We all know that starting a business is a big deal. It’s something that will change your life, your career, and even your bank balance. But, to get there, and to make that happen, you need to create a killer plan to get you there. And while we’re not going to delve into the basics on creating a business plan in this post, we are doing to consider five things that you can do, or use, or turn to, to support and encourage your growth. Whether you know that you need more website visitors, more time to work on your business, or you just need to make your first sale, you may find that one or more of these five points will help you to do exactly that.
1. Get To Know Your Audience Better
The very first thing that you’ll want to do here, is to make sure that you know your audience incredibly well. Because the more you know your audience and you understand their needs, it will be easier for you to create a product or service that they need to have in their lives.
2. Solidify Your Strategy
The next thing that you’ll want to do here is to make sure that you have a solid social media marketing plan in place. Because if you want more visitors, or to grow an email list, or to make more sales, you need to harness all of the tools you have. And social media can be vital for this. So creating a set plan or having a clearer vision on what you’re trying to achieve, will help you to get those results.
3. Outsource
Then next thing that might help your business to blossom, is to consider outsourcing some of the areas of the business that you’re not all that experienced with. Maybe you’re not great at finance or IT? Then why spend your time on it? Instead, you might want to read more about this here so that you can see if doing so will benefit you. Because if you can free up time, and get more work done, it’s definitely worthwhile.
4. Line Everything Up
But then also, if you know that you need to boost your business, you have to be really objective and look at your daily tasks. At what you’re focusing on and prioritizing. Because if your actions do not match your business goals – there’s your missing link. But when you align your actions to your goals, you’ll start to see better results.
5. Bring In Experts
And finally, if you’re thinking about hiring, or when you do, you’re going to find that it really works in your favor for you to hire people that have a certain level of expertise in their area. Sometimes, it’s easy to believe that you ought to hire novices, or trainees, or just cheap labor – but really, what will they bring to your business? Experts can really add value. And it’s smart to hire people that challenge you or that are more knowledgeable than you.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/CountryOffice.jpg8001200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2019-03-18 17:27:252019-03-23 22:00:355 Simple Solutions That Will Make Your Business Bloom
Being more productive as a business online largely depends on having the right tools and the right knowledge to use them effectively. IT now lies at the core of any successful business. Employees need to know how to use a computer effectively if you are going to reap the gains of productivity and efficiency. Nonetheless, this typically revolves around a lot more than knowing how to type on Microsoft Word. With the array of software solutions available today every business has differing requirements from their employees.
Nevertheless, the issue comes because not all businesses have the capability to provide training days for their staff. They may not have all of the equipment necessary for example. Thankfully, this issue is one that can easily be solved. An IT mobile classroom provides a great option for small to medium size businesses. Companies will come to your site and they will set up a training room in your conference or meeting room. They will provide you with the perfect platform for carrying out any courses or workshops you wish to hold.
The most obvious benefit of going down this route is convenience and time efficiency. After all, if you were not to use the services of an IT mobile classroom then you would have to move all of the desktops from your business into one room. This is extremely inconvenient and may not even be feasible in a lot of cases because of servers and different connections. A mobile IT classroom takes all of this hassle out of your hands. The company in question will bring all of their own equipment and they will set it up themselves in a mere matter of minutes.
Nonetheless, convenience is not the only key factor associated with this service. You should also consider the cost efficiency of this solution too. There are several ways small businesses can make savings by going down this route. For those who don’t have the resources, the only alternative to a mobile IT classroom is to send your staff away on a public course. This will need to be paid for per person and so is assured to be more expensive. Not only will the course itself be, but you will need to subsidise for travel expenses and possibly overnight accommodation too. And then there is the fact that you do not require permanent facilities and therefore there is no need to spend on equipment.
