Understanding the fundamentals of building a business is crucial if you want to gain more clients. And, at the heart of gaining clients lies your business foundations—the ‘bedrock’ upon which successful businesses are built.
So what exactly are business foundations?
Business foundations are the ways in which businesses establish themselves for clients to find them. Think of these as the core elements that every business needs to prepare for growth, essential for both stability, for setting your business up for future expansion and more.
In this article, we’ll delve into the business foundations, exploring key components such as online presence, target audience, and business legitimacy, and what businesses can do to establish these foundations and ensure that their business is set up effectively.
What are business foundations?
As mentioned previously, business’s foundations are the way in which businesses establish themselves, both online and offline. The way to think of it is your foundations are the core elements that every business needs to prepare for growth.
From your website and social media presence to your content strategy and SEO efforts, each element plays a crucial role in your businesses success.
How do business foundations help you to get clients?
Having strong business foundations significantly helps in acquiring clients as they establish trust, credibility, and visibility. For example, your online presence acts as the initial point of contact for potential clients, offering them a glimpse into your brand and services. However, beyond just being present, it’s essential to showcase your understanding of your target audience’s needs and preferences.
To help you improve your business foundations, we’ve narrowed these down into 3 essential categories: Online presence, Target industry and Business legitimacy.
So, let’s look at the three foundations in a bit more detail.
Understanding Your Target Industry
One of the main things from our three foundations that you need to know, before you can really do anything else with your business, is to know who your target audience is.
A target audience refers to the specific group of people that your business’s product, service, or message is designed to reach. This group can be identified based on various factors such as age, gender, location and more. As such, understanding the characteristics and preferences of your target audience is crucial for helping businesses tailor their marketing strategies.
Simply put, by learning the preferences of your target audience, businesses can increase the likelihood of engaging with their potential customers.
So, how do you find who your target audience is?
How to find your target audience
To find your target audience and, therefore, to begin to establish your business foundations you need to understand exactly how you can find your target audience.
To understand who your target audience is, you first need to know your audience, consider the following:
- Who are they?
- What sort of communication do they prefer?
- What might their pain points and preferences be?
To understand this, consider what you’re selling, whether it’s a product or service and think about who you want to buy your product. For example, a fertility based massage service would predominantly target women aged 20-40. From this, you could figure out which social channels they might use and then establish how you will market your product/service to them accordingly.
Conduct market research: Identify the demographic characteristics of your ideal customers such as age, gender. These factors help you understand who is most likely to need or want your product. You can also look into things like psychographics if you want to get more specific, this looks at the deeper psychological and emotional aspects that impact your target audience’s decisions, such as values, interests and hobbies.
Assess the competition: Part of understanding your target industry and your target audience is through competitor analysis. Analysing competitors helps in identifying your target audience as it provides strategic insights into your market. By studying competitors’ audiences, you can identify common characteristics from their audience that are most likely to be interested in your product or service. You can review competitor feedback and customer reviews to reveal valuable information about customer satisfaction and pain points, which will help you understand what customers value most.
Continuously learning: Once you know your target audience, you shouldn’t just stop there. After all, your audience is human, and their preferences will change over time. We don’t doubt that your market is continuously adapting, and as such your clients will change with it. You should be actively learning about your target audience to make sure that your business stays attuned to any market shifts, and make sure that your business remains relevant to your customers.
By conducting this analysis, you gain valuable insights into your target audience, enabling you to better tailor your business to meet their needs and preferences, thereby establishing a stronger connection with your clients.
For more tips on how to find your target audience, take a look through our helpful articles:
- How to identify your target audience
- How to gain competitive advantage
Now that you know your target audience, the next step to set up your business correctly is to build and improve your online presence.
Building an online presence
Now you know your target audience, in order to get your business found by them you need to make sure that you have an online presence. This includes a range of things, but it predominantly means being online—getting listed on directories, creating social media accounts, and getting a professional website.
Here’s how to start setting up your online presence:
Social media
Your online social presence is one of the main keys to your success. If you have taken the time to get to know your target audience, you might have learned where they are in the process. Ensure that you establish your business online. Some places you could create social media accounts include:
- Youtube
- X (Twitter)
Keep in mind that not all of these social media platforms will be relevant for your business. And as such, when first establishing your online presence, focus on creating strong profiles on the platforms that represent your business and resonate with your audience.
