In this four-part blog series we give our very best advice to creating a successful small business franchise. We always notice what makes a home-based business successful and pass that information on to our franchisees.
Step 2 | Create a strategy
Once you’ve learned all you can about your particular small business franchise, it’s time for some strategic planning. Success won’t happen by accident. And if you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail. You need to spend a good amount of time at the onset to take what you’ve learned and figured out exactly how you are going to apply it to your business.
Spend time on these 3 different strategies:
The first is your marketing strategy.
You need to balance your marketing both online and offline. There are very economical ways to build your marketing platform. You absolutely need a website and should create a social media presence as well. You have the potential to reach tens of thousands for moments of your time. And surprisingly, you can create an offline presence as well that is relatively inexpensive. Through smart networking and community involvement, you create relationships that will, in turn, build your referral business.
Secondly, focus on your business strategy.
How will leads, calls, and invoicing be handled? What are your policies and hours? Have a solid system in place and tweak from there.
And lastly, don’t forget a follow-up strategy.
This should be in place not just for “shoppers” but for your past clients. By following up and checking on how your product is performing the client is much more likely to do business with you again, not to mention refer you to friends. We can’t emphasize this strategy enough.