Focussing your business
If you really want to expand and develop your business, it’s best to do a bit of ‘strategic thinking’ first. It’s a fact that businesses that do plan ahead end up achieving greater success than those that don’t. Six key ‘strategic’ questions you need to think about first:
• What business are you in ?
• What parts of the market are you targeting?
• What customer needs or problems are you
aiming to solve ?
• What is different or special about what
you are offering ?
• What is happening in your marketplace that may represent
future threats or opportunities for your business ?
• How will you define future success for your business?
OM2 can help you address these strategic issues and work out with you the best targeting for your business.
A sensible policy for most new or small businesses is to focus on serving a particular market ‘niche’ i.e. a specific customer group who have a similar profile or who value a particular set of attributes or benefits from a product or service.
Once you have your niche, you can decide exactly what it is that you are going to be offering and selling to this market. Factors like:
• What products and services are you going to offer?
• What distinctive message/idea are you going to present to your customers ?
• What pricing structure are you going to use ?
• What channels or media will you use to make your products/services
available ?
• What promotional and communication tactics are you going to use ?
• What personnel and/or partners are you going to need to employ ?
Planning your marketing is not a simple or exact exercise, but by using OM2 to assist you, you’ll be off to the best start.
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