Important Lessons You Can Learn from Past Successful Products

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In business, success is never a one-time achievement. You want to reach the level of success you aim for and then stay at that level – if not advance further – to remain successful. It is not uncommon for businesses to revise their objectives every few years; some even do it every year.

Maintaining success is often more difficult than becoming successful in the first place. You now have something to lose as the leader of the market. In this article, we are going to look at the important lessons about maintaining success from products that were successful on the market.

Always Listen to the Customers

The moment you stop listening to the customers is the moment you will start failing on the market. Just because you have a successful product, doesn’t mean you can keep customers happy without doing anything. This is a trap that may businesses have fallen for in the past, and one that you should never fall victim to today.

You only need to look at the iPod 6th-Generation review on ArgyllFreePress.com to know what I’m talking about. The iPod was one of the most successful lines of products on the market. The iPod 6 is at the top of that long history, offering incredible performance to people who didn’t need an iPhone.

Unfortunately, there were some important market demands that the iPod didn’t meet. The lack of better DAC and the fact that some apps will not even work on the iPod disappointed some avid fans of the product. Apple failed to listen to its customer base, turning the iPod 6 into a mixed bag of success and failure on the market.

Learn and Innovate

Success is often considered the most dangerous comfort zone of them all. Once you are successful – or see yourself as being successful – you start feeling more and more comfortable about the position. It doesn’t take long before the lure of being in a comfort zone gets to you.

We’ve had so many cases of market giants being defeated because of this issue. Toyota took over the American market from GM. Samsung started winning in Asian markets with new and innovative products. The same occurrences can even be seen in competitions between small businesses and startups.

Be Flexible

There is no sure-fire way to maintain success. You can’t have a strategy and expect it to remain effective on the face of market changes. You can’t be stubborn and stick to the old ways when there is a certain need for change.

Be flexible. Being flexible is one of the most important keys to maintaining success. It goes hand in hand with the need to learn and innovate; the business has to remain agile and you as the entrepreneur need to promote that agility.

The only thing that must never change is the “why”; the main reason why you entered the market in the first place. It is the heart of the business. Stick to your principles, use the tips we covered in this article, and stay successful for longer, even in today’s volatile market.

Smart Strategies for a More Effective Business

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Running a business is a difficult thing to do. It is even more difficult to do when you are not running your business as effectively as it should be. When your business processes are sub-standard, it means that you are doing more work than you need to, while at the same time producing worse results. The successful business is one that can look at itself, find its weaknesses, and work on improving them. A successful business is one that works on becoming more effective, and one that constantly strives to improve. This is particularly important with how fast new innovations and trends take hold of each and every industry. If you cannot keep up, then you fall behind.

To ensure that your company is as successive and effective as possible, adopt these smart strategies today:

Create a New Business Plan

Though you should have already created a business plan when you first started, it’s important to periodically create new reports. That way you can stay on top of trends, on changes, and can ensure that your company moves forward in the right direction. Creating a new business plan is also an excellent opportunity to analyze and reflect on your current business strategies and work on improving them.

You need to know where your weak points are if you can ever hope to succeed, which is why you should conduct a SWOT analysis as soon as possible. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and it can be vital to drafting a successful business plan. Without this analysis, you cannot move forward and you cannot fix areas that are holding you and your company back.

Improve Work Productivity

When you or your team waste too much time trying to find a document, you are being inefficient. This inefficiency means more important things are held off, that your money isn’t going towards bettering your company, and that you workforce is too slow. Instead, improve your systems to that work can be done quickly and easily. This means using management tools, and training your employees so that they use the same methods to store and retrieve data.

Other ways you can improve your productivity is to actually improve how well you treat your employees. For instance, having a great break room can actually help you improve how well they work when they are on the job. Further if you have cooking means so that your employees can bring food from home (even if it’s a ready-meal), it means that they aren’t wasting money eating out, and aren’t ruining their health with the fatty, salty foods that are available.

Other ways you can improve your employee’s productivity is to give them more incentive. When your employees see your success as theirs, they will work harder for you. Do this by making them feel valued. Give them rewards once they reach milestones, listen to their suggestions and give them genuine responses, and treat them every once in a while. Even something as simple as taking a team who has done well out for lunch can help boost morale and make your office a great place to be. The more you care about your employees, the more they will care about you.

Save Money Wherever You Can

It is a huge mistake to simply accept the first product or replacement that a supplier offers you. By rule, they will want to sell you the most expensive option they have. They want to do this because it means better business for them, but it isn’t a good way to run your business more effectively. Instead, take quotes from several suppliers or businesses, and always try to haggle down.

A great way to save money is by doing price comparisons. That way you get the best deal, even if the product is the same. That is why businesses should visit Side By Side Reviews. That way you can ensure to get the best deal.

