It may just be the type of accounts and people I follow on social media, but I have noticed a massive increase in the number of posts relating to a New Year, a New You for everything from our eating habits, exercise routines, minimising our material possessions, improving our love lives, getting a better life / work balance, reducing our To Do lists etc etc!

The traditional setting of New Year resolutions now seems to be negative, as statistics suggest that they are doomed to fail before the week or month is out. Instead we are encouraged to set more realistic goals or at least make some small changes rather than trying to reinvent ourselves at a time when many of us are recovering from the festivities and are entering the colder winter months of the year.

Over the (almost) 12 years working as Marketing Doris, I have found that businesses (irrespective of where their financial year ends) like to have a review of their marketing in January. Typically we use the start of the new calendar year to look back at the performance over the previous month / quarter / year against the business objectives and identify methods of how we can make improvements for the coming months. The benefits of this practice mean that poorly performing marketing activities can be slightly tweaked or replaced with more appropriate methods. Usually there is no need to rip up any existing Marketing Strategies and Plans, but instead just make some small adjustments to get back track or introduce marketing activities to handle new goals.