Posts

Create A Business Strategy That Works

/in /by

Having a business strategy is more important now than it ever was before. As a small business you might find yourself in hot waters at the minute due to the current economic climate, and the fact that many small businesses haven’t survived the pandemic. When the world shut down and nobody was trading, business profits obviously plummeted and a lot of small businesses that were already on the brink have had to cease trading. So if you’re here reading this as a trading business then you’ve already done far better than many small businesses before you. Unless you’ve found some way to have a huge cash injection from somewhere you will no doubt be feeling the pressure to perform at the minute, especially if you’ve got staff employed under your belt. So, we’re going to try and help you create a business strategy that we think works during these current turbulent times.

StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Article | Create A Business Strategy That WorksA Financial Plan

This is the most important one that you need to be thinking about. Your financial plan now will be far different to the one that it was at the start of the year. Our advice is to be a little more cutthroat with the cuts you make. It’s like with your personal spendings, you get used to the money you have to spend and it’s hard to change back from that. Business is no different, areas of your business are used to receiving a certain amount of money and it’s hard to change that. So one area we would suggest making cuts is with employees, if you need to. If times are really testing, you should consider joining the many businesses who have had to make their staff redundant. Although it’s such a hard thing to do, it’s the easiest way to save a lot of money for the year.

A Marketing Plan

The quickest way to get your business back on track is to sell sell sell, and the quickest way to do that is to get people thinking about your business again. One we think small businesses in particular seem to not focus on, is SEO. Everything is online at the minute and most people will Google your business, or keywords related to it, before they decide to work with you. But what if they can’t find you? Or what if competitors beat you in the search? That’s where SEO comes in. ECommerce SEO might be a little more expensive compared to some marketing methods, but it’s going to prove the most effective if you want to gain attention. So are simple marketing techniques such as billboard advertising. It’s the sort of in your face advertising that you need!

A Sales Plan

Finally, make sure that you have a solid sales plan. One idea might be to go through your directory of old clients or customers and get in touch with them. Just a courtesy phone call or email to see how they’re doing and to put your business back in their mind. You don’t have to push sales or make multiple calls, that’s when your business gains a bad reputation.

How To Start Your Own Online Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start Your Online Business|How To Start Your Own Online BusinessStarting your own online business does come with a lot of benefits. It allows you to make money remotely while setting the time that you work by yourself. You can also choose to face that particular niche that you are interested in, and it is cheap, so you do not need to have a very high startup cost.

While it may appear like a rave or following what’s a trend already. It can be both easy and challenging to start your own online business. You just have to make sure that you do the right things and take the right steps. That’s the way for you to be successful at it. So, how do you do this? What are the steps that you will take? This article contains tips from australian assignment help on how to start your own online business.

1. Find a business that can meet people’s needs

The most typical mistake that people make when they are starting an online business is to decide on the product first before they start looking for a market to sell to. But this is counterproductive.
For you to have a high possibility of success, you need to get a market first. That’s where you start. What you need to do is look for people in search of a solution to a particular problem but are not getting much success from it.

These are the kinds of research that you do first. And it is very easy to carry out this research on the internet.
You can find these people through different means. One of those is online forums. It is now becoming a usual practice for other people to go to online forums to ask questions disturbing them.

You can also use keyword research to find those things that people search for very frequently. However, you must be careful not to get into already stiff competition with other people.

Look out for your business’ potential competitors, go through their website. You can learn something from their site as well. This will include things like how they fill their demand. Afterward, you can use your knowledge to create the ideal product for the market needs that you’re trying to accomplish.

2. Write a marketable sales copy

There are a number of proven formulas for sales copy that allows your visitors to go through the process from when they first arrived to when they make that first purchase. A proven method that you can use is one from authors at research paper writing service and here are some tips for it:

  • Include a compelling headline that will arouse their interest.
  • Talk about the problem that you or your product are going to solve.
  • Show that you are credible enough and able to solve this problem.
  • Once you get people to buy and use your products, include testimonials for them.
  • Explain the uses of the product and how the user will benefit from it.
  • Make an offer.
  • Include a reliable guarantee.
  • Create a sense of urgency
  • Ask them to make a purchase.

Your sales copy has to focus on showing them the unique way your service or product solves their problems or helps them live a better life. The real question to answer is the “what do I gain from it” question.

