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7 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Small Business Marketing Consultant

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | 7 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Small Business Marketing ConsultantIt’s suggested that businesses spend 8% of their revenue on marketing costs. But what happens when that 8% feel wasted?

If you’re not seeing the fruits of your labor, it’s time to rethink your marketing strategy. And who better to help you do that than a small business marketing consultant?

Keep reading to learn why partnering with a small business consultant might be the smartest move your business makes all year.

1. Consultants Understand Your Audience

Who does your business serve?

If you can’t rattle off an in-depth answer complete with demographics, you don’t have a clear enough picture of your target audience.

Your audience defines everything from your company’s voice to the channels you use to advertise. Simply put, you need to understand your audience and that’s something a firm can help with.

2. A Consultant Keeps You Focused

A consulting firm isn’t only here to give ideas, they’re here to shape the ones you already have.

By providing structure, your consulting firm partners can help you establish a clear and attainable plan for your business. That goes for your short term and long term goals.

3. Less Spending Waste

Anyone can spend money on a Facebook Ads campaign. But spending money doesn’t guarantee results.

Consultants know what channels to use and how to maximize their efficiency. As a result, you’ll save money.

4. Firms Can Help You Branch Out

Rebranding is the process of changing your company’s image. That can be literal, such as changing your company’s logo, or more figurative, like adopting a new persona or changing your voice.

But a new brand image comes alongside shifting goals and audiences. Like defining your audience, this requires plenty of in-depth research.

5. Consultants Can Help You Scale

Every business wants to grow. But are you ready to grow alongside your company?

Your goals for scaling and your current situation may not always match. And if you’re not careful, you could end up spending too much on unnecessary hires, resources, and outdated messaging.

6. You’ll Have More Time to Run Your Business

Your time is best spent working on the things you do best. And hiring a consultant takes a ton of pressure off of your shoulders, allowing for just that.

You’ll have more time to focus on the tasks that demand your immediate attention while your partners focus on growing your business.

7. Better Resources Means Better Results

Even if you have the know-how to run a great marketing campaign, purchasing the materials needed can drain your wallet. Software alone can cost thousands of dollars.

Your consultant partners will have state of the art resources that your business can use to maximize its potential. As a result, you won’t have to go out and invest in these resources yourself.

Why Your Company Needs a Small Business Marketing Consultant

Whether you’re looking to take your product global or you’re keeping things on a local level, a small business marketing consultant can help your business reach the heights you’re after.

Between their expertise, resources, and growth-centric approach, a consultant is more than worth the money. Think about reaching out today.

And if you’re looking for more content to help you grow your business, make sure to check back with our blog.

Business Blind Spots – How To Know What You’re Doing Wrong

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Business Blind Spots|Business Blind Spots - How To Know What You're Doing WrongWe all have blind spots. For example, perhaps one we all understand is those who are angry or showboating often hide a vulnerability or weakness underneath. Someone becoming incredibly toxic and aggressive following a romantic breakup, for instance, is often hurting underneath, and that’s what will motivate their hard reaction. While businesses are nowhere near as complex as people, the idea of the eternal blind spot is something that carries with it a sense of validity. After all, if you do not look in those darker areas, you’ll be unaware of how to improve or solve them.

But how can you know what you’re doing wrong as a firm? This might be clear if you’re struggling to sell your products, or if your staff turnover is increasing due to a bad manager. That being said, what if your business is improving and successful? We might take this as proof that we are perfect in our efforts, yet of course, this is never correct. Thankfully, with the following advice, your operation will remain more self-aware than ever:

Thorough Inspections

Inspect your processes thoroughly. Leave no stone unturned. It could be that you’re spending way too much on inventory, you’re failing to turn your stock over efficiently, or you’re experiencing an unusually high number of product damages at a certain area of your manufacturing line. Thorough inspections matter, and they can truly make a difference – allowing you to potentially slash tens of thousands of yearly dollars that may otherwise have been written off. The same can go for business expenses from your travelling remote representatives, or even computing equipment being replaced by overzealous IT managers. You’ll fail to find anything unless you look.

Worthwhile Consultants

Using expert procurement consultants can help you figure out if your procurement process is running in a streamlined manner or not, and if you’re truly maximizing the deals you are able to gain through this process. Additionally, they will be able to suss out flaws in your communication, in your staff training, and also the crippling overspending you may be laying down in certain departments. Procurement is complex and that means it is rarely perfected. With a team such as this on your side, you’ll take every step to get there correctly.

Coherent Feedback

If you’re not investing in the internal communication and surveying structures that can allow for staff to report issues, and for those reports to be read and understood, and for practical fixes to be considered and put in place, then you have an issue listening to coherent feedback. Even if you do not act on every issue that you’re presented with, the willingness to listen to them and maximize your attention to possible solutions at least helps you lay those cards out on the table, even if you decide that now is not the best time to move forward.

With these tips, you’re sure to understand where you’re going wrong as a business, and you’ll more than likely take steps to avoid that in the future.

