FindItMore | The business world is a challenging place for any small business or startup to get a foot hold in. With all the bigger companies having years of experience, competing against them is difficult. This doesn’t mean you can’t be successful too, especially if you take the time to put the following tips into action.
Use High-Impact Marketing
The Balance SMB says smallest business owners understand how online marketing can benefit them and they’re willing to explore new outlets for it, along with their offline marketing activities. They hope that by consistently changing, testing and mixing up their marketing activities they’ll be able to see what works, what doesn’t work, what produces the most interest, and what type of result it produces. These are all things you’ll want to work in over time so your business is successful. Start with one or two of them that are already aligned with the way you run your business. Then start making changes to incorporate the others gradually. Use your small business phone system to reach out to clients along the way so you know what they’re seeing from their side and what’s working best – something that’s more challenging to understand if you only conduct online surveys or opinion polls.
Increase Your Productivity
While some of your small business’ activities are routine, there are still various daily tasks that you’ll need to accomplish so your business runs smoothly. The more effective you are at these daily business management tasks (the ones you don’t delegate), the more potential for success your small business has. It also helps to take some time to develop systems to streamline these processes and boost your productivity.
Explore Digital Marketing
Your business will also benefit from adopting digital marketing. Digital Verge says there are a few ways in which this will happen, including:
- It’s more affordable than traditional marketing.
- You gain visibility in the Search Engines which will drive more traffic your way. Improved search engine rankings coupled with more traffic increases your business reach and awareness.
- By going mobile you’re reaching people where they spend most of their time today. This gives you more opportunities to display your services in a smarter way.
- You can have faster conversions with leads, sales, subscribers, and sign-ups. These conversions help your business be more successful and they’re easy to get.
- Increase your Return-on-Investment (ROI) in terms of sign-ups, subscribers, and audiences who provide contact information or online purchases. By monitoring and measuring these things you’ll know what’s working so you can do it more often and increase your ROI.
- Interacting with customers is one of the most important advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing. This is because you have various platforms available to you like social media, web applications, and your own website through which your audience can directly reach you, ask questions and even voice their complaints. The way you interact with your audience here can make or break your brand.
- It’s easier to measure your targeted customers’ actions. This gives you various opportunities to grow your brand – something customers love to see happen.
With the Use of Cloud Technology
The Balance SMB says you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much money your business can save simply by adopting cloud technology. These savings can be seen in terms of:
- You no longer need to pay for your own IT staff.
- You don’t have to buy or install your own software programs.
- You can consolidate your separate application needs into one multi-application cloud computing service.
- You can cut back on system hardware (e.g. file storage, data backup, software programs).
- You can easily integrate new programs into your business as it grows.
- Since these applications are updated regularly, you don’t have to spend time and money doing this yourself.
By Building Communities and Resources
Another great way to increase sales is by using loyalty programs. Entrepreneur says that it costs you three to 10 times more money to acquire a new client than it does to sell something to an existing client. This is one expense you can do without and something that loyalty programs help you with. By providing your clients with a clear incentive to easily spend more money with your business, your sales will skyrocket over time.
Know More About Competitors
Due says you’ll always be able to find another business like yours, regardless of what products or services you’re offering. This is where your competitors are located. Get to know them inside and out by using a platform like Similar Web or AdBeat – both provide competitive intelligence data on other businesses. You should also spend some time snooping around online to see what advertising strategies work best for them because more than likely this strategy will work well for your business too.
Boost Collaboration
Collaboration is a powerful tool for small business owners, regardless of what type of business you own. By forming connections with others you’ll find help in growing your business to new levels. The Balance SMB says there are a lot of great reasons why you shouldn’t overlook the power of collaboration, including:
- Collaboration can inspire you to find better ways of doing things instead of being stuck in your daily routine. While blogs, magazines, and books are inspiring, if you don’t communicate, share, and discuss these things you won’t get all their benefits. Getting outside of your own head offers you a fresh perspective, triggers your creativity, offers objectivity, and adds new context to the data you gather so you can use it effectively.
- Collaboration helps you grow your network because repeatedly selling to the same group won’t work.
- Collaboration is educational. When you meet someone else with a very different skill set, perspective, and strength than your own you can find new ways to grow your business.
- Collaboration can help you save money by sharing intellectual contribution, hands-on work and, expenses. This is a great way to reduce your business’ costs and get a bigger bang for your buck than if you were to only use your own resources. This only works out if all parties involved are equally invested in the collaboration’s success.
- Collaboration solves problems. A group of people are more likely to accomplish what a single person on their own can’t accomplish.