Things to Do After Launching A Business
Just launched your business? Here are the essential steps you need to take next.
Jimere
JUST LAUNCHED YOUR BUSINESS? DO THESE NEXT.
It’s official. After months of sleepless nights, long stretches of research, and pooling resources together, you did it! You just launched your business.
The period after a launch is very exciting for many founders. It feels like being able to exhale after holding your breath for a long time. Your efforts have resulted in a new delivery, the birth of your business. The flip side of the coin is that a new business launch is not a finish line. It is the beginning of a journey, one that is both demanding and rewarding.
Just like the experiences of a child in infancy can affect him or her much later in life, the actions taken after a business is launched will have consequences further down the line. This makes it important to know the steps to take after the launch. These steps can mean the difference between success and failure.
In this article, we will explore the steps founders should take after launching their business to make it profitable, scalable, and sustainable. These are:
- Track and Review Performance
- Collect Customer Feedback
- Build Your Brand
- Systemize Your Business
- Create a Long-Term Marketing Strategy
- Track and Review Performance
The first thing to do after a launch is to review the launch performance. How did customers respond to your business offerings? Did you experience any technical issues? This review will enable you pinpoint areas for improvement and strategies that are yielding the desired result. As your business starts operations, there are some key action steps to implement:
Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be used to measure your business performance. Key performance indicators are numbers that tell you how well or how poorly an aspect of your business is performing. You should have KPIs for measuring the performance of various aspects of your business, including sales, marketing, finance, customer service, operations, and human resources.
Examples of KPIs include growth rate (sales), lead conversion rate (sales), customer acquisition cost (marketing), cost per conversion (marketing), operational cash flow (finance), gross profit margin (finance), customer satisfaction score (customer service), net promoter score (customer service), inventory turnover (operations), order fulfillment time (operations), cost per new hire (human resources), and employee turnover rate (human resources).
Tracking performance involves collecting data generated in the different parts of your business and analyzing that data to discover patterns, trends, and insights that can be used to optimize operations and meet business goals. Tools like Google Analytics, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and spreadsheet software can be used to analyze the data.
- Collect Customer Feedback
Right from the beginning of your business, promptly eliciting feedback from your customers will provide your business with insights and strategies that can improve your products or services, and help you satisfy your customers. Feedback helps you empathize with your customers’ needs and experiences, and be better positioned to solve their problems.
When a business receives feedback from its customers and makes appropriate adjustments based on their input, the customers feel heard, seen, and valued. It shows them that the business puts their interests and needs first. This strengthens customer loyalty and will pay off in the long run, because satisfied customers become unofficial marketers for the business.
For a newly launched business, listening to your early customers will help you assess your business model and identify areas to optimize. You can identify which products or services have the most demand to plan your inventory more effectively, and modify pricing, packaging or delivery methods to fit customers’ demand, as needed.
Getting feedback from customers can be done through different means, including customer surveys, in-person meetings, calls, emails, or social media interactions. Structured feedback can be collected using tools like Typeform and SurveyMonkey.
- Build Your Brand
A successful business is one that is recognized and trusted. Branding is a key part of any business. As a new founder, it would benefit you to invest in building a strong brand identity and messaging. Your brand building efforts should be centered on platforms where your target audience are present, whether it’s X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, or others.
Establishing a consistent brand identity across all platforms your business uses is important. This is how customers will recognize and remember your business. It is also how they will differentiate you from your competitors. Components of a brand identity include your logo, your brand colors, your tone of voice or brand personality, and your brand story.
People connect with other people. One of the best ways to help customers connect to your business is by ‘humanizing’ your brand. This means making it more human and relatable for your customers when they come across your brand. You can do this by sharing materials such as behind-the-scenes content, customer testimonials and case studies, and your personal journey as a founder.
Additional ways to build a strong brand identity include creating a brand blog or newsletter. By telling stories through these mediums, customers become more familiar with your brand values, and they trust your business more.
- Systemize Your Business
Building systems in your business will optimize your operations. As your customers increase, certain operational processes are performed more often, making internal inefficiencies and bottlenecks likely to arise. Building systems is an effective countermeasure that enhances the scalability of your business.
Streamline core business processes such as order fulfillment, customer service, and delivery processes. You want these processes to run smoothly and efficiently even when your customers start interacting with your business more regularly. Establish standard operating procedures (SOPs) that clearly outline business processes and what they entail.
Automation is another important technique to systemize your business. Manual and repetitive tasks can be automated using tools or software. This benefits your business by saving time and resources, and making certain processes more efficient. Examples of automation software include Zapier, Make, and Trello, Artificial Intelligence customer service chatbots are also worth exploring.
As a newly business, the team is still small. In spite of this, it is essential to establish clear roles and responsibilities of each team member. Everyone should know what they are responsible for and what their duties are. This will remove any role confusion and ensure that processes are followed optimally.
- Create a Long-Term Marketing Strategy
When you launched your business, your marketing strategy may have been based on hype or your personal network of friends and family. While this was good enough for the launch, your new business needs a strategic marketing plan for the long-run.
There are many marketing channels available to businesses today, including social media, search engine optimization (SEO), influencer marketing, email newsletters, and local media among others. Your business does not need to be on all the channels. Rather, identify the top 2- channels where you can find your target audience and connect with them.
A good marketing strategy should have SMART goals (which can be set annually, quarterly, or monthly), as well as key performance indicators (KPIs) to track and measure performance. It is important to regularly review performance, and make strategic changes where necessary. The marketing strategy should be a live one, continuously reviewed and updated.
A proportion of the business budget should be allocated to funding marketing efforts. A strategic plan will help you identify how best to spend the marketing budget to achieve the set goals. Popular and effective forms of marketing for new businesses include content marketing, user generated content, and search engine optimization (SEO).
Launching a business is the first step in your journey to building a profitable business. The steps you take after the launch are critical to the long-term health and success of your business. By tracking and reviewing performance, collecting customer feedback, building your brand, systemizing your business, and creating a long-term marketing strategy, you can make your business become scalable and sustainable.
Cheers to a successful venture.
