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How to Overcome Business Challenges

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Every business will encounter various obstacles. It is how they manage the problems that will determine their success or failure in their industry. To ensure you successfully handle every problem, simply read the following advice on how to overcome business challenges.

Listen to Your Gut

Instinct can often be a business owner’s best friend. When there is no right or wrong answer, sometimes the only thing you can trust is your gut. Ignoring it could result in you making the wrong decision, which could pose a risk to your company’s success. Listen to your built-in radar when making decisions and hiring employees.

Streamline Processes

Complex, lengthy, mundane business processes can often reduce productivity and creativity. This can prevent companies from reaching their goals at the fastest possible rate. If your business is bogged down with too many tasks, it is essential to look for effective techniques or software to streamline processes. For example, learn more about the JD Edwards Consulting Company, who can help you implement a single-entry solution into your large or small business.

Adopt a Frugal Approach to Business

Many companies fail every year because they operate beyond their means. It is therefore important to frugally run your business. Embrace a small business mindset, even if you are running the largest organization on the planet. Microsoft is the perfect example, as the company has told its employees to think of them as “the biggest small company in the world” – so you’ll never spend more money than necessary.

Avoid Emotional Pricing

Many startup companies often do not know how to implement the right pricing strategies when first starting out. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs make the big mistake of allowing their emotions to dictate the pricing of their products and services, as they may worry they will lose a sale if they price a product too high and rule themselves out of the industry before they have even started. However, this can result in a smaller profit margin that can slow down business growth. Always price with your head in business and never your heart. Identify your costs and thoroughly research your competition before you set prices, which you should periodically review.

Introduce New Business Strategies

Many business owners cling tightly onto old tools and techniques, because they don’t know any other way to run their company. However, you must regularly review your processes to ensure you are using the right tools and strategies for your business. For example, traditional companies will need to introduce online marketing techniques, such as blogging and social media, to replace or complement their tried and tested offline tactics.

Abandon What’s Not Working

Ensure your success by having the courage to walk away from a product, service, or process, even if you initially believed it would be beneficial for your business. These blinders can often stand in the way of your business growth and profitability, so you must strive to immediately identify what isn’t working for your company to quickly move on.

5 Ways To Use Content Marketing To Grow Your Company

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Content marketing is a great way of creating brand awareness and improving your business’s credibility. This can attract new leads and potentially generate sales. As the name ‘content marketing’ implies, this method of marketing is all about generating content whether that be written or recorded on video. Most people absorb this content online nowadays. Here are just a few examples of content marketing.

Show off your expertise with a business blog

A great way to build credibility as a professional is to start a blog giving advice on various matters related to your business. This could be advice to clients or fellow business owners. The aim of a blog is not to be promotional – people won’t read a blog which is fifty posts about how great your product is. You should instead focus on being informative. It can be a great chance to educate your clients or give your opinion on certain arguments within your field. For example, if you run a estate agent business, you could blog tips about how to get a good mortgage rate, tips on organising moving day and advice on home improvements. It’s a great way of building respect in your field and could convert several customers. There are many advice columns out there on starting a business blog such as this one Should You Start A Business Blog?

Gain credibility with a Youtube channel

Those that prefer public speaking to writing may prefer to start a vlog (you can do both). A vlog is made up of regular video content. As with business blog post, these should be largely non-promotional and informative if you want to get views. Like a business blog, this can gain you credibility. It’s worth investing in a good camera and microphone as this will help to reinforce your professional image.

Try white paper marketing

White paper marketing is a means of offering an informative guide to your business. This can help to get people interested in what you do. Articles such as White Paper Marketing: How To Create Quality Leads Online Consistently offers information on how to create such content. This content shouldn’t be promotional in tone and should read as if you were writing a lengthy magazine article on a product. Similar forms of content include press releases and instructional posts.

Encourage positive online reviews

Positive reviews can help a build good reputation for your business and also help generate sales. These reviews cannot be written by you, although you can encourage others to review you. Lots of sites such as Trip Advisor offer the chance to write user reviews. You can also consider contacting publications and getting professionally reviewed.

Write an e-book

Want to be respected in your field? Being able to claim that you’re a published author could achieve this. Getting a book published is easier than ever before due to the rise of e-books. Such a book could be an autobiographical rise to success or it could discuss a topic within your field. Again, don’t make it promotional. Whilst you can name-drop your business in there, people will be more inclined to read it if it’s informative or entertaining.

Don’t Leave These Things Out Of Your Business Budget!

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People just starting out in the business world will often make mistakes when it comes to creating their budgets. That is a significant problem because it means the entrepreneurs can run out of money before they make a profit. With that in mind, there are some budget essentials listed below that you won’t want to overlook.

Marketing and promotion

Marketing is the single most critical aspect of your operation, and you need to spend a lot of money if you want the best results. These days, it’s possible to lower your promotional spend using digital tools like social media. However, you still need to allocate a substantial amount of funds.

Employment costs

You need to make sure there is always enough money in the bank to pay your employees. At the same time, you also need to think about whether or not you might employ more people in the next twelve months. Be sure you include all those costs in your budget.

