When it comes to developing your business, you must keep evolving. By constantly aligning with the times and even staying a few steps ahead your enterprise will keep moving towards success no matter what difficulties are to come. But how do you do that? And how do you take your business to the next level? Of course there are many ways and many tips that you should follow in theory to achieve this but let’s keep it simple for now and see some things you could incorporate to your strategy that actually work.
Invest in Social Media
If you haven’t noticed by now, we live in an era where every person and every enterprise has two profiles it presents to the world, an offline one and an online one. This dual presence is part of our reality and once we understand that we can start taking advantage of it. Just like someone who takes care of his outfit and his image before going to a business meeting with a new client, a company should also take care of its digital image before trying to approach new clients. Good first impressions are hard to make, and the worst thing about them is that they are made once. Either you are offering products or services, the first thing anyone would do when they first hear about you is look you up in the web. The fastest, easiest and cheapest way to boost your digital image and create a great first impression is social media. Update your business page information so your clients can find out details about your company as easily as possible. Start providing well designed content that your audience would be interested in, in order to gain their trust, stay in touch with them and encourage them to engage with your company’s profile. Once you have created an audience that is loyal, sales will follow. Just remember to take care of your online image as much as you would take care of your offline image if you were about to go out on a date.
Take Advantage of Data
You have definitely heard of Big Data, Data Analysis, Data Management and many more terms that use the word data. In case you haven’t you do now. Recently Data was categorised as the most expensive asset in the world overtaking Gold, and Petrol. This means that Data is pretty important nowadays and everyone is interested in it. The good thing about Data though is that contrary to Gold and Petrol it can be found everywhere. We all generate Data daily even when we walk and have a smartphone on us, or even when we use apps. This means that there is also data in your enterprise that you can take advantage of in order to optimise many of your operations. There is a famous saying by the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Lew Platt that refers to data quoting “if HP knew, what HP knows we would be three times more productive”. Data Analysis and Data Management is Science and in order to do it in the right way you will need to hire Data Scientists which means you will have to invest in it. But there are some things you could do with your existing resources in order to “get the engine running” in each operation. So if for example you where to be interested in increasing sales you should start by classifying information you have about existing clients in your CRM such as gender, age, location etc, this would help you understand your audience better. Then you should try to harvest data from clients that visit your website or your social media such as their email and what they are interested in. By getting to know your existing audience and an audience that could be interested in your services or products you automatically have insights on where to focus in order to take your business to the next level.
Develop Culture More Than Strategy
Most companies focus on developing new strategies and new techniques to reach audiences more efficiently but seem to forget to focus on developing their company culture. Strategy is very important, always has been and always will be, but in a competitive business world like the one we work in, besides having the perfect strategy you must also stand out. Differentiation is what makes you more desirable. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. The only way to let people that either work with you or are interested in your company know about what you do is through culture. Developing the right culture and passing it on to your team could lead to many interesting results and it is very important for an enterprise in many aspects. Imagine an enteprise with all employees sharing the same values and talking in the same language when it comes to serving customers. This automatically would add value to that company, value that subliminally would pass on to the customers as well and eventually achieve your initial goal.
The first thing you should do though before attempting to take your business to the next level should be understanding your position at that specific moment. By having self awareness and knowing where you are at this point of time and where you want to go in the future can help you figure out the steps you should take and adjust your strategy to it.
