The short answer is, “of course it’s important”.  I cant tell you how many times I meet with students of mine that think they will succeed without setting specific goals for themselves.  Without a sense of direction, your business is literally like walking in the dark of an unknown house & trying to find the light switch.

It’s a line we’ve all been hearing since we were kids: goal setting is an important part of success! It is easy to see the importance of goal setting as we rise through the academic ranks or when it comes to investing, but is goal setting just as important in our professional business life? The answer is an overwhelming YES. Goal setting is an absolutely vital part of any successful business, whether you are just starting in the mail room or if you are the acting CFO. Let’s look at just a few of the ways goal setting can help you over the long term.

Gives you direction

Above all else, goal setting gives your business direction. We all have the same long term goal, to make money and to live comfortably thanks to our business, but do you know how you’re going to get to that point? This is where short term goals come in. Think of each short term goal you set as a stone along the path towards your ultimate, long term goal. It’s impossible to jump from point A all the way to point Z without taking smaller steps along the way.

Motivation

Planning out short term goals can also help with motivation. If you’re at the base of a mountain and your long term, final goal is the peak, it can be completely overwhelming to think about getting to the top without a game plan. You have to set short term goals to help yourself stay motivated and focused on your final destination.

Stability

With the current financial markets in upheaval, sticking to your short and long term goals can provide a rock of stability and reassurance when everything around you is unsure. Your goals can be a creed you stick to when everyone around you is panicking. That, alone, is worth its weight in gold.

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Today, I had the privilege of meeting with a group of local entrepreneurs.  It was a very interesting and powerful experience.  The topic of discussion was blogging, or better yet, different ways to use blogging to grow your business.  As many of you know, I am a huge advocate of blogging, as I feel it is a huge part of your business growth.  However, I made it a point this morning to discuss the proper way of blogging & what should be discussed on your blog.  In my mind, identifying your niche and honing in on it, is paramount in your success as a marketer and will definitely catapult your income potential when using blogs as a method of marketing.

Name any successful product or company of the last fifty years and compare them side by side and you may not find that may things in common, except for one important factor: niche marketing. Every major company started as a niche marketer. Microsoft began creating software for an obscure machine known as a PC and Amazon.com once only sold books to the few computer literate folks out there who wanted to shop online. Finding your niche is the key to a successful, long term business that has the potential to grow exponentially over time.

You Can’t Be Everything to Everyone

One of the biggest mistakes many home business owners make when they first come out of the gate is that they try to be everything to everyone. Our businesses are tested, poked, prodded and massaged so much before we even open our doors that we tend to remove the one thing that will appeal the most to a niche market in an effort to appeal to everyone. This is a huge mistake that will land you in the poorhouse. By finding your niche appeal, you are appealing directly to a market that has a need to fill and that will translate to big business sooner rather than later.

A Niche Can Easily Be Turned Into a Loyal Customer Base

Once you’ve realized your niche and you’ve begun marketing to it, and assuming your product or service is of a high quality, you can develop a loyal customer following almost instantly. The point of niche marketing is to fill a need that was previously unfilled, and chances are, that niche is going to be eternally grateful for your product or service. Diehard customer loyalty is the first big step any business needs to make it over the long term.

Niches can grow and grow and grow

It is only once you’ve become the master of your niche that you should even attempt to try to grow your business on a national or global scale. Once you have a proven product with a proven reputation, you can then think about changing things up to appeal to a wider audience but you must always mind your original niche market. Lose them and you may find that your business isn’t doing any business very much longer.

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