7 Things You Should Know Before Developing a Post Covid-19 Business Strategy
Business owners face a unique set of strategic challenges in the Post-Covid landscape. As the economy gets on the slow path to recovery, more businesses should consider these key factors to allow a smooth transition into the new norm. Here are 7 things you should know before coming up with your business strategy leading into 2021.
1. What are the changes in your customers’ lives?
1. Understand your customer?
In order to continue providing the best service and products, you need to first understand how the pandemic has affected your customers and clients. Getting a clear picture of how these changes reshaped customer purchasing appetites, decision-making process, wants and needs would give you an upper hand when it comes to creating your new strategy. You need to shape your business to adapt current products and services into these new consumer behaviors, either by adding value or even creating new, unique ones.
2. What is your competition doing?
Your competitors can provide your business with some insight into many market conditions. What are their current strategic moves? How many resources are they investing in promotions and marketing campaigns? Are they offering better value than you on products and services? Of course, you may not be able to gather the most accurate information on your competitors, but every little bit helps in painting an overall picture of current market movements, in return enhancing your new business strategy.
3. Have new competitors emerged?
Having knowledge of your current competitors is important, however, you also need to take note of emerging businesses that may step into your segment. With the power of Big Data and digital analytics, you can determine beforehand if any sweeping changes would benefit your organization. Before attempting any riskier strategic maneuvers, it is necessary to know if the initial push has already been occupied by other organizations as you may not necessarily be the only one who has thought of making the moves.
4. Refresh your Unique Selling Points
When developing a strategy for expanding or readapting your products or services, you will need to understand the new market. Will your new audience be receptive to your current unique selling points? In these circumstances, refreshing what sets you apart from your competitors can mean the difference between a missed opportunity or a successful one. Instead of adopting a red ocean strategy, any entrepreneur or business leader will know that finding your unique space in a crowded marketplace will get customers to organically seek your products and services. Once you have determined these, then you will have a clearer insight into how you can market your products.
5. Realign business practices
If your new business strategy involves making sweeping adjustments to key products and services, you will need to realign many practices to suit the new challenges that you are bound to face. There are many digital tools and analytics available that will help you with determining actionable decisions, saving you a lot of hassle in the long-term. Understand that what works before may not generate the same results as we head into this new norm. Once you realign these obsolete business practices, you can then reallocate more resources into new strategic opportunities that work.
6. Look into digital opportunities
Based on a survey by the World Economic Forum, an overwhelming 84% of business owners will increase digitalization in their work processes in response to the pandemic. 83% have also said that they will provide more opportunities for employees to work remotely.
With such response in business adaptations, we can foresee that the shift to a fully digital future has been accelerated by the pandemic. You can no longer expect traditional strategies to still work today as customer behavior and purchase patterns have significantly changed. Your organization may even want to consider adopting a full e-commerce sales model as early as possible as it does take time to build a steady online presence. The trinity of website, social media and e-commerce will help carry your sales strategy forward into the future.
7. Look to long term prospects
If you have the resources, now will be a great time to reflect on long term prospects. Was there an investment opportunity that may upgrade key areas in your business? Now would actually be a great time to invest as market prices may have been driven down by the pandemic. From operations to fabrication, perhaps even sales, you can restructure your approach and look forward to long term gains. Develop any leads that can secure long term benefits or resources for your business, and when the market does bounce back, you will be grateful for the foresight.
Final Thoughts
As we enter 2021, a strong, redefined business strategy will secure your organization’s place in the market for many years to come. For the most part, expect the current economic, political, and social climate to remain as the new norm. Adapting to these changes quickly would be key to thriving in the coming months.
