The importance of strategy

One of my mentors used to say to me “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”  He was talking about the importance of having a goal, before you start doing things.  

Everything you do should be taking you a step towards your goals.  Every phone call, every email, every 15 minutes of quiet thinking.  They should all have purpose.  If they don’t help you to achieve your goals why are you doing them?

So - I’m going to assume that, as a sensible business person, you have business goals.  But you can’t DO a goal.  You have to have activities or actions to complete that to move you along the path until the goal is realised.  And that’s where things sometimes come unglued.  Businesses often have an end goal - but don’t always have the strategy and tactics to support it.  

When I’m talking to my business connections and clients I often get people saying ‘I need help with social media’ or ‘I need to be more consistent with social media’.  The problem is that if I ask why they are doing or intending to do with social media, they don’t really know.  The concept is that every business needs to be on social to stay competitive, but often there’s no actual strategy behind it.

Social media is not a marketing strategy

Social media is a tool - and it’s important that it’s only one of the tools that you use to market your business offerings.  So mindlessly posting on a Facebook page isn’t necessarily the right strategy for you - you may be better on Instagram or on LinkedIn or using Twitter to connect with influential media people.

All social platforms are not equal, 

A strategy starts with focus

Regardless of your end goal, you won’t get there without customers so the first step is to identify exactly what kind of customer you want.  

Step two is to understand what they need and what you can do to help them - what will the end results do for them?

Now you know who you’re trying to reach, you can start looking at where they hang out, what they read, who they follow.  That’s step three.

Step four is a proper tools review - what are all the various means of influencing these perfect clients?  Social media may be one, but what about articles in magazines, videos, podcasts, email, newsletters - and that’s just scratching the surface.

I call step five ‘Means, manpower and measurement’ - and this is where the strategy become tactics.  Who does what and how do you measure whether it’s working or not?

This creates your plan and ensures that activities are focused, consistent and scheduled.  Little steps take you a long way and if you keep take small steps in the right direction you will achieve your goal!

More than just a book

While it’s really good for your ego to be able to say you’ve authored a book, there is far more to a book than a little halo-polishing!  A book is the fuel for so many other things that will benefit your business.

So if you have already published a book - or plan to do so - here are some of the things you can do with it.

A powerful business card

If you’re in discussion with a potential client, presenting them with a copy of their book (don’t sign it until they ask, unless you want to look pretentious), gives a message that you are a thought-leader in your field.

A marketing tool

Send copies of your book to companies you’d like to work with.  Having an author as a supplier or consultant adds a little kudos.  Also if they read it and like your approach, the door is already ajar - and it’s a good reason for calling, to find out if they received it OK.

A structure to underpin consulting

If you’ve written a book that describes a framework, blueprint, techniques or a process, this can become the structure for your consulting system.  Give it a name and it will start to become known as your signature system.

The material for training

Your book can be converted into training programmes that can be delivered either face-to-face or virtually online.  You can add massive value by teaching people exactly how to use your information and can even tailor it to individual clients’ needs.  You can convert the book into workbooks with exercises and examples for your delegates to do or discuss.

A keynote speech

Most professional speakers write at least one book to sell at the back of the room when they present.  But it works the other way too.  If you’re an author you can be asked to speak on the subject of your book at conferences and industry events.

A podcast series

It doesn’t have to be an audio book, but you can convert it to a series of podcasts where you discuss a chapter or section and elaborate.  You could also invite industry experts to join you in the discussion to add more value.

A video series

In addition to your podcast you can make short video tutorials around the subject of the book.  If you don’t want to appear on screen there are all kinds of other options, from images, video clips, animation and slides that can retain people’s visual interest while you narrate it.

That’s seven different ways to leverage your book.  Why do all that work just to sell a few copies, when you can use that to bring in more, and very lucrative, business?

How can I help you?

If you could speak directly to the visitor to your website, this would be a good question to start with.  Unfortunately, you can’t do that live, so your website needs to deliver what that visitor wants.  Not only what they want, but you need to make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for and ensure that they’re not kept waiting while your pages load.

This is called usability - or UX.

The challenge is that, unless you’re a large organisation, it’s rare that websites built for smaller companies go through any kind of UX testing.  The result is that the website may look beautiful, but if it’s hard for visitors to navigate or there are irritating features, you could be losing potential business.

UX for small business owners

However, you can do some quick and dirty UX testing before signing off the final version of your website.

If you go networking the best place to get some help is to ask your regular networking contacts if they’re willing to give your website a test run.  Most people are happy to do this - but, before you do that, have your testing process ready.

If you ask any six people what they think of your website they will give you six different - and often conflicting - answers.  So that’s not the answer.

Instead think about what a potential client will want to know - or start the testing with a handful of people and ask them what they most want to find on a business like yours’ website. 

This might be:

• Specific products or services
• Costs
• Images of products
• Details of how a service is delivered
• Your contact info
• The company history
• Guides or templates for something

The list can be quite comprehensive.

THEN you can ask your UX testers to carry out specific tasks.  Give them a list of tasks and ask them to give you feedback on how easy it was to complete them.

You’ll soon get feedback on hard to find items because the menu didn’t have what they wanted where they thought it would be or frustrations in pages taking too long to load.

All this should be fed back to your web designer/developer with requests to improve the UX.

Navigation is the key

The navigation includes not only the menu tabs and options, but also any clickable boxes and links. 

• Big fat buttons or boxes fairly high up your home page for your core offerings is a good way to make finding things easy.  Stick to fewer than five or it will start to look cluttered, but it will make it easy for people to get where they want, without having to scroll back up to work through the menus.
• Have your contact information - phone and email - at the top of EVERY page.  If someone just wants to call you, don’t make them jump through any more hoops than necessary.
• Don’t bury core pages in a sub-menu.  Your About page and Contact page should be on the main menu and easy to find.
• Don’t give pages quirky names.  Stick to the obvious.  The aim is not to impress people with your creative labelling, but to make finding the right page a no-brainer.
• Stick to a maximum of eight tabs on your menu or it will look cluttered and confusing.
• Try to avoid lengthy lists of sub-pages.  People want to know if you’ve got what they’re looking for - so don’t give them too many options to work through.
• Avoid too much detail.  Your main copy on each page should focus on pain and gain - what problem does this solve and what will it be like when you’ve got it?  If products need specifications, then upload a pdf with the nitty-gritty.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s a good place to start!