How to Set Realistic Business Goals for 2025

Read Time: 4 minutes

Setting goals should be a priority of virtually any business owner. For a business to grow and thrive, it needs to grow in a particular direction. Establishing goals can ensure a business’s growth is consistent and leads toward a stronger version of the business for both customers and employees.

However, it’s important to set realistic goals. You’ll be more motivated to pursue goals if you believe you have a genuine chance of accomplishing them.

To ensure the goals you set for your business in 2025 are reasonable, keep the following tips in mind:

Get General

Normally, the advice is to get specific when setting business goals. That advice is absolutely valable. Often, achieving a goal is actually easier when you’re very specific about the details of what you want to accomplish.

That said, when you’re first setting goals for your business, it may help to decide what general areas of growth you want to focus on. Do you want to boost profits? Tap into an untapped market? Expand your customer base? Grow your workforce?

You might not have the bandwidth to pursue a wide range of business goals within a single year. Thus, getting started by deciding what general categories of goals you want to focus on can help you feel that the more specific business goals you set align with your overall vision for your business.

Review Past Numbers

Ambition is an essential quality in a business owner. To survive in a competitive landscape, you need to set your sights high.

On the other hand, you shouldn’t merely assume your business will experience unparalleled growth within a year simply because you want it to happen. Once you’ve decided what general types of business goals you want to prioritize, review business records related to those goals.

For example, maybe you want to boost profits. Review your records to learn what types of growth you can expect when your profits are at their strongest.

Doing so will help you better understand what types of profit boosts are realistic to aim for. In addition, looking back at records in this manner can help you identify steps you may have taken in the past to achieve your goals.

Write Out a Business Plan

Drafting a business plan isn’t just a step you should take when first starting your business. Some business experts recommend annual planning. The benefits of annual planning include:

Finding opportunities to adjust or “tweak” your original plan as-needed
Getting more specific about how you will allocate resources throughout the year
Giving you the time to identify new areas of potential growth that you haven’t explored in the past
Allowing you to reflect on the past year’s growth, which will hopefully provide lessons you can apply to this year

Creating an annual business plan also allows you to create a specific plan to work in conjunction with your larger plan. While the business plan you created when first starting your business can provide a general outline for how you want your business to grow over the years, an annual business plan can focus on the key details of achieving that year’s goals.

Don’t worry if you’ve never created a new business plan for the new year in the past. An annual business plan template can help you get started. Do some Googling to find one that serves your needs.

Seek Input

This tip won’t apply if you’re the only employee of your business. However, if you do have a workforce, consider polling them about their opinions on your various plans for the new year. How you do so may depend on the size of your workforce.

If yours is a small company, you may be able to simply speak directly with your employees about this topic. For a medium-sized or large company, it may be necessary to distribute actual polls.

Regardless, there’s value in soliciting opinions from your employees when deciding what types of business goals are worth pursuing. First, your employees may offer helpful insights that can make your job easier. Second, soliciting the feedback of employees has been shown to boost employee engagement.

Prioritize

You don’t have to set just one goal for the year. However, you have to accept that you might not be able to achieve all the goals you wish to establish.

Rank your business goals by priority once you’ve established them. If, midway through the year, you realize you won’t be able to achieve all your goals in 2025, prioritizing will help you focus on the goals that matter most.

Get Specific

Yes, this list started with the recommendation that you emphasize generalities. However, now that you’ve established exact goals, it’s helpful to break those goals down into the steps you may need to take to achieve them.

You can modify these steps later if needed. The main point is to ensure you and your employees have clear ideas about what you need to do to achieve your goals.

A Last Point: The Importance of Communication

These tips will help you set genuinely achievable goals for your business. They apply not just in 2025, but in any year when you want to reach toward new growth.

Just remember, you need to communicate your goals effectively with your employees. They’ll be more likely to help your business achieve its goals if you can help them get as excited about these business goals as you are.

Special Hint: Use Powtoon to Communicate Business Goals Effectively

Video and similar visual content is highly engaging online. Video content is dynamic and captures an audience’s attention in ways other types of content can’t.

Consider this when planning how to communicate business goals with your employees. You may want to create a professional-quality video or slideshow focusing on your goals and how you’ll achieve them.
With templates and various other resources, Powtoon makes creating such a video easy and affordable, even if you don’t have video production experience. Sign up for free today to learn more!

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Hanna Abitbul

Hanna is Powtoon's Content Marketing Strategist. She joined Powtoon as a copywriter in 2019, after graduating from university with a specialized degree in marketing and business. She continues to inspire people to create incredible video content with blog posts, videos, guides, and more. Hanna's passions include reading, singing, and caring for animals (#proudvegan). Nothing makes her happier than waking up to her two black kitties who, contrary to popular belief, are good luck!