As the warmer weather approaches, many of the households around the UK will begin to experience lower energy bills and as a result, will be looking for ways to continue these savings for when the weather begins to turn cold. But where can you start? In this article, we will be providing you with insight into some of the tips and tricks that you can use to save money on your energy bills.
Turn Off Standby Appliances
When you are looking to save yourself some money you should first start off by turning off your appliances that have been left on standby. With these appliances costing on average £30 a year turning them off will save you a significant amount of money per year. By taking the time to turn off your appliances when you use them, you can bring down the cost of your monthly bills and increase the longevity of your items.
Buy Energy Efficient Appliances
In addition to turning off the appliances that you are not using, you can also save yourself some money over time by purchasing several energy-efficient appliances. Whether it be a towel warmer for the bathroom or a new radiator for the living room, there are several ways that you can begin to use these appliances to bring down your costs over time. By replacing these outdated appliances, you can modernise your home with ease allowing you to save money gradually. With a number of these retailers selling energy-efficient applications, this can benefit you in the long term.
Invest In Double Glazing
Another way that you can begin to save money on your energy bills is to invest in double glazing. This will help to prevent heat loss from the windows and keep your home much warmer. With the heat being kept in the home, you can then turn the heating off throughout the day and save yourself some money. Though this is a much larger upfront cost there are several ways that this can not only bring up the value of your home but also help to reduce the monthly cost of your energy bills over the course of the month.
Add Insulation To The Roof
The final way that you can bring down the cost of your energy bills is to add insulation to the roof. By adding the insulation during the summer, you can make sure that your home is fully insulated when the weather turns much colder.
Regardless of whether you decide to implement the insulation yourself or hire a company to do so, this can help to keep the heat inside of your home and limit the amount of hot air that escapes through the roof, this, in turn, will bring down the cost of your monthly energy bills.
With this in mind, there are several ways that you can begin to save money on your energy bills without having to change too much in your everyday routine. Which of these tips and tricks will you be using first?
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/bulb-5258341_1280.jpg8521280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2021-05-21 16:00:522021-05-25 12:50:50Tips On Saving Money On Your Energy Bills
It’s a common belief that the only way to achieve a stable career is by earning a degree. And while that may be the case for certain professions, it’s not the only way to build a career that is fulfilling, enjoyable and that challenges you.
Learning a skilled trade offers many of the same benefits as other career paths without the cost or time investment of a degree. From plumbing to fitting and maintaining HVAC units, there are plenty of opportunities for you to find a job you love. Here are some of the key career advantages to learning a skilled trade.
It’s a quicker way to gain real experience
Not everyone performs well in an academic or classroom environment, which can make it challenging to learn new skills. But for those who learn best on the job, building up a CV with valuable, hands-on experience can make the world of difference. In a skilled trade career, you can earn experience as an apprentice where you’ll start working on projects and jobs immediately, while picking up knowledge from professionals in the field.
You’ll earn a decent salary
Tradespeople have the opportunity to earn a good salary for their work, and the more skilled and experienced you become, the more you can charge. Salaries vary depending on the trade you choose and the level of experience you have, but on average, you can earn good money with a career such as this. For example, the average salary for a qualified electrician in the UK is over £32,000 per year, making it one of the top-paying trades. And with society’s reliance on electricity, you won’t find yourself short of work. Which brings us on to our next point…
Tradespeople are consistently in demand
There’s a constant need for skilled tradespeople and the pace of growth isn’t slowing down any time soon. In fact, there is a huge number of vacancies for roles such as plumbers and electricians due to skills shortages for these jobs. Depending on the trade you choose to learn, you could find yourself in an enviable position when it comes to earning a great salary and finding work, whether you want to be employed or work for yourself. So, if job security is a concern for you, a skilled trade career can provide peace of mind.
It’s an affordable way to learn
With rising tuition fees, going to university is a costly investment that can leave the average student in thousands of pounds worth of debt. One of the primary benefits of learning a trade is that it’s a cost-effective way of building a career that will earn you a good living. It means that once you’re qualified and working, you won’t be lumbered with a huge student loan debt hanging over you for years to come.
The opportunity to set up your own business
Working for someone else isn’t everyone’s dream – for the more entrepreneurial, starting a business and hiring other people might be the objective. Learning a skilled trade offers great potential for running your own business or working alone as a self-employed individual, where you can set your own hours and determine your own rates.
Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is one of the top priorities for people seeking a new job now. With so much of our time spent at work, it’s important that we feel happy and fulfilled each day, rather than bored and dissatisfied. A big part of that is choosing the right career path and finding a job that is interesting, that challenges you and gives you the chance to build your knowledge. For many people, this also means finding a job that allows you to meet new people, to problem-solve on a daily basis and to do something hands-on. A skilled trade job offers all of this and more, and it can be a truly satisfying job opportunity that will leave you happier long-term.