Three People Who Can Help Your Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Business Leader |Three People Who Can Help Your BusinessEvery single business leader needs help. People don’t become business leaders without being helped to do it, and they don’t get to be respected in their industry without support along the way. Your business may be just fine, not in peril and not failing, but that doesn’t mean that you have to slow down your practice.

What you need is help! Whenever you think things are levelling out and you’re losing momentum on your business growth, you need to reach out and get in touch with people who can help you get back on track. When the office is going into disrepair, you need a commercial electrician and plumbers who can help, and you wouldn’t attempt to fix it on your own, would you? So, don’t try to fix your business by yourself. You need to turn to the right people to ensure that you can get your numbers up and keep growing your business the way that you always imagined you could. Who can you ask for help? Let’s take a look!

Business Consultants.

There are so many people out there who have better knowledge of your industry than you do. These people use their skills and market themselves as consultants who can evaluate your business and learn about what you sell, whether this is a product or service. These consultants can help you to ensure your office processes run more smoothly, and they offer packages that can do just that. They’ll be able to advise you on your marketing strategies and your general business development strategies, too. Contact a business consultant if you’re worrying that you aren’t going to be able to grow and they will be able to walk you through what to do next. There’s no shame in asking someone who’s better than you what to do next.

Expert Accountants.

The one person that you can’t take for granted in your business is your accountant. Hiring an accountant to manage your payroll, invoicing and paying your bills is important. It saves you getting it wrong and it frees up your time so that you no longer have to worry about splitting your focus. You can take the time to do the things necessary for your business, instead. Accountants are the experts in finance and payroll and their whole job is to manage the numbers. They can pay the bills, settle the accounts, pay the staff and ensure you get your cut, too. They can help you with your books and keep everything as balanced as possible so that you don’t make mistakes.

Website Experts.

The most important thing in your business is your website right now. It’s the one area that you need to be kept as up to date as possible so that you can continue to drive traffic to your website. If you have an online store, you need it to run well and you need it to offer your visitors everything that they are looking for. Find the right website experts, and you can ensure that you are running your business properly!

Ensuring Your Business Starts On Stable Footing

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Starting Your Business|Ensuring Your Business Starts On Stable FootingWe can often see businesses as stable institutions, perhaps absolutely secure on the platform upon which they stand. But most of us who have experience in the industry know better. For example, industry titans can easily lose plenty of their stock if rocked by deep controversy, if failing to live up to their obligations, or if investing in a bad route without caring for the sunk cost to make that work.

But all of that is in the future. For a business just starting out, ensuring your firm begins on stable footing can allow you to move forward to the future and develop a more cohesive output, potentially allowing you to sidestep issues before they occur and staying optimistic about meeting challenges.

After all, a tree with deeper, more secure roots will take much more effort to become uprooted in winds of chaos. This means that no matter what your business weathers, these essential preliminary tips can help you start in the best possible sense, and for the best possible reasons:

Plan Effectively

Planning effectively is not just a nicety, it’s a requirement. You need to be able to list, to the letter, exactly how you hope to proceed in a certain capacity. This means knowing how you will commit to a certain task, how much it will cost, who will be assigned to it, when your deadline is, and potential variables that can go wrong. Time is money in a small business trying to establish itself, and so as far as that is concerned you need to be as careful as possible. Chart each step as delicately as you can. When you follow this process, you can treat your clients with the care they might require, offsetting the risk they have taken by using your services despite the lack of testimonials.

Dot The I’s, Cross The T’s

Ensure that your paperwork is perfectly considered. For example, a fein application can help you immediately find an ID number that allows you to curate your best taxes planning and payment schedule. Additionally, taking an accurate view to your paperwork can help you more appropriately catalog it, even if you then offset that to a professional accountant or tax management lawyer.

Hire A Consultant

Many firms feel as though there’s something shameful in hiring a consultant, but of course, this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, a consultant can help you inject the experience that you may have never been able to curate on your own, and this can be a real problem. Additionally, you might find that hiring a consultant can help you dispel your own foolish or inexperienced notions, allowing you to refine your own skillset and embark upon your own necessary training. Business leaders who are unafraid to admit this need can only come out stronger and more capable in the end – and that’s never a negative thing to consider or promote.

With this advice, you’re certain to ensure your business begins on stable footing. We wish you the best to that end.

New Service Announcement – The Advisor’s Corner

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To further expand on our ongoing strategic planning and tactical business execution conversation, StrategyDriven Contributors are proud to announce the launch of a new service, The Advisor’s Corner. This service provides all guests to the StrategyDriven website an opportunity to ask direct questions of our experienced business professionals. Questions and answers will then be posted in The Advisor’s Corner category for all site visitors to view. Additionally, StrategyDriven members will have the opportunity to share their insights and experience by way of comments and feedback to these postings.

Questions can be submitted to The Advisor’s Corner by email at [email protected] or by using the ‘Email The Advisor’s Corner’ link located on the right sidebar on the StrategyDriven website. If desired, questions may be submitted anonymously to maintain confidentiality.

StrategyDriven contributors greatly appreciate the continued patronage of our website and hope this new offering is of benefit to all our site’s visitors.