How to Make Your Emails More Professional

/in /by

StrategyDriven Business Communications Article | How to Make Your Emails More ProfessionalRegardless of who you’re conversing with and who you’re having an email exchange with, it’s important you conduct yourself in a professional manner when using email. Making your emails professional looking will help you attract clients and keep existing ones and will also help your communication be far clearer and easier to understand when conveying information between team members.

There are many things you can do to keep your emails looking professional. Here are a few ways to do just that.

Use an Email Signature

An email signature is a great way to sign off on an email and make it appear organized, professional, and important. To make a great email signature, you can either create one yourself, or use many of the wonderful templates available on this email signature software for Office 365. A good signature should provide all the information an email recipient will need to contact you and connect and may include a name, job title, office number and business address.

Signatures can also be a good way to display a bit of personality and to display your brand in a better way. You can do this by making use of awesome themes, color schemes and fonts that convey your business or your own personal brand.

Avoid Grammar and Spelling Mistakes

There’s not many more worse email offenses than having spelling and grammar issues within the body of your message. This gives off the impression that you’re not professional and that you haven’t put enough effort into your correspondence to make sure everything is in order. A simple typo can easily be offensive and could make whoever you’re emailing with view you in a worse off light.

With tools such as Grammarly, making sure your emails are spelled correctly and formatted well is simple, as the application will scan through your email as you type it, highlighting potential issues. The premium version can also help you write to fit a certain tone of voice, which can be helpful when you’re dealing with different clients and people of different seniority.

Keep Things Short and Sweet

A professional email is one that gets straight to the details and isn’t overstuffed with pointless sentences and phrases. This is because saying the bare minimum will help to avoid misunderstandings as it keeps the content and the instructions within the email clear.

Of course, you’re allowed and are encouraged to ask how people are and be friendly, and it’s critical that you include all the relevant information, but you shouldn’t be writing essays for your emails. In addition, it’s also a good idea to have a line break between each paragraph, to make it even easier to digest.

Make Sure Your Email Address Is Suitable

If you’re using an email address that you created back in your early teens, then it might be worth evaluating it and making sure that it gives off a professional vibe. Too many working adults are using addresses like ‘[email protected]’ and it’s sending off a bad and childish impression. To ensure that you’re professional, change the email to simply your name.

How to Successfully Make the Switch from Brick and Mortar to E-commerce

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | How to Successfully Make the Switch from Brick and Mortar to E-commerceThere are many advantages to either adding an ecommerce store to your business to compliment your brick and mortar store or making the switch completely, closing the brick and mortar outlet to focus purely on online sales.

High streets are struggling more than ever thanks to a very challenging 2020, and many shops are looking at alternative ways to sell to their customers. Ecommerce gives you options. When you sell online, you can sell 24/7, without actually needing to be online all of the time. You can even continue to trade during lockdowns and forced closures. Online, it can be easier. It’s often easier to encourage people to click on a link than it is to walk into a store, it’s also cheaper, both for you and your customers. Online also has the massive advantage of taking you out of your local area. Even very small home-based businesses can use the internet to sell to a much larger area, instead of relying on local footfall and loyalty.

Selling online can be cheaper, easier, and a fantastic way to expand your business. But, making the transition isn’t easy. If you’ve never sold online before, or have only ever done so in a very small way, there can be a steep learning curve. Here are some tips to help you.

Prioritise User Experience

In a brick and mortar store, user experience is everything. With every decision you make, you’ll ask yourself how it affects your customers, and if it enhances their shopping experience. The same should be true online.

In store, you might carefully position shelves, take your time to find the optimal heating and lighting settings, and even consider the volume of your in-store music. Online, you need to think about how easy your website is to use, how accessible it is, how easy it is to find products, to add to basket and to check out, and how customers will get in touch if they need to. You’ll even need to consider how easy your font is to read, and whether the colours that you use are pleasant to look at.

