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Taking Control Of Your Business Finances

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Business Finances|Taking Control Of Your Business FinancesIt is well-documented that the majority of new businesses fail. Cash flow is an obstacle for many aspiring entrepreneurs, and this is why taking control of business finances is so critical. If you’re preparing to launch a startup, or you’re in the early days of growing a small business, here is some advice to help you reduce risks and manage your money effectively.

Plan ahead

Your business plan should outline how you’re going to fund your company and how you’re going to monetize ideas to generate a steady income and make a profit. Whether you’re new to business, or you’ve been established for several years, it’s crucial to plan in advance. Create budgets, evaluate spending and look for ways to make savings without compromising on quality or customer service. Increasing efficiency is an excellent way to lower expenses while also increasing your profit margins. Use forecasts to influence growth plans and resist the temptation to run before you can walk. It’s wise to consider investing in expansion once you start generating profits and demand for your products or services is increasing. Until you reach this point, it’s beneficial to tread cautiously when it comes to your finances.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Business Finances|Taking Control Of Your Business FinancesMake budgeting simple

Budgeting is an incredibly useful tool for businesses, particularly those looking to reduce spending or save money. To make budgeting simple, make use of software and apps and keep track of expenses. Monthly web hosting enables you to pay a set fee every month, for example. You could also look into annual options. Make sure you know which payments are coming out of your accounts every month, which services you’re paying for once a year and what you’ve signed up for on an ad hoc or on-demand basis. If you have a firm grip on your expenses, this will help to prevent overspending and cash flow problems. It’s very easy to forget about payments when you have direct debits or you touch to pay via apps or instant web payments. Analyze your accounts and update or revise your list of regular payments every few months to make sure that your budget is accurate.

Invest in protection

Running a business carries risks, and none of us know what is around the corner. Even if your financial situation is rosy, you can never be too careful. Natural disasters, cybercrime, theft, incidents that affect your brand image and reputation and economic and political uncertainty can all jeopardize even the most successful, profitable businesses. Investing in protection is essential for all entrepreneurs. Make sure you have the relevant insurance and try and draw up plans and policies to minimize disruption in the event of unexpected curveballs. If you have insurance, you have an emergency fund available and you have a plan B to keep the business running smoothly, this will stand you in good stead if the waters get choppy.

Managing accounts and trying to generate profits year in, year out can be hugely challenging for business owners. One of the most important jobs to master as an entrepreneur is taking control of your finances. Plan ahead, keep a close eye on your accounts, budget and make sure you have protective measures in place.

5 Key Business Considerations To Keep In Mind

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Considerations|5 Key Business Considerations To Keep In MindWhen you’re running a business, your mind can be a really busy place. Most of the time, when you’re in a set job, you’ll find that you have one major responsibility or role. Your job title often means that there’s a set thing that you need to work on – and that’s great. However, when you’re a business owner, there’s usually a full range of things that you need to be working on. And so, it can mean that you’re always doing so many things to keep your business running. But not only that, you have to be thinking of things to help it grow too. As a business looking for success, whether you’re currently running it from home or not, you will definitely want to think about what you want to do to make that happen. Here are five key considerations to keep in mind.

1. Marketing

To start with, you are going to want to be thinking about your marketing. What sort of marketing methods are you working on? How are you able to get your business and brand name out there? Really start to think about what it is that you want to create and pull together a marketing plan that allows you to shout about what you’re doing.

2. Outgoings

From here, you’re then going to want to take a look at your outgoings. You may find that you don’t really know what your business expenses are but that then can mean that you aren’t able to track your profits or business growth. So instead, it’s much better for you to be thinking about what costs you have to help you ensure you make a profit.

3. Manufacturing

The next thing that you’re going to want to consider is the manufacturing side of things. It could be the case that you have to find suppliers to work with, or consider doing it yourself with the right equipment. When that’s the case, you’ll want to put the right time and care into choosing a mixer or whatever it is that you need. This is to ensure that you have got the right setup in place and you know that you are able to create the products that you need.

