It is the small business strategy that defines what approach and tactics you are going to adopt in running your company. In the absence of a well-defined and well-developed strategy, your small business is doomed.
An important aspect of your small business strategy is the marketing plan you adopt to attract potential customers. Without a well-defined marketing plan, you will lose many potential customers. You also end up wasting a lot of time on issues that are not crucial to your business.
You need to finalize your strategies and tactics before you start your small business. This is the basic step of starting up. Many businesses are unsuccessful because they start without proper planning and strategy.
You need to have all the strategies in place before you start, and you need to have a business strategy plan – an outline of the things you will be doing to ensure the success of your business.
Below are some of the vital aspects of a marketing plan – and they should be well planned and well thought out – before you start your business:
Goals
Every successful business strategy plan needs goals to succeed. Without tangible goals, you just grope in the dark.
You need to have well-defined goals that can be achieved in a fixed length of time. These goals can be related to your turnover, profit, client base, etc.
For example, you can have a target of X amount of turnover in Y number of months. Similarly, you can have a target of increasing your customer base by X in Y number of months.
Having well defined goals help you channel your resources more efficiently.
Marketing Your Products and Services
You have developed a product. You can provide services. But where and how will you sell them?
You need a market to sell – and that is the essence of your marketing business strategy plan. You have to identify your market, and then you need a well-planned marketing strategy to woo the market.
Remember, there is never one perfect small business strategy. There are many ways to do the same thing. You need to identify the strategy that suits your small business the best, and you have to constantly work on getting new customers.
Customer Service
You now have a good customer base. Your next goal should be to retain them. How do you do it? How do you stop them from moving over to your competitors?
There are many ways to go about this. However, the best way to do it is to provide quality after-sales service. The better service you provide, the happier your customer base will be and they won’t even think of going to your competitors.
Next is the importance of having unique products or services, ones that separate you from your competitors. If you have unique products and services, then your customers will have no option but to stay with you.
Last but not the least is your ability to deliver more than what your customers expect. They will then recommend you to more customers.
So, the importance of a business strategy plan cannot be denied. In fact, a well planned overall small business strategy is what will make you successful.