In the future, however, we recommend that your business is on a range of social media platforms, this will help to expand your business reach, and you can leverage different platform strengths to cater to a wider audience who might not have found you before.
Get your business listed on Google
This will be a focal point for people trying to find you on Google. This provides customers with quick access to things like your location, links to your website as well as directions on how to get to your business. By getting listed on Google, you help to foster feelings of trust with your audience.
Furthermore, as well as getting listed on Google you should also list your business on Directories. These include things like:
- Yell
- Checkatrade
- Trustpilot
Being listed on different relevant directories will help to establish your presence online, and act as another way for customers to find your business.
Having a website
Having a website is foundational for building and growing a business. Although some businesses may not recognise the impact of owning a website, it can prove to be highly advantageous to all businesses.
A website serves as a central hub where customers can learn about your products or services, access important information, and engage with your brand. More importantly, a well-designed website provides a professional image, and helps you to build trust and credibility with potential customers.
A website helps you to showcase your value and can be the tipping point that differentiates your business from competitors. While companies may own a website – if it’s not optimised, or professionally designed, customers may look elsewhere.
If you don’t have a website you are missing out on the opportunity to appeal to countless potential clients.
With a website, through compelling content, visuals and more, you can effectively communicate your brand, highlight your strengths, and demonstrate why customers should choose your offerings over someone else’s. This will help you to build brand awareness, attracting new customers. However, remember that your website’s content is one of the main ways people will get to know who you are, and as such you should carefully plan it out when it comes to your website. Both for your client and for Google ranking purposes!
Check out our articles below to learn more tips on how to build your online presence.
- Planning your website content
- How to get a quality website
- Why businesses need a website
- 5 Things every aesthetics websites needs
- How to get found online
- Why businesses should be on social media
Business Legitimacy
Demonstrating your business’s legitimacy is absolutely crucial to your business foundations. After all, if people don’t trust you they won’t convert into customers. There are some simple ways that you can build your business legitimacy
Contact information: Having your contact information online, easily accessible to your clients, will make it easier for them to get in touch with your business. As such the harder it is to find your contact information, and as a result get in touch with your business, the less likely that clients will be to convert.
For example, on your social media, or website do you display your:
- Business address
- Phone number
- A form on your website
- Branded email address
Having all of the above helps to establish your business as someone that is legitamite Displaying achievements: Showcasing qualifications and certifications highlights your expertise and compliance with industry standards, further boosting your business credibility. You can also do this in a way in which it becomes something unique to your business. For example, what about your experiences, and qualifications could you take to create a unique trust building selling point for your business – Maybe, you specifically trained in traditional medication, so now you can display that to appeal to your audience.
A strong brand: Establishing a strong brand identity is essential for providing legitimacy to your business. A well-defined brand communicates professionalism, reliability, and trustworthiness to potential clients, setting you apart from competitors and instilling confidence in your offerings.
Consistency in branding across various touchpoints, from your logo and visual elements to your messaging and tone, reinforces your credibility and can help build recognition amongst your audience. By investing in brand development, you not only enhance your reputation but also create a solid foundation for long-term success and growth in your market. Think about how recognisable a brand can be, if I were to say Mcdonalds, or Nike, you would instantly know who I am talking about, what they do, their logo, etc.
By establishing legitimacy through the aforementioned means you reduce perceived risks, encourage customer confidence, and create a solid foundation for lasting customer relationships and business growth.
To learn more on building legitimacy read our articles below:
- Building your brand
- How legitimacy improves customer experience
- Things your website needs that will improve business legitimacy
- The importance of branding
Final Thoughts
It’s clear that laying solid foundations is key to attracting and retaining clients. From crafting your online presence to understanding your audience and building trust, each piece plays a crucial role in your business’s journey. These will shape how you connect with customers and grow your business over time. So, as you embark on this adventure, remember that your business is more than just a product or service—and that these foundational elements are what make it possible for your audience to connect with you.
