Lending Credibility To Your Small Business

/in /by

Credibility is crucial to business success, after all, if you customer haven’t got faith in you they are very unlikely to pick your over your competitors in the first place. However, for small or one person businesses being seen as credible can be something of a problem as they often lack the resources and staff to execute it properly. Luckily, there are some ways that you can raise the credibility of even the smallest business, keep reading to find out what they are.

Professional branding

One way to increase the credibility of your small business is to ensure that your visual branding is on point. Visual branding includes thing such as business cards, headed paper, and logos as well as company colors and marketing materials for shows and exhibitions.

Clear, visual branding is essential to credibility.

Remember though that there is nothing that says amateur outfit more than a poorly drawn logo that you got off someone’s brother on Facebook! With that in mind, invest in an experienced professional to design your logo, and get the best quality cards and paper printed that you can. It may seem like only a little thing, but it can genuinely help create the credible image that you are looking for.

Outsourced services

Next, another way to increase the credibility your small business is to use outsourced services. In particular, it can be useful to find a virtual office service that will be able to answer your call and take messages, as this present a much more professional and credible image to customers calling to place an order.

In fact, using such a service can be hugely useful to you in regards to productivity as well, as you don’t have to suffer constant interruptions to the task you are doing and therefore can be more focus on the job in hand. Something that means it not only useful in creating a more professional image but can also benefit you practically as well.

Endorsements

Endorsements are a fantastic way of boosting your business’s credibility, and these can work in two different ways.

Firstly, you can get key influencers to endorse your product. This can be useful as such influencers will have a specific demographic that they appeal to and this will raise your company’s credibility with them.

The second way that endorsements can be useful for credibility is by approaching professional bodies or organizations for their seal of approval. For example, a first aid company may seek the support of the red cross, something that potential customers will associate with increased credibility.

However, if you do go down this route, be sure that you follow official channels and guidelines. Also be very sure that you have permission to use another organization’s logo on your packaging or website before you go ahead.

Great reviews

Lastly, another worthwhile tactic for boosting your company credibility is to work on getting the best online review possible. We are not just talking about carefully selected testimonials here either, but authentic and independent reviews that have the power to convince new customers to go with you over your competitors. Something you can find out more about how to do here.

If You Haven’t Thought About Outsourcing, You’re Missing Out

/in /by

If you are just in the middle of getting ready to launch your business, there might be some avenues of freeing up time and energy in the early days that you haven’t considered yet. Most entrepreneurs are ready for long hours, the grind but you don’t have to accept that as rote. There are a few things that you can outsource early on and maximize your time for running the business and getting creative.

Bookkeeping – this is pretty much a vital part of keeping your business running well, and keeping firm hold of your finances. Head to a couple of freelance sites, have a chat with other business owners and see if you can find yourself a bookkeeper you trust and has a proven track record.

Accounting – they go hand in hand, and excellent bookkeeping can help your accountant make the most of those deductibles, and they are experts in the field. You won’t get silly mistakes or in hot water for not completing something correctly.

Appointments – while you might want to be the point of contact for all appointment setups, it is highly likely that you would benefit from something like TimeTrade, Setmore or SimpleBook.me. They are automated systems that check availability, book appointments, notify you or the person responsible for the meeting, plus they have many other functions to explore.

Storage – Rather than have a lot of paper or HDDs hanging around, look into ways to lighten to load and make your data accessible anywhere. Use of Cloud storage or an outsource fax server can help manage how you’re sending data to employees and clients.

Admin tasks – If you have a lot of admin tasks, and are spending more time taking care of those than managing your client work, then it might be time to think about hiring a VA. A virtual assistant can take care of a lot of tasks for you:

  • Social media management and scheduling
  • Research
  • Blog Writing
  • Data Entry
  • File Management
  • Commenting and responding to social media messages
  • Transcription

And, so much more. If you manage to find a VA that understands what you are trying to achieve they can be a tremendous asset to you and your business. It’s like having two of yourself.

Social Media scheduling – Set up something like Hootsuite, SocialOomph or Buffer. Other platforms work just as well, but those are highly rated. It will take you, or your VA a few hours to curate a month or more of content across all of your platforms.

