Innovation & data-driven digital marketing.
This year has led to massive industry and economic shifts. As such, it’s important to take a step back and reevaluate the goals you have for your business. At 10x digital, we’ve begun this process with a fun exercise, creating a business vision board. We’re planning for everything from increased virtual extensions of our current offerings, how we can optimize remote team retreats to where we intend to and would like to grow over the next five years.
As we enter the second half of the year, now is the perfect time to invest in a comprehensive analysis of your business, looking both at the present and the future. Creating vision boards is a fun and interactive way to guide your assessment.
To get started with your business vision board, here are five questions to guide your work:
Who Are Your Personas & Their Traits?
Having a clear and honest understanding of your audience is one of the most valuable tools for business planning, demand generation and projecting revenue or success. Consider developing client and customer personas for your vision board. Even if you’ve done this exercise before, it’s still a great time to revisit – especially with the drastic shifts that have occurred during this season. A persona should include your target audience’s general demographic/psychographic details, behaviors, industry pain points and concerns. Other persona elements could be:
- Motivations
- Purchasing habits
- Goals
- Frustrations
- Personality type
- Roles and responsibilities
In defining these target personas, businesses are better equipped to connect their solutions with consumer or client needs. Establishing that link can often take an ongoing combination of research, listening and reevaluation over time.
What Do We Want To Create?
Getting back to the basics can be one of your greatest assets. Ask yourself the simple question: what products or services are we currently offering and is that satisfying our client’s needs? From your answer, begin to build a vision around potential evolutions of your products or services.
If you’re interested in an ongoing effort to discover new approaches and technologies within your industry, consider making it a goal to develop an innovation or start by beta testing new ideas. If you’re a service business and you’ve always wanted to branch out into a specific area, start researching if it’s a viable revenue stream.
Conversely, you can also grow an existing model. Take a look at your offerings as well as your financial data (from both 2020 and the previous year). What’s brought in the best ROI? Can you expand upon that product or service to further help more clients or customers? Or expand your customer base and bottom line?
When you focus on what you want to create or provide, combined with what works for your business model, you’ll be on the road to success.
Where Do We Want to Be?
As we look at how businesses shift their approach post-pandemic, every organization should outline a clear plan for physical and digital space. Office environments can have a massive impact on employee performance and client perception; a smart combination of dedicated space for each audience is key. A few ideas worth considering when it comes to your real estate can be:
- Do we want to explore different office space options (less dedicated space, coworking spaces, etc.)?
- Does our headquarters space share our story and is it in the right neighborhood or area?
- Can we switch to occupying more digital space with remote employees?
- How do we take care of distributed employees and make sure we’re helping create a productive digital environment for them?
What Do We Want to Do More?
Do you remember creating vision boards as a child? You might have put interesting occupations, places to visit or hobbies you enjoyed—along with anything else that brought you joy. While the outcomes may look different for your business, the intent remains the same as an elementary school project: showcase what makes you happy.
Examine the services or products you and your team are passionate about. What is driving your company’s culture? Is it a belief in your ability to solve a client’s need or the adrenaline rush of helping develop the perfect consumer product? Success often comes at the intersection of passion and revenue and if you can identify practices that unlock both, you’ve likely found your golden ticket.
What’s in our future?
A business vision board isn’t a “one and done” endeavor. Just as your organization evolves over time, it’s important to reevaluate your expectations and objectives accordingly. Approaching your company’s future with a degree of flexibility helps you become more malleable and ready for industry changes.
Make sure your focus is on setting long-term goals that can be managed and measured through daily action. Continue to regularly use this information to guide your decisions. While it can be an overwhelming task, breaking down and finding a way to articulate your company’s potential can be one of your greatest assets in shaping the future.
Good luck!