Another issue associated with taking a public course is the fact that you have no control over what your staff are being taught. After all, your need for the popular Office 365 solutions may be different from another company’s, which is why in-house consulting and training is a must. If you have in-house training you can ensure that your employees are only focusing on tasks that are going to be used whilst in the workplace. This ensures no time is wasted. Optimum efficiency will be gained and you don’t run the risk of the workshop being ineffective. Not only this, but you can be assured that all of your staff will be in attendance. When inconvenience is caused by having to go to a new location etc, quite frankly you will note that a few people fail to attend. You don’t have to worry about this if the training is carried out in-house.
If you don’t currently have the facilities to carry out training courses and workshops on premises then assess all of your options before sending your staff on a training course. Opting for an IT mobile classroom is something that is likely to provide you with much more benefits and therefore is definitely a more viable and advantageous solution.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/monitor-1307227_1280.jpg9031280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2019-03-18 17:09:502019-03-18 17:09:50How To Be More Productive When Working Online
As a modern-day business owner, you know just how important it is to have a website that attracts traffic. Attracting visitors to your site is, however, only half the battle. You actually have to keep them there if you’re to stand any chance whatsoever of, one day, turning them into customers of yours.
In order to ensure that consumers stick around on your site long enough to see all of the great products and services that you make available, you’re going to have to put the following pieces of advice into practice.
Focus on speed optimization
A whopping 47 % of consumers expect a web page to load within 2 seconds. In order to ensure that the speed at which your website loads doesn’t affect your ability to keep consumers on it, you need to focus on speed optimization.
Do you feel like you have no clue where you would even get started in this instance? Fear not, as there are plenty of people and companies out there that are waiting and willing to help. Pixel Panther, a company that offers SEO services Romsey, are one such professional entity that you could turn to. They would work alongside you to ensure that your website is quick to load whether it’s accessed on a desktop computer or a mobile device. One of the things they would do to optimize your speed is fix any sticky menus that you have — this will ensure that none of your site’s pages fall foul to the plight of slow loading.
Be clear about what it is you do
Consumers aren’t going to stick around on your site if they don’t deem it relevant to them. They need to know that they are going to be able to unearth the information that they need to know, and they need to know this quickly. If they are unable to figure out what it is you do and what it is you can offer them within a few seconds of accessing your site, they’ll move on. For this reason, you have to be clear about what it is you do. Don’t waste anybody’s time — get straight to the point of what your business is and what it offers.
Keep it simple
Similarly, consumers won’t feel the need to stay on your site for too long if what they see confused them. What you should do, then, is keep everything as simple as possible. Do not litter your site with huge chunks of writing or, on the other hand, over-compensate with clever interactivity if the content that you upload doesn’t engage with your consumers. Everything that you do has to find the perfect balance between being both informative and intuitive.
After working so hard to attract them to it in the first place, why would you want consumers to leave your website within seconds of accessing it? To keep them around on your site for longer in order to, subsequently, give you a better shot of garnering more custom and profit going forward, you need to consider all of the above advice.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/speed-4028234_1280.jpg8111280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2019-03-15 16:00:032019-03-15 04:59:413 Ways to Keep Consumers on Your Website for Longer
When it comes to marketing your business, your strategy will depend on so many things, but ultimately it can be separated in to two types of strategies – both of which are great for business, but are implemented in different ways and usually at different times in your business.
These strategies are inbound marketing and outbound marketing, and before we go into the benefits of each strategies, we’re going to explain a little about what each is and and overview of how they work.
An inbound strategy is typically what you’d call a long-game strategy in that it can be implemented right at the beginning of your business, but it can take a while to see results and it’s something that’s going to continue to be implemented throughout the duration of you running your business.
Examples of an inbound marketing strategy in action would include things like content marketing, your website and social media – these are all things you have out there that allow people to come to you by finding your marketing material, so it’s obviously something that takes a little time to build up.
An outbound strategy on the other hand is something that tends to see quicker results and is usually not something that will be implemented consistently in your business, but will be something that you’ll do every once in a while or especially at the beginning of your business.
