8 elements for a successful business!

In today’s day and age, making the decision to do business is one thing and having all the resources to run a successful business is another. If you are a start up and have decided t to start a business, it is imperative for you to do your much-needed homework before you even launch your business. To do that, it takes months or even years to set up your business, get all the resources ready to kick in. So, let’s talk a little bit about some of the most vital elements to consider while you start doing your homework!

1. value proposition
2. revenue model
3. market opportunity
4. competitive environment
5. competitive advantage
6. market strategy
7. organisational management
8. management team

To begin the thought process, Value Proposition is one of the most vital element to ponder upon. What is it that you are offering the end consumers? Does your value proposition really fill the need of the consumers by the end of the day or is it just another firm added to the list of several firms out there serving the same need, in which case it is unlikely that you would survive very long in the cut-throat market where innovation is considered as important as the heart to the human! Your value proposition should be unique or something which fills the untapped need of the consumer somehow, in which case your very first step is good to go!

source: https://m.popkey.co/aeda2b/mzOpy.gif

Your revenue model is another important element in the long list of checklists. This simply tries to answer the question of how will the business earn me money? There are several models out there, and you will have to figure which model suits your plan best?There are subscriptions models like the several magazines, online music subscriptions, advertising subscription models like many of the online sites do such as Google where every brand wants to advertise on Google since it is pretty much half the market and avoiding them is avoiding half the search market online, transaction model like several of the e-commerce sites out there, sales revenue model which are followed by the retail stores, affiliate marketing model also known as performance marketing where several brands affiliate themselves to different brands and take leverage, in turn getting traffic and footfalls to their online websites and stores respectively. Conclusively, these are some of the revenue models but the big question is which type of model suits your nature of business, which could even be a mix of two, three of them.

Market-Opportunity entails questions like what kind of market sizes exist in the relevant market you are planning to get into? One is have an idea of what kind of market one wants to get into and another is the reality what really exists out there? It is important for the business to know the difference and not jump into your market without any knowledge and without much-needed homework done successfully. It is always better to be realistic and knows the market as it exists today, avoiding all future failures. The market opportunity also entails the existence of some market niche, which is rare to find but a true treasure if found! One should nurture the niche markets and do their due-diligence in order to grow their business in it and more importantly protect their business in the challenging environment of niche markets!

Next in line would be the question of competitive environment and competitive advantage? The questions related to these would be namely who else occupies your intended marketspace? This could be direct or indirect competitors in the same environment, also what influences the environment that you could take advantage of and what is it that you can offer to the market space which will be different from what already exists, which makes up for your competitive advantage? The competitive advantage could be thought on different lines such as could you have the first-mover advantage in the market? maybe have some complementary advantages that could be added to the market, giving you an upper hand on that! maybe think of the leverage eg. Amazon had on the online market with its loyalty program for the longest time, its prime membership rewards taking the market by storm and capturing maximum subscriptions. another good example would be Uber, which thinks innovatively, taking a huge chunk of the transportation consumer market with different services suiting all wallet sizes!

Market strategy is next which needs to be considerable thought since this could also make or break your business! Question- how do you plan to promote your business in order to attract the right target audience(TA) for your business? it is important to know your TA, to study them as much as possible, so you can target them with customised messages and serve them where they are found, meaning to reach your TA where they reside, the channels they are most fond of and used to? It is important for the business to reach their audience where they reside and not vice-versa. This will make the audience comfortable with the brand and eventually adopt them, turning into loyal customers in the long run, which should be the ultimate aim of every business!

Organisational development involves how the firm’s structure should be set up from the inside in order to carry out the business smoothly? how the firm should organise work on the inside? One could safely say that the organisational development is like the skeleton of the organisation without which there wouldn’t be any framework to its existence! This would also determine the efficiency of the organisation, how well they work on the inside giving optimum results?

The management team involved questions related to the leaders, what kind of backgrounds should the company leaders have? This would determine the leadership strategy, hence impacting the entire labour force in the company for the better or for the worse. The kind of leaders who lead the company would determine if the company will eventually have a strong management team or a weak one! In most cases, the qualities and management styles of the top most leaders are adapted or rather has a trickle down effect to the entire workforce.

Conclusively, these important elements of the business model should be given most importance before launching any business to be successful!

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4 shifts in the E-Commerce platform

I believe the inevitable shift of importance from the business itself given to the consumers today in the business of e-commerce is one which has been predicted for the longest time and rightly been a long overdue as well. there have been several predictions in the e-commerce ethos given by several experts out there in the field but here are some of the things I strongly agree with as time will tell!

