Whether you have your own small business or you are considering starting one, you are probably wondering what you need to do. You are going to put a lot of time and effort into your business, so you want to make sure you are doing things correctly.
Even if you already have a business that is successful and has many years going strong, there is always work to be done. You must remain proactive (sometimes reactive) as the landscape change around you. These changes will impact your business directly.
Outside Influences Are Out of Your Control
Many outside influences are going to be out of your control. It is how you handle them that will set you apart from your competition. Consider some of the influences that may impact your business:
- Global pandemics
- New competition
- Automation
Sometimes, running a business can seem great with no worries. However, you must be prepared for when obstacles do present themselves.
Yet, despite these outside influences that are out of your control, you must believe that the sky is the limit. You must strive to achieve more than what you have. If you do not, then your business may remain stagnant, become irrelevant, or, worst of all, fail entirely.
So, how do you strive to achieve more in the modern world? You must look for new ways to re-imagine your business. The business world is constantly evolving, so you should do the same.
5 Areas to Re-imagine for Your Business
t is always good to take inventory of areas that can be improved in your business. It does not matter how many times you have done it in the past. You may discover something that can dramatically change your business.
Consider these five areas you can re-imagine for your business:
- Strategy
- Branding
- Marketing
- Copy
- Operations/Service
Taking a closer look at each of these categories will give a clearer picture as to how you can re-imagine your business now so you can see success tomorrow.
Strategy
Where has your business been heading the past 12 months? Where would you like it to go? How are you going to get it there? In a perfect world, what would your business be doing? Are you doing it?
Identifying these important objectives and structuring a plan to achieve them is so important. They also require constant re-imagining as the market changes. One of the biggest challenges is finding solutions for problems that aren’t here yet.
We are excited to break down these categories in further detail over the next several months. Together, we are going to re-imagine your business to help you achieve the most from it.
Branding
When you think of branding, we’re sure that many things come to mind. For our purposes here, when we are talking about branding, we are talking about the promotion of your company with distinctive design and messaging.
This is a vast topic that we won’t dive too deeply here, but, essentially, we see it as an “identity” that our businesses portray to customers to make it attractive and easily identifiable. Our brands separate us from our competitors.
While consistency is very important for customers to associate the business to the identity, periodic reevaluations of the messaging portrayed by the brand can reap big rewards.
Marketing
How we promote our businesses constantly changes; and things that worked well last year may not work so well this year.
Taking time to re-imagine how to get the word out about your products and services can go a long way. How are your marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) performing? Have you seen a shift in the ways that customers are responding to the constant barrage of marketing messages?
The challenges to digital marketers becomes even more apparent with the ever-changing customer privacy restrictions that make us re-image how we engage our customers and how we track the effectiveness of our campaigns.
Awareness of the challenges that are present is the first step; but taking time to re-imagine our responses is the bigger objective. There never will be a perfect plan, but there can be perfect responses.
Copy
Much like branding, copy is the voice of your business that communicates directly to your customers. How we use this channel for communication can portray what we want very effectively, but it can also work against us.
It is important to write clear, concise copy that communicates exactly what you want your audience to know. Yet, it is not just the words of the copy that matter. It is also about how the copy is presented to your audience.
Taking some time to re-imagine the way that you communicate to your customers can freshen up your brand.
Operations/Service
Have you taken any time to evaluate how efficiently and cost effectively your business runs? Shop around for a different shipping partner–you may find a better rate with faster delivery times.
Gather data on your receiving teams–you may find that their units per hour (UPHs) are hindered by the lack of appropriate equipment.
Send surveys to your customer database–maybe you’ll find opportunity about your return policy.
There are so many moving parts to a business. Re-imagining these moving pieces for opportunities for improvement are one of the most effective and quickest ways to show measurable data.
Conclusion
These areas are just the beginning of your re-imagining process. It is best to take each area separately and slowly. You do not want to rush into anything because your audience will always notice a “rush” job.
Moreover, it is important to monitor your competitors and see what they are doing, too. You want to make sure you are always one step ahead of the rest so that you can continue to progress upward.
It isn’t difficult to re-imagine your business, but it does take some creativity, time, and effort.