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The Top Business Growth Strategy for 2021

While most are probably familiar with the term return on investment (ROI), return on relationship is a newer concept coined by CMO of Brand Innovators, Ted Rubin. ROR is a concept built on the social media age and the knowledge that connections with customers drive significant growth for modern businesses.

What is return on relationship (ROR)?

Like ROI, return on relationship is a way to measure business success. However, while ROI represents the positive outcomes of your efforts in financial figures, ROR applies to the value that you get out of nurturing connections with customers. This value comes in the form of:

* Recommendations and referrals
* Social media engagement
* Followers and fans
* Loyalty and repeat business
* Social sharing

A business hoping to build a company defined by loyal customers who are willing to support the organization via word of mouth marketing needs a high level of ROR. According to Rubin, the return on relationship is all about organic engagement, sentiment monitoring, and community management.

Provide valuable resources for customers
Focus your business strategy for 2021 on your customers and customer-facing actions, such as adding to the value you deliver to them, and the ways in which those actions assist with your revenue objectives. 

On the sales side, providing more options for financial assistance could help new customers make their purchases. Examples include layaway, structured payment plan services and other payment options that address smaller cash flows and decreased consumer confidence. 

For marketing purposes, you also have considerable time and opportunity to plan content and provide access to similar valuable resources that provide information to  your customers and prospects. These tactics might not deliver immediate revenue, but it can be effective to engage prospects now so they are ready to buy when things improve. 

Your business strategy can focus on detailing this transformation, including the timeline for testing and implementing those new digital processes. Doing so will better prepare you for when business picks up again. You may then find you can better connect with customers and offer them the digital experiences they have come to expect in other parts of their lives. 

Take care of your people

A core element of every business plan should be a people strategy. Now more than ever, employers should prioritize taking care of their people — from physical and mental health to quality of life and work-life balance.

In addition, maintaining a strong corporate culture is always paramount, but it is especially crucial with many employees working in a remote environment. There is a wide range of employee-related perks and options that can be incorporated into the 2021 plan, including an employee wellness program; access to an employee assistance program (EAP); paid volunteer hours; flexible scheduling; a generous number of PTO hours; lunch-and-learn sessions; half-day Fridays and more.

When companies take care of their people, it leads to more loyal employees and discretionary efforts.