How to Grow Your Business Post Pandemic? Here are the 7 Proven Strategies

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, smart organizations are getting creative and realigning marketing strategies to better suit the changing climate of business and grow their business post-pandemic. 

On a smaller scale, micro and small business owners continue to adopt new marketing practices in a bid to stand out in the tough economy. 

The pandemic forced consumer behavior to take a completely different turn. 

Similarly, It also had an impact on the way people treated their office work. Not to say, it has changed society and the way it went about its business. One of the most significant changes that we have experienced is the shift in consumers’ buying habits and how they would prefer the deliveries of their products. Gone are the days when the first preference of the consumers was to go out and have a lavish buffet. 

Today, people prefer sitting in the comfort of their sofas and having their food delivered on their doors with no contact whatsoever. The situation may change in the future, but it won’t unless the pandemic subsides. 

But it has also showcased the brands’ ability, including fierce competitors, to come together when the situation demands. For example, McDonald’s requested people to visit Burger King (its biggest competition) to ensure that they do a decent business. 

Delivery brands such as Zomato and Swiggy won hearts during the pandemic by adding groceries and other household items to their deliverables list. When people were unable to go out, these companies ensured that they had their needs fulfilled. 

Challenges Posed By Covid-19 Pandemic

1. Money management 

By far, the most significant challenge for any business is money management. At any point in your company’s growth and development, you are likely to be faced with the question of where the next dollar is coming from. 

Whether you’re just starting out, scaling up, or running in the red, it’s important that your business can pay the bills and provide for its future. During this pandemic, the demand has decreased and operational costs have increased. Therefore, a cautionary word to business owners is that they must learn how to budget.

2. Adopting Digital Medium 

Before the pandemic, not every business had an online presence. However, COVID-19 has forced companies to adopt digital mediums to communicate with both their employees and customers. 

In order to grow your business post pandemic, you have to connect and engage with your target audience. You have to look at digital marketing tools such as a brand website, social media handles, chatbot, customer care support, 24/ 7 online availability, email marketing, newsletters, and lastly efficient online delivery of your products and services. 

Through digital marketing, brands can send timely updates to their customers and promote new products or features to keep customers interested. 

3. Maintaining work-life balance

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought in the “Work from Home” concept and forced companies to embrace this new method of working. The constant challenge for employees is to balance work and personal obligations. 

When a person is stressed or overburdened, their work performance and ability to make decisions can be affected. This results in them being less effective on the job and creates a burden that they are unable to manage. As people’s needs increase, it becomes more difficult to balance both work and personal responsibilities. 

Strategies To Grow Your Business

There are indefinite challenges being faced by almost every business in this world due to the ongoing pandemic. However, with changing times, companies need to change their strategies in order to stay ahead of the competition. 

It is important that businesses recognize and identify these challenges early in order to strategize and reevaluate other options. Let’s take a look at some strategies that can help you to grow your business.

1. Bringing A Full-fledged Digital Model

Your business has a portal or has tied up with the top delivery partners for its services. That’s great, but not enough. It i s imperative for companies to figure out all the feasible digital channels viable for their business. Utilizing advanced analytics and other available techs, such as satellite imaging, to develop a plethora of insights would be crucial for businesses in moving forward. 

2. Bringing A Rapid Growth Mindset

Growth has taken a backseat for many businesses since last year. It has become about surviving challenging times to grow business post pandemic, but you can do better. Inculcate an agile mindset and augment accountability throughout the workforce. If feasible, undertake a weekly review model to ensure that everything is in sync. 

3. Utilize The Newer Delivery Models

The pandemic has affected a lot of the existing supply chain models. It means that it is imperative for businesses to adapt and undertake collaborations that were previously not considered feasible. It also means that management will have to be innovative and gauge what can work for their business and not depend merely on the pre-COVID resources. 

The pandemic period has seen businesses work with utmost urgency and the output they could deliver was beyond their expectations. We saw many companies undertake social listening to understand the need of the hour and make changes to their business accordingly. It has enabled them to streamline their delivery department and several other processes across departments. 

Also, the sales team adopted a host of agile models that enabled them to solve problems faster. It paved the way for a clear growth plan and strategies to cater to different clients with improved clarity. 

If you want to survive the pandemic, you will have to adopt these models too. It includes the need to find innovative ways to incorporate urgent delivery tasks into existing workflows and finding alternate ways to utilize the available resources. 

For example, Amazon undertook drone deliveries in several parts of the world. Swiggy started Swiggy Genie, a service that enabled its workforce to deliver documents, laundry, and other items from one location to another. Several other brands across the world have been innovative and used the newer delivery models to keep themselves relevant.

4. Bringing In Operational Transparency

Cloud computing has made available a lot of infrastructures “as-a-service” for the brands. But entities weren’t making the most of it until the pandemic arrived. It pushed them to convert their capital expenses into variable ones. But when they did so, it brought about improvements throughout their value chain, such as cutting down costs and improved management. 

Adopting digital technologies such as capital- spend diagnostics gave them insights into their cost model that was never available before. It encouraged them to undertake greater transparency in their operations and have a newer outlook towards spending. 

5. DEVELOPING OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE

Brands looking to survive the pandemic need to understand that operational resilience is one of the critical factors that would enable them to do so. It includes outsourcing tasks other than core competency, undertaking cross-training, and utilizing multiple sources. Also, the inculcation of newer technologies has improved insights into the regional advantages. It has allowed developing greater resilience towards potential future disruptions. 

6. AUGMENTING SUSTAINABILITY 

The pandemic saw massive shifts in customer behavior and the way they demand. For businesses to counter the platonic changes with ease, they will have to be sustainable and offer better value to the customer. It includes building a more interconnected but flexible workflow that would enable the workforce to adapt to the evolving customer behavior with utmost ease. An IBM report mentions that COVID-19 supercharged digital transformation by a stupendous 59%. It also led to businesses completing 66% of initiatives that previously suffered resistance. 

7. REIMAGINING DELIVERIES

Brands looking to survive the pandemic need to understand that operational resilience is one of the critical factors that would enable them to do so. It includes outsourcing tasks other than core competency, undertaking cross-training, and utilizing multiple sources. Also, the inculcation of newer technologies has improved insights into the regional advantages. It has allowed developing greater resilience towards potential future disruptions.

CONCLUSION

These are strategies for ensuring success for businesses during and post the COVID-19 pandemic. You could be the market leader if you learn from your mistakes and your competitors’ mistakes. 

Just use the right tools and technology for your business. So when you start a business and plan to expand it, just follow the steps and use the mentioned strategies and get ready to disrupt the industry. 

Apart from these, Tookan’s delivery management platform provides applications to make online delivery of your products and services more efficient, keep a real-time track of every task, broadcast messages to delivery agents and employees, advanced analytics reports to visualize the business performance, and many more. Providing the best services and a great experience is the only key to customer retention. 

So, have an edge in technology to deliver services in the promised time using Delivery Management Platforms.