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The Types of Business Model You Might Want to Consider for Your First Company

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Business Model|The Types of Business Model You Might Want to Consider for Your First CompanyThere are many decisions that need to be made when you’re looking to go into business for the first time. If you want to find lasting success, it’s important to get the fundamental decisions right. Among these is the question of what kind of business are you actually going to operate in terms of its business structure and its function and purpose within your chosen industry. We’re going to explore some of the options today, so read on to find out more.

Manufacturer

First of all, you might want to consider operating as a manufacturer within a particular niche. The manufacturing of supplies, products, parts and plenty of other things is always important and always will be. Manufacturers are relied upon by lots of different businesses operating within many fields and sectors. The startup costs can be high, but the profit margins can be strong too with the right setup and approach.

Distributor

Logistics and distribution has long played a vital role in the functioning of modern economies, and that’s truer now than ever before. Getting products and supplies to where they need to be in a timely manner is important, and any holdups in distribution can have knock-on effects for all kinds of other businesses too. That’s not something anyone wants to be dealing with, and it’s why reliable distributors matter.

A Franchise

If you’re looking to start a business that’s going to be less challenging to startup and that comes with a ready made idea, it makes sense to consider a franchise model. You can start a tax preparation business, a fast food chain and pretty much anything in between with the use of a franchise model. It definitely takes some of the hard work out of getting your very first business off the ground.

Retailer

Selling directly to the public is one common way to form the premise of your business. Retail companies can also focus on B2B sales within a particular business niche however, so that’s something that you might want to explore too. Succeeding with a retail business means having good sales people and offering strong customer service, as well as an ability to deal with all kinds of problems as they arise.

Ecommerce

If you want to get into sales but you want your new business to be online-based, it makes sense to consider the ever-expanding option of ecommerce. Of course, as we’re all buying online more than ever today, ecommerce is bigger than it ever has been, and there are certainly opportunities out there for you to take advantage of if you want to. It’s definitely a business model worth exploring if you want to keep startup costs low.

Each of the options we’ve discussed here is worth exploring because each business model we’ve mentioned is important and matters in its own right; there’s no doubting that. But what’s right for you will depend on where your skills lie and what you want your business to be, so give this some thought.

How to Use the Internet to Boost Your Business

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Boost your Business|How to Use the Internet to Boost Your BusinessIf you run a business, you will undoubtedly be aware of the importance of an internet presence. From digital marketing to content creation, the internet is one of the main ways that your potential clients and customers will find you, so you need to make sure you are using the internet to its full potential. When you run a business, you may not have a dedicated digital team, but fortunately, there are plenty of experts, software, and technology out there to make it as simple as possible to maximize your internet presence. Here are just a few of the ways you can use the internet to boost your business.

Virtual Tradeshows

These are a great way to connect with potential customers and other businesses, demonstrate your services and products, and check out the competition, all from your own home. Virtual tradeshows are perfect for those who cannot attend in person for whatever reason, and they can also cost less to attend and prepare for. You can still educate your audience with live webinars, and interact through the use of live chat functions, so you can get all the perks of an in-person tradeshow without having to leave the house.

Social Media Platforms

Don’t underestimate the power of social media as a tool for marketing, advertising, and increasing your client base. Some of the benefits of social media for business are that it is cost-effective, reaches a wide audience, and allows you to check out analytics and post insights to see exactly how successful your posts have been.

IT Systems

For a more behind-the-scenes use of technology and the internet, IT systems and consultants can help in many ways. They can recommend products and software that would work for you and your business goals, implement new systems or update your old ones. Furthermore, investing in IT consultancy can help save you time and money in the long run, increase productivity, and leave you free to focus on your business’s other elements.

Website

Having a high-quality website is incredibly important, not only for your users but also to help boost you up the list of search engine results. Make sure that your website is easy to use, the links are all working, and that the pages are in the correct place. You can also link your social media to your site and vice versa to ensure that people know how to find you and easily navigate between your different platforms and sites.

SEO

A well-designed website is just one of the techniques used in SEO (search engine optimization). This is the process of increasing organic traffic to your website by making sure that your site appears high up in the list of search results. This can also be achieved through good-quality copy that is rich in keywords, among many other SEO techniques. The majority of internet searchers do not look past the first page of results, so it is important to take SEO seriously to ensure that customers can easily find you when they are looking online.

How to Boost Brand Awareness for Your Business

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Brand Awareness|How to Boost Brand Awareness for Your BusinessLaunching a business is never a simple task, but building your company and taking its success to the next level can be even more of a challenge. Attracting new customers and increasing sales is vital to expand your business and to ensure you achieve sustainable long term growth. But, understanding exactly how to get your brand out there and let everyone know about your products can be difficult. Boosting brand awareness can play a significant role in growing your business’s success and ensuring that it gets noticed by your target audience. In this article, you will discover how you can boost your brand awareness and reach your target audience effectively.

Keep Your Branding Consistent

To build brand awareness, your brand needs to be easy to identify and stand out from competing brands. The more consistent your branding is, the simpler it will be for your target audience to recognize it. Having a recognizable brand ensures that your products become familiar to your customers.

When you build your brand, you need to ensure consistency in every area, from your corporate colors to your logo’s positioning. Writing brand guidelines will help you to ensure that everyone in your organization knows how to use your branding consistently to ensure that your business is always represented correctly.

A consistent brand image should be apparent in your social media packages, marketing collateral, and most importantly, your product packaging. In many cases, the product packaging is the customer’s first interaction with your brands, which is why it’s integral to time and resources to develop custom packaging that displays consistent branding. First impressions last; thus, you want to make it count.