Do you have the time to manage your content marketing? If not, hire a freelancer to take care of that for you. It is basically the use of easy to read and digest content, that educates and informs your target audience without being salesy. Lead generation, relationship building and vital.

Look at what you aren’t great at. Every CEO in the world has at least one thing that they aren’t great at taking care of or getting done. Check what yours is and spend the time to find someone who can take care of it for you.

4 Simple Strategies to Improve Your Business Success Rate

/in /by

It does not matter if your business is a budding startup or a few years old, you can always implement new methods to improve its success rate. Any business requires specific tactics to improve its functionality. In fact, without a proper plan in your mind, your company may suffer drastically. One of the reasons behind it is lack of business knowledge. However, that can be overcome by learning about the strategies and using them. Moreover, your business can always double or triple its revenue through the utilization of various approaches. This post lists four such ways of improving the success rate for your business.

Professional growth

Regardless of the nature of your business, you should always aim for professional development in your field. This technique will support you in coping with your clients, giving them a reason to trust you. Professional growth can incorporate methods like researching your business field, paying attention to client needs, etc., to improve your services and products. A few hours of research every day can have an absolute effect that your customers will admire.

It will not break a bone to take on new challenges. This is something most business owners are doing, as it can help you grow professionally and lead your company to success. New challenges may mean new business opportunities that are not only risky but can also lead to significant financial losses if you don’t take the right steps.

Another often overlooked way to grow professionally is finding a mentor outside of your organization. As a leader, you need to upgrade your skills by getting help from outside experts. This could either be people in your industry or a different one.

Read online materials to know common leadership weaknesses and mistakes. This can help you make the right decisions that will lead you to growth. For example, learn what mistakes people are making in various industries and identify solutions to such problems. Furthermore, identifying leadership weaknesses can help you become self-aware, which will help direct you on the right path.

Quality services and products

Many businesses are present in the marketing that might provide similar services and products like yours, but you will need to prove your worth by offering quality. You may need to plan, assemble and follow a strict business plan that formulates high-end quality.

Customer experience

Customers define your business, so it is essential that you offer them the best experience possible. Our customer should find value in your product/service. In fact, he should feel fully satisfied with the purchases he makes at your firm. Furthermore, you should not give up improving the experience for your customers. You may even feel like your method is not working to improve the success rate, but do not give up. You can choose multiple ways to find the one that gives the best output. Beacontranscript.Com is a new platform that will motivate you with its vast collection of business, tech and startup stories from all over the world.

Serving the customer religiously

While the business is yours, it does not mean that you can do what you prefer. You will have to understand the needs of the clients too. Many executives ignore the suggestions and feedbacks of the clients, and it can turn out ugly for the growth of your business. There is no shame in accepting a mistake during a business deal. Your service or product may be high in quality, but you will need to serve the customers adequately for making them rely on you. The idea is to understand the customer through his/her shoes. Do not ignore this strategy, as it will help you connect with your potential clients better.

For successful business growth, the above techniques have proven to be capable. Any entrepreneur who follows them exhaustively has achieved tremendous success in his/her business. Some of these methods do change in the implementation technique over time, but the fundamental principle for each one of them remains the same.

Update your website. 

Right now, we spend more time online than ever before. While many of us are trying to reduce the amount of time we spend online in our personal lives, there’s no denying that it can have a wonderful impact on your business. This is due to the fact that having a strong online presence can help put your business on the map – whether you focus on growing your social media presence or updating your website.

As your business grows, you must ensure that your website is up to date and prepared for an increase in traffic. However, you also have to ensure that you stay relevant and continue to top the charts on google rankings. While this may not seem like much of an issue, many customers will select one of the first five suggestions that appear after an online search – meaning ranking anywhere other than the top could cause your website’s traffic to drop considerably. And reduced traffic = reduced sales. 

Thankfully, there are various ways in which you can get around this problem. For example, you can work with an SEO agency who can help you generate content for your website that helps you appear more often in Google searches. They can also help you to utilise backlinks to your advantage. 

 

How to Revitalise Your Business When You’ve Hit a Slump

/in /by

Even the most dynamic and driven entrepreneurs and professionals can find themselves falling into something of a professional slump at some point in their career. It’s not that things are going badly, it’s just that they’re not improving, the ideas have dried up, and it’s difficult to see the business adapting sufficiently to meet the inevitable challenges the future will bring.

