Making Decisions for Your Business to Succeed

Making decisions for your small business can be daunting. It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and lose sight of what's important. But by following these steps, you can establish some important foundations for success.

Defining your brand story

A brand story is a narrative about your company that you tell to potential customers. It's the answer to the question, "Why should people buy from you?" It's more than just the facts and figures of your business--it's how you want to be perceived by customers.

Here are some tips for defining your brand story:

• Start with your promise statement. Your promise statement is often a good place to begin writing a brand story because it tells customers what makes your business unique and helps them understand why they should do business with you versus another company. If your business does not have a promise statement yet, start there! (Promise statements are also called mission statements)

• Think about how other companies in similar industries talk about themselves ---and then do something different! Not only does this help make your business stand out from its competitors, but it also gives people something new and interesting to listen to when they're trying to decide where their money should go next time around (and trust us: there will always be an end user who chooses based on something other than price). (This is also called "Market Research")

Identifying your ideal client

First, you'll need to identify your ideal client. Who are they? What are their pain points? What do they desire? What do they value? What is their age range and general location?

You're going to want to get as much intel as possible about who this person is so that when you start marketing and selling your product or service, it will resonate with them. For example, if someone is 52 years old and lives in New York City but works with startups in Nashville, then maybe he enjoys a different kind of client than someone who's 26 years old living in San Francisco.

A good way to start gathering information about who this person is would be by interviewing them (if you have access) or asking questions in your Instagram stories with polls. You can also Google it! There's plenty of info out there that can help guide us on understanding our target audience better.

Building a content strategy

Content is the lifeblood of your business. It can define who you are and what you do, but only if it’s done well. Your content strategy is the process of creating, distributing and managing that content so that it builds trust among customers, drives traffic to your site, generates leads and ultimately turns them into paying clients.

When drafting a content plan for your business or organization, think about what your audience wants to read about most (and what they need to know). Then brainstorm ways you can deliver that information in different formats: blog posts, podcasts, videos (long form video and short form video), static posts, or infographics are all good options for driving awareness around topics relevant to your target market.

Outlining your engagement strategy

• Define your target audience

Your marketing strategy should be based on who you're trying to reach, which is the first thing that needs to be determined. This can be as broad or specific as you want: maybe it's all adult women between the ages of 30 and 50 living in New York City, or maybe it's just dads with kids under 10 who are interested in scuba diving.

The key is narrowing down what type of person you want to engage with and how they differ from those already engaging with your business. This can help inform decisions about building out an email list, setting up a Facebook group, creating campaigns on Instagram—whatever channels make sense for reaching this person.

• Create a content calendar

Once you've defined who exactly qualifies as "your people," start thinking about how often you want them to hear from you. If nothing else, plan out one post every week (or whatever frequency works best) so there's always something new available when someone lands on your website or social media profile page; but also consider adding more frequent updates if there are certain times during the year where those updates would be particularly useful (e.g., back-to-school season).

Plan your sales strategy

Now that you have a clear vision for your business, it's time to think about how you're going to execute it. To do that, you need to define your sales strategy.

The first step in this process is defining your target market and ideal customer. Who are you selling to? What problem does your product solve for them? How much are they willing and able to spend on solving this problem? These questions will help inform how you plan out the rest of the sales process.

Next comes figuring out how exactly those customers will find out about your product or service and get through the door so they can buy it: what's known as a "sales funnel." Depending on who your target market is, there might be multiple steps in this funnel—from identifying potential customers through advertising (like social media ads), marketing campaigns (like email blasts), PR activities like press releases or interviews, etc.—before someone actually becomes a paying customer (the final stage of the funnel).

Making decisions for a small business can be hard. But by following these steps, you can establish some important foundations for success.

The first step to making good decisions for your small business is to make sure that you have a consistent vision for what it is you want the company to be. Your business should have a brand, and that brand should be based on who you are as an entrepreneur.

In addition, knowing your market—the people who buy from you and who will help promote your product—is essential for making good decisions about how to grow the business.

Creating content for customers is also important because it drives engagement with them. When customers are engaged with your content, they’re more likely to buy from you or recommend your products or services to others.

The sales side of things can also help guide decision-making: when someone purchases something from my store, am I getting enough value out of that transaction? If not, why not?

Making decisions is hard. But by following these steps, you can establish some important foundations for success. You’ll be able to tell a compelling story, identify your ideal client base and plan the right engagement strategy that will help you attract clients. With a sales strategy in place, you’ll know what type of support systems work best for reaching out to customers (whether it be social media or email marketing).