Final thoughts
If you’re unsure what career to choose after you finish school, or you are looking for a change and want to switch to a different career path, learning a trade offers a lot of advantages. In fact, without qualified tradespeople, the world would struggle to function as we rely on plumbers, electricians and other skilled trades so much in our everyday lives. From earning a good salary each year to learning new skills and the potential to develop your own business, these are just a few of the benefits you can enjoy when you choose a skilled trade career.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/electrician-2755683_1280.jpg8511280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2021-05-21 12:00:322021-05-21 10:48:096 Career Benefits of Learning a Skilled Trade
If you want to take your business to the next level but you don’t know how, you’re certainly not the only small business owner to feel that way. Finding that next leg up and finding a way to accelerate your progress is always going to be tough and there are never going to be any easy answers. But there are some strategies that you can make use of when it comes to leveling up and showing people your business should be taken seriously. Read on to find out about those strategies.
Push Boundaries with Your Goals
You should always be looking to push boundaries and achieve more if you feel like it’s time for your business to take that next big step up. Setting the right goals and pushing boundaries that way is a good idea because it gets your entire team on board. You can create team goals for you all to work towards collectively, ensuring everyone is pulling in the same direction and aiming higher.
Work on Increasing Your Productivity
If you want your business to be taken seriously and to take that big step up to the next level, you need to be performing efficiently and productively on a day to day basis. If you’re not performing well by those metrics, you’re always going to struggle to take that next step and show the world that your business is not just a flailing startup any longer.
Reach Customers in More Than One Way
Reaching your customers in a variety of ways is important. If you only have one strategy or one channel through which to bring in new people and to introduce them to what you have to offer, that’s always going to be something of a problem. Look for ways to diversify your approach and bring people on board in a more sustainable way.
Develop New Software Solutions
If there are particular areas in which you’re falling short and you want to create new solutions to them, finding the software that’ll make that progression possible will be key. Automating tasking and relying on solid software is certainly one of the things that’ll help your business make a step up. With the right software development methodologies and a good plan of action, you can make it happen.
Put Greater Focus on Customer Service
Customer service is always vital and something that should never be overlooked. If you want to grow, you’re going to need to keep your customers happy along the way. And that’s why good customer service is always a positive investment. You’ll keep customers on side and show everyone that you really do mean business here.
There’s no guaranteed way to find success with your business or to make that move up to the next level. It’s more about putting the things in place that’ll make such a move possible. That’s what’s most important here and it’s what you should be working towards with the help of the strategies discussed above.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/money-4029562_1280.png8111280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2021-05-20 20:00:062021-05-20 11:17:20Strategies for Taking Your Business to the Next Level
It can be easier said than done to start your own business; however, if you are interested in the healthcare sector, it could be a beneficial career option that you may never have thought about before. Healthcare is always in demand, especially in the current day and age, in which the ever-growing elderly population will need more medical services. With this in mind, it is certainly an avenue to consider for the long term. As with any business, doing your research will help iron out any obstacles initially and, hopefully, sets you up for success.
In this guide, we are going to look at how you can start your own healthcare business:
1. Choose your specialty
There are many different routes within healthcare; therefore, it is important to discover which most interests you and where your specialties lie. First, consider what you are most passionate about and can see yourself doing daily. From here, then you will need to contemplate whether or not you would prefer to start a business from scratch or own a franchise.
There are certainly pros and cons to both; therefore, it will be based on how much responsibility you would like and whether you would like to try a new idea or develop someone else’s brand.
2. Know which qualifications you need
When starting out in healthcare, you need to prove that you have the relevant knowledge under your belt to prove that you are a trustworthy and reliable professional. As healthcare is based on the wellbeing of others who may be putting their life in your hands, the relevant qualifications are essential. If, however, you do not have any practical experience, you could hire staff who do. This is particularly important if you are planning on running a franchise, as your responsibilities will be mainly management and administration-based instead of dealing with the public. On the other hand, if you are planning on running a business single-handedly, the relevant qualifications are typically vital in this industry.
3. Get the right funding
When it comes to running a healthcare business, it’s important to secure the right funding as a start-up company. This industry can be extremely costly when it comes to securing education, premises, equipment, marketing, and staff to keep up with the huge demands. Start-up loans would be the most advisable option as they are easier to secure as a brand-new business; however, you could even start a crowdfunding page that your friends, family, and acquaintances can donate.
