Boosting your Business during a Recession with Monday's Business Coach Advice! Plus The Role of People And Innovation During Inflation And Recession

Business Coach Advice from me Stephen Fahey -

Your business is doing well despite the local and national economic outlook and scary inflation. You may be a plasterer or tradesman who has been in business for 20 years and always gets clients no matter what. It makes me happy and pleased to hear that you are doing well. It is during this time of uncertainty that you feel the urge to go for growth. What's the reason? You like a little risk, and you see the potential in your industry. Where everyone else is playing it cool and halting recruitment, you see growth engines you want to fuel. Well, I would like to congratulate you on spotting your own unique leverage points. Let's start by reviewing your brand if you are that trader.

Business Branding in a Recession

Like learning to ride a bike for the first time, we need a strong brand in Business. Getting going and taking off in business activities requires the upper edge of stabilizers. Now, if you're self-employed, that's great. To get those 1 or 2 million pound contracts, you'll need to build a brand through time and investment. Consider Weetabiz, a well-known household cereal in the UK, which has a strong brand identity. Despite the fact that we may not be going so far just yet - for some maybe - it is a good illustration I want to use here. In order to reach its consumers, Weetabiz spends money on ads and creating branding channels. The fact is, even in these hard times we all want more luxury items, and if done properly with the right target consumer, any brand can be leveraged well enough to punch above its weight, and indeed grab some craking contracts.

Facebook Pressence & Website Creation

Here is the first magic trick I am going to teach you - ask yourself not what your vision is, but how far would you like your business to go. Would you rather build a brand that you can sell off later - or do you want a good return that you can pass on to your children. I understand that some of you may want to grow a national brand. Once again, you need to establish a brand identity and master social media management. Oh dear, did I use the wrong word. For the brand identity to be created and pushed, you're going to have to invest in decent social media marketing. It's going to be fun, don't worry. Review your Facebook page, then draw out a professional SWOT analysis of which your website must be aligned. Don't worry if you don't have one yet - one facebook page done well can give you branding - however, if you want those big contracts you may need more digital footprint, which I'll explain in the next section.

What is Digital Footprint and How To Get Started in It

Consider the carbon footprint as a term, then consider the digital footprint. On different social media platforms, it is how much digital content you display on a screen. For a good example, let's take my name. Try typing my name into GOOGLE - Stephen Fahey - and you'll see I come up in so many places. Although I'm not as prominent as GARY VEE or Richard Branson, you can find me on all sorts of digital platforms - including music, by the way - but that's another story. I hope now you have a better understanding of what one might need to do to increase their digital footprint and turn that into a successful brand. Gary Vee is a good place to start when thinking about social media branding - and that's where most of my strategies come from.

Final Touches To Building a Sustainable Brand in a Recession - Final Marketng

Once you have your marketing strategy and your business strategy in place, you should be good to go. Nevertheless, the most incredible moment awaits. This is the capital. It doesn't matter whether you have plenty or next to nothing, either way is fine. Depending on the size of your business, most business owners are willing to pay between $5000 and $10,000 to stimulate market growth. Decide on a full organic growth strategy after setting the marketing budget accordingly. Verify your sales funnel and decide whether to leverage bottom-of-the-funnel marketing. Once that's all in place - roll the dice, and start monitoring the data, as well as making any final marketing decisions you may have to make - like finishing touches to the website or waiting for the new leaflets. You will need data intelligence at this stage to evaluate what aspects of your marketing mix (Price, Product, Promotion and Place) are working, and how the whole business case is being implemented. At this stage, I applaud you - if you have never done any of this before, it is a lot of work. As your brand starts to work and sales start to increase, keep an eye on the external environment. News insights across different industries can help us understand how the market may change in the future. When it comes to bradning, leverage points are what you are looking for.

Innovation News

The Role Of People And Innovation During Inflation And Recession

Business leaders need to be concerned about people management and staff retention over the next few months. The waters are going to be choppy for most companies right now. A recruitment freeze might be implemented by some, while others might simply introduce new cost-saving measures. Whichever route you choose, what remains important is the corporate culture to support sustainable business growth. It is pointless to cut staff, such as Netflix recently did, and pretend it won't affect morale. As major recession storms approach, the culture and structure of your organization will matter. In the words of Batman: Dark Knight Rises, take control and take control. Anyway, you need to accept the wind is picking up and exercise control of the culture that will still create customer loyalty - innovation should be your weapon of choice.

Defining Innovation

You need to decide which innovation domains you will invest in or cut back on, and also whether you will condense the model of innovation in your company and look closely at what you invent. Choosing staff retention over product innovation, for example, in the hope of creating a new product in a new market, or choosing to play it safe and stick with product innovation. While you will probably do both - for now focus on one as a larger point of interest - where the Business Strategy is most impacted. It won't be easy because you're going to have to have some pretty stark meetings with broad about what opportunities or cuts need to be made. Remember one thing - a company's future depends on its people culture.

Spread the New Innovation

In order to ride the inflation and recession storm, you must spread the word across the company culture once the main innovation strategy has been defined. Embark not only on a Learning and Development prototype, but also having all departments report into Business Innovation - therefore, the entire organization is on the same page. During this recession, like others, you're probably going to have to make more staff cuts. Just don't give up on building a very strong innovation culture. Employees should step up their own independent emotional intelligence training. Please offer some support in that area if you can. As everyone's budgets are squeezed, mental health support needs are likely to increase. Additionally, innovation and emotional intelligence go hand in hand. As the emergency approaches, prepare your troops well - don't rely on technological innovation; instead, use emotional intelligence to develop deeper innovation frameworks. Nobody said inflation or recession would be easy. You might make some great waves if you spread enough quality innovation throughout the company. Genetlemen and ladies, I have given you enough rope now, so let's push it like in Top Gun School. It is inevitable that things will go wrong if you run enough businesses over the years. Do not blame yourself - don't worry. Get back home safely by trusting your wingman (innovation).

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