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Keeping Your Business Data Up to Date

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Keeping Your Business Data Up to Date

Collecting valuable data for your business is essential, but keeping it up to date is just as important. If you have data that is no longer relevant, it won’t be much use to your business. How long your information is useful for will depend on exactly what it is, so staying up to data can take some work. There are a few things that you can make sure you’re doing if you want to have accurate and useful data at all times. Take a look at some of the steps that you can take to keep your business data up to date.

Bring in Fresh Data Regularly

Collecting business data isn’t something that you just do once and then never again. You should be bringing in new data regularly so that you always have the freshest information. How often you collect new data will depend on what sort of data you’re collecting, where it comes from, and what you can afford. You might constantly be collecting data on who is visiting your website and how they behave. On the other hand, you might only collect information about your competitors every few months or years. When you collect new data, you can ensure it’s accurate and up to date.

Have Your Data Reviewed

Going over your existing data can be time-consuming. If you want to save time, outsourcing the review and auditing of your data will help. You can use a service to comb over your debt collections contact details or your customer demographics data. By finding the right service to help you, you can ensure that your data is reviewed and stays up to date while saving time so you can work on other things. Some services can both review your current data and help you to find more up to date and accurate information for your records.

Remove Data You No Longer Need

You should get rid of data that are no longer useful for your business. For one thing, it will help to free up digital space so that you can store new data instead. It will also mean that outdated and irrelevant data is no longer used, even accidentally, and you can replace any old data with new and more relevant information. Data that are no longer relevant could be useless and best and even dangerous at worst, depending on what it is.

Pay Attention to Regulations and Compliance

It’s important to be aware of the regulations and laws concerning data. You should know what you’re allowed to collect and record, and what you’re not allowed to keep. You also need to know what rights individuals have to know about the information that you hold about them and to ask you to remove it. The regulations can change at any time, so it’s essential to stay up to date with the latest laws and how they affect your business.

Keep your business data up to date if you want it to be useful for your company. If it’s out of date, it could cause problems.

Four Tips to Manage Your Marketing Team Effectively

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | Four Tips to Manage Your Marketing Team EffectivelyMarketing is one of the most important departments in any small business. While your sales derive from the impressions you make with consumers across the world, you’ll find that it’s your marketing team that delivers these impressions, on a regular basis, to the consumers that matter most to you.

But marketing is also as much an art as it is a science, and this means that sound management and good decision-making can have a profound impact on the effectiveness of your marketing team. In this piece, we’ll look at the best forms of marketing management to help your brand grow and increase its sales this winter.

Measure Success

While it’s true that marketing is both an art and a science, it’s also true that marketing can be measured for success. Digital marketing is especially useful in this regard, as you’re able to monitor your strategies in real time by seeing how many clicks and sales your adverts generate in the online space. This is the data that’s most important for a manager who’s making the decisions about the next campaign and the ongoing marketing strategies. Keep an eye on what’s working well, and who’s working well, in order to keep prioritizing the hardest-hitting campaigns.

Set Goals

Marketing goals are also company goals. For instance, if you secured 100,000 sales last month, your target would be to increase your sales in the following month. You’ll be able to use the monitoring that you undertook in the previous month to direct the effort that your team puts into your marketing drive in this subsequent month. This pushes them to focus on the more effective marketing methods that are returning the most sales for the spend that you’re dedicating to your strategy.

Software Engagement

Marketing has been given a welcome shot in the arm over the course of the past decade by the rise of digital marketing and the software that’s come along with it. It’s this software with which managers can delegate less work to their staff, enabling them to get creative with their time, and to devote additional time to sales calls, customer service queries, or managing your social media channels.

Use enterprise SMS messaging software, for instance, to automate your SMS text marketing drive. Use analysis software to determine how your website is faring online. And use chatbots to talk to customers who land on your website’s URL.