Travel and accommodation fees

As the infographic below shows, most business owners have to spend a lot of cash when it comes to travel and accommodation. You never know when you might need to meet a client on the other side of the country, and so it’s vital that you keep enough funds in your accounts.

If you remember to include all those things in your business budget this year; you should find your company on the right track. Still, there is always more to learn, and so you should continue your research after clicking away from this page.


Infographic designed by Jettly

Why Disaster Recovery Strategies Are Still Crucial for Businesses – Even in the Cloud Age

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Recently, it was reported that scientists may have found out a very plausible reason for the disappearance of the Mayan civilization. The 3,000-year-old civilization vanished almost entirely (though there are still some descendants of the Mayans alive today) in or around the 9th century AD, and as yet, nobody really knows why this happened. They were highly advanced, large in number, and had inhabited their lands for millennia, and yet they were effectively wiped out.

The new theory, based on analysis of materials found at the bottom of what is known as the ‘Blue Hole’ in Belize, is that the Mayans left their region and dispersed, breaking up their civilization, because of a drought. A natural disaster was something that this 3,000-year-old civilization just wasn’t equipped to handle.

So, what does this have to do with your business? Well, just like the Mayans, you may well be very vulnerable to the destructive effects of a disaster.

Sophisticated Technology Only Does Part of The Job of Protecting You

 

Disaster recovery used to be a big deal in business, with companies prioritizing every element of their strategy as essential, from back-ups for data through to providing access to staff from offsite locations to allow for business continuity when an office and its equipment were made inaccessible (or destroyed) by a disaster.

Naturally, some of the things that took a lot of work to plan for 15 years ago are no longer such complicated problems. With the cloud, offsite back-ups are no longer essential for all businesses to preserve data if servers are destroyed. Remote working is very easy to achieve with mobile technology and SaaS applications, so keeping key staff in operation when a site is inaccessible is also no longer something that requires intense planning.

However, just because the technology is there and a lot of your DR plan can effectively be pinned on it, it doesn’t mean you no longer need one.

Detailed Planning

While you know your data is all backed up to the cloud and your staff all have access to what they need from home (or a secondary office location), you still need to look at the details. Important things include the roles and responsibilities in the event of a disaster, inter-team communication protocols, and how key stakeholders and clients will be kept up to date and provided with services during the incident.

Risk Analysis

While devising your DR plan, you should also consider the risks associated with different types of disaster, and also both the likelihood and severity of those risks. This will vary by location for things like earthquakes and hurricanes, however, some disasters like fires and floods caused by burst pipes can happen with fairly equal likelihood anywhere, and this all needs to be thought about in your plan.

Don’t rely on the fact you have the latest technology when it comes to disaster planning – the Mayans had some of the best tech of their age, too!

Improve Your Employees’ Production Levels by Changing Up the Food and Beverage Options On-Site

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As the owner of a company, you’re always looking to find ways that improve the production level of your employees. Today’s employers know more about what motivates and drives their employees than ever before, which is helping them to enjoy some fabulous results. While there are all kinds of routes you can take, one that you may not have considered is the fuel you’re offering staff.

Pretty much every company, no matter the size, offers on-site snacks, beverages, and even meals for employees to access. Well, here’s the thing, did you know that the options you provide can actually have an impact on their productivity levels since the food and beverages affect their overall health? Let’s take a closer look.

What Fast Foods and Snacks Do to a Person’s Health

In order to get an idea of just how important the right food and drink choices are, one needs to look closer at what fast foods and snacks do to a person’s overall health. As reported in middaydaily.com, those under the age of 30 who consume fast food at least three times a week suffer higher levels of anxiety and stress. This is believed to be brought on by the high levels of fatty acids that exist in fast food.

As far as the healthiest diet goes, the same study went on to show that the Mediterranean diet is indeed one of, if not the healthiest, choices. This is a diet that is rich in fish, seafood, tubers, legumes, and vegetables.

Experts recommend looking at food the same way you look at fuel for an automobile. Sure, the regular fuel will give you what you need to get the job done, but when you go for premium fuel (the healthy food choices), the performance will be that much better. Food has a huge impact on a person’s cognitive performance, which plays into a person’s decision-making skills. If you want your employees to make sound decisions, then better food options may be the answer.

What Can You Do to Help?

So, what can you do to help your employees make food choices that will impact their productivity in a positive way? Well, you can start by encouraging them to eat small meals and/or snacks more frequently. Forcing your employees to go hours and hours without any fuel is going to greatly affect their performance.

Ideally, your employees should get a break every couple of hours where they can have a quick snack and re-fuel, keeping their mind sharp. Not only that, but it helps employees from feeling sluggish, which can then lead to mistakes and errors in the workplace.

Research has shown that foods such as carrots, blueberries, whole grains, avocado, nuts, and dark chocolate all help with productivity levels. It can be beneficial to add these choices to your snack stations or on-site cafeteria/kitchen. As well, be sure that employees always have a supply of fresh water available to them, instead of just coffee.

Providing your employees with energy and brain-boosting foods won’t just benefit them, but the whole company.