on social media channels.  List  your g