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Marketing Strategies To Consider To Drive Your Business To Success

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Starting up a business, especially if it is something you feel passionate about, is one of the best things any budding entrepreneur can do. Having that drive and ambition to make something a success is potentially what fuels and motivates you to get up in the morning. Whether you are just starting out, have a fully fledged business, or even class your company a huge success, I think we can all agree that the marketing strategies you put in place are vital to your business growth. It is certainly one of the ways you can steer your business in the direction you want it to go.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article
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However, we can all become a little blinded by it all. Focusing on the here and now, your targets, your sales potential, product, and service. We can forget to invest the time to look at how we make the journey, instead of what it is all about. It takes a while to get your business to where you want it to be, but do you consider how long this will take? Do you contemplate what tools and actions you will need to undertake? A decent marketing strategy can be the difference, the reason someone steps into your store or clicks on to your website. With that in mind, I thought I would share some of the best marketing strategies and ideas you could easily implement into your business model.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article
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When was the last time you took a look at your branding?

Branding may not sit high on your list of things to be thinking about right now, but this is where you are making a big mistake. Your branding, your logo and your website are all the first impressions your business gets to make. A first impression can be decided upon in a matter of seconds. If someone doesn’t like the look of your website, perhaps can’t even find it on a google search ranking, or finds your colour choices bright and offensive, they will click off and look elsewhere. It may sound materialistic, but it’s true to society today.

Take some time to look at how your branding looks and your website. It’s important to ensure that you stick with an easy to use dynamic, as well as considering lighter and a more cleaned up approach to your brand. Keep things simple, often those simple designs and websites do the most talking. While on the subject of your website it’s all well and good it looking the part, but if no one can find it, what is the point? How you rank in a search engine is vital to your business success online. So many people will start out a web search on websites like Google. Placing in a few keywords or a sentence into the search engine and often look at the first few suggestions. If you happen to be ranked on page two, you may not get a look in. However, putting some focus on search engine optimisation could be a great investment. This is creating backlinks to your site, making those search engines think your website is of importance. It’s also about placing keywords in text, giving you again more opportunity to show up in searches your company will be relevant in. If all of this sounds a little alien to you, then get in touch with an seo company who will do all the hard work for you.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article
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Don’t forget the power of social media

Your social media profile, be that on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to name a few, is your direct line to your existing and potential customers. It’s important to ensure you have an engaged audience. What they can do is extend your reach without you needing to do much else. Commenting on updates in Facebook, for example, will show in their followers feed. They may then take a look at what that person has been looking at, as we can all be a bit nosey, and then the chain reaction continues. You get to put eyes on your business by simply keeping your social media profiles updated, engaging, and full of content people want to see and read.

You can even consider investing some money into advertising through social media. Facebook and Twitter, for example, can then place your ad in front of people within a demographic you have requested. For very little, normally a daily charge, you can increase your presence and reach for your business.

Giving your business a voice actually can humanise your company and make it much more appealing to deal with. This can be done through status updates and call to action comments, but it could also be done through a blog. Allowing you space to discuss offers or share knowledge in a non-offensive un-sales like manner. A blog is another page of your websites, helping you with that all-important SEO we mentioned earlier.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article
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Call to action comments could be a little different for you. Perhaps you ask for feedback on your social media pages, maybe run a completion which could get your page shared and increase your audience. There are many things you can consider. The trick would be to take a look at what other businesses are doing. You may not want to copy the style, but you can take note of what some businesses do well, or improve where they fail.

Consider your local community

A great tip is to ensure that you consider your locality. Perhaps you have a shop front in your local town, or just want to capitalise on being the only supplier in the area. Maybe you have competition and want to do things a little differently. Your local community could be a little gold mine for marketing and advertising.

There is a popular trend that more people want to shop locally. Be that for local produce or simply supporting the smaller or local businesses. So it’s a good strategy to be the local expert in your field and industry. This in effect could create great word of mouth advertising for you. You may also want to consider sponsoring local events or even getting involved in local charities. A charity needs all the help that they can get but it also opens up a new potential audience of customers for you. It can be a lucrative relationship on both parts. Advertising at events could mean supplying prizes for raffles or simply helping out. It can all depend on what your expertise are but getting your business heard locally will never be a bad thing.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article
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Relationships with other businesses and your employees

When it comes to people you have working for you, they are your biggest advocate. Many people in social surroundings or at events will talk with other people, and one common subject is what you do for work. It’s word of mouth advertising without you even realising. Having a happy employee will mean that they will sing the praises of your business. Which could then lead onto a conversation about a potential new client then or in the future. If you don’t have happy people working for you, it could work against you. Meaning people will remember the negative vibes and not consider giving you their business.