Do be aware that you will not start earning much profit with any business immediately, so you may need a financial buffer to get you through the first couple of months. The Accounts Receivable component is an option to bridge the gap between each payment, so you have enough income to keep the business ticking over.
4. Do not forget about marketing
While healthcare is a field that is always in demand, it does not necessarily mean it is a given you’ll secure customers. Since individuals are placing their health and wellbeing in your hands, they need to ensure that it is a dependable company that has their best interests at heart. However, unless you have physically proven your skills, it is impossible to show potential customers exactly what to expect from you without marketing. Digital marketing now allows businesses to branch out to customers across the world almost instantly and creates a brand image that you are proud to show off to the world.
However, if you do not have a background in digital marketing, it can be hard to quickly get to grips with the various tools, platforms, and strategies required for the best chance of success. Check this Hip Agency’s blog content about dental marketing as an example to understand how to best market your healthcare business niche to your target audience.
5. Create a business plan
Before your idea of your business can become a reality, you will need to create a business plan. It is often the first starting point of any business that should indicate your plans and overall concept. Then, various steps need to be followed, and the document should include:
Executive summary – An explanation of the basic premise of your company.
Company description – The goals of your business and reasoning for starting up the company.
Services – A detailed list of the range of services on offer.
Marketing proposal – The strategies and methods that will be used to market your business and how your target audience will find you.
Management proposal – Describe the ownership and management of the business.
Operational proposal – Explain the operations of the business (either run as a physical business or online), the employees working for you, and your role within the company.
Financial proposal – The funding methods used to finance your business and break down the individual costs.
Long-term plan – Hoe you expect your business to grow in the next 5-10 years.
6. Register with the state
Healthcare is one of the few businesses that require you to register with the state. Your business will need to meet the exact state requirements and legalities before you can begin trading. There may be different rules and regulations in place depending on which state you live in; therefore, you may need to carry out in-depth research to discover what is expected and the laws that need to be abided by.
7. Hire great staff
If you believe you are going to need a team of staff to help conduct your business, you must take the time to employ staff that will give your business the best chance of success. Ultimately, your employees are the face of your brand and will reflect your business’ public persona, so you must select candidates wisely.
During the hiring process, ensure you thoroughly read through resumes and conduct background checks on each individual. This may mean scrolling through their social media platforms and ensuring they do not have a criminal record. This should help prevent legal action should an employee cause a serious unlawful issue while on duty.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/pexels-karolina-grabowska-4021775.jpg8001200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2021-05-20 19:00:302021-05-20 11:00:04How to Start Up Your Own Healthcare Business
Do you have a new business and are working on brand recognition? Do you have a growing small business or an established, large company that you wish to keep successful? Regardless of its size, your business needs market research and analysis. These two are the core of any marketing or business plan you’ll ever create – or pursue.
“The activity of gathering information about conditions that affect a marketplace”
This is a much-simplified version of what market analysis encompasses, but it tells you exactly what you can expect from the hard work you put into it. In other words, this is a process that helps you understand the market trends, your audience, your competition, and other market variables like preferences and behaviors.
There’s a lot you can learn if you perform a market analysis. You get to learn about the current size of the market, which companies are your competition and which are not, as well as which trends you should follow to promote growth.
Business News Daily lists several questions to which market analysis will give you answers:
Who is your target customer?
What’s the size of your target market?
What are their buying habits?
How much would they be willing to pay for your product or service?
Who’s your biggest competition?
What are their weaknesses and strengths?
How to conduct a market analysis
There are plenty of reasons why business people opt for market analysis. According to EdwardLowe, proper market analysis helps you understand the market you’re competing in, allows you to enter into new markets (or gain market share), and offers accurate and helpful data for your business and marketing strategies. Lastly, you need this data to produce an analysis report, a document that your team can use to optimize their work.
But, before you can use this data, you need to obtain it first? How can you do this?
A super-fast solution: use a quality template
If you’re a newbie at this, have limited time, or need some assistance, you might want to use a template – but only use a quality one. Creating a market analysis template with AskaTest is an excellent opportunity to learn about the size of the market, uncover new strategies for growth, and perform competitive analysis. You just need to sign up to the Attest platform and you can draft the survey questions to target your audience in minutes. With 7 pre-created question types and a highly powerful survey builder and analyzer, you can simplify everything.
Steps of a deep market analysis
Whether you’ve decided to create your custom report or use a template to ease the process, you still need to conduct the research. Here are a few steps that you need to take to make this happen.
1. Industry research
Where’s the industry headed? What are the trends in it right now? To start analyzing the market, you need to learn as much as you can about your industry first. For this step, you need metrics like trends, size, as well as projected growth.
