All businesses should have a business plan in place that is an organic document that sets out how the business functions and what its overall goals and aims are. This is a document that is used when trying to raise business finance and is often set out as a 3 or a 5 year plan. The business plan should be reviewed on a regular basis by the senior management team.
As well as having a business plan in place there are a number of strategies that you may also want to consider.
Brand – when it comes to understanding your brand and the elements that are made up within it you can create a brand strategy. A good Brand Strategy Agency such as www.reallyhelpfulmarketing.co.uk/specialist-services/brand-strategy-agency will help you to identify teh key areas of your business and as well as look at what the strengths and weaknesses are. This then enables you to share the strategy with those members of your team that need to be aware of the elements within it. This is usually your marketing team, communications teams and your senior management.
Marketing – it is important that when you look to market your business that you have an overall strategy behind this. This should be linked to your business plan and should cover key areas such as which marketing methods you are going to use, how you are going to use them and what key performance indicators you are going to use to assess how well your marketing is doing. In some cases there may be cross over between your marketing and your brand strategy so you can copy these elements across as necessary.
Operations – this type of strategy will look at how the day to day running of your business is going to take place. It will usually contain a cost analysis that will look at what costs are associated with the running of the buildings and employees costs. This strategy is the one that you will use when assessing whether or not you need to employ more staff, expand your business premises or in some cases look at whether there are posts that you no longer need and roles that you will make redundant.