Getting the best deal in other areas of business, however, requires a lot of cunning and negotiation. One of the best ways to do this is to be extremely effective in your networking. People help out their friends, and when you network effectively, you become friends with all the right people. Remember to be genuine, and to offer help first. You cannot expect others to do favors for you when you are not willing to do the same in return.

Build a Community

When it comes to your customers, the notion of networking remains the same. You need to be genuine, you need to have a certain “personality” and you need to give before you can hope for them to buy from you. If you don’t work on building relationships with your customers, then you are working extra hard for each and every sale.

Build a community that not only like your products or services, but who also enjoy you as a company. Many companies have seen their public image increase substantially from good PR. Have an effective enough company persona, and people will follow your social accounts for the joy of it. When that happens, you benefit from word-of-mouth, from increased SEO, and from becoming a household name.

Build a community, because when you do you have a circle of repeat customers and a circle of those who will recommend you to their friends and family. Word-of-mouth advertising is the most effective way to get new sales, because we trust our friends. In order to nurture this community, you need to provide great content and even better customer service.

How you treat your customers will dictate how well you are received, but you need to remember that customers are rather savvy; if you are a large business without any bad reviews, for instance, you are immediately suspicious. Don’t delete the negative reviews you receive, but instead respond to them in a courteous manner. This is especially important in a public forum, because it shows other potential customers how well you deal with complaints.

Being a more effective business means working better – it could even mean working less! Don’t bog your business down with inefficient policies or out-of-date practices. Reevaluate, and innovate.

How to Create a Greener Business

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Becoming an environmentally-friendly business cannot only help to preserve the planet, but it can also improve your brand’s image and increase sales. If you want to develop eco-friendly practices across your organization, find out how to create a greener business.

Utilize Solar Energy

Do you want to reduce your energy bills without compromising on your electricity usage? If so, you should utilize the power of solar energy. You might be surprised to learn that one hour of sunlight can meet the world’s energy needs for a whole year. So, it is therefore an environmentally-friendly way to power your operations whilst reducing your overheads.

Telecommuting

Modern technologies no longer tie businesses to offices. Video conferencing, cloud computing and email has made it easier than ever for professionals to communicate and collaborate, so you can create and run your business from the comfort of your home. You can also outsource affordable talent from across the world to help run your growing business. So, try telecommuting to reduce traffic, your carbon footprint, waste and energy consumption.

Green Procurement

Green procurement is easily one of the most effective ways to make your business eco-friendly. You simply must source both goods and services that are both produced and supplied sustainably. Always try to buy from local suppliers to reduce your carbon footprint.

Always ensure suppliers embark with sustainable manufacturing processes, and that their products and materials do not feature any ozone depleting or toxic substances. Also, ask a supplier if their products are made from recyclable or renewable materials.

Decrease Water Usage

North America has experienced some of its driest years on record recently. It is therefore important to prevent both climate change and drought conditions by decreasing water usage across a business. You can do so by fixing dripping taps or plumbing leaks, and you can hire a plumber to install both low-flow faucets aerators and low-flow toilets in every washroom.

Electronic Recycling

Unfortunately, the US alone is responsible for two million tons of e-waste every year. Items that are not recycled will make their way to landfills or will be incinerated or illegally exported to developing countries, which will each have a negative impact on our planet.

Businesses therefore have a morale responsibility to recycle their electronic devices. Most technology manufacturers, such as HP and Dell, have introduced technology recycling programs to make it easier for individuals and companies to dispose of their gadgets. You may also be able to donate computers, monitors, smartphones or tablets to charities or schools across the local area.

Cloud Computing

 

Cloud computing makes it easy for businesses to store important documents, collaborate online and gain instant access to important files. As a result, it can reduce the need for travel or the printing of hard documents. So, you can reduce paper waste and improve your carbon footprint. Utilize cloud computing software today, such as Dropbox, Office 365 or Google Drive.

Have you got any top tips for becoming a greener company? Share your advice by posting a comment.

Why Technology Is So Important In Business Practice

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The information age got itself into full swing about 100 years ago, and we’re still living in it these days because of the amount of new information that can spring up in any sector in any market anywhere on the globe. As a result, it’s such a powerful time to run a business. You can be reached from anywhere and find the market you need instantly with a few search engine terms, and then operate on a larger scale than you ever would have been able to in the past. So with that in mind, here’s some of the mostly wide renowned reasons as to why technology is so important in our business practices.

Our Communication is So Much Better

Let’s consider this for a minute. When you’re able to write things down to send off, instead of speaking it to a person, we can draft out what we’re going to say. That means we can perfect our communicative skills, and make it a lot easier to close a deal with a few emails. Of course there’s no beating the natural charisma of the speech, but if you’re the kind of person who is in a leadership position and struggles with this, no longer do you need to think yourself turfed out because of it!