Keep in mind that you’re not performing market research, but researching the industry instead. In other words, your goal is to learn about your competition, not your consumers.
Creating an overview for the industry shows people within your company, as well as partners and investors, that you understand who you’re competing with. It’s also amazing for your business’ growth – it helps you understand if the demand for your products will grow, how many options consumers have on the market, and what you can do to become one of the best competitors.
Plenty of tools can assist this part of your research. For example, you can use Statista or your country’s official websites with industry data available to source some numbers for your industry and learn more about its current situation.
2. Target market research
Now it is time to research the consumer i.e. perform market research. This research is not only based on who already buys from your business but on your target audience also i.e. the people who are most likely to join your consumer database.
Do you know who your target customer is? This might not be the same as your ideal consumer, the person you’d think would be most interested in your product. You need to perform research to find your buyer persona, the people who are most likely to be interested in what you’re offering.
This is where you group different customers into segments and use elements such as demographics, market size, location, behaviors, trends, psychographics, etc.
3. Research your competition
When you performed industry research, you learned a lot about the companies that exist in your industry. They aren’t all your competition – some just operate in the same industry, but offer entirely different products and solutions. In this step, you need to perform an analysis of your competition.
More specifically, you need to focus on businesses that are your competition and find out their weaknesses. You can exploit those weaknesses in your marketing strategies and use them to reel people to buy from your company. You can also use their strengths to strengthen your own business.
When performing such analysis, consider the following:
Your direct competition: companies that offer the same or similar products and services
Your indirect competition: people with alternative products or solutions to the same problems that you’re aiming to solve
You don’t want to copy the qualities of strong competition. If you want to thrive in a market, you need something unique and special. Yes, you should use this data to learn and grow, but above it, all, make sure that you stand out.
4. Figure out the pricing
Based on all the data you’ve collected, it is time to set the pricing. It should be more than what you’ve invested and enough to cover your expenses, as well as leave a profit. But, it should also be something that your buyer persona can afford, something competitive but not too low, and something that fits the quality you’re offering.
5. Do some forecasting
Lastly, it’s time to create a forecast that allows you to understand what you can achieve in the future. Think about how much you can sell based on the data you collected. Compared to that, how much will the overall market capture? Your forecast should be as realistic as possible. Based on it, you can build your business and marketing plans, track and analyze your progress, and make new goals for the future.
Sources for market analysis
There are different ways to collect the data you need for market analysis. Most of them can be set into two categories: primary and secondary. You can use a mixture of sources of a wide variety.
For primary research, use sources like surveys, focus groups, your employees’ insight, sales data, as well as social intelligence. Social intelligence is easily accessed these days. You can discover trending topics based on social media research and share of voice analysis alone.
For secondary research, use publicly available, ready data. You can find such data on official government sites, surveys published by research or consultancy firms, and stat-rich websites on the Internet.
Why perform the market analysis?
Market analysis can be highly beneficial for your business. It can reduce risk, help project revenue, and identify growing trends. You can use this at any stage of your business from its beginning to its most established stage. Many companies conduct one such analysis every year to keep to date with major changes in their market.
This is usually a part of your business plan, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. You can perform it separately even while already working on an older business plan. Some of the biggest benefits of conducting a market analysis include:
Reduced risk: By knowing things about your market, you can eliminate or predict risks for your business. When you know who the main players are and what they do, what people request and what is trending, and what it takes to be more successful, you can form better business decisions.
Staying ahead: Emerging trends are very useful when you make investment and marketing plans for your business. Being the first to spot opportunities on the market puts you ahead of the competition, and can often change your business significantly.
More targeted services/ products:When you know what your customers are looking for, you are in a much better position to offer it to them. You’ll know which SEO strategies to use, how to approach the target audience, and how to appeal to their specific needs.
More accurate revenue projections (and market optimization): Most such analyses have market forecast as the key component or goal. A revenue projection tells you what to expect and how to adjust your strategies to meet those expectations.
Key takeaways
A quality market analysis can benefit any business and in many ways. Ideally, you should conduct regular analysis and make sure that you’re always informed about the latest trends, needs, and expectations on the market.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/freelancer-763730_1280.jpg8501280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2021-05-20 18:01:542021-05-20 10:46:56The Guide to Market Analysis & How It Can Help Your Business Improve
A VETERAN OWNED SMALL BUSINESS | Call or text now for a FREE consultation: +1 (770) 765-3692 | 
As the warmer weather approaches, many of the households around the UK will begin to experience lower energy bills and as a result, will be looking for ways to continue these savings for when the weather begins to turn cold. But where can you start? In this article, we will be providing you with insight into some of the tips and tricks that you can use to save money on your energy bills.
Business Programs