New Ideas

Digital marketing is not a fixed discipline of professional skills and techniques. It’s constantly changing in line with the latest innovations in the marketing sphere, and the latest technologies that are driving those innovations. Moreover, the algorithms that dictate your SEO strategy are constantly changing, which means that you’ll always have to tweak and amend your strategies to fit in with the requirements of Google, Amazon, and Facebook. This means that your digital marketing team should never be static; it is always mobile, dynamic, and ready to change tack at a moment’s notice.

As a marketing manager, these tips are the most important for you to manage and drive success in your marketing team and across your enterprise.

Top Reasons Why Workplace Safety Is Crucial In 2020

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | Top Reasons Why Workplace Safety Is Crucial In 2020

Everybody desires to work in a protected and safe environment, making workplace safety a priority. In the US, 5,250 people died from work-related injuries, but the figure is expected to reduce by the close of 2020 due to the pandemic. This is why employees and employers are expected to take precautionary steps to ensure safety at the workplace – as everybody benefits from workplace safety. How have you created a thorough safety protocol for your employees? Here are some reasons why you should.

1. To limit a resurgence of the pandemic

Across the world, there has been a worry of a possible resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is why employers should ensure that they do their part in preventing such an occurrence from happening. Ensure that your employees follow the safety protocols highlighted by WHO. Be sure that employees showing symptoms of the virus are isolated from a healthier workforce. In doing so, you can play a part in limiting an insurgence.

2. Statutory office inspections by government health officials

Formal office inspections are carried out in different ways, depending on your form of business. They range from safety tours to samplings, surveys, and incident inspections. The first deals with the general inspection of your office. Safety sampling is a systematic approach to specific risky activities or workplace areas. A survey is similar to safety sampling; however, it focuses on a general overview of dangerous processes and activities.

An incident inspection is only carried out by health and safety authorities after a workplace accident, injury, or death. In some instances, it may be required when an employee reports a case of ill health to the enforcing authority, based on negligent office processes. These checks are increasing this year, and you do not want to be in any trouble.

3. To reduce liabilities

A safe work environment would prevent you from being held liable for injuries or other health wrongs. For example, Walmart got sued for a wrongful death lawsuit when two of its employees contracted the virus and died from complications. Every step necessary must be taken to prioritize health and safety so as to prevent such lawsuits. For example, if you work in an office with long-standing water pipe issues, you should seek services such as Water Mitigation from HL Restoration to resolve these problems and avoid getting sued for putting staff at risk. No company wishes to be slapped with such a suit.

4. Continually changing data

Data on the Coronavirus disease changes every day, putting more burden on research and safety professionals. As scientists learn more about COVID-19, businesses become better equipped to handle the crises and its ripple effect on operations. With a second wave threatening the United States, it is quite challenging for companies to forecast correctly. As a result, they need to be extra careful while adhering to all protocols set out by the WHO and CDC.

The world is moving into new trajectories, especially concerning health and safety. Follow these tips to ensure that your company is not left behind.

You Need a Competitive Advantage: Here’s How to Get One

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Competitive Advantage|You Need a Competitive Advantage: Here’s How to Get OneWhen you’re in business, you’re in competition with a great many people. They might be working in the same industry as you, in the same sector, even in the same niche, and they will all be looking for the same customers. In order to be the one who secures those customers and makes the all-important sales, you need to set yourself up with a real competitive advantage. This is not as difficult as it sounds, although it will require planning. Once you have something in place, you’ll start to see the difference right away. Here are some of the ways it can be done so you can get started as soon as possible; the old adage about time being money holds true in business if nowhere else.

Good Marketing

Good marketing is going to be vital to your business no matter how big it grows or how much of an expert you can prove you are. If you sit back and do nothing, relying solely on your reputation to give you customers, sooner or later someone will overtake you, and they will be the experts, not you, taking your customers.

Good marketing relies on two things. Firstly, you need to market to the right people. Secondly, you need to convert as many prospects into customers as possible. In other words, it’s no good just having people visit your store or website if they don’t actually buy anything.

