Ready to significantly scale your brand?
A strategic plan will make all the difference.
Strategic planning moves you from the passenger seat to the steering wheel of your business. It defines the direction you need to travel and helps better prepare you and your team for any potential roadblocks. In businesses without this foundation and foresight, it’s easy to lose momentum and lose track of where you wanted to go in the first place.
What is strategic business planning?
Strategic planning is a systematic process for developing an organization’s direction. It defines the objectives and actions required to achieve that future vision and outlines metrics for measuring success.
By creating a strategic plan that you regularly review and update, you’ll limit future risks your business could encounter as you grow. You’ll have clarity on your goals and a clear plan on how you can achieve them- step by step. You’ll also set up the foundations for long-term success by strengthening these key areas:
Focus and direction
Operational efficiency
Understanding of the current market
Team morale & communication skills
Long term stability
The Strategic Planning Process
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1. Understand Your Business
The first step is to review the current state of your business. It’s a time to reflect on your vision and core values and confirm that everything still aligns. In this step, it’s also vital to gather all of the historical data you can on your customer base and product performance.
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2. Complete a SWOT
A SWOT analysis is a tool for critically evaluating your company's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Key questions to ask yourself here include - What do we do well? What could be improved? Are there market gaps in our current offers? Are there industry changes occurring?
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3. Define Objectives and Set Goals
Drill down into specific objectives that will help you achieve your vision. I suggest using the SMART method whenever you’re developing goals. The SMART method stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely, and can be used to eliminate guesswork, set clear timelines, and identify missed milestones.
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4. Put the Plan into Action
Objectives are future-focused, so now you need short-term action steps. Unlike goals, tasks should take only a few days or weeks to complete. Break down tasks into the smallest possible steps. Keep asking yourself “what needs to happen before we can take the next step?”
Ready to learn more?
I’d love to help, feel free to reach out below.