Examples of outbound strategy in action would be something like you’ve just started a service-based company where you provide professional writing services for the medical industry and since your first priority is to get clients then part of your outbound strategy is to create a cold outreach campaign to places like hospitals, medical credentialing companies, and other medical industry companies that you could write for.
As mentioned above, each strategy works great, but they both have their time and place, and each also is better to implemented depending on how much time you have in your business to spend on marketing. Outbound is going to see faster results over a shorter period, but inbound will see consistent results over a longer period and can be a great way to plan your growth in terms of customers and revenue, so below we’re going to list some of the benefits of each strategy to help you see which one is best suited to your needs right now.
Inbound:
Helps you establish trust and credibility with your audience over a longer time;
Is usually great for SEO and organic reach since you’ll be creating a lot of content;
Can be automated to run over longer periods of time, so it doesn’t require so much attention.
Outboud:
Great for getting yourself known quickly;
A great way to build confidence when selling;
One of the fastest and most effective ways to get new clients fast.
Hopefully this post has provided you with a little clarity on the differences between these two strategies and helped you see which one could potentially be best for you depending on your business needs right now.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/board-marketing-strategy-6229.jpg8001200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2019-03-15 11:00:572019-03-14 14:19:06Inbound Strategy Vs Outbound Strategy: Which Is Better For Your Business?
Businesses want to have strong and long-lasting relationships with their consumers. That relationship is built on trust, but in a post-truth world brands are faced with a serious challenge: so much of modern life is defined by mistrust.
I believe that for brands, trust and truth are the most important games in town.
The ‘trust issue’ is a central theme for organisations in any sector, and it’s one in which I’ve conducted a mass of research into how a post-truth culture is impacting brands, across an array of business sectors, on a global basis. To quote The Economist “consumer trust is the basis of all brand values, and therefore brands have an immense incentive to retain it”.
Why is this so important? Because, if a brand isn’t seen as credible and trustworthy, then when choice is available it’ll be rejected in favour of one that is – by those who view themselves as being ‘informed’ as opposed to ‘passive’ consumers.
This is due to a weakening of the vital trust connection between brands and consumers and is causing enormous problems for businesses. The ramifications for brands in sectors of all description are deeply serious, when ‘reputation capital’ is of such immense importance, regarding our belief in those core questions of ‘is a business honest, competent and reliable?’
But just running an advertising campaign stating that a brand is trustworthy isn’t good enough. This isn’t a marketing issue, this is a business-wide issue, involving every facet of the organisation, hence leadership being so important.
Companies have to be consistent in their behaviour, from top to bottom, and right along the supply chain, from the ‘first hand of production to the final hand of the consumer’.
And this genuinely has to go all the way. Make no mistake, organisations and brands that want to earn and keep our trust have to ‘live it like they say it’. Business has to be about more than just profit. ‘People plus Planet’ and to quote a much-derided word ‘Purpose’ have to be in there too.
The ‘actual’ difference between ethical brands with a moral code and those exposed as being without one, is increasingly a key factor in consumer brand adoption or rejection. This approach very much links to social innovation and indeed conspicuous altruism.
‘Social Purpose’ is a phrase used obsessively by modern, forward-thinking leaders, and links directly to joint value creation where both shareholders and society benefit from business. Yet many still attempt to portray, or indeed dismiss, the demographic most associated with this ideal as being one where, as The Guardian newspaper put it recently “the idea that market activity should have a purpose other than purely profit is roughly where it always was on the spectrum, somewhere between Marx and Jesus – one for the rioters, the subversives, the people with beards, unsuited to mainstream discourse.”
To illustrate that this thinking goes right to the top of hard-headed business thinking, in their ‘Reflections from Davos’ report regarding the meeting of the World Economic Forum, the managing partner of McKinsey was quoted as saying “the next innovation imperative will be social innovation – business’s role will be critical here.” The report went on to note “society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose”.
This is set against research from those such as Deloitte who show how millennials are fast losing faith in business; and against a backdrop where people are scrambling to find solid ground in an era when we’re told that the very notion of truth is subjective, and indeed much of public discourse has become increasingly anti-fact and anti-expert.
