Whether you’re promoting your own business, selling a product or service or are just out there selling yourself to the world, you’re a marketer. Like all other facets of your day-to-day life, the beginning of a new year is the perfect time to assess your marketing habits and identify potential areas for improvement.

The following are a few, simple resolutions anyone can make—regardless of whether the word “marketing” actually appears in your job title or not.

1. Become a better listener

Good listeners are not only good people (generally), they’re also good marketers. When you truly understand the wants and needs of the people you’re trying to connect with, you’ll better understand how and what to communicate. It doesn’t matter if it’s in person or online, listening provides the insight that will lead to your future success.

2. Put the needs of others first

Once you’ve really begun to listen, it’s time to put what you’ve learned into action. Take the time to answer your customer’s questions, calm their concerns and give shape to their dreams. In a word, empathize. Even if it won’t boost your bottom line—which it will—it will make the world a little better place to live.

3. Watch your language

Want an easy way to test if you truly are putting the needs of others first? Look at your most recent Tweet, blog post, web page or company brochure and make note of how may times you use “I,” “we,” or “our” instead of “you” or “your.” If you find you’re using more first-person pronouns than second-person, you’re spending too much time talking about yourself—and nobody likes being on the receiving end of that.

4. Exercise daily

While physical exercise has been proven to boost a person’s creativity, the kind of exercise we’re talking about here is more of the mental variety.

Take time to read, watch and observe the world around you each and every day.

But don’t just limit yourself to things related to marketing or your own specific industry. Read that novel you’ve always wanted to read, watch the documentary everyone’s buzzing about or just check out the lettering on that bag of chips you’re eating because as Seth Godin once stated, “Innovation is often the act of taking something that worked over there and using it over here.”

5. Have more fun

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the hot deadlines, endless to-do lists and the tangible results of your work and lose sight of the fact that marketing is, well … fun. Given the choice of digging trenches or dreaming up a new advertising campaign, most people would spend the day pretending they’re a character in “Mad Men” without hesitation.

Not only is marketing fun, it’s also not a matter of life and death. Free yourself to come up with the new idea or approach that may or may not work and try your best to just enjoy the process.

Once you have your list of New Year’s marketing resolutions compiled, be sure to write them down and keep it in your top desk drawer or taped to your computer monitor so you can refer back and check on your own progress throughout the year.

Have your own idea for a great marketing resolution? Share it with us in the comments below.

Happy New Year!