How ONQOR are Planning Growth for 2020 in an Uncertain Economy

The 2020 Economy is Fragile.

It’s not exactly a secret that this year is an uncertain time for the global economy.

Notwithstanding instability in the US market the UK has made the decision to leave the EU, which much like the 2016 vote itself, has produced diametrically opposed views from business owners across the country.

One thing’s for certain – businesses in the UK, particularly start-up enterprises, are at a pivotal point in their business development. It is in times of austerity and financial uncertainty that businesses either thrive or die – as was clearly evidenced during the 2008 recession.

For those of you who own or are in a senior position within a company, it’s inevitable you have been spending the past 2 months mulling over your strategy for 2020 and beginning the execution of that strategy. Failing that, you are likely gearing up for the Financial Year End in April and are focussing your efforts on getting the paperwork associated with that over the line.

I cannot stress enough the importance of spending time developing a clear marketing strategy, along with a strategy to develop automation as soon as possible if you haven’t already.

Defining a strategy now based on key events in the calendar will enable you to make educated decisions to further the growth of your business, and even accelerate where others are shrinking.

Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail

Producing a strategy for the year ahead (and taking the time out to actually focus on it) will provide one of, if not the best return on investments you will accrue all year.

When you have a plan with clearly defined goals & targets, you hold your business accountable to attainment & can address failings in instances where those goals are not met.

The best place to start when compiling your plan for 2020 is at the end. Where do you want your business to be by December of this year?

It is important to remember to be realistic with your expectations of the outcome for these goals – i.e. don’t set your goal to be World Domination if your business currently consists of you and your cat, Smudge – no matter how hard-working he may be.

Once you have defined your goals, it always pays off to reflect on the previous year & assess what went well, and what went… not so well. Documenting this will help you put the events into context based on key external events, helping you to forecast your future outcomes with a larger degree of certainty.

What Have We Got Planned for 2020?

Following extremely healthy growth from Year 1 to Year 2 of trading, ONQOR set its’ sights high for Year 3 in the run-up to July.

The exciting news is we have already beaten our original Year 3 target… 3-fold! As a result, we have restructured our goals and have instead focussed on the calendar year goals for 2020, which include expansion plans to provide further services to our clients on an international scale.

International Expansion

Within the next 12 months, we will have our new office in New York, servicing East Coast America and providing Digital Content Strategies from the Marketing department to a whole new demographic.

Of course, the US market is something we are aware is unstable at present given the turbulent political situation the country finds itself in – nonetheless the economy is showing healthy signs of growth for business to business trade, and business to consumer trade is particularly strong on the West Coast. To facilitate work with our B2C clientele, we will also be introducing a small presence on the West Coast by Jan 2021.

In addition to our US expansion, we will be venturing into Europe, developing a presence in Germany within the next 12–18 months and Singapore within the same timeframe, enabling us to service a wide range of demographics in countries across the EAEU zone.

This strategic expansion is part of a larger strategy to provide a more comprehensive service base to all our clients, & to be able to assist them with international expansion into these rapidly growing emerging markets.

Domestic Growth

Continuing the trend in growth, we will be increasing our office size in London to house our growing staff body.

As we expand our marketing and design department, we will also be growing our service offering in the Dev team, enabling us to help our clients with automation of processes, improving customer experience in a digital capacity and reducing overheads from a staffing perspective where necessary.

Our goal is to develop a clear, repeatable process for every service we provide in the company, whilst retaining creative input. This is with a view to reducing costs to our clients, improving consistency and ultimately delivering better results.

We are exceptionally proud of our development to-date, and believe a large portion of that success can be attributed to our planning and forecasting efforts throughout the year.

Our work is taking us into new fields, with new signs in the food and beverage industry, as well as the law. Not only does this allow us to work with a multitude of clients across various sectors and make an impact on their brands, it also allows us the opportunity to make introductions to others across industries at events.

Over the course of 2020, we plan to host at least 3 company/client events to enable relationships to develop within our network – just one of the many ways we are focussing on building relationships with our clients and between members of our network.