Fortunately there are numerous shining examples of organisations that are showing us all ‘how to do it better’ ranging across the business spectrum, in sectors ranging from beauty to finance, and from fashion to beverages.
With good leadership at the core of these businesses, all members of the organisation are enabled to understand and demonstrate ‘why they do it, what they do and how they do it’. And this means leaders of companies taking deliberate and definitive action to ensure that their businesses demonstrate ‘corporate social leadership’.
This will also enable the truism that ‘good business is good business’.
About the Author
Sean Pillot de Chenecey, author of The Post-Truth Business: How to Rebuild Brand Authenticity in a Distrusting World, has over 20 years’ experience as a brand expert, combining marketing consultancy with ethnographic activity and trend research around the world. His clients have included Unilever, Swatch, Heineken, Diageo, General Motors, Beiersdorf, AXA, Costa, Vodafone, Kerrygold and Starwood. He’s collaborated with numerous international advertising, branding, design, media and PR agencies. He is a lecturer at the University of the Arts London, and has written for Dazed, Admap, Brand Strategy, Marketing and Contagious. A public speaker, he’s given speeches for over a decade in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America. For more information, please visit www.koganpage.com/post-truth-business
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Business Programs
5 Simple Solutions That Will Make Your Business Bloom
/in Entrepreneurship/by StrategyDriven1. Get To Know Your Audience Better
The very first thing that you’ll want to do here, is to make sure that you know your audience incredibly well. Because the more you know your audience and you understand their needs, it will be easier for you to create a product or service that they need to have in their lives.
2. Solidify Your Strategy
The next thing that you’ll want to do here is to make sure that you have a solid social media marketing plan in place. Because if you want more visitors, or to grow an email list, or to make more sales, you need to harness all of the tools you have. And social media can be vital for this. So creating a set plan or having a clearer vision on what you’re trying to achieve, will help you to get those results.
Then next thing that might help your business to blossom, is to consider outsourcing some of the areas of the business that you’re not all that experienced with. Maybe you’re not great at finance or IT? Then why spend your time on it? Instead, you might want to read more about this here so that you can see if doing so will benefit you. Because if you can free up time, and get more work done, it’s definitely worthwhile.
4. Line Everything Up
But then also, if you know that you need to boost your business, you have to be really objective and look at your daily tasks. At what you’re focusing on and prioritizing. Because if your actions do not match your business goals – there’s your missing link. But when you align your actions to your goals, you’ll start to see better results.
5. Bring In Experts
And finally, if you’re thinking about hiring, or when you do, you’re going to find that it really works in your favor for you to hire people that have a certain level of expertise in their area. Sometimes, it’s easy to believe that you ought to hire novices, or trainees, or just cheap labor – but really, what will they bring to your business? Experts can really add value. And it’s smart to hire people that challenge you or that are more knowledgeable than you.
How To Be More Productive When Working Online
/in Practices for Professionals/by StrategyDrivenNevertheless, the issue comes because not all businesses have the capability to provide training days for their staff. They may not have all of the equipment necessary for example. Thankfully, this issue is one that can easily be solved. An IT mobile classroom provides a great option for small to medium size businesses. Companies will come to your site and they will set up a training room in your conference or meeting room. They will provide you with the perfect platform for carrying out any courses or workshops you wish to hold.
The most obvious benefit of going down this route is convenience and time efficiency. After all, if you were not to use the services of an IT mobile classroom then you would have to move all of the desktops from your business into one room. This is extremely inconvenient and may not even be feasible in a lot of cases because of servers and different connections. A mobile IT classroom takes all of this hassle out of your hands. The company in question will bring all of their own equipment and they will set it up themselves in a mere matter of minutes.
