StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | Scaling A Small Business Tips

Scaling A Small Business Tips

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | Scaling A Small Business Tips | Scaling Business

It’s no easy feat scaling a business, it is pretty difficult and takes considerable effort. At the beginning of a business, the owners will practically do every job that needs to be done. Things that involve a wide spectrum of skills and knowledge from different business departments, such as dealing with sales and marketing. It also means understanding taxes and corporate compliance including employment regulations and laws. And finally, usually, for small businesses, It will involve having to interact with customers on a daily basis.

Spending all your time fulfilling these roles can make you think that your business is far from any growth or expansion and in doing so would damage its foundations. Sometimes this is not true. There is a light at the end of the tunnel for those who struggle to grow their business. Scaling a business is a strategic program framework and requires an element of planning with compiling the business assets into one fluent engine in motion.

Like anything else in life, including business, you will have to put in the time if you’re looking to reap the benefits of success. Don’t focus on the short-term outcome of your work but look to the long term and build sincere value to your customers.

Here are some ways a small business can prepare for growth and scaling up.

Build A Good Sales Funnel

One of the first ways to quickly grow a business is by building a sales funnel. If a business does not have one, they’re making a monumental mistake. Sales funnels can help to somewhat automate your business functionality making it more established.

Upgrade Your Technology

Scaling a business will require some essence of updating the current system in place that takes care of the business needs. Whether it is a fleet of smartphones or vans, sometimes the investment will need to be made to keep clients and customers satisfied with your products or services. If your business requires minimal IT but still requires digitalizing documents or even hosting a web site, check out Hudson Valley IT Services company, who will take care of your site needs.

Customer Management System

Now manually tracking transactions is hard and can take up a lot of space when storing them in cabinets. No one wants to do that. Paperwork can get burdensome as the business grows but if you want to scale quickly, use a customer management system. You can find plenty to choose from online and make sure you choose the right one that depends on your line of work.

Email Lists

Back in the day, it was a little book with all the client information but now one of the best and most effective ways to grow a business quickly is to build an email list. The more people you can send offers and deals to the more potential sales you will have.

Scaling up takes time and strategic measure need to be in place to be able to counter-act any problems that may occur. Have you scaled your business recently? Share your tips on what you found helped you in the comments below.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Budget Strategy|Here's a Budget to Use if You Hate Tracking Expenses

Here’s a Budget to Use if You Hate Tracking Expenses

StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Budget Strategy|Here's a Budget to Use if You Hate Tracking ExpensesIf you’re looking for a budget strategy that suits your own personal approach to finance management, then you’ve probably considered plenty of options. After all, there are a handful of different methods out there, from the envelope budget, to the strategy that involves placing everything you can onto an automated payment process.

Probably the easiest option of all for people who hate tracking expenses is the 50/30/20 budget. This is a budgeting plan that recommends that you should be spending 50% of your income on the things you need (mortgage and food for instance), and 30% on the discretionary items that you want. The remaining 20% goes into your savings and helps you to tackle your debt.

So, how does this budget work, and is there a better option?

The Rules of the 50/30/20 Budget

The 50/30/20 budget is designed to help you manage and understand your money a little better. It requires you to look at your incoming and outgoing expenses and decide where you need to assign your cash to wants and needs. To use the 50/30/30 budget effectively, you need to understand the difference between necessary items like paying off your loans, and unnecessary or “discretionary” items like Netflix subscriptions.

Some people have a lot of trouble figuring out the difference between what they want and what they need. For instance, you know you need food, but you only want a specific brand and extra treats from the bakery aisle. Additionally, it’s worth noting that not everyone can handle the process of constantly classifying their needs and wants or tracking their spending.

If you’re not the kind of person who likes to watch every penny, then you’re going to struggle adhere to the 50/30/20 budget – that presents a bit of a problem.

The 80/20 Budget Alternative Approach

If you hate tracking your spending, you’re still going to need to make some changes to your expense strategy. For instance, you can’t just choose the first personal loan option you see because you can’t be bothered to compare your options for a better deal. Ultimately, good money management requires an active approach to spending. However, you don’t necessarily need to spend every day watching the pennies either.

The 80/20 budget asks you to place 20% of your money towards your savings, while the other 80% goes on everything else – that includes both your wants and your needs. The beauty if this strategy is that you don’t need to track your spending as often. You can simply take 20% of your income away from your monthly money and place it into a separate savings account. Then, you know the rest of your cash is left to spend on your must-have and discretionary items.

Of course, it’s still a good idea to track your spending from time to time if you want to look for ways that you can cut down on your regular monthly costs. However, the 80/20 budget will give you more room to spend money freely.

How to Use the 80/20 Budget

With the 80/20 budget, the best thing you can do is set up an automatic deposit that moves money from your standard current account into your savings account as soon as it comes to you each month. That way, you won’t accidentally spend it. Once your cash has been distributed into the savings account, your checking account money is yours to spend; however you need to use it.

