How To Make Your Busi­ness Fu­ture Proof

Lament­ing the speed of change has been en vogue since be­fore I en­tered the busi­ness world.

That was back in the 1980ies.

Rapid change is a given. Dis­rup­tive change is a given.

What can you do to keep up, to avoid risk of extinction?

Here are 5 strate­gies any busi­ness, small or big, can use.

Fu­ture Proof Strat­egy #1

Keep up to date on ma­jor trends in your in­dus­try, in mar­ket­ing, and in technology.

Those are the three ar­eas that are most likely to af­fect your business.

Use Google news, blogs in your in­dus­try, mar­ket­ing and busi­ness blogs to in­form your­self what’s go­ing on to­day and what’s on the horizon.

In your in­dus­try use con­ven­tions, books, mag­a­zines, and per­sonal con­tacts to find out where the in­dus­try is headed.

Fu­ture Proof Strat­egy #2

Move early once a trend be­comes clear that will af­fect your business.

We know things change, but at the same time we act as if they didn’t. You’ll sleep bet­ter if you proac­tively ad­just your strate­gies to up­com­ing trends.

Think about SEO, as an ex­am­ple. For about a decade many busi­nesses got all their prof­its from Google search. They fully re­lied on Google to send vis­i­tors to their site.

For about 5 years ex­perts have told us that Google was chang­ing - and not in the best in­ter­est of on­line busi­ness owners.

A proac­tive strat­egy would have been to build ad­di­tional mar­ket­ing chan­nels, be­sides SEO. Many web site own­ers didn’t, and Panda and Pen­guin hit them like a brick, and de­stroyed their business.

Fu­ture Proof Strat­egy #3

Build mar­ket­ing chan­nels you control.

See the SEO ex­am­ple above. Don’t build your busi­ness re­ly­ing on Google, Face­book, YouTube, EBay, Ama­zon, iTunes, or whatever.

Use those chan­nels to add to your prof­its, but don’t de­pend on them 100%.

Many won’t like this and ar­gue. Es­pe­cially those who DO rely 100% on one of the men­tioned sites.

But does it re­ally feel right to put your busi­ness at some­one else’s mercy?

Fu­ture Proof Strat­egy #4

Keep an eye on the un­der­ly­ing need that your prod­ucts and ser­vices fulfill.

If you de­fine your busi­ness through your prod­uct or ser­vice, an out­side change can put you out-of-business.

Imag­ine you were a highly spe­cial­ized con­sul­tant for Face­book ad­ver­tis­ing. All your po­si­tion­ing, all your writ­ing is about Face­book ad­ver­tis­ing. Every­thing you know is about Face­book advertising.

• What would hap­pen, if Face­book went the My­space way?
• What would hap­pen, if Face­book changed its busi­ness model to paid ac­counts and stopped advertising?

You’d be with­out a job! Your busi­ness would go from hero to zero in a day.

What’s the un­der­ly­ing need of Face­book Ads? Get­ting in touch with new po­ten­tial customers.

What if your busi­ness, your mar­ket­ing, your po­si­tion­ing were fo­cused on that need? 

Face­book could go out of busi­ness, and you would just move your busi­ness to other mar­ket­ing chan­nels, while keep­ing your brand.

Fu­ture Proof Strat­egy #5

In­no­vate your prod­ucts and ser­vices be­fore there’s a need to innovate.

Even if your prod­ucts sell like hot cakes, don’t rest on your laurels.

With the un­der­ly­ing need as start­ing point , con­sis­tently im­prove your offers.

• How can you make ex­ist­ing of­fers bet­ter? Use cus­tomer feedback!
• What can you add to bet­ter ful­fill the un­der­ly­ing need? 
• How can you al­ter your of­fer to meet trends that your com­pe­ti­tion is still ignoring?

Be a dri­ver of change, not a victim.