When it comes to kickstarting your business in 2019, there needs to be a significant focus on planning. Planning is pivotal in a business’s success, and it will help you to determine if your business is on the right path. When assessing your organisation, there are eight essential things that you need to look at as a business owner.
1. Financial results
Is your business on track to achieve and reach its desired and intended economic gains? This is essential in any business because, without the ability to turn a profit, companies will struggle to survive. You may need to look at cutting costs if your margins are too high.
2. Increase cashflow
Once you’ve assessed your financial state, you will need to determine if you need to increase your cashflow or have the ability to do so. If the answer is yes, putting together a plan to achieve is essential. This could mean increasing the cost of products or services, decreasing staff, investing in marketing or putting forth a new service. There many ways that businesses increase their overall cash flow, once you have figured out what is right for you and your business, implement your desired plan.
3. Look for growth
Endeavour to increase your business’s overall growth by looking opportunity, even if it is only minor. This could be hiring one more employee or adding an additional service to your list of expertise.
4. Increase website traffic
By increasing traffic and gains to your business’s website, this will help to generate brand awareness, and send potential leads to a spot they can learn all about your brand and products/services before buying. Look at investing into paid adverting to help drive additional traffic to your website; social media can be a cost-effective way of achieving this.
5. Content
Ensure that all material that is being posted to social media is relevant, fresh and up to date. Make sure that you are communicating to the right people, with the right message. By doing so, you will attract an audience to your business, which in turn once again allows for more opportunity.
6. Get your administration in check
This is a process that should have been completed before your business closed over the holiday period; however, if you’re slightly behind the eight ball, then it is essential that you get all your minor and significant administrative tasks completed and underway. It is sometimes the minor task that holds businesses back.
7. Increase customer relationships
Client relationships are essential for any business and generating long-lasting relationships is key to the success of any business. When looking into planning for 2019, ensure you include networking and building relationships. This will not only make your existing customers feel validated and unique, but it will also offer an opportunity for you to network and be introduced to new clients.
8. Review your competitors
With the new year underway, it’s essential to make sure that you are on top of your game. That is why assessing the competition is necessary. It will help determine if your businesses plan or strategy is lacking innovation, ingenuity or creativity. If this happens to be the case, you will be able to identify this as a weakness in your SWOT and put forth a strategy to rectify this.
So, is your business 2019 ready? Check these eight tasks off your to-do list and kick-start your new year in business!
Brooke Arnott, Managing Director, The Small Business Lounge
