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Monthly Office Checks Your Business Should Run

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Office Checks|Monthly Office Checks Your Business Should RunWhen it comes to creating a safe and positive working environment, you’re always going to need to stay ahead of the curve. You need to be able to anticipate potential hazards within your workspace, and eliminate them wherever possible to keep your team producing the great work they do day in and day out.

But how can you be sure the office is a good place to be? Well, as long as you’re running monthly checks to ensure health and safety is top priority, you’ll be well on your way to crafting an unproblematic workplace. Here are the kind of checks you should be running.

Fire Safety

Fires are the most common hazard in the modern workplace, next to tripping and falling. And in a commercial setting, a fire can happen in a dozen different places at once! From equipment overheating, to someone taking a smoke break in the wrong place, to an electrical fire in the server room, you’ve got your work cut out for you checking here.

You’re going to want to keep multiple fire extinguishers on site at all times, as well as check them as regularly as you perform maintenance on office equipment. Similarly, make sure all potential fuel sources (including waste paper baskets!) are disposed of in a timely and safe manner.

Air Quality

A lot of toxins can leak into the air in a commercial setting; from dust to foreign particles to actual harmful gasses, there are a lot more hazards in the modern workplace than there’s ever been before! And if you’re going to be spending at least 8 hours a day in your office, you owe it to your team’s health to check on the air quality on a monthly basis.

Most of all, keep an eye on your AC or central heating function. A lot can leak through these two systems, and making sure you know the warning signs before a gas accumulates to a hazardous degree is essential. You can read more about keeping your air pure in a workplace setting, but it’s mostly simple care and maintenance; make sure those AC vents have been washed out by a cleaning team!

Mental Health Assurance

You’re also going to want to think about the human element, in terms of health and safety, as most inspection criterias now include mental health and wellbeing as part of the pass rate. And not only that, but if you can’t be sure that your employees even enjoy being in the workplace, how can you ensure they’ll do their best work?

You need to keep work exciting and/or challenging within your office, as well as define the job expectations as clearly as possible. You’ll also want to keep work hours as flexible as possible, and never expect an employee to stay beyond the average 8 hour working period. It’s just good practice this way!

Your office needs checking out; keep health and safety in mind for a much more productive workday.

Keep Your Cost Per Customer Low

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Cost per Customer|Keep Your Cost Per Customer LowAcquisition cost is one of the preferred metrics on Google Ads to enhance the value of your ads. In essence, the acquisition cost refers to how much you are likely to spend on a prospect lead to turn them into a customer. In the world of Google AdWords, the metric is used to automatically increase bids in AdWords auctions to maximize chances when a user is likely to convert.

If you are familiar with this definition of the acquisition cost, you might assume that customer costs refer to the thing. In reality, customers costs are all the costs involved in the acquisition and retention of your customers. The overall customer management process could end up costing you more than you get paid for the product or service. Here are tips to ensure you can keep your cost per customer as low as possible.

Improve your SEM campaigns

As mentioned, Google Ads has strategic acquisition costs bidding. This approach can be successful if you set the most profitable cost. Paid marketing doesn’t have to break the bank. On the contrary, Google Ads lets you choose and manage your budget. But if you’re going to secure high rankings on the SERPs, you want to understand how to improve your ads for best visibility. High bids can win the auction, but other strategies can keep your costs low and your results high. Adding relevant ad extensions such as your phone number can increase the conversion rate. Additionally,m you can add business information to appear only for local searches.

Keep shipping costs profitable

Ecommerce shops have a tough task keeping their costs as appealing as possible. As a result, shipping costs need to be kept intentionally low. However, it can be tricky to manage all shipping-related costs effectively, including return costs, return checks, preparation for international shipping, etc. it might not physically cost more to transport a parcel from A to B, but your team will be working around to clock to manage the logistics strategy. So, why not give yourself some slack and turn to simple order fulfillment services to keep shipping processes cost-effective?

Let a bot help them

Customers frequently need help and guidance. Companies often feel overwhelmed by the volume of calls or emails reporting issues that are easy to solve. It is a time-demanding process that wastes the workforce. Simple queries could be easily managed by an AI bot. Whether a customer wants help finding the right product or needs basic troubleshooting, a bot can guide them effectively through the steps. More complex queries can also be filtered and passed on to the team.