The first point will come from good market research. The more in-depth you can go, the better. You can then make your advertisements tailored exactly to the people who are most likely to buy from you. This will help with conversions, but it is also a good idea to hire a conversion rate optimisation agency. With their help, you can ensure you have all the right tools in place to persuade as many people to buy from you as possible.

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Become the Expert

It takes a lot of time, effort, and money to find customers and prospects. It would be far better if they would come to you rather than you having to go out and find them. This would put you at a great advantage over your competitors, so it’s something you’ll need to plan for and put into action.

One way to ensure people come to you rather than someone else is to prove that you’re the expert in your field. Being the leading authority in whatever niche it is your business works in means that, once you have established yourself, your name – or your business name – will be the one that first comes to mind when potential customers are looking for your product or service. When you’re in this position, you will still need to search for customers, so your marketing is still crucial, but you will also have a steady stream of customers coming to you.

So how can you be the expert? There are a number of ways including:

The Six Skills Hiring Managers Really Expect of You

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Hiring Manager|The Six Skills Hiring Managers Really Expect of YouJust when the unemployment numbers were looking pretty good, along came the COVID pandemic. The result: millions of people are out of work, trying to make ends meet and wondering how they’re going to land their next professional role.

To make matters worse is with so many people out of work, landing your next job just became that much more difficult because the competition is fierce. Even those applicants who are highly qualified are struggling in their quest to land that new position.

The good news, however, is there are things you can to do help yourself standout. There are many characteristics that hiring managers look for in candidates that go way beyond your qualifications.

Here are six things to remember.

They don’t expect you to be perfect

Think about the last time you went on a job interview. You probably spent hours picking out the perfect outfit, preparing the perfect answers and put together the perfect looking resume. Hiring managers do expect a lot of things, but contrary to popular belief, one thing they do not expect is perfection. In fact, one typo on your cover letter, taking a little longer to respond to a question or other little imperfections shows them that you are human.

They are looking for someone with high EQ (Emotional Intelligence)

Being smart in the traditional sense is all well and good, but how do you interact with customers and colleagues? Do you think before you speak? Are you empathetic toward others? Do you make your point known or go with the crowd? EQ has become the new IQ and it is here to stay.

The most important skill they want you to have is being a problem solver

There are going to be many candidates who are just as qualified as you. The most important skill hiring managers look for is what you do when things go wrong and the pressure is on. Will you have a meltdown or be able to think of a potential solution with the resources available to you? Be ready for the question: Tell me about a time when things didn’t go according to plan and how you solved the problem.

It’s not what you say but how you say it

There will be many candidates who are well-qualified for the position. One characteristic that hiring managers look for is presentation skills. In other words, do you speak with confidence? Are you passionate? Do you offer personal experiences and stories to back up your point? Are you persuasive? Do you make and keep eye contact? How you speak is just as important as what you say.

They expect you to have some knowledge about the company

Do yourself a favor before you go on any job interview: learn a little about the company. You can be the most qualified candidate in the room, but if you show up and don’t know anything about the company, it shows that you are unprepared and leaves hiring mangers wondering just what kind of work ethic you really have. Familiarize yourself with the background of the company, what the current market is like, who the key people are and who are the company’s biggest competitors.

They expect you to send a thank you note

Sending a thank you note after your interview is always a good tactic. This must be done within 24 hours of your interview. It shows the recruiter that you appreciate the time he or she took to conduct the interview, and it also shows a lot about your character. It reveals how you may interact with clients and colleagues.

The takeaway

The job market is very competitive right now and candidates have to do everything in their power to land their next role. This means paying attention to the finer details and honing in on what recruiters and hiring managers are looking for. It also means really focusing in on your people skills. To be the next hire, you have to be the total package.

About the Author

Angela Civitella is a business leadership coach. She is founder of Intinde. www.intinde.com