Business Networking Strategy
The first step to developing and executing an overall business networking strategy is to identify the primary objective.
The objective to be achieved by the business networking strategy range across the domain of innovation, marketing, sales, communication and internal operations. Specific objectives that an organization may consider as it begins strategy development include:
- Innovation Objectives
- Gaining customer insights
- Capturing and evaluating customer input and ideation
- Differentiating products
- Differentiating service
- Expanding the capacity for innovation
- Marketing Objectives
- Building brand image
- Building audience engagement, loyalty and support
- Amplifying positive customer word of mouth
- Marketing to hard-to-reach customers
- Marketing to high-value niche audience
- Sales Objectives
- Generating new customer leads
- Driving direct marketing sales
- Achieving greater efficiency in online sales channels
- Earning permission to market to customers directly
- Educating your market to grow it
- Communication Objectives
- Managing reputation and crisis response
- Breaking through media clutter
- Improving product support and documentation
- Mobilizing employees through better communication
- Improving data transparency within the organization
- Operations Objectives
- Extending the global reach of your business
- Lowering customer service cost
- Increasing productivity despite limited resources
- Increasing speed of business decision making
All of these objectives may appear worthwhile, but business networking strategy requires prioritizing and choosing objectives to focus on.
