If anything, 2020 has encouraged many to embrace the fact that not all things can be controlled, especially with business. The coronavirus pandemic has forced many businesses to rethink their operations. With the new year just beginning, now is the perfect opportunity to plan how to do things differently, set up for success, and kickstart your business in 2021.
As a business owner, it’s important to put steps and processes in place to make your business work successfully in 2021. As everyone continues to make their way through covid-19, you can avoid the unprecedented challenges and succeed in a difficult business environment.
Create a vision for your business
How do you eat an elephant? You eat it one bite at a time. The most effective way to take advantage of an ever-changing economy is to create a mental picture that can shift and adapt to the constant demands of running a business. For example, if you want an impactful brand, you must not think less than a CEO. By implication, you must create a business vision.
A vision usually starts as an idea and develops into a concept that you can put on paper and communicate with everyone. A clear understanding of this vision will fuel you to create a forward path for your business. Your vision works as a roadmap to position your company for success.
To create a vision, you need to keep it simple, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. A vision is not always about the physical position of a business. Instead, it is often about planning business goals and creating systems for your goals. We recommend you create one year, two years, and ten-year business goals. After carving a clear business plan, you need to create a system of workflow and process that ensures smooth and seamless operations. You can use an online business manager to automate processes and make your operations more concise.
Determine your source of funding
Decide how to finance your business to avoid getting thrown out of business too early. Get started with a bank that can support your business. For example, Bankwest provides support for businesses including online banking, business loans, and guides and tools to help you succeed in business.
Here at the Small Business Lounge, our partnership with Bankwest means that if you’re a Bankwest customer, you can get 10% off all bookkeeping, advisory, and digital marketing services. It’s a great place to start if you’re launching your business! Whether you’re looking for advice, training, or someone to manage these aspects for you, we’re here to help.
Leverage social media to gain visibility
The world is a global village, and rightly so, since all activities are conducted online. To get your business seen by people in 2021, you need a cost-effective way to increase your brand awareness. Thanks to COVID-19, everyone is spending more and more time online.
If done properly, brand awareness through social media can yield a lot of results. It doesn’t matter if you are new to the business or not, the fact is that you need to embrace virtual relationships and connections with your target audience.
Meet your audience where they hang out!
Social media marketing is an investment of your time and energy. It will require you to create a marketing plan, draft up content, and schedule to maintain consistency.
Don’t expect immense growth immediately after you start advertising and posting on social media. Instead, focus on building a community and bringing VALUE to your audience through the content you post.
People go online to consume content that brings them value. They don’t go online to see you advertise your service blatantly every day!
If social media isn’t your strong suit, get an expert to do it for you! We have a range of different social media management options so you can focus on other business processes that you’re good at .
Use an advisory or bookkeeping service
Ask people that are already in business and they will tell you bookkeeping and accounting is one of the most challenging parts of any business. To survive in the 2021 business climate, you must guide your business with a solid and reliable plan that can project problems and solve them even before they arise. For example, if your management reports are up to date, you can back them up with technological solutions that let you optimize and streamline your business. By going through the different options to match your services, you can identify advisory services tailored to your business needs.
We highly recommend looking into establishing a cloud-based accounting system as early as you can such as MYOB or Xero to streamline and automate a lot of the financial processes in your business.
You should pay particular attention to general bookkeeping assistance, payroll processing, email support, lodgements, and management reports. Apart from this, you also need to monitor cash flow, budget, and reconciliation statements. Don’t be afraid to ask for help in building the right business system solutions to improve your business efficiency.
Create a feedback system
More than meeting needs and creating a life for your customers and associates, you must create a system to get feedback on your services and processes.
Unfortunately, this is the stage where many good ideas die. A feedback system lets you get your customer’s opinions on how to improve your business and possibly what you are doing wrong.
For example, you can try a holistic marketing approach like digital marketing as a marketing solution and expect everything to go well. However, without a feedback system, you may not be able to define new objectives and align them with your key performance indicators and overall business goals.
A feedback system is about discovery, strategizing, and creating a fast and seamless system for adaptation.
Conclusion
True, the times are different; however, business in 2021 doesn’t have to be difficult. Still unsure of how to start, check out our website for consultation and solutions for growth and automated processes.
