Nowadays, how you work as a company is almost as important as what your work as a company is. As such, it’s crucial that you think about your methodologies as a business and really take a look at different ways to keep your business thriving, even in the midst of civil unrest and a global pandemic. While not every industry is the same, many of the principles of running a strong business are applicable from company to company. Here are just five simple tips to help keep your business afloat.
Adopt an OKR framework
One of the best ways to keep your business on track is to use an OKR framework for setting goals and measuring accountability. OKRs, also known as objectives and key results, offer you and your different teams a way to clearly define what strategic goals are the highest priority to your business, as well as what achieving those goals looks like. An OKR framework can be used on a macro level when it comes to aligning different departments with the same goal, but it can also serve as a form of performance evaluation with each employee setting their own goals, too.
If you need a little bit of help figuring out how to write or phrase your OKRs, it could be worth looking at some sample OKRs to get a feel for how your small business can use OKRs to their advantage. For example, your marketing team may decide that it’s important that your business is seen as a thought-leader in the sector, and define that as your objective. Then, you may decide that increasing blog posts and blog subscribers are two ways that you could define a key result of that objective.
Hire experts in marketing
Continuing with the thread of marketing, how you present your brand to others can play a large role in how customers feel about you and your products or services. To that end, if you build strong customer loyalty and brand identity, it will be harder to break that loyalty in the future, even in the midst of something as displacing as a pandemic.
One of the best ways to boost your marketing’s impact is to hire experts to help you refine your approach and even help you create content. For example, searching online for “digital marketing agencies california,” you may realize that there are a lot of stones you’ve left unturned in your marketing plan. Whether that’s unconventional public relations, search engine marketing, blog targeting, or any of another number of strategies, you may realize that having a team of professionals from a marketing agency enhance your digital strategy can go much farther than trying to boost your online presence or handle social media marketing on your own.
Ask “Why?”
As a business leader, it’s easy to get entrenched in the way things have been done. That being said, sometimes things aren’t actually working as well as they could be, even though they are, for the most part, working out. By auditing every process in your business and asking yourself why something is being done the way it is, you can find your way towards a more efficient way of working, even with a small team.
Cut your budget where possible
One way to keep your business running is to ditch any expensive or unnecessary products or services. Especially if you use a lot of SaaS programs, it may be worth investigating whether or not you could find a platform that meets your needs better and encompasses several programs’ features. The one place you don’t want to cut your budget is employee compensation, since paying your team well can help them stay invested in your company and prevent turnover, which can be costly.
Invest in your employees
Speaking of investing in your staff, professional development is another way to show your team that you care about them. Sending them to conferences or registering them for different classes can help them continue to build skills that help your company thrive. Not only that, but these sorts of professional development experiences are an active way to show them you care about their growth within your company, increasing their job satisfaction.
