Starting a business is fun and easy. Growing a business should also be accessible. You only require a tactic to enable you to make profits and keep your company thriving. The business environment is about building value. Thus, the need for variables that can help you create value for your brand _ is the marketing driver. Marketing drivers involve the key activities and inputs that propel a business’s financial and operational results. Business drivers determine your choices about your economic model and business strategy.
If you can identify your marketing drivers and monitor them, your business will quickly grow without many struggles. These metrics will add value and impact the performance of your business. The question is, how can one identify the necessary drivers for his business? In this article, you will explore various business marketing drivers, including how to identify them to help you succeed in your endeavor.
1. People
Business can only be good if it has the right people at the right time, beginning with the chief executive officer to the least of the support staff. Everybody in the business has to play his part in keeping the company running smoothly. A business owner should know that the business workforce is just like machinery. Irrespective of their position in the business, each employee is vital to ensuring that the machinery works.
A business owner who wants to see his business thrive must hire people who fit his brand’s culture.
Recruiting talent that believes in your business mission and values leads to high performance. They are motivated to see your business thrive through their handwork. A company that grows fast has key individuals propelling the brand forward. However, achieving enormous success requires teamwork. Thus, employing people with whom you share dreams, values, trust, and goals is essential to bringing the business to the top.
The business workforce is a crucial factor in boosting your brand’s success. However, an entrepreneur can only succeed if everyone in the business is the right person. To ensure you have the right workforce, invest in employees through training. Focus on areas that will equip them with the skills necessary for their roles.
To know where to begin, identify all your employee’s strengths and weaknesses. Understand skills currently affecting their performance using metrics such as performance data, sales figures, years of service, and quality management to analyze and deliver effective benchmarks. Perform the analyses on organizational goals and those of the team to understand the areas where training is crucial.
Finding the link between what you have and your expectations is crucial to know the right metrics to close the gap. Investing in your employees should be a continuous process. As your workforce improve, your organizational performance.
2. Capital
Every company needs finances to operate and grow. When laying down the growth strategy for your business, you need additional funds. Identifying the proper funding is critical for your brand to thrive. You should not confuse your business growth by having significant capital in your bank account. There should be transactions taking place.
Transactions results in a strong relationship between business, customer, and suppliers.
The business income provides insight into the cash your company gains from selling its products and services. The higher the revenue a company receives, the more popular your business is. High income should not make you relax and think you have succeeded in your industry. It demonstrates that you need tight measures to remain ahead of your competitors. This idea makes you set time to look for ways to improve customer satisfaction to retain them in your business. This effort will lead to more generation of capital.
You need to popularize your products and services if your business receives low revenues. You can make use of the best marketing strategy to promote your business. Assess your gross margin to know whether you are making a profit or loss. Gross margin ranges with the industry. Conduct some research to understand whether your gross margin is low or high compared to what your competitors get.
More so, working capital helps you measure the liquidity of your company. It enables you to evaluate whether your business operating capital can cater to the daily operations and other unplanned expenses that may occur. Once your company reaches the break-even – point, that’s when your cash flow begins to increase.
3. Customers
Understanding your customers’ needs is a significant drive to ensure your company is producing products and services that meet the demands and needs of its audience. The brand that meets the needs of its target audience maintains a competitive benefit and can easily plan the correct path to increase its growth.
Business owners must be consumer-centric in all their business processes. The company must make decisions aiming to satisfy its customer’s needs. Thus, customers remain attracted, engaged, and loyal to the brand. For a business to ensure continuous growth, understanding its customers should always be the primary aspect as far as market-leading is concerned.
Customers are suitable for your business to grow, but having the right ones is an added advantage. A company’s best tactic to thrive in business is selling many products and services. Therefore, you need consumers who can pay for your products and services. Customers who take products or services on loan are likely to slow the growth of your business.
Many business owners believe the notion that a customer is always right. They understand those happy customers are likely to repeat business to a company that exceeds their needs. Therefore, closely monitor your customer relationships to lobby feedback on areas you need to improve.
Studying your customers’ profiles will help you fine-tune their marketing strategies and shape their catalog to attract many more. Group them based on demographics such as gender, income level, age, and geographical location to enable you to cultivate a customer persona. The research results will allow you to broaden the relationship with the existing customers and reach other prospective customers to increase traffic.
4. Infrastructure
Infrastructure can be defined as a framework of facilities and systems serving a business. As your business expands, you must develop firm infrastructure, including basic office space, processes, and IT systems. A solid infrastructure will enable you to have enough for your workforce, build appropriate operational systems, and purchase the right machine that propels efficiency in your business. Your business will thrive if it has a good structure that can support it.
An established business infrastructure provides appropriate coordination of all processes, human resources, and operational tools, resulting in profitable growth. Business infrastructures are very important since they offer aspects such as a solid foundation, economies of scale, replicable platforms, and consistency in customer deliveries. It is a business structure that shapes models and formulas that ease business processes. Every business wants infrastructure because it answers aspects such as:
- What to do for the business to grow
- Who is the right person to do it
- How will it be done?
- A contingency plan to follow
- How to profitably replicate the business model
Business infrastructures showcase that you can meet the needs of your staff and customers. It is a clear demonstration that you are well-organized and efficient in the way you do things. When you achieve a positive customer experience, then you can expect increased sales. Increased sales drive the need to employ more workers in your company, additional offices, and franchising opportunities. A firm business infrastructure link people, goals, and activities by planning processes and systems.
5. Technology
Technology has shaped almost every aspect of business operations. Regardless of your business size, technology has tangible and intangible impacts that will enhance customer awareness and increase profit. It greatly impacts the communication, efficiency, culture, security, and relationships of a business.
