Last year, over 5,000 start-up businesses were launched in Gloucestershire.
Our three year business survival rate is one of the best in England, but how well equipped is your business to survive those crucial first years?
[source: The Growth Hub] Will you follow Gloucestershire’s trend for successful business growth? What if we told you that your business strategy is the very thing that can help ensure your long-term success?
Here’s why we think having a business strategy will give you a competitive advantage in a competitive marketplace.
Knowing who your customers are ensures you reach your audience
In order to sell your services to people, you need to know whom you’re selling to. There are more than 800,000 people living in Gloucestershire alone and among those 800,000, at the very least, some of them will be your customers. But you need to know exactly who they’re going be. A business strategy will help you identify your target market. Knowing the age, gender, occupation and marital status of your audience are essential demographics that really only scrape the surface of what a business strategy will help you uncover.
Finding your position in the marketplace builds your brand
Unless your business is completely unique, there’s a good chance that you have competitors out there with several years of a head start on you. So, how will you make an impression? Well, we believe that positioning yourself correctly in the current marketplace is the key to your business’ success. A business strategy will help you identify the unique selling points (USPs) of your business, help you differentiate your brand from others and enable you to identify gaps in the market.
Foreseeing challenges enables you to handle them resourcefully
If only we all had the benefit of hindsight before we launched our start-ups, our businesses would be a guaranteed success. The reality is that the unexpected happens. When the time comes (and it comes to every business at some point), the businesses that come out on top are those that pre-plan for setbacks. A business strategy enables you to foresee where things might go wrong further down the line and lets you consider how you’ll resolve those issues.
Knowing what success actually means helps you quantify
We’re not talking definitions here, but what success will look like for your business. A well thought-out business strategy will help you identify how you’ll quantify and measure your success over the first few years. This involves goal setting and creating benchmarks within specific timeframes. Planning what your successful business will look like will help you navigate your way to building a successful enterprise.
Not only does a business strategy give you the competitive edge but also it ensures your very survival. Having a business strategy alone doesn’t guarantee you long-term success, it’s the level of detail that you go into, the flexibility of your approach and the eventualities that you consider that will put you ahead of the game in the marketplace. At the Growth Hub, our aim is to provide businesses in Gloucestershire with key support services which will transform their business.