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start Your Online Business|How To Start Your Own Online Business3. Design your website

Once you have completed the most critical steps in determining your market and the product that solves their major problem(s), you have completed the hard part of starting your own online business. The next step is for you to create or design a website.

The thing with your website is that you have to make your web design as simple as possible. You also do not have all the time in the world to catch people’s attention. You only have about five seconds or even less. Some few tips are:

  • Use a white background with a plain font or two.
  • Make sure that your navigation is very simple and clear and is available on all pages.
  • Make use of video, audio, or other graphics that might help you strengthen your message or boost your content marketing.
  • Include an offer for website visitors to opt-in so that you will be able to get their email addresses.
  • Make sure that the buying process is as simple as ever and straightforward too. Potential customers should not get over the clicks during the checkout process.
  • Make sure that your website is user-friendly.

4. Drive potential customers to your website with search engine

One of the easiest ways to bring traffic to your new website is through pay per click advertising. There are some advantages that it has in driving traffic to your site.

Firstly, pay per click ads come up immediately on search pages, and secondly, you can test different keywords, headlines, selling approaches, and prices with PPC ads. It does not just bring you immediate traffic; you also use this advertising medium to find the keywords that can give you the best chances of conversion. Then you use them throughout the different content and webpages of your website. This will also help to increase your organic search engine ranking.

5. Establish a reputation for yourself as an expert

The internet is used to seek information. That’s what people do with it. So, give them that information for free and watch how you will get increased traffic and a better ranking on the search engines. What you need to do is to add your website’s link with every little information.

Give away your expert content for free. Create videos and articles and other forms of content that is useful to people. Then distribute this content through social media sites and online article directories. Also, include links to “send to a friend” on these critical content from your website. This will help you draw more traffic.

Make yourself into an active expert on social networking sites and other industry platforms where you can reach out to your target market. This will open you to new readers, and all the sites that make a post on your content or posts directly will add links to your website. Getting these links from the relevant websites is very important for search engines, and it will increase your ranking afterward.

6. Convert visitors to buyers by leveraging email marketing

By building an opt-in list, you are building an asset that is valuable to your online business. For every subscriber on that list, you already have their permission to send emails to them. This implies that:

  • You are sending something that they asked of you to them.
  • You are creating a relationship of a lifetime with them.
  • You can measure the response 100 percent.
  • You can enjoy a highly targeted marketing that is more effective and cheaper than radio, TV, or print.

Every of your website visitors that opt-in for your emails is a lead. And one of the most effective tools to follow them up is email marketing.

Conclusion

The internet world is always changing with trends coming and going. But the basic principles for starting and growing a successful business online have not changed and will not change anytime soon. So, if you are looking to start your own online business, these are the sequences that you should stick to. You can also carry out a quick review and check for steps that you might be neglecting or aren’t doing well.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Tiffany HarperTiffany Harper is a training guru who has been working in the corporate sector for over a decade now. She is a management graduate and loves to share her experience through blogs and articles. For her love of writing, she also provides freelance help to the cheap assignment help in Adelaide as a paper writing services review writer while working with top essay writing service.

7 Brand Management Software Solutions For Your Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Management Software Solutions|7 Brand Management Software Solutions For Your BusinessEntrepreneurs understand the importance of strong and consistent branding. Whether it’s your artwork, tone of voice, marketing materials, or storytelling; each part of your brand must be handled with care. Brand management software can help your company to organize your brand assets, and to manage your reputation. For a few great software options, make a start with these six solutions.

1 . BrandYourself

BrandYourself is a reputation management platform, designed to improve your business profile by ensuring that positive results show up. Using the software, you can gain control over what information Google shows about your company. With this kind of control, you can progress in your field, and boost your profile. BrandYourself can help you to create the branded persona that you desire. Using the analytics tools, you can monitor your search results as they improve. Some of the best features of BrandYourself include suppression of negative results, customized strategies, and social media scanning.

2. Brand 24

Brand 24 is a social listening platform; using this tool, you can find out what the Internet is saying about your company, product, and industry. Brand 24 is essentially an intelligence platform where you can keep track of the comments that people post about your business. You’ll have the option to respond to comments in real-time, plus you’ll gain plenty of useful marketing analytics. Other features of Brand 24 include sentiment analysis, topic grouping, and influencer score. Remember, whether comments are positive or negative, all comments need a timely response. It’s not enough to just ignore negative comments, you must respond with a solution, in the most professional way possible.