Don’t Neglect Customer Service

New ecommerce sellers often make the mistake of skipping customer service. But, it’s at least as important as it is in the real world. Make the effort to engage with your audience on social media, reply to emails and messages, and send personalized notes with packages, or emails on dispatch. For a smaller business, relationships are crucial to success, whether on or offline.

Get Visual

One advantage that real-world shopping has always had over online is that you can see and feel the products. You can check for quality and better judge how much you like something.

But, thanks to the development in online visuals, this is changing. Great photos, 3D visualizations, and explainer videos mean that you can offer your customers a much clearer idea of what they are buying. Using a 3d visualization and rendering service from Cadesign form means that you can show consumers exactly what they are buying. Cadesign form can also offer videos explaining even the most complicated products, which are ready to use on your ecommerce store directly, but also on social media, and in your email campaigns for the best effects.

Filming live videos, and Q&A sessions on social media can also help your customers to learn more about your products and business. Excellent visuals give you the best chance to advertise, educate, and build relationships, and shouldn’t be overlooked.

Start Email Marketing Straight Away

Email marketing gives you a great way to form personal connections and keep in touch with your audience. Emails have a much higher conversion rate than social media posts, and give you an easy way to offer a range of content.

But, many businesses neglect email marketing entirely. Perhaps because it takes more effort to build an email list than it does a social media following. It’s worth it, however, and should be part of your marketing strategy from the start.

Get to Grips with Analytics

In store, you can see what is working. You look at sales to monitor conversions, and you can feel how busy your shop is. Online, initial impressions are harder to make, but if you study your analytics you won’t just get a conversion figure. You’ll know how old your customers are, what gender, how long they spend on your site, where they come from, and what kind of content they engage with. Analytics give you a great chance to build a very clear customer persona, which can be a big boost to your marketing campaigns.

With an incredible online store offering great visuals and an easy use interface, as long as you optimise digital marketing strategies and continue to build relationships with your customers, just as you would in the real world, your switch to ecommerce should be a complete success. But, it may take time. Don’t be disheartened if you make mistakes, or it takes you a while to find your audience online. Keep going, learn along the way, and take some risks, monitoring analytics to see what’s working, and you will never look back.

Tips To Help Save Money In Your Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Save Money In Business|Tips To Help Save Money In Your BusinessSaving money in your business is never really a bad thing. It’s good to always have a bit of extra cash lying around when you need it and for many businesses, an emergency fund is in existence for a rainy day. If you’re looking to save money for your business, then here are some helpful tips that you might find useful.

Control Department Spending

Departments are likely to have individual budgets that you’ve distributed out at the start of the financial year. However, that doesn’t mean you should simply let go of that responsibility or just let them spend as they please. It may be useful to have more than just the one person signing off on a bigger expenditure than normal to ensure that the money is being spent wisely. It’s also good for all departments and their staff to have good communication about what’s being spent and what can but cut down on.

There’s always going to be the odd spend here and there that can be avoided and so it’s good to monitor the departmental spending where possible. If there are opportunities to reduce or cut back when needed, then make sure you let the departments in question know beforehand. It’s critical that you’re not pulling the rug from under them, especially when they may need the money for something else. This can be particularly important for smaller businesses who may not have the sizable cash flow that bigger companies have.

Monitor Your Finances Overall

There’s no harm in monitoring your finances overall as a business. There are lots of expenditures that will be happening in your business and it’s good to look over them every once in a while. There’s also always the risk of falling victim to fraud and that could result in a lot of money coming out of your bank account. It might also be money that comes out in small amounts and is therefore not noticeable, especially if you’re not checking receipts against what’s being spent. It’s important to have someone do this regularly and if you can’t get it done in-house, then it’s worth outsourcing where possible.

Don’t allow your finances to become something you push to the bottom of the to-do list because they matter more than most things.