4. Growth Plans

You should also have some sort of growth plans in mind. It’s safe to say that if you want to get somewhere you’ll want to be able to have a plan on how you’re going to get there. So start to think about the steps you need to be able to take to get to where you want to be.

5. Customer Service

Finally, there’s also customer service for you to be thinking about. As you may know, when it comes to business, the key to making things work out for you, is to ensure that your customer is happy. So, if you want to be able to nail all of the other points and, of course, scale, you have to be able to produce stellar customer service too. So make sure that you are hot on emails, getting orders out, and if you’re not sure, hire a service team to help you.

How To Protect Your Business

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When you own a business, you need to know how to protect it. There are threats that could damage it – and you – from all directions, including cybercrime, lawsuits, and contract issues among many more. By putting some of these ideas into practice, you can give yourself an added layer of protection that could save you a lot of worry and money in the long run. Read on to find out more.

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | How To Protect Your Business

Be Wary Of Social Media

Social media can be great for business; it’s the ideal way to connect with more of your target audience, and you can advertise very cheaply – if you post the right kind of post that captures people’s imagination, you might even go viral and essentially advertise for free.

But just as social media can be wonderful for your business, boosting it much further and giving it greater reach than any other method could, it can also be dangerous. Anything you say online will be archived for all time, and sometimes it can even be taken completely out of context and used against you, and this is especially true if it’s a business account posting.

When using social media, always think twice about what you’re about to say, and if it could be taken the wrong way, think again. In the worst cases when your reputation has been attached through social media, you can hire reputation management services to help you regain your good name.

Train Your Employees

No matter how much you know not to open email attachments from strangers or to click on links that look suspicious, your employees might not, and it’s vital that they are trained to understand more about online safety because it’s all part of protecting your business. Don’t just assume that they know what to do and what the best practices are; ask them outright.

To be completely sure, even if most people are aware of what to do, it’s still a good idea to implement regular training on the issue. The more they know, the more they’ll notice, and the more protected your business will be.

Destroy Your Data Properly

All businesses are going to have some form of confidential data or sensitive information in their files somewhere. Whether it’s customers’ address details or credit card numbers, or the company’s own bank accounts, if any of this information were to get into the wrong hands, it could spell disaster for you, either because your finances could be compromised, or because the information could be used to steal your customers’ identities.

If you have this information on paper, make sure you destroy it properly when you need to – shred it, rather than simply throw it in the trash. If it’s digitally stored, make sure you destroy the information completely rather than just deleting it because a cybercriminal will be able to restore it and use it for their own illegal needs.

Using the cloud is going to help in most cases with this issue. The information will be securely stored, so you’ll be able to access it whenever you need to, and no one else will be able to find it.

Is your Business Not Growing? Here’s What you Could be Doing Wrong

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If you feel as though your business is stagnating, then you will know how frustrating this can be. You may be able to fix the issue though, if you are able to pinpoint the cause properly.

You Don’t have a Good Marketing Plan

Operating without any kind of written plan is not a good idea if you want to keep your business running like it should. If you do not have a good plan, then you may find that your competitors end up surpassing you and this is the last thing that you need. Sustained growth and cost containment all require a huge deal of planning, so you have to make sure that you explore every option here so you can prepare your business for any future hiccups.

You Don’t have a System

Believe it or not, systems save time and they also give you the chance to monitor all of the different parts of your business. If you want to facilitate growth, then you need to try and track your weekly and your monthly productions. You also need to develop and track your leads, and boost your customer retention rate. If you can use tools to monitor your customer satisfaction, then this will help you out a lot here, so keep that in mind as much as possible. Look into sample accountability to find out more. You can find additional info here.