As technology advances, communication and information sharing take a new shape. With applications such as Microsoft teams, zoom, social media platforms, slack, and Chabot, communication have become more efficient hence the increase in sales. Sale enablement helps in tracking buyer-seller conversions and getting analytics depending on user behaviors.
Additionally, high intelligence enhances the access to customer information that business owners use to evaluate the customer experience. Communication is efficient when technology allows the creation of personalized conveying of information using customers’ data resulting in automated messages_ and boosting marketing strategy.
Digitalization optimizes efficient processes, thus reducing delays in the workplace, errors, and duplications.
Technology has contributed to a mobile-first business environment. Smart devices enable a business to operate remotely in content marketing, customer relations, and sales enablement through back-end processes. Most consumers use mobile devices to sell, buy, and find local businesses. They also share their retail experiences with others, such as friends, prospects, and new customers. Small and corporate businesses need to embrace technology to have wide access to the global market and real-time trading.
Digital tools are changing resource management as well as how employees work. They allow opportunities to maximize management and production despite the size or industry, enhance the security of an organization’s data tokenization and encryption prevent the loss of data.
The world is becoming tech driven. Thus, a business should adapt and embrace technology as a tool for business growth. Embracing digital innovations enables a company to consider effective ways of interacting and engaging with its customers. It can be on a live chat or social media.
6. Strategy
Strategy is activities a company takes to compete aggressively to secure more customers and increase profit in the business. It guides the management team while running the business so that it can reach its fullest potential.
Strategy is the major marketing driver to consider for your brand to thrive. It comprises all forms of the foundation the business owner has built on. Based on the business strategy, one can define a set of values and purposes of a company. It outlines what the business’s success will look like. Strategy pinpoints a roadmap for the company as well as the stopping points. Since strategy directs all business activities to achieve success, it should be flexible, realistic, creative, engaging, and responsive. It should outline how a business intends to use its resources, material assets, and finances to achieve its overall goal.
Strategy is a significant component of the business to thrive and produce value for stakeholders continuously. A successful strategy is structured by information from vendors, communities, and other business stakeholders. It includes the intuition of the stakeholders within the business _who are committed to delivering value to all customers and contributing to the business’s future growth. A strategy can revolve around particular areas that a business wants to focus on, including building a new product line, expanding into new markets, and opening additional premises.
To come up with a good strategy, you can base it on choice, the process of analysis, and implementation. Begin by understanding the current position of your business. When you know the ideal position of your business, take time and reflect on how you reached there. Based on your mission, values, and vision, analyze the strength and weaknesses of your business. Then, analyze your business environment and evaluate strategic options. Once you attain that information, you can now set objectives, communicate, and execute the strategy. Ensure to review the strategy of your business to optimize profit.
7. Risk
There is always a risk element at every stage in your business. Identifying and managing potential risks will help you to navigate through any challenge in your business. Risk management enables you to improve your business decisions. It is a process that helps you minimize negative impacts on your brand. Risk management can be a great business drive to boost your profit. However, you must balance between risk-taking and risk management.
By managing risks, businesses improve their relationships with suppliers, customers, communities, and employees since they understand and manage their expectations. It is a process that enhances employee confidence knowing that they are in a safe work environment. Business owners should always pay attention to this business drive, for it helps keep businesses open in case of economic and natural disasters. It is a way of minimizing your insurance and compliance costs by devising a low risk of harm.
Having all the information you need to manage every risk is impossible. Thus, it would be best if you kept modifying and changing your risk-managing approaches as your business grow.
When dealing with unexpected phenomena, find the most appropriate management practice. You can consult your business stakeholders, staff, and community to identify the most suitable approach. Determine the most likely risks your business can face and analyze them based on their urgency. Once you know the ones your business can face soonest, compare them against the mitigation approach. Keep adjusting the plan as your business grows to ensure every risk is managed correctly.
8. Debts
Monitoring your business debts is a healthy practice. It is one of the main marketing drivers that every entrepreneur should notice. If your debtor’s book is large, it clearly indicates that things are not okay. Bad debts impact your business negatively, making its growth difficult.
For a business to grow, there must be efficient ways of managing debts without having additional funding. One of the best ways of managing debts is through bookkeeping. Create a list of debtors per week, indicate overdue bills, highlight the urgent payment, and immediately take action. If your business is big, engage a professional bookkeeping service.
Cutting down costs is another great way to reduce bad debts. Begin by identifying ways to cut costs and directing funds toward setting debts. For instance, if you have been paying for marketing efforts, you can decide to grow your brand organically and reallocate the funds to manage debts. Finding new income streams can also help you to manage your debts. Think of some new streams of generating income. You can aim to establish at least six revenue streams. Think outside the box and have an income-generating activity that is related to your business to make debts less burdensome.
A business that is registered as a limited liability company (LLC) has several benefits. One of the major benefits is that it splits up business and personal assets. Thus, you won’t have to worry about your finances as a business owner. Debt is easier to handle when it is separated from individual finances.
If you are an entrepreneur burdened with multiple debts, consider consolidating. Look for a bank with good terms and take a loan to clear the older debts. Ensure that the loan is payable in friendly installments. You will be able to concentrate on one lender, which will help you remain focused too.
Conclusion
Managing marketing drivers can be challenging. However, marketing can be effective if you engage the correct business drivers. Keep revisiting each of the drivers as your business grows. Working with each of them at a time may speed up your business’s growth. You will build a successful and fast-growing business if you understand and leverage significant marketing drivers. All the best!