You could also strike deals with other businesses in the area. Perhaps offering a discount for their employees and vice versa. This works for different industries as there is no competition, but you are securing potential future business.

There is so much that you can do to try it all could be a huge task, but stick with certain areas and do them well. The rest will follow.

Making More of What You Have: Optimise Your Business in These Ways to Achieve More

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Every business has its limitations, so yours shouldn’t get you down. Instead, you just need to make the most of what you do have, and that’s called optimisation. It’s all about getting more out of your business without having to spend more money or live beyond your means. It’s about improvement without any of the risky unsustainability that can so often come with it. Here are some top ways to achieve that kind of business optimisation.

Adopt a Customer-Centric Approach

First of all, you should definitely try to adopt an approach to business that is a lot more customer-centric. If you can do that, your business will be sure to go much further than ever before, and that can only be a good thing. Some business owners forget that everything they do has to be geared towards customers. If they don’t like what you’re offering and don’t buy what you’re selling, then nothing else really matters at all. By taking a customer-centric approach, you can maximise and optimise your business’s appeal to customers and, ideally, make more sales.

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Achieve Growth Through Continual Training

Continual training is vital, and it’s something that any business can focus on. It’s a great way to improve your team and get more out of the people you employ. It allows you to maximise their talents and capabilities, and this should lead to further growth for your business. If you allow your employees to stagnate, they will never improve and never be able to push your business on in the ways you might want them to. You have no right to keep expecting more from your people if you are not willing to offer them the training that allows them to improve.

Get Something Out of Those Unpaid Invoices

Lots of companies find that they end up with a backlog of invoices that haven’t been paid. Clearly, this is not an ideal situation to be in for your company. But rather than waiting and waiting for payments, you can make the most of those unpaid invoices. It could improve your cash flow situation and help your business to survive any tough financial times. Accounts receivable financing allows you to get more from companies that buy up these unpaid invoices. It’s something that is definitely worth considering if you need the cash quickly.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article
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Create Better Balance in Your Team

By creating better balance in your team, you can get more out of that group as a whole. Balance is one of the most underrated attributes when it comes to group dynamics in the office. If you have too many people who are good at one thing and not enough people who are good at another, the team will be unbalanced. This might not sound like such a big deal, but it can have a pretty big impact on your business and how it’s run. You will sooner or later find that you can’t be as efficient nor as productive as you would like if you don’t fix this.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article
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Want To Be A Great Team Leader? Look On The Bright Side

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Some entrepreneurs are great at managing their money or developing new deals with clients. But sometimes, they lack skills in the leadership department, mainly because they’ve not had time to practice them elsewhere in their lives. Some people believe that you’ve either got leadership skills or you haven’t. But, as it turns out, there are plenty of ways to improve your leadership skills that don’t require you to totally change your character. Here’s how.

Be An Optimist

It’s hard being a great leader while believing that the world is getting worse. It kind of takes a bit of the joy out of running a team of people and striving for a better life in the future. As a result, great leaders tend to be optimists in general, and this helps to keep their staff upbeat and on track. Positive thinking tends to go hand-in-glove with higher team output and individual productivity.

Get To Know The People Working For You

StrategyDriven Management and Leadership Article
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With the rise of internet working, it’s becoming more and more difficult for managers to get the know the people who work for them. But just because a lot of your interactions are digital, doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do. Even if you’re just employing contractors on a temporary basis, ask them how their lives are going, whether they’re enjoying their work and what they want to achieve in the future. All these questions can help bring a team together even if they seem unimportant at the time.

Get Excited About Going To Work

In every job, there’s something worth getting excited about. That’s because all jobs are fundamentally about serving other people and helping to meet their needs. Even if your business does something mundane, like clean out septic tanks, it’s still possible to get enthused about what you do. After all, who wants a malfunctioning septic tank? It’s funny: the longer you work at something, the more passionate you tend to become about it. The best way to really get into a management role is to embrace it and make it an important part of your life.

Update Your Skills

The science of management has come along a long way since you last went to school and a lot has been learned. As a result, it might be a good idea to head back to school temporarily to update your skills. Thanks to things like FPU online degrees, there’s no longer any need to go to a physical college or school to learn more about the craft. It can now all be done over the internet meaning that you can organize your training around your day job.

Find A Mentor

Leading a team is never easy or a process because people are complex creatures. As a result, it can sometimes help to get a mentor to help you through the harder times – and there will be tougher times. Mentors are great for giving advice and well as sharing stories about the leadership trials they faced and how they got through them.

