Ted and Flori Pate, owners of Dig Local in Asheville, say their best advice for developing your small business strategy is to talk to your target audience. Write down a list of questions for them including things like, "What are some problems you're currently dealing with?" and, "What do you wish existed to help solve those problems?" You can then take this feedback, find common pains among your target audience, and then come up with a solution through your business model.
The best practice for developing strategies, and this is against, I learned this at Startup Weekend here at A-B Tech is you need to come up with a list of questions and get out there and ask people who are going to be your target audience. That's how we came up with a lot of the features that are still the most popular on Dig Local is that we got out there and asked potential customers, what are some problems you're dealing with? How are you trying to solve those problems? What do you like about what you're currently doing? What do you wish what you were doing was different? We took all this information and found the common pains and tried to come up with a solution to those pains.
