7 Methods to Build a Strong Foundation for Your Business By John Burton Posted on August 20, 2018 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Frantically running your business and playing catch up simply isn’t enough. If you want to achieve and surpass your goals, you need to take the time and build a foundation for your company to grow from. Here are seven different things you can do to strengthen your business’s foundation. 1. Find The Right Area To Target The way you position your business has a huge influence on how hard it is to gain traction. If you position yourself to cater to a small market, you can’t expect success to come quickly. If you’re a new business, you have the advantage of studying angles other companies in your niche have used. Trying to target everyone is a recipe for disaster. Take the time to decide what problems you’re business is going to solve. 2. Don’t Neglect Your Research In addition to targeting the right people, it’s essential to research your industry. Your plans are much more likely to succeed if you make them with current industry knowledge in mind. Take the time to learn about your products, your audience and what makes them excited. It’s easier to pivot your business to solve different needs if you have in-depth knowledge of your industry. 3. Make Sure You’re Taking Care Of Your Employees Your employees are essential to your business. Investing in your people is going to put you ahead of your competition. You’ll get better performance from your staff if you invest in their education and their mental and physical health. You can take care of your employees by running training programs, encouraging them to pursue new certifications and offering a benefits package that’s comparable with other companies in the industry. Consulting with an employment lawyer is a great way to get familiar with your options when it comes to creating policy around your staff. 4. Find Ways To Track Performance If you don’t track your progress, you lose the opportunity to analyze your actions and identify your mistakes. All aspects of your business need to be tracked. It’s essential to monitor your web traffic, especially if you’re running paid ads. Tracking metrics such as attendance, initiative, and quality of work will help you identify team members who aren’t performing at their best. Tracking productivity is especially important for tasks like content marketing and maintaining client relationships. 5. Look For Areas Where You Can Improve A lot of times businesses end up chasing after problems instead of looking for the cause. Finding ways to do things better is always going to be helpful for your business. Something as simple as improving communication between two departments that need to work together can reflect positively on your bottom line. If you notice yourself solving with the same problems over and over, you’re not looking deep enough into how you do things. The ability to assess your actions is why tracking performance is so important. 6. Develop A Visual Identity All strong brands are easily recognizable. Your audience and the general public should be able to recognize your company at a quick glance. In order to build a strong foundation, design your logo and website to communicate your core values. You can work with a graphic designer to translate your values and aspirations for your company into a visual identity. 7. Start Building Your Own Platform Owning your own platform is the future of advertising online. When you have an active blog and an active email list, you don’t need to sink as much money into social media marketing. Paid ads pale in comparison to organic traffic when it comes to conversions and buyer interest. If you want to start attracting people organically to your site, start producing content that’s worth consuming.