Ensure Your Finance Team Aren’t Overwhelmed

Looking after your staff is a must and the last thing you want to do is to make them feel overwhelmed. This might lead to a lack of productivity else and that’s only going to hinder your business directly. Look at your finance team and how much they’re taking on. It might be that the work processes involved in their day-to-day activities are too much and it’s something that you may want to streamline. Consider what can be streamlined and what needs to be outsourced.

All businesses outsource certain things that need doing and it might be that you need to do the same in your finance department. Make sure that your financial team have all the relevant training they need to, whether it’s a course to help learn more mathematics like how to calculate percentage or a course on dealing with taxes. There’s always learning to be done!

Spend Money That’ll Go Further

Spending money is important because it helps grow the business in different ways. If you’re trying to make your money go further, then it’s important to consider what you’re spending it on and where you might want to change when it comes to your tactics. For example, traditional advertising has worked for many businesses over the years but to an extent, has limited the amount of companies who can financially afford it. It has also proved to be quite inferior thanks to the birth of the online world. Digital advertising therefore has become a lot more popular, and a lot more affordable.

Not only has digital advertising become more popular there’s also more opportunity to expand your reach as a business. So, you might be thinking about spending your money through digital advertisements, rather than the traditional route to save money.

Try to be more smart with your money and how you spend it. There are lots of ways to spend your money that will only do so much. The best way of spending your money is to spend it in places that are going to double or triple the ROI. The more you can get out of it, the better. Start looking at where you could be saving money and where else to spend it to get more out of it.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Save Money In Business|Tips To Help Save Money In Your BusinessCollaborate With Other Businesses

Collaborating with businesses can be a great way to save money because you’re cutting down the costs. For example, if you wanted to create a new product and that product had the opportunity to be combined with an existing business, why not partner up? There’s something that can be gained by both of you financially but also there’s the potentially to cross-promote on each other’s channels, which opens up the potential for new customers on both sides. As much as you might not want to partner up with other businesses for fear of the competition, it can actually be more beneficial to you both, to collaborate where you can.

Be Wary Of Taking Financial Risks

All businesses can come with their risks and there are many occasions where some risks will be taken and others will be avoided. Any risk is usually financially driven and you should be wary about which ones you take. When considering a risk, ask yourself whether or not you can bounce back? If you don’t have the money to risk or you can’t afford to do the risk twice, then you may want to step away from the opportunity itself. There will be many more that come along but it’s important to spot those risks that might be financially detrimental to the business.

Saving money in business can be something that helps keep you going through the tough times, so try to be active in your methods of saving money.

Why Backlinks Are Critical for Your Online Success

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Why Backlinks Are Critical for Your Online SuccessEach and every day, more people are creating websites for business and other purposes. The cyber-world is getting quite cluttered. It is more important than ever that your website is visible to interested eyeballs, But, how can you ensure that your site is even seen online at all?

One way to do so is by creating a strong backlink campaign when building out or revamping your website. Indeed, if you are serious about building a top-notch website, you may choose to work with a backlink service.

Website Backlinks: A Primer

To make matters as simple as possible, backlinks are hyperlinked connections from one website to another. A backlink, often just called a “link”, is an encoded pathway for one site to communicate electronically with another. You can think of them as roadways, using the transportation analog, or neural synapses, using the brain physiology model.

Links are easily seen on a webpage as a highlighted text string referred to as an “anchor text“. You can click on it and you will be quickly directed to another page on the web. It may be an internal link to another page on your site. But, in the case of a backlink, it will connect to another site in cyberspace.

Why Backlinks Are Important

High-quality backlinks make your site rank higher with the search engines like Google and Bing. Indeed, before your website site can rank, it needs links. The search engines use backlinks to “crawl” the web and make internet connectivity a reality. The better you help the engines with their operations, the better they will reward you.

Your reward comes in the form of high ranking on the search engine result pages (SERPs). You want to rank near the top for each of your keywords. Indeed, if you are not ranking in the top few pages, your site is essentially invisible.

Not all backlinks have an equal value to the search engines. Some are much more valuable than others. If you have a backlink to a popular, high-volume site, this will curry much more favor with Google than a link to a small site that is never seen. That is why high-quality links are of utmost importance.