3. Reputology

Reputology is a software platform designed to help businesses gather reviews, feedback, or other brand commentaries. Reputology offers social listening and monitoring tools, which can help you to assess how people feel about your brand. There are plenty of features to take advantage of, including tracking surveys, review sites, and comment cards. Further features of Reputology include customer feedback, opportunity finder, and quick customer engagements.

4. Frontify

With the Frontify platform, you’ll have a range of tools to manage and improve your brand. Using this software, you can create style guides that govern exactly how you’d like your brand to be designed. Frontify allows you to edit these guides using logos, images, color palettes, and more. With this platform, you can also organize your brand files, guides, and manage your assets. Take full advantage of collaboration tools, smart content blocks, and a Kanban workflow.

5. Bynder

Bynder is a brand portal to help businesses simplify the brand managing procedure. Using Bynder, you can effectively store your assets and improve the collaborative process. Bynder can help you ensure that your branding is consistent and support you in keeping your marketing resources in order. Bynder includes product info management, hybrid mode, and customized themes. With this software, you can streamline your marketing processes and improve the performance of your campaigns.

6. Brandifyer

Using the Brandifyer portal, you can access your branding and marketing collateral all in one place. Brandifyer stores your brand guidelines, so you can ensure that all your publications and communications represent the correct brand identity. You can access plenty of brand management features, including asset management, artwork management, and approval process control.

7. Brand It

With this powerful brand management platform, users can create all the marketing materials they need and store digital files. It’s simple for you and your employees to access your brand assets from wherever you are. With Brand It, you can manage your artwork, projects, and other assets too.

Further Advice

Companies with excellent branding will go from strength to strength, and with these tools, you can manage your brand to ensure both consistency and a positive reputation. Perhaps you’re wondering what else you can do to improve your branding? There are plenty of options.

  • Branded Merchandise: One really simple way to boost your branding is with branded merchandise. Whether it’s notebooks, pens, or custom air fresheners, merchandise is a highly effective way to ensure that everyone remembers your name!
  • Nostalgic Branding: To follow the branding trends this year, consider using a touch of nostalgia as part of your ad campaigns. Whether it’s an old song, a cartoon character, or an limited edition product, nostalgia evokes positive memories that help you tap into your audience’s emotions. With a little bit of nostalgia you’ll improve your marketing!
  • Improve Your Storytelling: Branding these days is all about storytelling, and to improve your storytelling, you’ve got to shape your story around the values of your audience.

How to Create a Safe Working Environment for Your Employees

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Safe Working Environment|How to Create a Safe Working Environment for Your EmployeesIf you want your business to do well, it’s imperative to take care of your workers. At the very least, employees should feel safe in the working environment.

There are a lot of ways you can ensure safety in the workplace and below we’ll look at some of the key steps you can take.

Ensure there are dedicated exits

In the event of a fire, legally all businesses need to have dedicated exits. That is, employees should know where they need to go if a fire does break out. So, ensuring there are dedicated exits in the event of an emergency is one of the top safety aspects to focus on.

These dedicated exits should be clearly marked and obviously left unobstructed. As an additional step, you’ll want to consider adding waterspouts installed throughout to quench any fires which do break out.

Carry out a safety assessment

One of the best ways to ensure your employees have a safe working environment, is to carry out a safety assessment. Ideally, this should be done by a professional as they will have the knowledge and the equipment to identify all risks.

You’ll be able to identify risks such as trips and falls, faulty equipment, not wearing PPE and electrical safety. The assessment will provide actionable steps you should take to improve certain safety aspects.

Take a look at your health and safety policy

When was the last time you reviewed your health and safety policy? It is important to regularly review the policy to ensure it is kept fully up to date. If it isn’t and an employee injures themselves, they could make a claim against you. This could leave you significantly out of pocket depending upon how serious the incident is.

If you are ever injured at work, make sure you get the injury checked out by a medical professional and when you do, tell them everything about your injury so you get the best consultation possible and reduce any chances of medical negligence arising.

So, review your health and safety policy and make amendments if needed. You should also make sure every employee has a copy of the policy they can review. If they aren’t aware of the rules because they weren’t provided with any, the responsibility will fall on you.

