Simply launching your own website, Facebook page or YouTube channel may be fun and interesting and perfectly ok if you’re doing it for yourself, but it should be planned if it’s your company. Fun or not, in the end it should support your business and be more than just fun.
Strategy always sounds like something that only big companies do, something that languishes in a drawer and is endlessly thick, boring and unreadable. But these are (unfortunately far too often) not available at Schär Hoch Zwei.
A strategy has four elements:
- Actual state
- Target state
- Plan to get from the actual state to the target state.
- Metrics
These three elements can be dealt with in a few sentences or pages. Is it even worth writing them down? As soon as there are more than two people yes, if there is only one person… yes. In the first case, it’s about ensuring communication, in the second case it’s mainly about thinking about it.
1. determine actual state
This first phase is about analyzing the current situation. To successfully reach the summit, you first need to know where you are starting from, otherwise there is no point in planning. This includes questions such as: What tools and resources are available to you? What is the business strategy? Are analytics available?
This actual analysis can be very detailed and meticulous or pragmatic and a means to an end. I suggest that you use the one List with all digital channels do. This includes: Websites, newsletters, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter etc., advertising channels, Google Maps etc. To make it good, write down the goal you are pursuing with these different channels (if you are aware of it).
Secondly, think about what your business strategy looks like at the moment. Do you want to grow? Would you like to offer more services and expand your portfolio? Do you want to become more efficient and therefore cheaper? Would you like to enter new markets? In short, what do you want to achieve with your business, where do you want to be in 10 years?
The third point is to make a list of the resources that are currently available to you. Does your company have the relevant know-how? If so, in which area? SEOdesign, web development, programming, video, etc.. Do you have a budget that you want to spend on your online activities? Whatever your strategy is in the end, with a budget of 1000 you will hardly be able to create an integrated online campaign with YouTube, Facebook and your website. However, 1000 is enough to optimize certain areas in a targeted manner. This is not to say that you should spend that much money, just how much you would be willing to pay if you saw the opportunity.
And fourthly, your environment. What does your clientele currently look like? Are they private individuals or companies? Young or old? Men or women? Rich or poor? Experts or laypeople? However, this also includes a trend analysis. Is there something that is on the rise? Are there any laws that need to be taken into account? And what does the competition do? This fourth field is a bit more comprehensive. Here you can let off steam as you wish or keep it short and sweet.
The current situation can be summarized well in a SWOT (strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/risks). Strengths and weaknesses are an internal view and are reflected in points one and three. Opportunity and danger come primarily from the fourth point. More information on SWOT on Wikipedia.
As I said, this list is not complete, but it gives you a solid basis. Other elements of an as-is analysis could be a customer survey, an analysis of past business statistics, etc. These questions can be answered on 1 or 20 A-4 pages. The length is not important. Rather the thoughts you have about it.