Internet Business Strategy And Tactics
by Abe Cherian,

Developing a Internet business strategy is often hyped up in the online media as something that only expensive specialists and business fortune-tellers can do. In fact, it is fairly straight forward and can produce spectacular results for anyone. As long as you use a systematic approach and follow through to the end.

Analyzing the current situation is all about understanding what happens inside the business to add value for your customers. And how the rules of the game are set outside the business. Organizing these issues and thoughts gives you pointers on what you have to do to become or remain a winner.

When you are clear on where you are going with your online business and where you are coming from, you start to get a good idea of what the strategic gap is. And you are well placed to develop a business strategy that will bridge that gap. This is the next stage in the process. 

What Makes This Business Tick?

Internet business strategy is all about the how of building a business. You know where you are going to, and you are clear on all the issues affecting the business. Creating a business strategy for the Internet explains how your business is going to make the exciting voyage from where it is to what you want it to become.

The temptation, when developing this strategy, is to focus on marketing, sales, and the generation of income in the short-term. But it is very important that you take a balanced view of the whole business. In addition to financial returns, you must also consider customer satisfaction, business processes and learning/growth areas in the business. Most importantly, you must understand the interdependencies between what happens in these business areas.

You see, getting good financial returns from your business depends, in the long run, on how satisfied your customers are. In turn, how satisfied your customers are depends on how good your business processes are. To take it one step further, how good your business online processes are depends on how good your web site is, how skilled your people are and how well your systems have been set up.

All these interdependencies work together to produce the ultimate online business outcome – the performance, or lack of it, of your business. Which is why strategy is the key to the growth engine in your business. Without a focused, pro-active Internet business strategy, the business won’t go anywhere. There are three key steps in developing an online strategy. And you must go through them in this order:

1. Understand interdependencies between different areas of your business.
2. Figure out the critical success factors in these business areas.
3. Identify tactics that support the critical success factors.

Establish A Tactic 

A Tactic is a group of related activities that support achievement of a strategic objective. For example, if the objective is to get more clients, a tactic could be getting online referrals from existing clients. The activities are all those things you have to do to implement a referral campaign.

When you are clear on how you are going to achieve your objectives, you move on to figuring out what you have to do to make it all happen. This is where the planning starts.

First, you Scope all the Work that has to be done - your strategy consists of a whole lot of tactics. Your next step is to organize these tactics into an outline. At this stage, don’t worry too much about the detailed actions involved. Prioritize your tactics and decide which ones you want to start working on.

It is important that you do this. It means that, instead of using a piecemeal approach, you are able to take a broader view of what has to happen in your business. Seeing the big picture enables you to make sense of all this strategic action, and prioritize what you have to do.

When you know what tactics you want to implement, you can start to make action plans. Simply break your tactics down into detailed actions, and schedule them over a period of time. Don’t think too far ahead. Planning for the week ahead works best in small Internet businesses. At the end of the week, you review what you achieved and plan for the next week.

If your Internet business plan is going to fail, this is where it usually happens. The final step is taking strategic action. This is where the rubber hits the road. And this is where strategic management efforts often falter. It goes almost without saying. If you don’t take the action, all the planning you did beforehand was a waste of time!

Many Internet businesses never manage to implement their strategies because key stakeholders in your business were never fully committed to the process in the first place. And they failed to re-arrange the way they work to ensure that strategic action gets taken.

To avoid this happening to your business, you must ensure that key affiliates, customers, and partners buy into the process. And that an effective, action focused ongoing strategic management process is used.

The Only Constant is Change Itself

The strategic planning model has a feedback loop – review strategy. This is because your Internet business operates in a constantly changing environment. While, your Mission may stay the same, your strategy has to constantly adapt to changing technology, circumstances, both inside and outside the business. It is as if the goal posts are moving the whole time. Ongoing change is often a harsh reality in Internet business life. And the rate of change is increasing all the time, every hour. 

Failure to constantly review and refocus your Internet business strategy means that it will quickly become out of date. Implementing a strategy that has been overtaken by the course of events, won’t get you anywhere. So you need to review your strategy regularly. This is why a weekly planning cycle works best. It serves as a reminder for you to scan your environment and re-focus your Strategy.

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