Overall, it’s important to ensure the workplace is a safe and healthy environment for your workers. The above are just some of the steps you can take to boost safety in the workplace. Don’t forget to focus on cyber security too. Workers are exposed to more than just physical safety risks, their information could also be compromised if you suffer a cyber attack.

8 Ways You Can Improve Your Leadership Skills

/in /by

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Leadership Skills|8 Ways You Can Improve Your Leadership SkillsAre you considering starting your own business, or wondering how you could get better results from the current business or businesses that you run? If you always seem to get held back and are struggling to get your teams to work exactly how you would want them to, your leadership skills could do with some improvement. Studies show that teams who work under good leaders tend to be more eager to go above and beyond the call of duty when needed, have better relationships with their work and their colleagues, and tend to be more loyal to the companies that they work for. So, there’s every reason to consider improving your leadership skills for the good of your business. Here are just a few ways that you can do just that.

Consider a Coaching Course:

Some people are just naturally good at coaching and guiding others, while others miss the mark completely. If your efforts to train your employees in something new or coach them through tasks are not getting you the results that you want, a course like the BCF Group executive coaching course could be the ideal choice for you. With a BCF Group executive coaching course, you will learn the leadership skills needed to coach your employees in anything and get the reception that you want, with one to one sessions provided either at your workplace or over the phone.

Become a Better Listener:

One of the main differences between someone who is a boss and somebody who is a leader is that a leader knows how to listen to their team. Reflect on your practices so far. If you have been simply telling people what to do and not giving them much of a chance to be heard, then it could be that you’re acting more like a boss than a leader. Active listening skills are absolutely essential to anybody in a leadership position, as they allow you to truly hear what your teams have to say and take it on board.

Act on Feedback:

Simply listening isn’t always enough – being able to act on feedback or give team members concise reasons as to why a suggestion might not be possible right now, is a crucial skill for any good leader. A good leader knows that his or her team is extremely important to the organisation and, as a result, will listen to and try to act on any feedback that is given by them. Whether it’s about small changes to the layout of the office, or suggestions about remote working, leaders never just dismiss their teams’ concerns and suggestions as they know that these are the people they are relying on for success.

Give Autonomy:

A good leader trusts his or her employees to get the job done and makes sure that they are around to offer support and guidance when needed. If you want to become a better leader then the first thing that you will need to do is let go of the idea of micromanaging people or constantly checking up on them to make sure that they are getting the work done. While it might be tempting to do so, this will only create a sense of mistrust in your team and could even lead to individuals resenting you. As a result, you’re less likely to cultivate a sense of loyalty among your team, and could even see a bigger rate of turnover among employees.

Inspire By Action:

A boss will stay in their office all day and tell others what to do; on the contrary, a good leader inspires their team to do their best through their own actions. Whatever you want your team to do, make sure that you are demonstrating this to them in the best way. Even in the workplace, people are inspired by the actions of those who are in authority to them and a leader who demonstrates a genuine passion and verve for their work is always going to get this kind of response from the people that they are in charge of. Show your team exactly how it’s done.

Be Honest and Humble:

Nobody likes having a boss who struggles to admit when they made a mistake. The truth is that we do all make mistakes from time to time and nobody on your team expects you to be perfect. If you mess up, the best thing that you can do is admit it to your team with honesty and integrity, take responsibility, and work together to figure out how you can avoid the same situation happening again. Nobody is going to respect an authority figure who tries to cover up their mistakes or blames others for them.

Communicate:

The best leaders have a thorough understanding of good communication skills and just how important they are to the workplace. Not only do they clearly communicate tasks and instructions to their teams, but they also encourage their teams to improve communication between themselves and provide them with the tools to do so. This could mean giving teams more time to get up to speed at the beginning of each day or providing remote teams with the best communications tools to get the job done while working from home.

Keep Learning:

A good leader knows that there’s never going to be a point where they know everything. No matter how experienced or successful you become, there’s always going to be something that you don’t know and somebody that you can learn something new from. In fact, you may find yourself learning new things from people who are further down the chain of command from yourself. Good leaders never feel embarrassed that they didn’t know something or resent others for knowing more than them; they appreciate the opportunity to learn more and have the utmost respect for the knowledge of others.

Whether you want better results for your existing business or want to get your new business started out on the right foot, the best place to start is by improving your own leadership skills.