By Sam Stoffel, Founder and CEO of Outplayed.com
You’ve got a killer idea and the beginnings of a potentially successful business, but without the right planning and strategy in place, do you have what you need to grow your budding startup into a fully-fledged scaleup?
As an entrepreneur, the right strategy can make or break your business, and even the best idea can quickly flounder and stagnant if executed with poor planning.
With so few certainties in the current economic and business landscape, the right strategy can be the difference between capitalising on a new opportunity and successfully responding to shifting market conditions, or desperately playing catch-up.
So, what are the key elements you should consider when developing a business strategy with the best chance of success?
Define your purpose
This is an obvious one, but a surprising number of entrepreneurs launch head-first into a new venture without taking the time to fully flesh out the problem they are trying to solve and why their product or service should be the natural choice.
Defining your ‘why’ should be the crucial element underpinning your entire business strategy. Without this why, effectively positioning your business to target the right audiences and developing strategies to both acquire and retain customers becomes an uphill struggle.
A clearly defined purpose informs your entire approach to the business, making it easier to build your brand, retain both customers and employees, and create value further down the line.
Pricing that pays
All too often, otherwise promising businesses stagnant due to a lack of capital needed to grow. A strategy for scaling the business is great – but without a pricing model that keeps your cashflow in the black, it’s next to useless.
It’s tempting to think that undercutting your competition by offering the lowest price possible is a failsafe way of attracting large numbers of customers. While this certainly might be the case in the short-term, in the long-term, you might actually be starving your business of the vital funding it needs to grow.
It’s essential that your pricing model reflects not only your current overheads but also provides enough financial wiggle room to respond to new opportunities and increased demand. A strategy that focuses on providing value to customers that your cheaper competition cannot is key to adopting a sustainable pricing model.
Create customer value
Defining your purpose and pricing is only half the battle. Your strategy should be translating that purpose and justifying your pricing through a relentless focus on how you are delivering value to your customers.
While your product or service may be best-in-class, if you fail to plan for investment into customer service or improved purchasing experiences, customers will inevitably find it elsewhere.
For cash-strapped startups who lack the resources to launch large-scale marketing campaigns or invest in a dedicated customer experience team, creating and leveraging the community around your brand can be a cost-effective way to boost your brand recognition while delivering real value to your audience.
Marketing matters
Marketing is often an afterthought when launching a new business, but why this should be the case is puzzling when you consider how crucial marketing is for communicating your brand and purpose to your target audience. Without a strategy for how you will market yourself, your ability to generate leads and sales and grow your visibility on the market is going to be severely hampered.
You don’t have to break the bank to begin leveraging marketing channels, with social media platforms and pay-per-click advertising offering cost-effective ways to market on a budget, but you do need a strategy in place. Getting clear on the metrics you will use to measure how these activities are performing, and establishing relevant KPIs to track success and return on investment are both essential for building a marketing strategy that supports your wider business goals.
Final thoughts
With a flawed business model cited as the fourth most common reason startups fail, getting your strategy right early on could be the difference between your company becoming a footnote, or the next major player.
Agility and the ability to effectively respond to rapid changes are hallmarks of successful entrepreneurs, but this is only possible when your business fundamentals are taken care of.