Exceed their expectations

Customers have expectations on the quality of your services or product. The quickest and easiest way to keep customer costs low is simple to deliver precisely what they expect. Exceeding expectations is a popular marketing buzz phrase, but in reality, if you have to work extra to deliver more value than people have paid for, you are ultimately running your business to the ground. Meet expectations at all times, including in terms of communication. Honesty and authenticity in your communication with customers can remove increased costs linked to complaints.

Why You Should Start A Company

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Start a company|Why You Should Start A CompanyMany people would love to start a company. But have you ever really asked yourself why you’re doing it? Like, what’s the point?

Well, in this post, we provide some answers. It turns out that starting a business is about more than just having more money in the bank. It’s about so much more.

You Have More Job Security

Climbing the corporate ladder is an ordeal. You never quite know whether you’re about to go up the next rung. And when you don’t progress, you can feel like you’re being deliberately targeted or let down by the people around you. It’s not fun.

But when you have your own business, those sorts of politics don’t matter one bit. Instead, you’re the boss and you decide the direction that the company goes. It’s your job to create a system that generates money. And because you’re not worried about promotions, you have so much more energy to devote to providing customers with value.

You Can Be More Creative

Another advantage of setting up a company is the fact that you can be more creative. Corporate environments often force people to follow tried-and-tested paths. But as an independent businessperson, you can branch out and take risks that regular management teams would never allow.

You Get Tax Breaks

Why do some many ultra-wealthy people own businesses? It’s pretty simple really: they love the tax breaks.

Think about it. Corporate taxes are much lower than income taxes. So if you run your salary through a company, you wind up keeping more of your profits than if you do it through regular PAYE.

You Get More Control Over Your Life

Here’s the biggest benefit of owning your own business: you get to call the shots. There’s no manager sending you emails at the weekend, demanding that you have work done by Monday morning. Instead, your time is your own, and you can use it as you please. If you’re not happy with the amount of time you’re spending at work, you can always hire somebody to take over the necessary tasks for you. Nobody is telling you that you should do anything.

You Can Get Real Financial Independence

You can achieve financial independence working nine to five in a regular job. But it takes years and years of struggle.

When you own a business, though, you can massively shorten the time it takes to build wealth. What would take some people ten years might only take you two. If you’re really quick off the mark, you could make serious returns that outpace your regular job in less than a year.

You’re Following A Passion

Following your passions in life is critical. You’re only here for a limited amount of time, so you need to find things to do that make you feel fulfilled. And, if you’re like most people, that’s not working in insurance for 30 years. Starting a business is a blank slate which you can take anywhere you like. It’s something that makes you feel engaged every day of your life.

Don’t Fall Off Track With Your Current Project

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StrategyDriven Project Management Article |Project Management|Don't Fall Off Track With Your Current ProjectManaging any sort of team is not easy. It does not matter whether you have ten team members or you have 50, you have to make sure that the project remains on the right track so that you can achieve your objects on-team and on budget. However, this can be a lot easier said than done. As any project manager will attest, it is difficult to ensure things don’t run off in another direction. So, what can you do to aid this? Let’s take a look:

  • Make sure there is a clear direction – You must make your team’s goals and mission clear. The importance of this cannot be overlooked. After all, we tend to find that projects go off track when people are on different pages and things aren’t very clear. This can result in people prioritising the wrong things, for example. Clear and effective communication is at the core of every project today.
  • Targets should be communicated on a regular basis – Setting a clear target is a good place to begin. However, you then need to make sure that your employees can achieve these targets, and that is where supporting management strategies come in. Communication is key here. After all, you are only going to be able to move forward if you communicate with your team regularly throughout about their performance. Onboard learning management systems can be beneficial here.
  • Self-awareness should be promoted – All of the people working on your project need to have a thorough understanding of the individual role they play. This not only relates to their own specific tasks. It also relates to their part within the bigger team. This can be challenging when you have people who are preoccupied with issues relating to everything from policies to processes and governance. Nevertheless, the mindset of your individuals is what is going to make or break your project. This highlights why it is vital to make sure that your team has good self-awareness.
  • Encourage your team to collaborate effectively – Aside from the points that we have discussed above, it is important to create an environment that is highly collaborative. This is critical in terms of reaching your goals, as you need everyone to work together, and you need them to do so in a manner that is as efficient as possible. You cannot be a dictator as a project manager. Yes, you need to give out tasks and lead, but you also need to encourage others as well.
  • Don’t drift away from your project plan – Last but not least, the final thing that you need to keep in mind is to make sure you do not drift away from the plan. This is something that can easily happen when the end goal seems so far away. This is why it is vital to make sure that you set smaller milestones and targets along the way to keep everyone on track.

