Top 4 Effective Business Strategies for US and UK Brands
Over 800,000 new businesses were started in the UK during 2020-21. More and more people are taking the plunge to chase their dreams. However, only a few make it big.
Many businesses fall behind due to a lack of planning, management, and preparedness for contingencies. You need a thorough and flexible business plan to navigate your business in your chosen industry.
You also need to be on your toes at all times to identify opportunities and obstacles and maneuver them wisely. We’ve come up with some effective business strategies to help you strengthen your brand and make it grow organically. Read on to know more.
Top 4 effective business strategies for US and UK brands
Brand strategies refer to the holistic approach of how a brand builds its identification among its audience. Their goal is to provide a path for a brand to walk on that aligns with its goals and helps them grow organically.
You can adopt multiple strategies depending on the scope and nature of your business. Make sure that they complement each other and work together to empower your brand. As a rule of thumb, it’s good to have a roster of strategies that cover every aspect of your business.
This way, all bases are covered and you can create a comprehensive business plan that takes your brand forward. With the basics addressed, let’s dive into some of the most effective business strategies for UK brands.
- Invest in market research
One of the first business strategies that you can implement and that will bring extraordinary results is market research. It’s often seen as a long-winded process that takes up a lot of resources and effort but brings results too late.
But that is not true. Efficient market research can bring results as soon as you start applying your learnings. Market research is classified as a systematic and organized gathering of information about your target audience.
This includes their preferences, likes, dislikes, and expectations from the products and brands. It directly helps you craft an efficient and proactive business approach by making it inherently customer-centric.
As market research involves an extensive examination of the market you operate in as well as your target audience, it requires dedicated effort and resources. You may allocate an internal team to conduct it or outsource the operation, depending on what suits you better.
Here are some of the best UK-based market research companies that will help you conduct top-notch and targeted market research. With outside help, you’ll be able to hone in on particular areas that require focused attention with more accuracy and get expert opinions.
- Key benefits of market research
Given below are the key benefits of adopting market research as a business strategy:
- It gives you a thorough idea about the market and industry you operate in, where you stand, and how you can navigate it.
- It helps you identify potential opportunities and threats so that you can prepare in advance to handle them.
- It vastly minimizes investment risk as you can take educated risks while keeping all the potential results in consideration.
- You may be able to spot emerging trends and capitalize on them before your competitors.
- It will aid further planning of other strategies as you have the complete picture regarding your brand performance and position in the market.
- Make the most of email marketing
Email marketing continues to be one of the most efficient digital marketing tools along with being a pioneer in the field. Almost all brands make use of it given its ubiquitous nature. However, many fail to make an impact with it.
This is mostly because most brands send out emails with little motive or strategy behind them. You need to be specific and targeted with your emails to make an impact on your audience. Understand that your mailing list is people who legitimately want to hear from you on their own.
So, you already have their attention. All you need to do is make the conversation worthwhile for them. This is where your market research comes into play. It helps you identify the needs and wants of your clients and build conversations accordingly.
The key to acing email marketing is conversing with your mailing list based on where they stand on the sales funnel. So, if someone has just been acquainted with you, focus on providing them with valuable information about topics that interest them.
And if someone has been inactive for a long time, you can try to re-engage them with win-back emails. Here are some win back email examples and target page examples to help you recapture your customers’ attention.
Let’s take a look at some effective email marketing strategies you can implement:
- Personalize the conversation — Simply adding the name of the customer in the salutation does wonders for the tone of your message. It makes them feel invited and increases their likelihood of engaging with your message.
- Segment your mailing list — Segmentation helps you organize a large mailing list. Your subscribers are essentially grouped in advance and you can come up with campaigns for them based on the basis of their segmentation, such as likes and position in the sales funnel.
- Conduct A/B testing — Since emails are opened on both mobile and desktops, you need to make sure your emails are optimized for all kinds of screens. A/B testing helps you test out different variations of a message and pick out the most suitable one before it goes live.
- Reassess your core values
A fairly underused business strategy that can tremendously help you strengthen your brand is reassessing your brand values from time to time. Changing with the ever-evolving business landscape is simply the need of the hour.
Businesses often start with a set of values that become obsolete to their own way of operating as they morph and mold their approach as they go along. Sometime later, they are reduced to a superficial and rigid aspect of your brand.
To avoid this, assess your values from time to time. See if you still align with them or do they need to change with changing times. If so, embrace the change and announce it to your audience so that they know what you’re changing for the better.
- Example — Victoria’s Secret
In August 2021, Lingerie and fashion brand Victoria’s Secret announced that it would be partnering up with women of different colors, ages, and shapes instead of just supermodels as it previously did.
This transition was aimed at inclusivity and sending a positive message to the new generation, one that was well-received by its audience. As a brand, it allowed Victoria’s Secret to embrace change and improve itself.
- Example — Burberry
British luxury brand Burberry has been around since the 70s. While its core values have remained more or less the same, it has successfully made the transition to digital marketing from on-the-ground marketing.
It has achieved this with collaboration with Google, acoustic music projects, and hiring popular British celebrities such as actress Emma Watson and supermodel Kate Moss as brand ambassadors.
- Don’t ignore your digital presence
In today’s digital world, brands that are not online are simply a step behind their counterparts. It has become a need to have a digital presence in some capacity. However, it requires effort and upkeep to do that many small businesses cannot afford.
The solution isn’t to simply abandon your digital presence. You should strive to have as much online presence as you can, no matter how limited. Doing so gives you some online presence as opposed to none.
This way, people trying to reach you have a way to do so as opposed to being left in the dark or worse, getting contacted by your competitors or fraudulent parties. It also allows you to reach out beyond the geographical boundaries of the UK and make your brand universal.
You don’t have to keep up your online activity as high either. Post weekly if that is all you can manage. The key is to keep consistent and provide value. So if you have created four quality posts at once, schedule them for the next four weeks instead of the next four days.
- Consider outsourcing
Another way to keep your digital presence afloat is to outsource it. Hiring agencies is an efficient way to take the load of creating and maintaining a digital presence. They’ll come up with creative ways to spread your outreach. There are all kinds of agencies available in the UK.
Hiring agencies can be costly for small businesses but it’s well worth the effort as they directly help you expand your reach and acquire new customers. They also help you tap uncharted territories with their expertise. They may also help with a brand ambassador program. Check this to learn more about brand ambassadors and what they can do for your brand.
If you cannot afford an agency, fret not, you can maintain your presence on your own as well. To do so, pick fewer platforms — preferably the most popular ones to get the most engagement — and stick to a simple routine to stay consistent.
Research your market and make targeted strategies to strengthen your brand organically
Planning your business approach can often be a nerve-wracking experience in the ever-evolving market landscape. To keep your business on track and flexible to face the challenges that come up each day, you need thorough groundwork.
Invest in market research to arm yourself with valuable information about the industry you operate in. It directly helps you craft targeted strategies. Moreover, assess your core values from time to time to check if they fit your current way of operating or not.
Let us know in the comments what you think are efficient strategies to strengthen a brand and build it up.
Author bio
Atreyee Chowdhury is a freelance content writer with more than 10+ years of professional experience. She’s passionate about helping SMBs and enterprises achieve their content marketing goals with her carefully crafted and compelling content. She loves to read, travel, and experiment with different cuisines in her free time. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
Top 4 Effective Business Strategies for US and UK Brands
