Happy new year!

Hopefully you've had some time to recharge your batteries from 2011, have not eaten too much, and are looking forward to 2012. I'm sure you've set personal and business goals for this year and are now in the process of achieving them.

When many business owners set their business goals for the year it's not unusual for them to set financial targets.  That is, they establish revenue and profit goals they'd like to achieve.  No doubt you've done the same.

So assuming your financial targets are realistic, how can you ensure you hit them? You need to understand and overcome the one biggest obstacle to business success.  I wrote about this obstacle just a few months ago, but seeing it is so important, and as it's the start of a new year, I want to repeat the message.  As they say, repetition is the mother of learning.

Yes, there is one main obstacle that will stop you from enjoying greater success in your business in 2012.  Overcoming this obstacle will help make your business more competitive and will ensure you hit your financial targets more easily.

So what's the obstacle?  I'm going to let Kam Wai Yu and Derek Lee Armstrong reveal it to you.  Kam and Derek are the authors of The Persona Principle (published by Simon and Schuster) and the founders of PersonaCorp, one of Canada's leading marketing services firms and creative shops.  Here's what they have to say about this obstacle:

"The biggest obstacle to your success is invisibility.  The best, the most experienced, or the most talented cannot enjoy prosperity until they are visible to their potential market." - Kam Wai Yu and Derek Lee Armstrong.

Quite profound isn't it?  Yet it's so true.  If you're invisible to your potential market – i.e. you have no brand awareness or recognition – you will struggle.

Now before I go on, let me make a small addition to the above quote:

The biggest obstacle to your success is poor brand visibility.

When we talk about poor brand visibility what we are really talking about is brand awareness.  And in the business world brand awareness is the primary driver of business success.

Let me put it this way.  Your ultimate goal in business is to have people buy your stuff and to make a profit as a result.  But how can they buy if your brand visibility is poor or non existent? It just ain't going to happen my friend.

Here is the reality. On an operational level, your business cannot and will not make a profit if you firstly have poor brand visibility. It is not scientifically possible.  This is illustrated below.

If you haven't seen the visual above before, it's something I've created called the Revenue and Profit Drivers Statement.  And what it does is show the sequence of activities a business goes through to generate profit.

Now as shown on the statement, the whole profit sequence begins with brand awareness.  And when you have no brand awareness, you will not get customers, you will not earn revenue and you won't make a profit.  What you will have though are big fat zeros all over the place.

So ultimately, when it comes to the day-to-day running of your business, your first and foremost priority is making yourself visible. You just gotta get some brand awareness.

In the Revenue and Profit Drivers Statement I've used the term High Value Brand Awareness to specifically define what you need to get your business out of first gear.  So how do you develop and generate more high value brand awareness?  In a nutshell High Value Brand Awareness has these components:

1. You firstly need, to coin a phrase from Warren Buffett, a beautiful castle and moat.  This is your overall business concept, which is also the foundational component of your business/competitive strategy.

2.  You need a powerfully positioned strategic brand.  This is the way you differentiate your business from your competitors and it incorporates your brand values, identity and personality.

3. You need a clearly defined and captive audience/market/ideal customer.  To elaborate, you need to have a clear demographic and psychographic understanding of what your ideal customer looks like.  Understanding your ideal customer profile is also part of your strategy.

4.  You need to know where your target market/ideal customers are most likely to be found.

5. You need multiple, cost-effective media channels to get your messages to your target audience.

6. You need powerful, compelling sales messages.  These need to be crafted by talented writers, designers and producers.

7.  You need to get these messages out to your target audience.

If any of these are missing from your brand-building efforts your marketing will not be as successful and you won't create the effective visibility you need.

To reiterate, your biggest obstacle to business success is poor brand visibility.  And, when you have poor brand visibility you will not hit your financial targets.  That is a given.

Yes, it doesn't matter how great your product or offering is, without brand awareness you have nothing.

So, you really want to hit your financial targets in 2012?  Focus on getting more High Value Brand Awareness. Improve and adapt the seven key components that will help you you get that brand awareness and results will surely follow.