Nonetheless, convenience is not the only key factor associated with this service. You should also consider the cost efficiency of this solution too. There are several ways small businesses can make savings by going down this route. For those who don’t have the resources, the only alternative to a mobile IT classroom is to send your staff away on a public course. This will need to be paid for per person and so is assured to be more expensive. Not only will the course itself be, but you will need to subsidise for travel expenses and possibly overnight accommodation too. And then there is the fact that you do not require permanent facilities and therefore there is no need to spend on equipment.
Another issue associated with taking a public course is the fact that you have no control over what your staff are being taught. After all, your need for the popular Office 365 solutions may be different from another company’s, which is why in-house consulting and training is a must. If you have in-house training you can ensure that your employees are only focusing on tasks that are going to be used whilst in the workplace. This ensures no time is wasted. Optimum efficiency will be gained and you don’t run the risk of the workshop being ineffective. Not only this, but you can be assured that all of your staff will be in attendance. When inconvenience is caused by having to go to a new location etc, quite frankly you will note that a few people fail to attend. You don’t have to worry about this if the training is carried out in-house.
If you don’t currently have the facilities to carry out training courses and workshops on premises then assess all of your options before sending your staff on a training course. Opting for an IT mobile classroom is something that is likely to provide you with much more benefits and therefore is definitely a more viable and advantageous solution.
3 Ways to Keep Consumers on Your Website for Longer
/in Online Marketing and Website Development/by StrategyDrivenIn order to ensure that consumers stick around on your site long enough to see all of the great products and services that you make available, you’re going to have to put the following pieces of advice into practice.
Focus on speed optimization
A whopping 47 % of consumers expect a web page to load within 2 seconds. In order to ensure that the speed at which your website loads doesn’t affect your ability to keep consumers on it, you need to focus on speed optimization.
Do you feel like you have no clue where you would even get started in this instance? Fear not, as there are plenty of people and companies out there that are waiting and willing to help. Pixel Panther, a company that offers SEO services Romsey, are one such professional entity that you could turn to. They would work alongside you to ensure that your website is quick to load whether it’s accessed on a desktop computer or a mobile device. One of the things they would do to optimize your speed is fix any sticky menus that you have — this will ensure that none of your site’s pages fall foul to the plight of slow loading.
Be clear about what it is you do
Consumers aren’t going to stick around on your site if they don’t deem it relevant to them. They need to know that they are going to be able to unearth the information that they need to know, and they need to know this quickly. If they are unable to figure out what it is you do and what it is you can offer them within a few seconds of accessing your site, they’ll move on. For this reason, you have to be clear about what it is you do. Don’t waste anybody’s time — get straight to the point of what your business is and what it offers.
Keep it simple
Similarly, consumers won’t feel the need to stay on your site for too long if what they see confused them. What you should do, then, is keep everything as simple as possible. Do not litter your site with huge chunks of writing or, on the other hand, over-compensate with clever interactivity if the content that you upload doesn’t engage with your consumers. Everything that you do has to find the perfect balance between being both informative and intuitive.
After working so hard to attract them to it in the first place, why would you want consumers to leave your website within seconds of accessing it? To keep them around on your site for longer in order to, subsequently, give you a better shot of garnering more custom and profit going forward, you need to consider all of the above advice.
Inbound Strategy Vs Outbound Strategy: Which Is Better For Your Business?
/in Entrepreneurship/by StrategyDrivenThese strategies are inbound marketing and outbound marketing, and before we go into the benefits of each strategies, we’re going to explain a little about what each is and and overview of how they work.
An inbound strategy is typically what you’d call a long-game strategy in that it can be implemented right at the beginning of your business, but it can take a while to see results and it’s something that’s going to continue to be implemented throughout the duration of you running your business.
Examples of an inbound marketing strategy in action would include things like content marketing, your website and social media – these are all things you have out there that allow people to come to you by finding your marketing material, so it’s obviously something that takes a little time to build up.
An outbound strategy on the other hand is something that tends to see quicker results and is usually not something that will be implemented consistently in your business, but will be something that you’ll do every once in a while or especially at the beginning of your business.