Not only does this impress possible investors and business connections, but you can also better perform customer service with the written word. No issues with connectivity over the phone, everything about a complaint is set out in front of you to refer back to, and you can focus on more than one task at once seeing as you’re using a screen instead of your voice. You can practice with online programs and apps without ever needing to hire out a service. It’s often a lot cheaper to run business through technology!

It Affects Our Operating Size

So whilst we may be a far cry away from replacing human workers with robots, despite burgeoning AI on the frontier, we can expand our businesses via the use of software. This is because everything is instantly accessible as long as you have an internet connection, and there’s hardly any countries left in the world where this isn’t reliable. Connectivity on a global scale means we can do international trading, conference calls across oceans, and bring in more and more people from the other side of the world with a whole wealth of talent. It’s incredibly exciting when you think about it!

You can even cut out a few hours of work time, or even lower the cost of hiring an accountant when you can do financial modeling on smart spreadsheets. It may still be a good idea to bring on someone who knows the numbers inside and out, as nothing is smarter than the human brain, but programs like this give people with lower budgets a better chance from the get go.

It Often Keeps Details More Secure

Of course in such a digital age you’re going to experience software bugs, and of course sometimes there’s the odd hack or two. However, having firewalls and digital security systems in place make these details you store on a network a lot more secure, plus they’re easier to reach for everyone involved in a transaction process.

On a more local scale, business operations can be kept secure by software from outside intrusion by competitors, and if you’re running a business that has a secret recipe involved in the creation of your product, this is where it’ll be the most safe. Even passwords alone are a great deterrent!

So the general theme is that if you have software systems in place to encrypt the data of customers, you’re not going to lose it in the back of a filing cabinet or need to input the same information everytime it comes to it, plus you’re better protected against any malware willing to get into your data banks. Don’t underestimate the power of technology when it comes to this purpose, and remember that customers always have a choice to either have their details remembered or not; you’re simply providing a better alternative for them to avoid hassle!

Overall, technology makes business easier and safer to conduct, and there’s a whole world of it out there for you to explore as an entrepreneur. Startups have never had such a strong foundation age, and whenever a sustainable business crops up on the block, it means the information age has done its bit for the future.

Protecting Your Ad Campaigns from Ad Fraud

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Ad fraud poses a risk to the ad tech industry compromising the technology industry as a whole. This causes nearly 60% of digital display ad budgets to be lost due to fraud cases annually, according to the ANA and White Ops, 2016. Most ad fraud focuses mainly on non-human traffic that is not visible to humans and is misrepresented by fraudulent publishers. These include simple bots, sophisticated bots, botnets, invisible ads, arbitrage, domain spoofing, site bundling, ad injection, cookie stuffing and click farms

Why is Ad Fraud Difficult to Curb?

The digital markets enable ad fraud to thrive due to the nature of programmatic advertising marketplace as an open market environment with innovations that enable fraudsters to thrive. The programmatic environment also has misaligned incentives across its supply chain that causes inertia and passive treatment in addressing the ad fraud problem.

How to Protect Your Ad Campaigns against Ad Fraud

In order to optimize your ad campaigns, you must ensure that you look out for ad fraud cases to optimize visibility and brand safety of your ad campaigns. The nature of programmatic advertising allows for the use of the long-tail website which becomes hosts of ad fraud. Ad fraud can be curbed by handpicking website placements and taking a publisher-centric approach to ad campaigns when dealing with both public and private market purchases. Adwatcher.com advises adopting extra vigilance, especially when making audience-based ad campaigns in order to mitigate against ad fraud. This can be achieved through the following process:

Use Pre-Bid Contextual Data Segments

This is done by leveraging contextual brand safety segments during ad purchases in order to protect your ad campaign and making them available through the digital signal processor. Data from providers such as comScore is pre-bid hence minimizes chances of fraud making it easier than filtering it after purchase. This enables selection of segments with invalid traffic and visibility tiers ensuring that the ad campaigns not only avoid fraud but also are visible.

Source for an Ad Verification Vendor

Ad verification vendors, such as Integral Ad Science, ensure access to campaign metrics for ad campaigns, that enhance visibility and access to, invalid traffic thus ensuring safety for the brand. This requires having your own ad server, in which you incorporate the vendor’s tracking code in the ad tags.

Analyse the Campaign Data

Audit the ad campaigns for signs of fraud after receiving metrics like invalid traffic levels and use the information to optimize the ad campaigns by shutting down low-quality publishers and placements and reallocate your budget to higher-quality sites.

Maintain a Universal Blacklist

Blacklists are lists of domains that ensure that your ads are served elsewhere, which if handled well, should block low-quality sites from your campaigns. This may provide a competitive advantage against other, less-diligent advertisers.

Adopt Private Marketplaces Deals

Most fraudulent publishers do not access private marketplaces since they lack sales or ad ops teams to support such deals hence making it a safer option for ad campaigns.