Understanding Market Trends for Strategic Growth
Many people tend to overcomplicate the process of understanding what makes the market tick - I've been guilty of this myself. When you think 'market trends', your mind might jump to someone poring over mounds of data, at a desk, surrounded by intricate Excel sheets and Post-its. The reality. Just staying aware of what's happening in the world around you can help you understand what affects your business and how it all comes together.
While quantitative data and graphs are helpful, a chunk of what we see play out in our daily lives can help understand broad market trends quite well. Sort of. I tend to look at surveys and studies focused on my industry; but that's not all that plays a factor here.
Keeping an eye out for where social media conversations are headed is great for listening to what customers feel. But factoring in potential news events that could influence those feelings is possibly important too. Of course, there's so much information out there today that it can feel overwhelming keeping tabs on everything.
A good rule of thumb here is to focus on staying aware of what's happening without letting it consume all your time and energy. Ultimately, the most important thing when trying to understand the market is to look at macro-level trends - things affecting everyone everywhere, industry-wide changes in sentiment, or emerging areas of focus that could affect your business' work one way or another.
With everything else, looking at how competitors and other businesses within the same space behave gives a pulse on what's effective and what isn't.
Leveraging Technology to Enhance Efficiency
It's amusing how people immediately equate business technology with AI and automation. There is a whole bunch of other options such as cloud computing, digital communication tools, and customer relationship management. While the former is something you will need to leverage at some point in time, try not to think of technology as a replacement for humans.
The best way to use it is to enhance processes and make them more streamlined. My approach to integrating technology has always been a long-term one. For example, I knew that deploying chatbots would allow my customer support staff to focus on other business aspects while offering my clients round-the-clock service.
I used chatbots on e-commerce platforms for first-level queries and basic information but only after making sure my customers were comfortable with the idea of interacting with an AI chatbot. Technology also allowed me to experiment with different business models while keeping costs low. Sometimes this backfired spectacularly but I learned from my mistakes without having spent too much time or money on manual procedures. While it may seem fairly obvious that tech does wonders for efficiency, I must admit that introducing it into an organisation isn't always simple or easy.
If you have teams who have been used to doing things the old-fashioned way, there will be some resistance. The key is potentially to slowly introduce new tools and train your employees so that they feel involved in the process rather than threatened by it.
Building Strong Customer Relationships
It’s easy to get on your high horse about loyalty programs, isn’t it. All the big brands tell you customer relationships boil down to complicated data, clever apps, and cross-selling masterclasses. That’s not what I’ve found.
It seems like overthinking building these relationships is not only stressful but also plain ineffective. Strong relationships take care of themselves if you let them.
There are only so many times a customer wants to be sold something in a face-to-face conversation before they get turned off. Sort of. Understanding what your customer wants means listening and going with the flow, I think.
I’m careful not to slip into thinking ‘that’s great, now I’m going to go back to telling them exactly what I was going to before they gave me that answer’. People know a canned sales pitch when they see one; they want to feel seen. They want you to answer their unique question based on the answer you got.
I cannot stress this enough - the modern customer is aware, sometimes painfully so. They appreciate when businesses are upfront about both benefits and potential challenges. They reward businesses that build trust in this way with their money - and keep coming back for years after if that business keeps showing up.
Look, there are allegedly going to be people out there who refuse to come over even after a lifetime of conversations and gentle invitations. But if you keep at it with patience, empathy, and a little bit of humour, most people will come over when they’re ready.
Diversifying Product Offerings
Most people tend to get overexcited, or maybe a bit too ambitious, and start adding every product under the sun to their brand’s lineup. Rather than creating value, it just ends up confusing customers with a slew of unrelated offerings. Sort of. Going from one pair of sunglasses to 10 new designs is one thing.
Launching a line of eye masks and skincare products and hats at the same time is, well, something else. In my experience, expanding your portfolio with intention can be quite rewarding for the business. It keeps things fresh while also allowing you to serve your customers better in the long term.
But it has to be done slowly and deliberately - not as an exercise in chasing a trend or micro-moment. For example, when you’re launching a new style or product, keep the original brand aesthetic front and centre. The design, colours, logos, packaging, and overall messaging should all reflect whatever your brand stands for. If you’re blending trends into your offering - like creating the Y2K version of ‘jelly’ sunglasses - it’s still important to make sure that your collection is distinct from every other pair of Y2K sunglasses out there.
And sometimes you’ll want to launch something completely new because you see an opportunity (not in terms of sales but genuine good that can come from fulfilling that need). That’s where things can more or less get tricky because you’re now veering into ‘product line expansion’. Which means – instead of just diversifying what’s available within your lineup, you’re launching new ones that could potentially become associated with the brand in the customer’s mind.
Not just sunglasses for example but a wide range of accessories they now know are available from your label. And managing these launches and subsequent campaigns can be challenging especially if they’re not adjacent lines (like eyewear and apparel). It’s definitely worth putting in the time and effort but there are likely going to be some hiccups along the way.
Investing in Employee Development
There’s this myth that employee development is something you do once a year - at best - or when you’ve got a little bit of extra money in the budget. It’s treated as an afterthought. Almost like an unnecessary expense.
I have seen so many managers make this mistake. Then, they hire external consultants or new employees every few years because their existing team “just doesn’t have what it takes. ” Here’s a little secret: you’re supposed to grow employees into leaders and experts.
The first time I realised that employee development was not just about business, but about making employees feel like they matter, it changed everything for me. People want to feel valued, challenged and comfortable at work - all at the same time. And when people are happy and invested in their jobs, they tend to stick around - in my experience, employee development isn’t exactly a straightforward process. There’s training and mentorship, sure, but some people might prefer to attend courses by themselves while others are possibly eager to shadow someone more experienced in their field.
Every person has their own unique learning style, strengths and weaknesses, and goals for the future. Employee development plans need to take all these things into account if they are to be truly effective. Of course, no employer can give everyone exactly what they want all the time. But designing employee development plans is often quite easy - if you take the time to talk to your team members about how they’d like to grow.
Most people will tell you what they want from their jobs if you take the time to listen. The upside. You’ll spend less on recruiting new employees and your retention rate will go up. Sort of.
Measuring Success: Key Performance Indicators to Track
It’s almost funny - businesses will trip over themselves creating elaborate dashboards with more dials and toggles than a 747. Looks impressive but isn’t always that useful. They focus on heaps of data but end up with no clear understanding of how to measure what actually matters. More or less.
There’s no magic number - no ‘north star’ that works for everyone. KPIs can change as the business evolves, so it's alright to start tracking something and realise it isn’t relevant anymore. Some things you can track are sales, website traffic, profit margins, net income or customer churn rate.
But the numbers must tell a story about your business and what direction you’re going in. Some founders measure their personal performance instead of just focusing on their products or services.
Say, they run a survey about their leadership styles to see how they can improve, which in turn impacts their brand. It could be something as simple as seeing who is clicking through emails because an increase in sales is directly tied to an increase in email opens - well most times anyway. What can get complicated is knowing when to change your KPIs because they may not be working anymore.
The indicators you use in one stage of growth may need tweaking at another point so don’t be too stuck on having one set forever. Like everything else in business, things need changing every once in a while - and that’s fine too.