For business owners, it’s important to have a direction. You need to know where your business is going and ideally you want the concept for the future of your company to be as clear as possible. You don’t want to be in the situation where you are essentially filling in the gaps and trying to figure out where you should be going next. This is a recipe for disaster, and it can be seen quite clearly in Warner Bros. plans for the DCEU as shown on Mashable.com.
It might seem odd to refer to a film studio as an example of what can go wrong if you don’t plan ahead for your business and have a clear set of ideas in place for what you need to do, but let’s run with this idea for a moment. We think that there are a few goals you need in mind for a business model to be a success and to survive in the long term. We’re going to use Warner Bros. and the DCEU as an example of what happens when you don’t have these type of goals set. Let’s start by exploring the concept of innovation.
Excelling In Innovation
What is innovation? If you are innovative, you are introducing something new and fresh to the market and that is absolutely crucial. By doing this, you are getting ahead of the curve, and it gives you a competitive edge. Recently, we’ve been talking a lot about websites and website design. An idea that could be connected to innovation in this area would be the concept of security. Before this year, there was very little official reason for website owners to invest in security. That all changed, when Google released their update which marked sites that didn’t have the right security features in place as unsafe. How does innovation fit into this idea? Well, there were plenty of business owners who saw that security was going to be a major issue. Before there was even talk of an update like this, they upgraded their systems. Others fell completely behind the times, and some still have not updated their site with new security, including several notable banks. As such, they are currently dealing with rather troubling questions from the public. Learn more about HTTPS on InstantSSL.com.
What about that example we mentioned with Warner Bros. and their DCEU? Well, if you have kids you might have been to see a few superhero movies this year. The DCEU is the collection of movies released by Warner Bros that includes the DC slate of superheroes like Superman and Batman. Thus far there have been five films released. All received scathing reviews from critics bar one but all made bank…bar one. The latest film looks to be the first to actually suffer a loss at the box office. Why is this? Warner Bros. blinked and remade and marketed the film to be more critic and consumer friendly. In doing so, they eliminated the aspect that made their films different and a new option in the superhero movie market. Instead, they tried to imitate a brand that was already successful, and this is the opposite of innovation. It is the clearest, most recent example as to why you have to make sure you’re bringing something new to the table. Otherwise, customers are going to favour something that they trust and that they know over a new possibility that is ultimately more of the same.
There are various ways to innovate in business, but arguably one of the key options would be to make sure that you are keeping up with the latest technology. Shifting away from the film industry we can instead look towards the industrial sector. New laser tech from LaserLight.com and other similar resources is leading to huge strides in the power, performance and efficiency of items being produced. It is this type of innovative option that will put you on the lips and minds of the public. Since we mentioned efficiency, let’s take a look at why this is important.
Keeping Up Efficiency
Let’s take a step back and look at Warner Bros and the DCEU once more. As we’ve explained already, their latest film Justice League will most likely suffer a loss at the box office. This would be bad enough, but reports have revealed that Warner Bros spent upwards of three hundred million making the movie and at least ten or twenty million reshooting it. Ultimately, they have wasted a fortune on a product that most likely will not turn a profit. As such, their method of producing isn’t at all efficient. In fact, if they had spent less, they would have found it far easier to simply break even and try again another time.
So, by keeping things efficient, you can make sure that it’s easier to make a profit and that you’re not building a business on shifting sands. Of course, typical businesses don’t have to worry about the cost of reshoots, but they do have to think about how much they spend on supplies as well as the costs of labour.
As such, it is always in your best interest to keep a handle on efficiency regardless of your business model. You need to do what you can to keep costs low and completely under control. One aspect of your costs that you should definitely look at is energy. Energy bills can creep up without you realising it until you reach the point where that’s the greatest thing costing you money. You can learn more about saving energy on BusinessInsider.com.
Thankfully, there are innovative and awesome possibilities that you can look into which will allow you to reduce the costs of your energy and ensure that things are far easier for you to handle. Care for an example? These days, it’s perfectly affordable for most business owners to explore the possibility of solar panels on the roof of their business office. In fact, government incentives are making this the smart move financially.
Shaping Your USP
Back at Warner Bros, film executives are still scratching their heads wondering what went wrong with the fifth film in the DCEU, Justice League. We could tell them, it’s all to do with a USP or unique selling point. A unique selling point gives customers a reason to buy from your business rather than another one on the market. It ensures that you have something that they can’t find anywhere else. You might think that the unique character that fills the world of these movies would be enough, but it isn’t. While Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman used to be the cream of the crop and lucrative IPs these days, kids would sooner rather dress up as Thor, Ironman and Captain America. So, Warner Bros needed to offer audiences something else, and they did. They offered a more mature, gritty take on the superhero genre. Unfortunately, critics scared them off this idea leading them to release a film that had been watered down – losing their USP, imitated an established brand – lacking innovation and spending a fortune to fix it – killing their efficiency.
So, now you should see why a USP is so important but how do you build one? Well, you need to look at what your competitors are bringing to the market and then try to beat it. You don’t have to head off in the completely opposite direction here, but you do need to bring them something that they can’t find anywhere else. For instance, many businesses use a fast turnaround time as their USP. In the rapid world of business sometimes it pays to be the fastest and we mean that literally.
Building Loyalty
With all the issues with their current brand Warner Bros. face the problem of loyalty. One of the biggest ways to lose customer loyalty is to offer a poor quality product again and again and expect them to continue to pay. If one were being particularly critical one could suggest that audiences weren’t fond of the offerings up until now either. But, for that, you would have to say they were willing to pay four times and the fifth was the one that broke the camel’s back. It’s a flawed argument because both critics and audiences were delighted with the previous film offering this year of Wonder Woman. Still, regardless of why, Warner Bros. have a long road ahead towards building brand loyalty for the DCEU and getting audiences to show up.
It’s a lesson that all companies should learn at one point or another. Ultimately, you do have to make sure that you respect the customer and ensure that you are delivering a quality product. As well as this, you need to make sure you are listening to them and making sure that you understand what they want and deliver it to them. Learn more about living up to the standards of your customers on Inc.com.
There you have it then, a few goals that every business owner should keep in mind when running their company. We can see how important these goals are by looking at the failure of one company that failed to keep them in mind. It’s worth pointing out here though that in Warner Bros. case it was one part of their trillion dollar organisation. But for typical business owners, screwing up like this would be the beginning of the end of the entire company model. It’s a mistake you simply cannot afford.
If you get any value from this post be free to comment or share. Also feel free to connect with me on Facebook or Twitter!
text me: +385/9193-55474
email: hrvojeh75@gmail.com