Today is April Fools Day. Sorry, no jokes. The only joke about right now is that an infinitesimal amount of people are still working on their New Year’s resolutions. Plus, this is the end of the first quarter of the 2021 business game. How are you scoring for 2021 (or is it still 2020)? 

There is a reason the first day of spring is the second-most popular day for setting resolutions for the year. That’s because most of us have long forsaken any hope of continuing our first-of-the-year resolutions and business plans. 

Here are the top 10 goals I found for 2021 as curated by many surveys:

1. Regularly updating website content
2. Generating qualified leads
3. Researching customers
4. Creating more engaging content
5. Adopting mobile-first strategies
6. Fulfilling privacy regulations and web compliance
7. Improving website user experience
8. Targeting website to users, rather than internal audiences
9. Content distribution strategy
10. Measurement of marketing efforts

I watched the first President Biden Press Conference. It happened 65 days into his presidency, and he was asked why he hadn’t achieved many of the pressing needs of the country. Imagine if you had to have a press conference for your first 100 days of 2021.

Behavioral scientists have a name for the constant need to set dates for beginning new commitments: It’s called The Fresh-Start Effect. We need a clean slate to restart our efforts and achieve goals.

So let’s restart 2021 today and start with a clean slate. What needs to be accomplished?

1. Fresh content
2. Fresh look at mobile-first strategies (Google is shifting all website indexing from desktop to mobile-first in 2021.)
3. Fresh look at customers and potential customers through research
4. Fresh look at new regulations around privacy, data-sharing and compliance
5. Fresh look at the omni-channel marketing environment and establishing a plan to use it

Spring is here and so is the second quarter. It’s time to gain Marketing momentum for the year — and measure our accomplishments. The clock in this game is always running.

Mark Mathis III is chief creative & strategy officer, partner and cofounder of AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising.