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8 Super Tips to Grow Your Small Business Today

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Grow your Business|8 Super Tips to Grow Your Small Business TodayIf you’re a small business owner, you probably understand that it takes proper planning, flexibility, and excellent organizational skills to succeed. Today’s business environment is competitive, and your company needs to stand out from the crowd. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 20% of startups collapse in the first year of their operations. Fortunately, if you’re looking to grow your business, this guide got you covered. Here are great tips you can use to achieve your desired goals.

Take Advantage of Modern Technology

If you’re not using the available technological tools in your business, you could be missing a lot. Technology can enhance your business operations while reducing the effort you may need to manage it. You can do this by utilizing various tools ranging from spreadsheet to logo maker.

The good news is you may not require a lot of money to invest in many of these advancements, but you’ll gain considerably by incorporating them into your business. Before you utilize such tools in your organization, it’s essential to ensure you familiarize yourself first.

You don’t want to work with something you’re unsure of because sometimes it can be a recipe for trouble. That’s why you should test any technology tool with an experienced IT company before integrating it into your business to know if it can match your day-to-day activities.

Set Attainable Goals

Setting achievable goals should be part of your business. If you don’t set goals for your enterprise, you need to start it today. Creating business goals shouldn’t be daunting. One of the best ideas you may want to consider is making them attainable but challenging to achieve. This enables you to push yourself more.

If you set goals that you can quickly achieve, your business may appear to do well, but this may not translate to long-term success. That’s why you should make your objectives broad and measurable. What things can you do to improve your business’s success? If you’re unsure of how you can set attainable and measurable goals for your business, here are a few ideas you may consider:

  • Enhancing employee retention
  • Improving your enterprise’s online ratings
  • Reducing operation cost
  • Boosting sales
  • Attracting more clients to your business

Consider Work-Life Balance

While the dream for many entrepreneurs is to grow their businesses and make more profits, it’s advisable to focus on other areas of life. Proper relaxation is a critical part of business success, and you should set time for it even if you’re a workaholic.

Unfortunately, some people may work too much and forget to take a break. This can lead to stress and burnout, and soon you won’t accomplish the required tasks. If stress continues to build up, you may succumb to the pressure and fail to achieve your objectives.

You need to focus on either direction and don’t swing too far. For example, if you’re doing well with your company, maintain the pace instead of slowing down and relaxing. This will ensure a steady growth curve for your enterprise and avoid unpleasant experiences if things don’t work as per your wishes.


Think of Innovative Ideas for Your Enterprise

If you’re looking to enhance your business, you need to be creative and develop innovative ideas, as this may help you implement the necessary measures and lead to improved results. While not all ideas can be successful, some changes could work best for your company. The bottom line is to keep thinking of things you need to implement to achieve your objectives.

Every successful entrepreneur may tell you it’s vital to take measured risks and accept the results. If you’re looking to change your niche’s status quo, don’t be afraid to experiment and see the possible outcomes. Here are some ideas you can fiddle with:

  • Strategic pricing
  • Partnering with other enterprises
  • Adding or removing some products or services
  • Marketing efforts

Enhance Your Hiring Process

Whether your firm is small or big, improving your hiring process is something you don’t want to underestimate. You can look for ways to get the most talented employees into your company. If you’re not currently hiring, prepare for the issues you may need to handle when the time comes. Find ways you can improve how you hire your employees.

This means you should always focus on the next step, allowing the process to be systematic for easy following. Sometimes you may face challenges that need your particular intervention. However, when hiring employees, you may not require new methodologies. You can take advantage of the available tools to hire the best talent in your industry.

Nurture Your Customers and Look for More Prospects

Every business needs to retain customers and attract more to boost sales. That’s why you should design strategies to nurture existing clients. For example, you can connect with them in various ways, including offering information about upcoming promotions and sending e-newsletters with valuable information.

You also want to generate leads and convert them to reliable clients. Look for ways you can find such opportunities and continue building your customer base. Ensure you balance between maintaining existing clients and attracting new ones.


Use Social Media

Many enterprises are utilizing these platforms to advertise their offers. The powerful tool can help you interact with your potential customers and comprehend what they need. Through social media, you can spot current market trends and what clients are talking about your brand. This helps you to make better decisions.

Provide Excellent Customer Service

Some businesses may focus on making more profits and forget to tackle clients’ needs. However, modern customers are looking to work with companies that can solve their most pressing problems. Offering exceptional services gives clients the best experience, and they can refer to other individuals leading to the growth of your network.

The Bottom Line

If you’re looking to grow your small business, you need to understand what it may take to do this. You can use these valuable tips as a checklist to help you attain your enterprise’s objectives. What other tips do you think can lead to small businesses’ growth?

3 Cost-Effective Strategies for a Modern Online Business

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StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Article |Online Business|3 Cost-Effective Strategies for a Modern Online BusinessImplementing a strategy-driven paradigm for any business has never been more important as more and more businesses come to rely on online interfaces with an up-to-date IT infrastructure. Embracing and utilizing new and emerging technologies is always a viable and trusted method of engaging with the public and taking your business into an optimal configuration that both clients and employees alike will expect.

For most companies, however, managing and maintaining the vast infrastructure of a modern IT-based business is a perplexing challenge, expensive and in most cases not even possible when such things as qualified technicians, complex integrations, and the cost of equipment are considered. For these reasons and more, it might be time to think about employing the services of such providers as:

  • Managed IT services
  • Live chat systems
  • Call center operators

Managed IT services can be a godsend when it comes to the installation, maintenance, and monitoring of your computer and network systems while live chat can bring your website firmly into the 21st century while call centers offer an inexpensive method of dealing with call volume.

Managed IT Services

Simply in response to the growing reliability of most businesses on computer and network systems, managed IT services have become an almost essential and integral part of a modern business. Companies such as BlackPoint IT Services are able to provide complex IT infrastructure and maintenance services that cover such things as network configuration, PC setup, license management, hardware as a service, and cybersecurity.

As useful as all managed IT services are, the last two mentioned, HaaS and cybersecurity are the most important in the modern business world. Hardware such as PCs that are required for any office as well as printers and specialized hardware are all very expensive and can be a major cost for a business. Cybersecurity is highly relevant right now with many smaller businesses being targeted by malicious hackers in order to steal company and personal data that is then sold on the dark web. In 2017 in the UK alone, 46% of small businesses reported a cyberattack of some kind.


Live Chat Systems

One of the most expected services on any modern website is now the option of a live chat interface between your company and a client. While around 50% of people still prefer to use the telephone system, the other half opt to choose a website interface using their PC or smartphone for communication through channels such as live chat, email, or ticketing.

The best live chat for shopify comes in various forms that offer something for almost everyone so that they can have an issue resolved.

Proactive live chat provides audiovisual cues for a user to click and can be operated through either a human or AI interface and reactive chat waits for a user to engage manually. While they both offer advantages depending on the nature of your business, most users expect an AI to human proactive engagement and these can be easily integrated using third-party software.

Call Center Operators

Still a primary and effective public communications branch of any business, a call center offers customers a tried and tested method of raising queries with the correct department. While many people will choose to communicate via online channels, there are cases where calling is necessary and many of the older generations have been shown to prefer traditional telephone communications.

Employing your own full-time call center would be an enormous expense, not least for the installation and maintenance of a complex PSTN system that is soon to be outdated, but the wages for staff alone would be astronomical. There are however outsourcing companies that provide call center services for a relatively small fee, providing only the services you need such as the correct number of staffing, forwarding services, and even receptionists.

Using Digital Marketing To Line Your Own Pockets

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Digital Marketing|Using Digital Marketing To Line Your Own PocketsThere is a lot that needs to be considered when it comes to digital marketing today! If you want to make sure that your business stands out from the crowd, there are a number of things you must do.

Gathering consumer feedback is a must

When it comes to making sure that your business is a success, one thing you need to do is get a good handle regarding the thoughts and feelings of your target consumer base. At the end of the day, these are the individuals that will line your pockets if you do your job effectively, which is why it is imperative to consider their thoughts, feelings, and pain points with a lot of care.

There are a number of different ways that you can go about this. One of the most effective methods is to carry out a survey. You can use a ranking survey to find out what your customers think. This is a great way of finding out what matters most to the people you are targeting with your products and services.

Getting people to fill out surveys can be one of the most difficult and challenging things for a lot of people. Because of this, you need to try and find a way to entice people to take your surveys. You could decide to give everyone entry into a competition whereby the winner will win a voucher or one of your products, for example.

Make sure your website is responsive

Responsive web design has been around for at least a couple of years now. And in the online world whereby changes occur by the minute, this is definitely considered a long time. Nevertheless, a lot of designers are still experiencing problems with creating and/or updating their clients’ responsive websites. This ranges from troubles related to the implementation of images to changing the coding of old fixed-width websites. If you have experienced trouble with responsive web design, read on to discover three of the most common problems encountered and discover some recommended tips on how to solve them as well…

Poor quality images

When it comes to using images in responsive web design there is a high sense of ambiguity. Designers have to partake in their own guesswork and interpretations of how to use images effectively. This is because there has been no backed specification as of yet. If this wasn’t troublesome enough, new devices with high pixel density displays are being released onto the market every day. This means that if images aren’t dealt with properly then they can easily end up appearing blurry and of a low quality. One recommended solution is to use adaptive images. These actually detect the size of your visitor’s screen and will those create re-scaled version of your embedded HTML images.

Trouble converting fixed-width websites

Many designers seem to experience this problem. Not only do people struggle with how to change an old fixed-width website’s code basis, but a lot of designers are debating whether they even should. Is it worth the hassle? After all, responsive design coding is a lot more stringent. With regards to whether to convert the coding at all, it is probably best that you do. At the end of the day, these old websites had no consideration for new digital platforms, such as mobile internet. Therefore, they are not structured in a way that would be appropriate for a smartphone display.

Navigation issues

We are usually guilty of overcomplicating things in business, yet when it comes to navigation there is a general underestimation of the monumental number of considerations that need to be put into place. A lot of responsive website designs have a problem with navigation because of the fact that there has been a move away from your standard box along the top of the page or alternatively down the left-hand side. Instead, navigation placement needs to give a lot more thought.

There is no right or wrong answer. Nonetheless, finding the right solution for you revolves around considering your content, design factors, the architecture of your information, and the effectiveness when used on different platforms.

If you experience any of the common problems that have been mentioned regarding responsive website design, then hopefully you will now have the adequate solutions to combat them. No matter what issue you are trying to put right, remember that constant testing on various digital platforms is a must.

Your Small Business Should Be Focusing On Branding (and this is why)

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Small Business Branding|Your Small Business Should Be Focusing On Branding (and this is why)So, you have a small business and it is doing ok, but you cannot seem to take it to the “next step”, what do you do?

If you are serious about moving your small business from tabletop tinkering to garage empire, there is one thing you should be focusing on: Branding!

Branding For The Future

So many small businesses miss out on great opportunities because they do not think that branding is important, and even fail to see how putting a clear focus on their brand and brand experience can be important to their business.

British marketing agency, Eleven Marketing, know all about branding and help all kinds of clients to solve their marketing challenges, and one of the first ways they do this is by helping them to create a strong and recognizable brand that will catapult them forward.

Here are four reasons your small business should be focusing on branding right now to build a better future for you tomorrow.

Branding Helps You Get Noticed

When you think of McDonald’s you immediately see the golden arches on a red background, Coca-Cola has that specific red and white look, and if it is Apple you can bet that it is white, sleek, and has a premium feel.

Branding helps your small business to be recognizable, even if you are only advertising to your town right now, plenty of big businesses started as small-time enterprises.

Branding Builds Authority

Having a strong and consistent brand is key if you want to build authority and trust in your business.

If people can recognize who you are from a mile off, they are more likely to be trusting of you and want to buy from you.

Branding Boosts SEO

It is not just people who need to recognize you, sooner or later your brand will need to be online, on social media, and on Google My Business.

Having a strong and consistent brand across all of your digital properties – that matches your in-print properties – will help you to stay on top of your search engine optimization (SEO) and improve your search result rankings.

The bottom line with SEO is that the more Google and other search engines can see you are the same company across all of your properties online, the more its algorithms are likely to boost your rankings and get you closer to the top of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Branding Helps Your Business Expand

The final reason for exploring branding in your small business is so that you can expand your offering and get more customers who want to be shopping with you.

No matter what it is you do, getting more customers (or more clients) who are higher paying is like the holy grail, and there are not many businesses who want to have less custom!

Improving your brand means brand loyalty, but it also means brand advocacy, letting your current customers do the hard work of your marketing for you by word-of-mouth, reviews, and brand advocacy through their own channels.

Three Qualities Your Medical Practice Can’t Be Without

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Medical Practice|Three Qualities Your Medical Practice Can't Be WithoutRunning a medical practice is quite unlike almost any other kind of business you could be involved in. In an ideal world, you wouldn’t be needed, and repeat customers would be something you actively discourage. Similarly, for the people who use your service – even if you give absolutely premium-level assistance to them – it’s going to be hard to be enthusiastic about their visit to the doctor, because they’d rather just not be ill.

But this is not an ideal world, and people do need to see a doctor every so often, so it is of vital importance to make sure that their experience under your care is as positive as can be, and that they leave there with hope. This is something you can affect, so it is vital to ensure your medical practice hits the mark on all the following fronts…

Efficiency

Sitting in a waiting room is never the most enjoyable way to pass the time, even at the best of times, and when you’re not feeling your best it’s less enjoyable still. You can do as much as you like to make the experience more soothing – providing drinking water, reading material and potentially a TV on low volume – but primarily, patients want to show up, be seen, and be out of there as soon as possible. A combination of attentive reception staff and effective practice management software can ensure that you get people checked in and through to their appointment in a short time without them feeling rushed.

Communication

It could be said that there is only one thing worse than receiving a call from your doctor, and that’s not getting one when you were led to expect it. Medical issues can cause a patient to expect or imagine the worst, and when they are left with room in their head to wonder, those gaps naturally fill with negative speculation. So when a customer or patient is promised a call by a certain time, they must receive it. Even if you have no new information, a courtesy call informing them of the situation and answering any questions they may have is the least they should expect. Any medical practice should ensure there are enough staff to ensure these calls are not missed.

Respect

When you practise medicine at a sufficiently high level to make a difference to a patient’s outcomes, it is in many ways indistinguishable from magic. With that said, it is never a good idea for a doctor to assume that a patient is not also well-informed. It’s equally a bad idea if reception staff are dismissive of a patient’s concerns. All medical facilities should seek to collaborate with engaged patients in a respectful way, hearing them out if they have their own opinions on treatment options. Even if it is mainly to explain why an option is unworkable, presenting them with facts and differentials is better than cold dismissal. A patient who feels they are not being listened to is less likely to follow a decided protocol.

Medical practices are not like other businesses, but the fact that patients are there because they have to be and not because they want to be doesn’t make it less important to prioritize their comfort and sense of ease. Quite the opposite, in fact.