Ideally, you’ll want to check on your spending strategy once every couple of months to see whether there are any trigger areas where you might need to cut back on your spending. This is particularly useful if you find that you don’t have enough cash left over after bills to spend on the things that you want, or if you want to put 25% of your income in savings instead of 20%.

You’ll also need to make sure that the money you’re going to spend on your bills goes out of your account before you start using money for discretionary spending. The last thing you want is to assume that you’ve got around $500 when you actually have $200 waiting to be taken out for your insurance bills.

Once you see how much money you have left after you’ve subtracted your savings, subtract the cost of your bills too, and whatever is left should be yours to spend. This budget requires some care and attention, but it requires a lot less work than the average 50/30/20 budget.

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Reputation Management|How To Restore A Business Reputation

How To Restore A Business Reputation

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Reputation Management|How To Restore A Business ReputationNo business, no matter how large, small or seemingly impenetrable, is free from the benefits or disadvantages of having a good or bad reputation. It can take only one small social media scandal for your profits to dip. Just look how the reason release of the Samsung Galaxy Fold was handled. Sending out test units to online reviewers, many content creators found that the foldable screen could easily break when pulling off a seeming screen protector. This was not told to said creators ahead of time, and so they quite understandably fell into that trap.

From then on, the narrative regarding said phones was that they were a shoddy product, they didn’t work, and that folding phones were a gimmick. Samsung are now on the back foot, are redesigning elements of those models, and will need to re-release them. The business reputation has been somewhat tarnished, and stock value dipped. Even for a company as massive as Samsung, negative perceptions and narrative can stop their expected yearly results dead in their tracks.

But how do you restore a business reputation? Sure, we know it can be difficult to achieve. But is it possible? We would say yes. We’d also like to explore why:

Control The Narrative

It can sometimes be that the narrative gets out of hand when we are the new target among annoyed consumers. This can, unfortunately, lead to things getting blown out of proportion. Any attempt to publicly deflect that narrative, outside of clear statements as we’ll explain below, can seem like an aggressive and overly-defensive stance. This is where it can be important to take a more subtle approach to shift the narrative back in your favor.

Public relations firms continually strive to restore consumer faith in businesses. It happens all the time. Rewarding loyal customers with extra promotions, offering customers that might have left or cancelled their service with ideal return offers, and taking excess pride in the practices your company has gotten write can often let the passage of time heal the issues that were caused in the first place. This can be freeing for every firm.

On top of that, subtle, yet informative marketing could be used to restore your company’s name in the public consciousness. Services such as Fat Joe, which operate as professional SEO firms, can help you wrap your business name within informative content through their excellent blogger outreach. Not only this, but their ability to raise the rankings of search results can help your firm avoid dying out due to a lack of attention, perhaps during a time when a truly aggressive marketing strategy might need to take a breather.

Understand Goodwill Is Valuable

Goodwill is an evasive word and concept. We can’t gift goodwill back to our shareholders. We can’t use it to pay the electric bill, or pay our staff wages. But without goodwill, the glue that ties a business to its audience washes away. It’s very important to consider this as a vital resource. Connect with your customers, listen to them, interact with them, and treat them as more than just people to bat away with a simple defensive statement.

If you can be clear, concise and direct regarding your strategy, honest about what happened and how things were caused, and why this will never happen again, you can get on top of the issue immediately. Some might even respect you more. You can be certain that your goodwill shall not fade as a result. And that’s extremely important to consider and manage.

Fix The Issues

We are living in the age of social media, where slights and issues aren’t swept under the rug. While we are used to political scandals often being forgotten about as the next one comes along, business injuries aren’t as fortunate to enjoy something like that. And that’s a good thing.

Jumping immediately to fix the issues should there be a legitimate concern is essential to helping you restore your name. Otherwise, this can be a black cloud that hangs over you, particularly if you fail to address it. Restoring a business reputation often means just that, restoration. For example, it could be that your product is defunct. Offering a full refund to any proven purchase can help you overcome the damage. However, taking another step forward and offering up to 50% off another purchase at your store can help people see this as less than a waste of time. It can also help you avoid a very costly class action lawsuit by offering the appropriate reparations immediately.

You gain nothing by ignoring the issues, but potentially plenty of goodwill by fixing them.

Rebrand

Sometimes, a negative business reputation can be so bad, you need to rebrand your operations. This might sound like a dark tactic, but it is often used in many industries. Even after fixing the issues and remaining forward-facing about the troubles you face, sometimes it’s not enough.

Starting again with a new business name, a new logo and aesthetic can be important. Of course, you cannot expect to hide your business past – but you might be able to redefine it. Consider how Dominoes once operated in the late 2000s. After many widespread reports that their US Pizza chains were terrible, and that the recipe tasted awful, they embarked on a major rebrand campaign. Of course, they weren’t shy about it and didn’t change their name, but after revolutionizing every recipe on their menu, for all intents and purposes they were a new firm with a new outlook.

