You’ve spent time and money nurturing your business from a seedling into a fully-fledged company.

You’re familiar with countless hours going over goals and lists, emails flying back and forth, and late nights spent worrying and strategizing. You’ve made a major investment in starting your business. 

Now what? 

It’s time to take a step back and look at your business from a new perspective—inspect its foundation. Do you have everything you need for long-term success? 

Your product or service could be amazing, but without strong brand values, impactful marketing, analytics and measurement, smart finances, and the right team, you could end up crashing and burning. Neither of us wants that to happen, so let’s examine your business foundations and make sure you have everything in place for long-term success.  

Strong Brand Values  

Defining your brand values is a great first step in strengthening your business foundations. Take some time to consider what you stand for – do you believe in integrity and authenticity? Sustainability? Perhaps you’re focused more on customer service and respect. Narrow down your core brand values to three to ten main points. 

These values will determine not only how you view your brand, but how the whole world sees your brand. Incorporate this messaging throughout your website and marketing assets, and most importantly, walk the walk. Your brand values mean nothing if you’re not true to them in your actions. 

Impactful Marketing Strategy 

Once you’ve defined your brand values, you can work them into your marketing messaging for maximum impact. Of course, marketing isn’t as simple as buying a couple of ads on social media and hoping for the best. Marketing can involve email, content, social media, and more. You’ll want to be strategic about your marketing mix so you reach the right people at the right time without blowing your budget. Choose only the best marketing channels to reach your target audience. 

A great example of reaching your audience in the right place at the right time, with the right messaging, is sending a nurture email to a lead who downloaded an offer from your site. They filled out a form and gave you their email – now you can follow up several days later with more information about your brand, your values, and explain how you can help this person achieve their goals. 

Analytics and Measurement 

Consider business analytics the cornerstone of your business – they should shape all your decisions and goals. You’ll want to collect and analyze data on where website traffic is coming from, how leads are converting on your site, your growth and engagement on social media, and the effectiveness of your email marketing. All of this data will help you optimize your marketing mix and set your business on track for long-term success.   

Tools like Google Analytics and Search Console are great starting places. You may also find some social media analytics platforms, such as Sprout Social or Later, can give you insights on how your social media marketing efforts are playing out. 

Smart Finances 

Even the savviest of business owners dread looking at their finances. It’s a big time commitment and can be stressful to handle it all on your own, but it’s not impossible. Careful spending and budgeting coupled with data you’ve collected can go a long way. 

Make sure you’re not wasting money on marketing channels that aren’t working for you—that’s a sure-fire way to hurt your business. Leverage your business analytics to understand what channels and marketing tactics are working for you, and cut back on waste. Experts can also help you make strategic spending and budgeting decisions for your business. 

The Right Team 

Hiring is essential to growing your business. You can’t handle it all on your own forever! Plus, hiring gives you access to experts and takes busy work off your plate, allowing you to focus on the bigger picture. 

If you’re not sure where to start, I’ve already written a blog post on how to find the right talent for your team. This should be a helpful resource as you begin the hiring search and need to choose the best candidate. 
At the end of the day, you’ll want to make sure that all your ducks are in a row and your business is in good shape to grow the right way. Sometimes that means working with an expert (or experts) to examine your business foundations and get answers to your questions.