Environmental factors are issues to be considered before choosing a business location. There are numbers of factors that need to be carefully considered. One of the earliest decisions any entrepreneur has to make is where to locate his or her business and factors that may affect the business either positively or negatively. Positioning has always been an important element of setting up a business. Your success as in business depends largely on how well your business is strategically located.
You’ve probably heard the classic advice, “Location, Location, Location.” The importance of location in business cannot be over emphasized enough, despite the rise of technology, virtual communication and cloud business. Certain environmental factors like business address is an important factor in the way that business is perceived.
If your business address is far away from your target audience, especially if you sell offline, prospective customers may find it difficult to locate you. Conversely, if your business is situated at the city center or commercial area, prospects may be more incline to convert.
Environmental factors – Important questions to note
- Does the success of your company rely heavily on customer traffic?
- Is convenience important to you and you and employees?
- Do you rely on vendors?
- Is brand visibility important for your growth?
- What about the legal implications of your location?
Favorable environmental factors – Increase brand visibility
Location can also influence a business’s ability to market itself, the competition it faces from businesses, the total cost of operation, taxes the business owner has to pay and the regulations they must follow.
Environmental factors like location also matters for marketing. The importance of location goes beyond your business’ physical location and your website rank in Google search results. It extends to the placement of your advertisements.
For example, choosing a business address in the City center will likely change the perception of your business as it would be seen to be part of the finance and high growth culture of the area.
Easy access is a huge advantage – Environmental factors
Basically, you just want to be wherever your customers are and make it as convenient as possible to visit you. Location is of utmost importance especially to businesses that sell goods or services directly to customers at brick-and-mortar establishments.
Some customers choose to buy from certain companies because of the perception they have about them. A business in the commercial area of a city gives the perception that the business is successful for it to afford a good location.
environmental factors like car park should also be carefully consider if your business will attract traffic, many customers may choose to go somewhere else if it’s too hard to find park.
Think about suppliers
Depending on your business, suppliers could influence your location. Price and quality are pre-requisites in choosing a supplier, but the speed of delivery has a huge impact on productivity, therefore proximity is a strong environmental factors.
For better and quicker businesses operations, it’s important to consider the location of your company to make it easy for your suppliers to reach your premises on time to deliver goods and provide the necessary service for your business to run smoothly. And the closer you are to your suppliers, the quicker your product can be in the market.
If your business is conveniently located at the best place to attract customers, you can be certain of growth, an increase in sales and brand visibility.
If you’re running a traditional or physical business, your success primarily depends on some environmental factors like your strategic location, proximity to raw materials or source of goods, accessibility, and others.
Think about the following dynamics when choosing the location of your new business or when you plan on expanding to other cities.
- Your business image
- The competition you will face
- Growth plans today and tomorrow
- The overall safety and perception of the location
- Laws and regulations