You might be able to practice the same idea. Both front-facing marketing promotions such as these or hidden rebrands to help your firm gain some room to breathe, a rebrand might be just the thing you and your business needs to start again with a strong pace.

With this advice, we hope you’re much better able to shake off or restore a bad business reputation. This can be hard to do, but with enough dedication and a cohesive mindset, you can pull it off. Good luck!

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Home-Based Business|4 Tips for Running a Home-Based Business from a Rented Apartment

4 Tips for Running a Home-Based Business from a Rented Apartment

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Home-Based Business|4 Tips for Running a Home-Based Business from a Rented ApartmentYou hear of home-based businesses all the time and, of course, you usually don’t think of them being run from a rented apartment. If you are honest, you think of a home that has a spare room in which to set up shop and perhaps even a nice area where you can meet and greet customers or clients if the need should arise.

Actually, a huge number of home-based businesses are run from rented apartments, but there are a few challenges that are a bit different than what you’d experience when running a business from a home you own. If you are considering going into business for yourself from home in an apartment, here are some tips you might otherwise overlook.

1. Check Zoning Codes in Your Area

Zoning codes are of vital importance if you are going to operate a business. To do it right, you’ll want to register it as a business, but some areas of the country are zoned for residential only. You’ll want to check this out before you take another step.

2. Talk to Your Landlord

If you can’t see anything in your lease that would prohibit you from running a home-based business, then it’s probably safe to assume that it should not be a problem. This just may be the case but if you are going to be seeing a lot of foot traffic, so it’s a good idea to get the property manager’s approval before advertising you are “Open for Business.”

3. Licenses and Insurance

This is something else many apartment dwellers don’t think of when running a business from home. You will want to get the appropriate business licenses and occupational permits if required in your city/county. Also, you should get the best renters insurance coverage you can find. When seeking a renters insurance quote, ask about the various kinds of coverage. For example, you’ll probably need liability if anyone is going to come to your ‘place of business’ and you’ll want contents insurance because of theft and loss due to natural disasters or fire. Obviously the amount of coverage you purchase will have an impact on renters insurance cost, but by comparing renters insurance online you will be able to find the most inclusive policy for the lowest amount of money.

4. Keep Work and Play Separate

Finally, even though you might be limited on space, always keep work areas and living areas separate if at all possible. Some people move their television and games systems to their bedroom and use the front room as their office space – or vice versa. It really isn’t quite that important how you do it, as long as you set aside an area to work so that when you are working you are in the right frame of mind.

It really isn’t that much different than setting up a home-based business in a family home, but the major differences will be that you have a landlord involved when you are renting. If you get permission to work from your apartment, it can be a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Marketing Strategy|How to Formulate a Killer Marketing Strategy

How to Formulate a Killer Marketing Strategy

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Marketing Strategy|How to Formulate a Killer Marketing StrategyMarketing is one of the most important aspects of any business; if you aren’t marketing as effectively as you can, your business isn’t going to be performing as well as it should. It’s easy enough to understand the link between good marketing and increased sales, but many business owners are getting by with mediocre marketing and don’t even realize it.

If you think that there is even a slight chance that your business could be performing better, you should explore whether a rethink of your marketing strategy might be the answer. Here are some simple tips to help you devise effective marketing strategies every time.

Make it Personal

Personalization has been a growing trend in marketing for some time now. Personalization didn’t really come into its own until social media sites like Facebook started to offer personalized advertising that used the names and photos of a user and their friends in ads that appear on the site.

You don’t need to make your marketing quite this personal, but you should avoid making it entirely impersonal. You want to give your audience marketing content that they can relate to on some level. Your marketing should demonstrate to your customers that you understand who they are and what they like. The greater the emotional connection you can create, the more effective your marketing would be.

Use Specialists

There are many circumstances in which it makes more sense, both practically and financially, to use an outside marketing specialist to help you manage your marketing. There’s nothing wrong with calling in outside help, and as long as you choose the right marketer to partner with, your marketing should still feel personal.

You might think that your business niche is too small to attract specialist marketers, but you would be amazed at the marketing specialties that now exist. For example, if you run a law firm and don’t have anyone on staff with experience in marketing, you could turn to someone like just legal marketing, who specialize in advertising law firms online.

Get All Your Employees Involved

The most effective marketing campaigns are those that are able to communicate a clear message to their audience across a variety of mediums. Try and formulate your campaign around a simple message that will resonate with your audience. Make sure that all of your employees understand the marketing campaign you are trying to launch.

It is particularly important that your frontline workers, any who have interactions with customers, understand the principles behind your latest marketing drive. They can then reinforce the message and the ethos of your marketing campaign. It will also highlight the cohesiveness of your business to any outside observers.

Formulating a killer marketing strategy doesn’t have to be a serious challenge. It isn’t easy to put together an effective marketing campaign, but any business owner worth their salt needs to be able to differentiate between a good campaign and a bad one. The above tips will help you to produce good campaigns every time.