With the COVID-19 pandemic causing major disruption to our lives, for many, our working lives also took a hit. Those of us fortunate enough to go about our daily business, it meant flexible working policies became the new way of life, at least for the foreseeable future. With this came new challenges and priorities.
Pandemic aside, the team at Refuel is always looking for ways to go paperless and support remote working. We believe it’s important to find ways to spend less time chasing financial documents and more time running our business.
Countries and cities around the world are in lockdown due to COVID-19. As the situation evolves around the world, governments are calling on businesses to do their part. We all need to encourage social distancing to protect the health and wellbeing of our staff and colleagues.
Setting marketing goals is like driving a car. When we drive our car, we have a destination in mind. If we don't, we might as well ask ourselves, "why are we driving?".
This is the same concept we can apply to setting our marketing goals. If we are not setting any tangible and specific goals in marketing, we may as well be 'driving to nowhere'.
How do we know what is working, what is performing? Are we working well? Is our marketing working?
When I started this business, I underestimated the value of a lot of formal structures. Things like vision and mission statements and documented processes seemed unnecessary when working from home. My dogs were my colleagues. They didn't care about values as long as they got their food and a scratch behind the ear.
But as you grow, these things that you think only big business need become far more valuable for your business. Things like value statements are easy to overlook when you're small. When you're a one or two-person organisation, it doesn't matter, right? It's one of those things bigger businesses need.
Then one day, you find yourself with a team of 8 from varying backgrounds and experience levels, and it's suddenly much more relevant. And urgent.
We overlook it because we think values don't matter as much as the ability to do the job. We believe in a small team we're all on the same page because we communicate so much. Or at least I did. I assumed this was the case for the longest time.