When this situation strikes, and you find yourself in the doldrums, there are a few things you can do to work on revitalising your process and getting back on the upwards climb.

Work on encouraging more creative discussions in the company

Many businesses end up bringing in consultants in order to inject new ideas into their company. Sometimes this works, but often it’s just a smokescreen that covers up poor personnel management in the workplace.

If you have even a handful of team members working under you, it should be more than possible to summon up creative ideas in-house in order to streamline and improve your business processes and come up with viable solutions to the problems you may be experiencing.

The key issue is in the way that may managers deal with meetings and brainstorming sessions. Rather than throwing a big question out there such as “who has a viable solution in mind for this problem?” you should be opening up a more dynamic and less threatening space in which creative discussions can thrive.

The direction you take should be more along the lines of “I want you all to come up with an idea in the next few minutes, don’t worry about it being “good”, this is just to get the ball rolling”. When people feel comfortable sharing whatever’s on their mind, you can begin gathering novel thoughts and refining them with some work into viable and applicable strategies.

Broaden your knowledge of the business world in general

You may be a master of your own particular industry, but understanding how other, tangentially related parts of the broader business world work, will give you a useful degree of insight into how your role is affected by wider market forces.

This, in turn, can make you more dynamic in your ability to manoeuvre professionally.

You can begin expanding your knowledge in any area. What is forex? What beside-the-scenes constraints affect the performance of your key suppliers?

The main thing is that you begin expanding your understanding of market forces per se.

Consider branching out and expanding your services

Many companies begin with a laser-sharp focus, but expand and branch out their operations over time to encompass a greater range of services. Sometimes this can cause resources to be wasted, but at other times, it opens new markets and areas of innovation that had previously been untapped.

Is there something your clients need, that you’re not currently offering them but perhaps could? A “package deal” where more of their needs are served by a single trusted brand is often an attractive proposition, and it allows you to trade off the trust you’ve already built in your field.

3 Ways Your Company Is Using Technology Wrong

/in /by

As a business owner, you’re probably fed up of hearing about how important technology is for your business. You know that by now and you’ve probably made some updates to the tech in your office and started to see some of the benefits. But a lot of business owners end up adopting technology because they’ve been told that they should, without really understanding how to use it properly. If you’re making mistakes when implementing and using new tech, you’re paying out loads of money for stuff you aren’t getting the full benefit of. These are the biggest tech mistakes that companies make and how to solve them.

Using The Cloud For File Transfer

I’m not suggesting that using the cloud for file transfer is a bad idea, it isn’t. One of the great things about the cloud is that you can use it to quickly access files from any computer, but so many companies think that this is the only thing the cloud can do and they’re paying for an expensive service and only using it for this one small thing. When you set up the cloud, spend a bit of money on cloud implementation services and get everything set up properly, then you’ll be able to get the full potential from it. You can use it to improve collaboration between employees by allowing them to work on documents together in real time. It’s also great for cutting costs and saving space in the office by reducing the number of physical servers you’re using. If you aren’t using all of the great features of cloud services, you’re wasting money.

Experimental Technologies

When a company comes to you and says they’ve just developed an innovative piece of software that is going to revolutionize your company, it’s tempting to bite their hand off and hand over your cash. But you don’t know where IT trends are going to go and a lot of tech in the early stages is going to be riddled with problems. You might get lucky and buy something that saves you money and improves productivity, but you’re just as likely to buy a buggy piece of software that never takes off. Don’t take risks on new technologies, it’s better to invest your technology fund in the tried and tested stuff.

Viewing IT As Separate From The Business

 

The IT department often gets shunted out of the way and forgotten about until they’re needed. They’re seen as separate from the rest of the business but that’s the wrong attitude to have. Now that technology is so tied up with every aspect of your company, the IT department has a central role to play in maintaining that technology and helping you to use it properly. If you’re not allowing the IT department to do what they do best, you’re just going to slow things down unnecessarily.

Spending money on technology is one thing but if you actually want it to have a meaningful impact on your business, you need to understand how to use it properly and avoid these mistakes.