2 Ways Your Business Can Benefit from Integrating SEO & PPC Processes

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |SEO and PPC Processes|2 Ways Your Business Can Benefit from Integrating SEO & PPC ProcessesSEO and PPC are two of the most popular and widely used digital marketing channels. While there is a lot of instruction and discussion out there when it comes to individual optimisation strategies for these respective channels, there is perhaps a lot less said about how these two channels can actually work well together.

In this article, we want to explore two specific ways in which your business can benefit by having your SEO and PPC processes aligned.

This is equally applicable whether you have an in-house team or if you’re working with a specialist SEO agency or a specialist PPC agency.

Keyword Research

One of the first and most obvious ways in which PPC and SEO can be aligned is when it comes to keyword research. Both channels require keyword research which is the process of finding out what exact words prospective customers for a business are using to find what they’re looking for online.

You then look for how much search volume there is against each individual keyword, as well as other metrics when it comes to PPC such as the average cost per click and how much competition there is to appear for a particular keyword.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of areas in which SEO insights can help PPC and vice versa.

PPC is usually much more directed at the lower end of the funnel, which means the PPC team will usually only be spending ad budget on keywords that convert or have a very high likelihood of converting or assisting a conversion.

Therefore PPC is actually a really good way to test whether or not a keyword is relevant and will ultimately help business objectives before investing a lot of resources into it to help it rank at the top of organic search results.

On the other hand, the SEO team may be able to provide some useful insights to the PPC team when it comes to keyword research as well. Usually, the SEO team will also look at what other websites are ranking for a particular keyword and that will give them a hint as to the intent behind the search query because that is what Google takes into consideration when choosing which websites to rank for a particular term.

In that research, the SEO team will usually also look at the landing pages and on-page copy of competing websites that are appearing for a particular search term.

This usually provides a lot of insights into what types of customer fears, motivations, and values appear to be important, which competitors are trying to target with their own page copy.

All of this can be particularly useful insights for the PPC team, especially if they choose to target a keyword and then produce a landing page specifically for that keyword.

User Behaviour Insights

One of the other ways in which both the SEO and PPC teams can work well together is by looking at the behaviour of users once they arrive on the website, whether that is through paid search or through SEO.

With SEO, you will tend to have a broader spectrum of keywords driving traffic to the website, because with PPC, you will tend to only spend money with a very specific objective of driving a very specific action through your ads.

With SEO, you have a little bit less control over what keywords drive traffic to your website, but of course, you can shape this somewhat.

One of the best ways of understanding how effective and relevant a particular keyword is by analysing the behaviour of users that use that keyword to arrive on your website and seeing what they do next.

You will be looking at which pages they tend to engage the most with and which sections of those pages they tend to engage the most with. Of course, you’re able to do this through tools such as Google Analytics.

You want to see: are there any particular pages that have very high bounce rates? i.e. are people leaving the website right after visiting that particular page? Now, of course, this doesn’t automatically mean that there’s something wrong.

They may have simply received the information that they were looking for and then chosen to leave. However, sometimes high bounce rates can be indicative of a problem with the user experience that you can then go and fix and hopefully improve your conversion rates.

Similarly, the paid search team can provide insights into what types of copy and message are working better because they’re able to produce specific landing pages for particular keywords and campaigns.

They’re able to test a lot more than perhaps the SEO team can, therefore they’ll have a much richer data set of what types of keywords and messages tend to convert better, which can then be utilised on the SEO ranking landing page.

Closing Thoughts

These were just a couple of ways in which having SEO and PPC processes a lot more integrated can benefit your business. There are many other benefits of having SEO and PPC working in tandem, such as capturing more SERP real estate and optimising ad spend, which perhaps we can get into in a future article.