Examples of outbound strategy in action would be something like you’ve just started a service-based company where you provide professional writing services for the medical industry and since your first priority is to get clients then part of your outbound strategy is to create a cold outreach campaign to places like hospitals, medical credentialing companies, and other medical industry companies that you could write for.
As mentioned above, each strategy works great, but they both have their time and place, and each also is better to implemented depending on how much time you have in your business to spend on marketing. Outbound is going to see faster results over a shorter period, but inbound will see consistent results over a longer period and can be a great way to plan your growth in terms of customers and revenue, so below we’re going to list some of the benefits of each strategy to help you see which one is best suited to your needs right now.
Inbound:
Outboud:
Hopefully this post has provided you with a little clarity on the differences between these two strategies and helped you see which one could potentially be best for you depending on your business needs right now.
The Trust Issue
/in Customer Relationship Management/by Sean Pillot de CheneceyI believe that for brands, trust and truth are the most important games in town.
The ‘trust issue’ is a central theme for organisations in any sector, and it’s one in which I’ve conducted a mass of research into how a post-truth culture is impacting brands, across an array of business sectors, on a global basis. To quote The Economist “consumer trust is the basis of all brand values, and therefore brands have an immense incentive to retain it”.
Why is this so important? Because, if a brand isn’t seen as credible and trustworthy, then when choice is available it’ll be rejected in favour of one that is – by those who view themselves as being ‘informed’ as opposed to ‘passive’ consumers.
This is due to a weakening of the vital trust connection between brands and consumers and is causing enormous problems for businesses. The ramifications for brands in sectors of all description are deeply serious, when ‘reputation capital’ is of such immense importance, regarding our belief in those core questions of ‘is a business honest, competent and reliable?’
But just running an advertising campaign stating that a brand is trustworthy isn’t good enough. This isn’t a marketing issue, this is a business-wide issue, involving every facet of the organisation, hence leadership being so important.
Companies have to be consistent in their behaviour, from top to bottom, and right along the supply chain, from the ‘first hand of production to the final hand of the consumer’.
And this genuinely has to go all the way. Make no mistake, organisations and brands that want to earn and keep our trust have to ‘live it like they say it’. Business has to be about more than just profit. ‘People plus Planet’ and to quote a much-derided word ‘Purpose’ have to be in there too.
The ‘actual’ difference between ethical brands with a moral code and those exposed as being without one, is increasingly a key factor in consumer brand adoption or rejection. This approach very much links to social innovation and indeed conspicuous altruism.
‘Social Purpose’ is a phrase used obsessively by modern, forward-thinking leaders, and links directly to joint value creation where both shareholders and society benefit from business. Yet many still attempt to portray, or indeed dismiss, the demographic most associated with this ideal as being one where, as The Guardian newspaper put it recently “the idea that market activity should have a purpose other than purely profit is roughly where it always was on the spectrum, somewhere between Marx and Jesus – one for the rioters, the subversives, the people with beards, unsuited to mainstream discourse.”
To illustrate that this thinking goes right to the top of hard-headed business thinking, in their ‘Reflections from Davos’ report regarding the meeting of the World Economic Forum, the managing partner of McKinsey was quoted as saying “the next innovation imperative will be social innovation – business’s role will be critical here.” The report went on to note “society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose”.
This is set against research from those such as Deloitte who show how millennials are fast losing faith in business; and against a backdrop where people are scrambling to find solid ground in an era when we’re told that the very notion of truth is subjective, and indeed much of public discourse has become increasingly anti-fact and anti-expert.
Fortunately there are numerous shining examples of organisations that are showing us all ‘how to do it better’ ranging across the business spectrum, in sectors ranging from beauty to finance, and from fashion to beverages.
With good leadership at the core of these businesses, all members of the organisation are enabled to understand and demonstrate ‘why they do it, what they do and how they do it’. And this means leaders of companies taking deliberate and definitive action to ensure that their businesses demonstrate ‘corporate social leadership’.
This will also enable the truism that ‘good business is good business’.
About the Author