1. It’s very interesting to find out that since the evolution of e-commerce giants like amazon, e-bay and the likes has come to the surface battling it out for their own piece of army(customers) through the most innovative ways to capture their customers’ minds (top of mind awareness), it’s been a rollercoaster for each of the competitors as a financial drain, fight for the most intelligent brains in the market and all in all providing the best and most ideal environment to grow in along with the organizations, all of which starts and ends with $$$.

2. Content is king: content is finally getting its due since its inception or rather since it’s been considered important in the whole picture! thanks to the several algorithm adjustments by Google, it has improved the SERPS, ranking the web pages rightfully according to the relevance, authenticity and authoritative content out there on the web. this has also been good news for any business out there small or medium in attracting the audience and ranking high on the SERPS solely on the basis of its original powerful content! It must also be noted that ranking high in the SERPS doesn’t happen overnight instead takes a long time building its authority and credibility. On the other hand, the bigger organisations will also have to go through the same drill when it comes to SERPS, hence the earlier one starts, the better it is!

3. Cashing in on the micro-moments: interestingly enough, though the cash flow in an organization is very vital for the growth of the organization, in today’s e-commerce environment, banking in on the micro-moments experienced by the vast consumers have also started playing an important role in capturing the right audience, eventually also true evangelists for the organization, believe it or not! The moments are simply where the customers are at the time of dispersal of the content, it is most ideal to reach the customers where they are instead of making the customers come to the information (content) which is simply considered a failure of the whole practice which will result in the minimum result 😦 Instead it is vital to reach the customers where they are on whichever channel they might be on? to understand the mood of the customers and bank on that precisely, the more accurate you are, the better you can market! Conclusively, to study the micro-moments of the consumers insightfully and smartly giving the right boost to the growth of the organisation in providing marketing its product or services.

4. Consumer fragmentation a challenge and an opportunity: unlike the traditional way of studying consumers, where the traditional organisations used traditional media simply targeting them through print media and television, the consumers today has evolved! Today the market has realised the true importance of the consumers out there, hence making it a real challenge for all brands out there to fight for the same lot of audience! Though the market sounds small, but it is because the preference of the consumers has grown immensely, the consumers have finally started thinking rationally, intelligently about their needs and preferences, and since the organisations and brands have also realised that, it is up to them to capture the audience intelligently too! Hence, the audience has been fragmented by infinite folds, and it is left to the brands and organisations to change the minds of the consumers in their favour through their several innovative ways!

Concept of ‘freemium’ case study

‘Freemium,’ this is just another example of how vast the digital space is today, this one for the audiophiles out there!

Having read the introductory chapters and the case study on Pandora the surprising internet radio, music streaming app and its several competitors like Spotify etc etc, I just wanted to share some thoughts I had on the subject!

1. Concept of Freemium

It’s interesting to find out how the leading brands in the industry of online music providing services, music streaming did everything they could or rather are doing everything they can in order to sell more and make more bottom line dollar figure? the concept of freemium would probably fit into one of the business models to make that happen, and of course, there have been several of the brands which had evidently done very well and are managing even today very successfully the concept of freemium. Some brands worth mentioning would be the professional networking site Linkedin, online storage site Dropbox to name a few.

The concept of Freemium, when you offer some service online free for a while, post which you intend to enroll the individuals in your paid subscriptions, doesn’t necessarily work everytime as seen through the brand Ning, company dedicated to creating your own network online, at first started with the concept which it failed at, swiftly switching to the paid subscription part, at which it surprisingly succeeded later on. Several of the online music streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify, Apple music have practised the freemium concept to capture audiences across the market.

1. Does it work for your brand?

Maybe the concept also needs to connect with your brand, the very nature of the offer you are making out there? Some questions certainly need to be looked into, what are the target audience out there, online looking for? what are they talking about in the online forums, communities? how much will the freemium concept connect with your target audience and will they value your offer not only while they have it but even after the trial period has expired? will they enrol in your program in a heartbeat? how can we make that brand really identify with the target audience? As a marketer, I would like to think that the brands wich have really stood out in this case study and concept of Freemium such as Pandora, Dropbox, Linkedin have certainly done their homework even before they got anything out there online, hence the clockwork success which followed, if I may say so, of course, nothing comes without minor setbacks if any at all in the process!

 

Someone once said to me,”There are no shortcuts to success.” I for one believe that through all my experiences in life.