Business will no longer be the same post-pandemic. Once we start moving past the crisis, businesses must reinvent themselves and product or service offerings to survive in the economy. We’ve come up with a 5-step system to follow: dissect, innovate, evaluate, master, implement. This method solely relies on the evidence found throughout the 5-step process and decision-making once completed.
There are some factors you have to consider before starting: companies have little funding to work with; team members are ready to get back to work but are wary of the current climate; consumers are spending less on non-necessities, and transactions have shifted to online channels.
Now, we dive into the 5-step system that business owners and leaders should start planning for the post-pandemic economy to come.
Dissecting your current operations.
This doesn’t mean to scratch everything you currently are doing and figure out how to reinvent the wheel. It simply means to tweak a few pieces of your business operations. For example, a company that is doing social media marketing might still see strong demand for its service, but the target market may shift from young entrepreneurs who may be low on funds to an older age range of business owners who have government income flowing in and don’t understand how social media works. This latter generation does not care to participate in complex platforms or learn graphic design. However, they are interested in strategies that will help their business thrive in the current market climate and are more likely to invest.
The target market would experience a slight shift, but the changes in operations are what would significantly alter. It would require the business to switch up marketing efforts and message distribution channels. This is where dissection moves into the next step.
The innovation of alternatives.
This is the process of brainstorming with team members and experts in your field to create a new effective plan surrounding the product or service your business offers. Create a list of ideas you can realistically execute. Returning to the example of social media, what if there’s a sudden need for it within corporations who haven’t invested in digital marketing as much as they should’ve pre-pandemic? If so, the services must add an element of training to their menu. Most social media agencies are run by small teams, which means they probably can’t take on what the corporations need. But the company can introduce a training service to teach the corporation's current marketing team how to create useful content and run social media effectively. Or the agency could create an online course that touches on all things social media. This would be an application that now enters the agency into the tech space.
At this stage, be open-minded to the possibilities by making lists and then going back and selecting which efforts are actually worth the time to achieve your business goals. It might feel a bit different at first for individuals in a leadership role because they are used to executing their own ideas, but teamwork makes the dream work. The next step of evaluation should bring more comfort and peace to their minds.
Evaluating the alternatives.
Start out by considering what could go wrong. Consider conducting small amounts of research within your new target market(s). The social media agency could send out a survey to 50 random people about their social media habits during the quarantine. If these results show that consumers in a particular market segment do not have a problem, then there is nothing your service could solve. Shift into figuring out what problems you can solve. Switch your survey to focus on business owners age 50 years and older, and ask if they would consider social media services to help marketing efforts achieve business goals and bring in more consumers. You’re more likely to see a good percentage of individuals open to finding the solution.
Understand that you must go about this step methodically. Many people may be answering out of emotions because they are uncertain of what their future holds. Once this step is done successfully, it’s time to enter the mastering phase.
Master the blueprint.
This step involves taking all the previous steps into consideration and outlining for the full execution process to come. Consider offering your pre-pandemic products or services at a post-pandemic market and price. For example, the social media agency would promote the ‘Social Media 101’ course for the company’s marketing teams with an installment payment plan to a fine-tuned target audience segment using ads on Instagram
Gradually obtaining information from your target market evidence is a very low cost, which means you can put more funds behind the blueprints. Consider having a soft launch of the first product or service. In the example, the social media agency would allow a certain amount of consumers to try its online course out first to gather information, testimonials, and supplemental materials that would help in the hard launch.
Implement the service or product.
As the final stage of the 5-step system, the implementation should be seamless if you produce useful results in the previous steps. This step is fully focused on your hard launch. Now that you have all the information you need from your internal and external factors, it’s time to put it out to the world. Have your team members, colleagues, friends, and family share it with anyone they know that would be interested or could benefit from the product or service.
It’s all about getting innovative with your business strategies and tailoring goals to reflect what is happening in your market and in relation to the world.
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