You Cannot Differentiate Yourself

If you or your team can’t answer why you are different from your competition, then you may have just found the reason why you are not growing as well as you could be. Take the time to come up with the answer and then tell your staff. The answer here should be automatic. It’s the key to making sure that you are not selling price over value and that you are able to close big sales with ease.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Is your Business Not Growing? Here’s What you Could be Doing Wrong

You’re Not Investing

Some say that it takes money to make money, but so many companies underspend when it comes to marketing and advertising. You have to know that your business growth is often related to how much you are able to allocate in this area. You should be spending around 9% of your projected revenue every year on reinvestment. If you can do this then you will be able to increase your company potential more than you realise.

You’re Not Staffed

You may say that you do not have enough money to hire help. That being said, you have to make sure that you don’t defer hiring staff. If you do, then you may find that you end up losing out and that you are not able to advance your company. This is the last thing that you want, so you have to make sure that you invest in your business and that you hire people to help you out with any non-essential tasks. Outsourcing is a fantastic way for you to do this if you want to stay under budget. Little things like this can really work wonders for your profit and your rate of progression.

How To Market Your Small Business Locally

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Unless you are specifically choosing to market to a huge audience right from the start, when you run a small business, it’s often better to start with your local community, even if you’re only selling online and don’t have a physical store in the area. If you do have a store, it’s even more important to use your local area in your marketing practices; now more than ever in the last few decades, local business is something that more people want to support, so it’s a good idea to use what you have and create a marketing campaign around it.

Marketing locally doesn’t mean you have to limit yourself and your business. It simply means that you have a sure footing to launch a wider campaign from, and by establishing yourself as the leader in your sector and being part of your local community, you can more easily fend off competition. Read on to find out how to market your small business locally and make the most of your hometown.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | How To Market Your Small Business Locally

Use Local SEO

SEO is crucial for any business, and getting it right is one of the most important elements of any marketing campaign. This is why it can often be a good idea to go to a white label agency for advice and to outsource your SEO entirely. No matter who creates your SEO and the strategy behind it, however, making sure that local interest is piqued is going to have to be a part of it.

When writing your blog posts, social media posts, and other content, use your local area. Talk about why you love it, what it has to offer, how much your business could improve the lives of those who live there, and more. SEO revolves around keywords, and although they must be relevant to what you’re selling, and to the phrases that people will search for, try to incorporate your town within them.

Use It In Your Brand

When you want to attract customers from your local area, you can use that area in your branding (although be careful of copyright and make sure you are completely in line with all laws and regulations when you do so). The name of the town in your brand name can work well, announcing that you are local and proud of it. Or you might take one element that the town is famous for (a particular tree, a historical figure, a view, and so on) and include this in your branding.

Although this is a great idea to gain more local interest, it should be used with caution – if you want to expand your business at a later date, anything that is too specific might work against you, putting people off the idea of working with you or buying from you because they don’t realize you can help them. Assuming you want to grow your business in other areas, try to be subtle when using your local town in your branding.

Be Part Of The Community

It won’t help your business if you play on the fact that you are local but you are never seen in the community, and you are never a part of what is happening. The more you can be part of the community itself, the more your business will be remembered, and the more likely it is that people will want to buy from you.

One way to do this is to organize local events. Although this will cost you money, it will give you a good standing in the community and it will set you apart from your competition. Events could include a local fair, a fun day, or perhaps a workshop wherein you show your skills and have community members try their hand at whatever it is you do too. Not only is this fun, but it will show them that you have the talent to help them.

If you run a business that has no tangible product, then sponsoring an event is a good idea too. You can also sponsor a local sports team, and your name will be seen every week when they play or practice as it will be on their uniforms and even around the field they’re playing on. Think about the things that happen in your community; how can your business be part of that?

Comment On Social Media

Social media is a huge force when it comes to advertising, but users are becoming savvier, and they don’t necessarily like to see adverts taking up their feeds. Because of this, businesses need to think differently, and one way to advertise your business without actually creating adverts is to comment on other people’s posts.

Facebook offers the perfect platform for this. You can create a business page and then, commenting as that page, you can write thoughtful, helpful, or interesting comments on other local businesses’ pages, or join in with discussions that relate to local events. Just make sure you are always polite and think before you post because one wrong post on social media can be a disaster.