The effects of 2020 will be in our minds for the rest of our lives. It is a year that got many businesses, small and big unawares and took some of them off the market. While we have gotten through the most challenging phase, uncertainty remains. In some areas, some businesses remain closed while others opened a few weeks ago. Planning for the future is becoming increasingly challenging as we don’t know yet when things will come back to normal. Consequently, business owners are having a rough time developing a growth strategy for 2021.  As such, I have listed down some strategies you can employ.

If there is anything 2020 has taught us, perhaps emergency preparedness is the biggest lesson ever. The coronavirus pandemic has taught us the importance of having emergency preparedness and the need to have a plan that will keep the business running during and after a crisis. Emergency preparedness is not a one-day affair. It is a process that does not just involve a single drill once a year but entails planning how a business will run, before, during, and after a crisis. The process begins with identifying possible business threats or disruptors and developing plans to counter them. Here are some common business disruptors to watch:

Social media has proven over and again to be a valuable channel for businesses to reach customers. With many marketing activities moving online due to the pandemic, social media marketing has emerged to be helpful than earlier thought.  According to a behavior survey, 74 percent of people are now shopping online than they did before the pandemic. Of those doing so, 88 percent of them stated that they would continue doing so even after the pandemic has been put under control. While social media can help your organization save a lot, channel managers require a proper marketing approach. This means keeping up with the latest social media trends, both social and technical.