If you have a site that has more than one page, be sure to practice deep linking. This is when you have backlinks not only to your homepage but to other pages on your site. For example, let’s say you have a site about coin collecting and you are in the business of buying and selling various coin types. You’ll certainly want links to your pages on dimes, quarters, and halves as well as your home page. Search engines love sites with deep linking and reward them with a higher ranking.

Why You May Need a Backlink Service

Hyperlinked connections from another website to yours can and do occur organically, but at first, the process can be excruciatingly slow. Because link building is so important in raising your site’s online visibility, it is often prudent to work with an SEO-savvy backlink service. A quality backlink service is up-to-date on the ever-changing SEO best practices. You want them working for you.

Tips for Finding the Best Backlink Service

These days, it seems like everybody and their brother has a shingle out on the web posing as SEO experts and site builders. The same is true in the areas of link building. Some of these are excellent firms, others are less scrupulous or savvy. How do you pick the best backlink-building service if you need one?

Here are several tips that will help you ferret-out the very best backlink service providers:

  • Will they evaluate your site content for quality as part of their service?
  • Will they assist you with internal link building as well as in the generation of quality external backlinks?
  • What do they know about SEO?
  • Can they provide a list of super-satisfied customers?
  • Are all costs and fees spelled out upfront?

The online world has become complex and busy. Quality backlinks will help your site will actually be seen.

DIY Marketing: Does it Work?

/in /by

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | DIY Marketing: Does it Work?As a small business owner, chances are you often find yourself in DIY situations. From managing your social media accounts to writing your own blog, there are many forms of DIY marketing. There’s no cap on what you can spend on marketing your product or service. However, to save money people often rely more on DIY than giving this over to the professionals. With that said, just how effective is DIY marketing? Can you reach the same number of qualified consumers when you opt to take care of marketing yourself? What is Digital Marketing? To learn the answers to these questions, and more, read on.

Digital marketing is just one part of overall marketing, but it’s a big one. Most people go online first when researching a product or service and digital marketing takes advantage of this. Digital marketing is the marketing component that relies on using websites, search engines, social media, emails, mobile app, and more to reach consumers and educate them about a product or service. It’s a great way to brand yourself and your business.

Is Your DIY Digital Marketing Working?

Marketing on a budget means you’ll have to do some DIY digital marketing. But how do you know if it’s working? Traffic to your website is one way to know. Are people clicking on links in your marketing emails? Are your Google Ads getting clicks too? These are just some questions to ask yourself after implementing a DIY marketing campaign. Others include:

Are you getting enough of a return on your time investment? In other words, are you getting results for the time you’re putting in? To figure this out, estimate your weekly DIY marketing schedule and multiply that by your hourly rate. Next, take your weekly investment, multiply that by 52 weeks, and divide by 12. You will then need to figure out your KPIs (i.e. clicks, calls, form fills, etc…) and compare the numbers. This should give you a good idea of what you’re getting for the work you’re putting in.

Is marketing on a budget working? If you’re doing DIY digital marketing and marketing on a budget, you can still make it work. The key is to keep analyzing your data, as described above, to ensure you’re getting a good return on investment (ROI). Otherwise, you’re throwing money away that could be used for effective marketing strategies. Some tips for marketing on a budget include:

Become an expert: Create new and meaningful content that answers your reader’s questions and you will see sales increase.

Reach out to influencers: With the help of an influencer, you can reach hundreds of people looking for a product in your niche and the cost is negotiable in some cases.

Giveaways and samples: Giving away a product or sample is a risk-free way for customers to try your product.

In the end, does DIY marketing work? Yes. However, for really in-depth digital marketing that shows the highest ROI, it’s best to leave the marketing up to the professionals. They will be able to strategize a digital marketing plan and then carry it out. Of course, if you love DIY marketing, you can still take on many projects to add a personal touch and be more involved with day-to-day marketing.