Strategic Planning Articles

Business » Strategic Planning | By Alvah Parker @ Thursday, 29th July 2010 @ 6:41 PM

To better market your business you'll need to think about your marketing strategy. It isn't enough to do sporadic marketing activities. A successful plan will help you to establish a constant flow of new business and allow you to more accurately forecast your staffing needs. 1. Describe your target market in demographic terms (age range, income level, occupation, marital status, geographical location, sex). 2. Describe your target market in psychographic terms (life s... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Alexi Snider @ Thursday, 22nd July 2010 @ 12:32 PM

Making clear marketing goal in your mind is important if you would like to enjoy a huge benefit. Actually, marketing goal is something popular among businesses. The most basic decision you need to make in setting up the marketing goal is to find out the type of marketing that you want. There are mainly two types of marketing campaigns that you could set up now. The first way is the traditional way for marketing, which is regarded as the product based marketing. This type of marketing cam... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Alexi Snider @ Wednesday, 21st July 2010 @ 10:22 AM

Business activities are highly dependent upon interpersonal and negotiating skills of their managers or owners. It is through negotiation only, that the parties involved in the business activity can come to common grounds of interest. Hence, if you are unable to adopt a wise strategy to negotiate with the other party, the probability of failure is higher. Three most important elements of a useful negotiating strategy are commonly observed to include; the ability of building and maintaining trust... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Mike Theriault @ Monday, 19th July 2010 @ 6:26 PM

Surprisingly, when it comes to security risk mitigation and safeguards, studies show even the largest organizations skip or don't complete steps. Then they face the same problems again. The good news is that whether your organization has 50 or 5,000 computers, the methods for responding to a security crisis and reducing future risk are simple. For most organizations, the biggest threat to their security isn't outside hackers, rather it's internal users. And most of the pr... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Rich Talbot @ Thursday, 15th July 2010 @ 8:48 AM

All businesses must plan for the future if they want to stay in business and prosper. Nobody really knows what the future will bring but sitting back and accepting what it may bring without trying to at least prepare for it, will set a course to failure. Data forecasting enables a business to try and see the shape of things to come by taking past data and predicting future performance. Businesses need to know how much income will be generated and what costs will be involved. Microsoft Exc... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Lawrence White @ Wednesday, 7th July 2010 @ 9:26 PM

The reason that anyone goes into business is to make a profit, plain and simple. Many business owners end up spending a whole lot of time analysing sales figures and assuming that they will somehow make a profit. Unfortunately however, many business owners do not see what they are doing wrong until the end of the business year, when it is often too late. If you are a business owner and want to know how to increase profit all year long, it takes a bit of imagination and knowledge but once... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Jacque Crook @ Thursday, 1st July 2010 @ 3:33 PM

You likely have a target market in mind with your product. Maybe you sell hats, mostly to teens. Maybe you get an occasional middle-aged person buying something - often as a gift - but your target customer is pretty well-established. Regardless of what you sell, if your target demographic has proven successful, that's great. But it's time to expand your business and bring in an additional type of customer. If that demographic hasn't proven successful, it's time to ree... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Karen Scharf @ Wednesday, 30th June 2010 @ 1:28 PM

Have you ever heard the saying "If everyone is your customer, no one is your customer"? Many small business owners are afraid to create a niche for their business thinking that they will end up turning away prospects or that they will cut themselves off from potential customers. The fact is, having a niche actually makes your small business marketing much easier. A niche gives you focus. It allows you to tailor your message to your particular audience. It allows you to have a bett... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Dave Kauppi @ Thursday, 24th June 2010 @ 2:15 AM

As it turns out, buyers are astute business valuation analysts. They look for certain features when they assess the desirability of a business acquisition. Private equity groups are particularly rigorous in this process. Without exaggeration, we receive at least five contacts per week from private equity groups describing their buying criteria. The most surprising statement contained in a majority of these solicitations is the statement, "We are pretty much industry agnostic." The... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Jane Dawson @ Wednesday, 23rd June 2010 @ 1:09 PM

For plenty of people - mainly those in service industries - their current and past customers are important for several reasons: They have bought your product or service already. So guessing they had a wonderful experience, they might buy from you again. Bringing in new customers costs more than selling to a current customer, so if you keep on selling to them, you are saving yourself time and money. Existing customers offer priceless feedback on how well you're doing. Did you e... more...