You’ve become successful as a startup and are now ramping up to get a bigger piece of the pie. But how do you grow your business without committing beginner mistakes?
These 10 questions should serve as a road map to attaining more sales, reach and profits.
1. Who Is Your Core Audience?
Take a long, hard look at your product or service and ask yourself who your customers are. This should give you an insight of your future demographics, and more importantly, allow you to see what kind of customers aren’t buying.
From here, you can tailor all your business plans, including marketing campaigns, sales pages, landing pages and promotions to attracting more of that core audience who brought your business to what it is now.
2. What Do They Need?
Your responsibility as a business is to answer the needs of your customer with the right goods, products and solutions. Deliver, supply and prepare for current demands and if possible, future ones so you can cement yourself as the authoritative, go-to brand your customers can rely on.
3. Who Do You Want Buying Your Products?
It’s not enough to find who your current audience is, because in the future they may not be the customers you want.
If you somehow find the demographic a bit off-target, re-calibrate your marketing efforts and content to attract the new audience. Ask, how can you continue serving the customers you have now while coming up with ads or campaigns to get newer ones?
4. Are You Ready To Go Online?
Having an online presence in the form of a company website, an e-retail shop and on social media is an absolute must-have if you want to achieve greater success.
The good thing about setting up a website is that you get maximum returns for your investment. Everyone is on the internet nowadays, and more than half of the world’s population use their smartphones to look for products, services and local establishments. By having an online presence, you gain greater visibility and more chances of acquiring business and customers.
5. What’s Your Leadership Style?
As you bring more people to the company, leadership and taking the role of a CEO will be integral to future success.
Map out strategies on how you can streamline day-to-day processes and anticipate future challenges. How will you tackle problems with the staff, with the product and others?
6. How Can You Keep Your People Happy?
Happy, satisfied employees are generally more productive. They have more zeal and passion simply because they like being there. You will need every bit of momentum and energy within the workplace, and disgruntled employees won’t help in that regard.
Your best bet will be to pay attention to what your staff is saying so they’ll feel more valued. Come up with incentives and be transparent with them. A good boss is someone who works closely with his or her team to bring excellent results.
7. Is Your Team Aligned With The Same Goal?
Having talent working on your company won’t be enough. You will need a team that understands your goals and works as one. Drive and motivation are two elements that propel a business to new heights.
8. What Can You Get From The Competition?
Sometimes the best practices and ideas can come from the competition. It serves as a blueprint that tells you what you’re doing right and what can be done to improve your business and its many cogs.
The best ones to check out include their social media, website and how they market to the audience.
9. What’s The Future Of Your Business?
How do you see your business both in the short- and long-term? More specifically, how will your company look like 5, 10 and 20 years from now?
Do you want it to become a global presence or a brand that a particular demographic trusts? Having a plan in place makes it easier to see opportunities for new growth or for maximizing your presence in a particular industry.
10. Do You Have A Business Plan?
Really, this should be the very first step to starting a business. Every major company has it, and without a plan you’ll be flying in blind.
Write up your plan in one piece of paper and keep it as simple as possible. Answer important questions, including “What’s your next move?”, “How will you market the brand?” and others. Then, go from there!
Remember, winging it is not an option if you want to achieve greater success.