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Business Planning and Strategy
The first step in assembling a strategy is to understand all the elements that go into making the strategy. To help with this task we've assembled a list of questions to ask yourself about your business. The language here is pretty casual and the questions are pretty high-level, but trust me, any professional Internet marketing consultant worth his fee should be asking these questions in one form or another.
Questions About My Business
- What is the personality of my business? Playful? Fun? Professional?
- Do I plan to have direct sales or use an intermediary?
- What people do I want contacting me, and how?
Questions About My Product
- What are the benefits of my product/idea/service?
- Why is my product/idea/service different from anyone else's?
- Why would people want to buy/sell/manufacture my product/idea/service?
Questions About My Audience
- Who is my audience/market? Don't say everyone. People have preferences.
- How can I reach my audience or market? Who else is already in that space? Is there someone I can work with?
- How does my audience/market make their buying decision? Some people make impulse purchases. Others prefer a long evaluation. Do they buy from a store, from a service representative, online?
Questions About My Competition
- Who is my competition? Maybe not direct, but who could take away my sales?
- What advantages do I offer over my competition? Let's stay away from things like full service, we're nice people, our high quality, or we're trustworthy. Everyone says things like that. Why should anyone buy my product?
- How do I think I can differentiate myself from that competition?
Answering questions like these are crucial to any business, whether or not you plan to have a website. The insights you can gain from the answers to these questions can be invaluable in planning how to grow your business. Regardless of whether you use these questions for other things, it's critical to think about these topics as you plan the purpose and content of your website.
Further, asking these same types of questions of your customers/clients can be even more important. Sometimes it's painful to hear the truth, but the pain of not hearing the truth can be much worse. One way to ask these questions is to ask loyal clients to take a survey, or maybe offer an incentive for completing the survey. If you do offer an incentive, make it worth doing, say being entered into a drawing for free service. Another option may be to ask a few of these questions on the back of your invoices, or if you already have a website, on your site.
Now that you have some ideas formulated about your strategy, it's time to start planning your website!
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