Don’t Fail At Retail: Tricks For Beating The Competition

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Launching a company in the retail industry is harder today than ever before. That is because lots of consumers purchase their goods online these days. Still, you can keep everyone happy and make a decent profit if you’re smart. In this article, we’re going to discuss some tricks you can use to ensure you always beat the competition. Like it or not, there are many established firms out there with large customer bases. While you don’t have to steal the lion’s share of the market, you will have to attract some of those consumers to your brand. With that in mind, read this post and put some of the suggestions into practice as soon as possible.

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Launch a website as well as a real-world store

It would be nice if you could make a decent living from a single shop. However, that isn’t likely in the current climate. So, all new retailers need to launch a website too. Thankfully, you won’t have to invest that much cash because some designers offer excellent rates. Still, you need to make sure you’re getting a professional product. Your website should provide a catalog of your products and allow online purchases. It should also contain a live chat feature that enables customers to contact your team in an instant. Don’t make the mistake of trying to create the website without expert assistance. People will spot an amateur design from miles away.

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Accept every payment type possible

The last thing you want is to lose out on a sale because you don’t take the customer’s preferred payment method. With that in mind, you need to receive money from credit and debit cards at the very least. Find a credit card merchant services review if you want to identify the best providers. You should also consider letting people pay using their PayPal account. BitCoin has also become a popular method in recent times. So, it makes sense to incorporate that too. With a bit of luck, you will never have to turn money away again.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article
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Undercut your competition on price

Starting a price war with your competitors is rarely a wise move. That is especially the case if they’ve been around longer than you. Larger companies will always manage to undercut you if you catch their attention. Even so, that doesn’t mean you can’t beat some of your rivals on price. Just don’t make the mistake of undercutting them too much. A dollar here and there can make a significant difference to consumers. So, you should notice an increase in sales and new customers when you drop your prices. Just don’t go mad with the idea because it can backfire.

If you employ all the tricks mentioned on this page, you should stand a decent chance of success. Nobody wants to fail at retail because you often have to invest a lot of money to get the operation off the ground. You could lose everything if you get the process wrong. Considering that, we hope you manage to achieve all your business goals this year.

Smooth HR Equals Smooth Business Growth

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In the business world, growth relies on a team of knowledgeable and experienced professionals. Naturally, the quality of the service or product, the success of the marketing campaigns, and the satisfaction of the customers and partners also play an essential role. But there is no denying that a company that is struggling with finding the appropriate talent or retaining essential skills in-house will also experience a slow or even negative growth. After all, a business is made of people, and it is them who create the necessary additional value. Therefore the performance of the HR department matters hugely to support business expansion. Often overlooked or labeled as the department responsible for internal policies only, the HR has essential tasks to perform successfully in the business structure: From a recruitment process that identifies the right candidate for the job to the effective organization of the team structure. And that is without mentioning the abilities to run useful employee retention policies.

At A Recruiting Level

When it comes to the recruitment process, the HR team is responsible for the job advertisement. While it can be designed in collaboration with the relevant manager, in truth, HR is in charge of defining the job perks that are likely to attract candidates. It is essential at this stage to be realistic. Free gym membership, free coffee, fancy IT devices, company cars, and much more, are among the most common perks to be found in job specs. However, most candidates would happily exchange the latest MacBook against flexible time, as their values have evolved. Additionally, when it comes to the choice of the right candidate, most companies now prefer to use the cover letter as a gauge. Yet this doesn’t mean that the resume doesn’t count: It is used to identify the suitable skills and experience.

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At An Organizational Level

StrategyDriven Talent Management ArticleWithin the company, HR continues to make sense of the internal teams for all, especially in large companies where it can be difficult to keep track of everyone. In these organizations, creating an org chart is a mammoth task that needs to be updated with every employee who leaves, changes function, or is hired. However, there are tools, such as the Pingboard org chart software solution, that enable the HR team to complete the chart in a matter of minutes, saving time for more urgent projects. Finally, it is essential that the HR provides each new employee with an information pack and ensures that an introduction day or week – depending on the size of the company – is planned for the newcomer.

Limiting Staff Turnover For A Healthy Structure

Last, but not least, it also falls under the HR responsibility to work on employee retention concepts. This requires regular measurements of job satisfaction, stress level, and team integration, as well as internal communication. It is more expensive to launch a new recruitment process than to try to fix existing issues. With this in mind, the HR needs to help develop recognition models that go beyond monetary rewards, and identify structural issues that turn off new employees, such as excessive micromanagement or disinterested team manager.

Organization chart photo courtesy of Wikimedia