Start With Your Website

Almost all businesses have a website, but not every company uses its website effectively. Your website is often the first point of contact a customer will make with your business and creates their first impression of your brand. To ensure that you create a positive first impression of your business that leaves your potential customers wanting to know more, you need your website to encapsulate the essence of your brand. The appearance and feel of your website should be perfectly aligned with your brand’s personality, as this will ensure it is easily recognizable for website visitors. Having an attractive website that features plenty of engaging content will make it far more likely that website visitors will become customers.

Spread the Word

Having a fantastic product and an amazing brand is excellent, but you will need to let everyone know about it to help you achieve success in your business. Setting up social media pages and posting on them regularly is essential. Don’t forget to use your brand personality throughout your social media posts to keep your messages consistent.

Social media is a fantastic place to start when promoting your business and offers many opportunities to engage with audiences across the world. But, taking a multi-channel approach is the most effective way to develop the highest level of brand awareness and to boost your business above competing brands. Working with TV advertising services to build a campaign designed to maximize reach and build awareness of your brand is sure to get your brand noticed by a far wider audience. Advertising on this scale should translate into a boost in sales and healthy return on your investment, as well as increased awareness of your brand.

Finding Out What People Really Think Of Your Products And Services

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |User Experience|Finding Out What People Really Think Of Your Products And ServicesTo ensure you provide an excellent website experience, you need to find out what an actual real-life user’s experience is of your website, product, or service, and so on.

One way of doing this – and don’t forget, this will change from one project to another – is to interview real-life users in real-life situations.

This means getting a group of people and asking them for their opinion on your product, whilst they are actually using it. This information can be invaluable for a content marketing agency or a person in charge of your digital marketing efforts.

Sounds a tough call and it can be, which is why many companies employ people who are specialists in what is known as UX interviews. Be aware though that not everyone who puts this on their CV is a specialist of this kind. It takes more than a cup of tea and a biscuit to understand, process, and collect this kind of data from people.

For a start, you need to find customers who are willing to have their user experience measured and quantified. Projects of this kind can work in all kinds of ways. Individual interviews are commonly used where the information the business wants is particularly detailed and thorough.

Focus groups are important and can be run along pre-determined lines. For example, the groups may be determined by age or another indicator such as level of experience in using a product and so on.

How the information is gathered is important too. Brainstorming sessions, user interviews, as a group or individually, and asking people to complete a questionnaire are all common features of UX projects.

Many of these kinds of interviews are based on observation too. As a result, the person doing the observing of users and customers needs to have a heightened awareness of their own thoughts and opinions.

Our own judgments invariably color how we see things and when we observe someone struggling to check out online, rather than thinking this may be a design fault, we may assume it is because their computer skills are pretty low.

Take a look at some of the things that make for a great set of user interviews:

  • You need to be genuine and interested in what your customers are saying – Don’t be defensive.
  • You need to adapt to each and every user – For example, if they have stopped talking, are they thinking, or have they finished what they have said?
  • Be aware of how the customer is interacting with you – Are they telling you what they think you want to hear, rather than being honest?
  • Makes sure the customer is providing their opinion – Did they find it difficult to use your website for example? You don’t want to know if their mom does…
  • Some people will censor their own views – They might say it is a ‘complicated website to use, but for others, it’ll be fine.’ It’s never fine if they found the website difficult to use.
  • You want to know the problems, not the solutions
  • Always dig deeper – For this, you need to ask the ‘why?’ question.
  • Your observations must be objective
  • Let people speak spontaneously

Employee Engagement Is The Key To Competitive Advantage

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Employee Engagement|Employee Engagement Is The Key To Competitive AdvantageEmployee engagement is often confused with the satisfaction or happiness of an employee. This is not the case. Employee engagement is when an employee genuinely cares about a business – it is their emotional commitment to the organisation in question. They genuinely want the company to succeed. This is imperative if you are to achieve a competitive advantage, and effective employee engagement software can help you to get there.

Why should you focus on employee engagement levels?

There is no better reason to focus on improving employee engagement than the fact that it will drive your business to greater success. If your employees are committed to the success of your firm, you are naturally more likely to succeed. This is even more significant nowadays due to a number of factors, including the fact that people have become the key source of competitive advantage and there is a war for the talent that is out there, with businesses becoming more serious in their efforts to attract and retain the best employees.

Using software to boost and manage employee engagement

So, where do you start? Well, first, you need to select employee engagement metrics, so that you can determine how engaged your employees are. Metrics include the likes of personal growth, feedback, recognition, happiness, wellness, relationship with managers, ambassadorship, satisfaction, company alignment, and relationships with colleagues. After you’ve done this, you need an employee engagement platform, which will ensure that initiatives run consistently and that cadence is maintained if things start to slip. The employee engagement platform will gather feedback from employees and crucial data that can help you make critical decisions on how to improve engagement.

What about remote workers? Can you make sure that they are engaged?

More and more businesses are embracing remote workers at present. This is a trend that was already starting to get more and more prominent. However, the recent pandemic has accelerated this trend further, and now more people are working on a remote basis than ever before. If you hire remote workers at your business, you may be wondering if you can keep them engaged at your business without seeing them on a day-to-day basis. The truth is that you can.

There are a number of ways you can go about this. Ensuring that communication is regular and easy is important. You should also look for different ways to bond and get to know your remote workers, such as virtual team building activities. Aside from this, it is important to make your remote workers feel just as valued as those who go into the office every day. Bonuses and small gestures can go a very long way, as remote workers often struggle to feel included or like they are part of a team.

The best way to unlock the true potential of your business is to invest in employee engagement software. This will help you to strengthen your employees’ emotional commitment to the business, which will have a positive effect on the overall profitability and success of your firm.