Posts

How to Start Your Small Business Online

/in /by

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start your small business|How to Start Your Small Business OnlineIn this article, we’re going to discuss why you should place your business in the online world, even if you’re just starting up. Also, you’ll find a list below of helpful pointers that are important considerations when readying your business to go online.

Why you should venture into online business

If you prefer to operate a traditional business in brick-and-mortar, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But, you’ll be well served to take into account that the world is changing, and people’s buying patterns are changing as well.

With over four billion users as of July 2020, diving into an online business venture is not a bad idea. This might even be your business’ salvation during this ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Aside from working remotely, an online business is cost-effective and competitive (based on your marketing strategy). This gives your company, no matter how small, a fighting chance against mammoth industries in your niche.

This is one reason why we recommend starting your online business sooner, rather than later. And here are the five easy steps that you’ll need to do to kick-start your online business:

Five easy steps when starting a small online business

1. Create a business plan

Identify what problem you are solving

Your business is a solution to your potential customers’ problems. But first, you need to define the problem at hand. What problem does your business want to solve? What need do you seek to fulfill?

Take some time to think about whether your skillset solves real-world problems. If it does, check if your competitors offer the same strategies. And if they do, what makes your solutions unique?

This will be your leverage against your competitors. Analyze these factors to see whether your market is thriving or nonexistent.

Manage your startup budget

When you’re starting a small business online, you will need startup capital to cover a range of necessary expenses. For beginners, you need to estimate the budget by having a good guess of your operating expenses.

Pay attention to the expenses that must be covered and make sure they are budgeted. The more cost-effective your startup, the more income you will have to work with.

2. Choose your business structure

When you’re starting your business online, you should define your business structure. You can operate solo (sole proprietorship), or with partners (LLC or corporation).

Sole proprietorship

This is the simplest type of business structure. You can operate this on your own even without filing a lot of paperwork. However, there are risks to this business structure.

Your business won’t have protection from liabilities of debts and business obligations. You will be personally responsible for all of these. That’s why you only choose sole proprietorship when you can handle your business on your own with little need for liability protection.

Limited liability company (LLC)

This business structure allows you to share your business liabilities and obligations with other individuals. If things go south, a LLC protects your personal assets from the liability of business debts.

Through a LLC, you share your liabilities with other individuals. The business is owned by you and these individuals share in profits and liabilities.

Corporation

You’d want to use this business structure if you choose to gain investors for your business. Corporations are like LLCs, but with outside funding possibilities and more personal protection.

In order to interest possible investors in purchasing your stock, you’ll need to arrive at a business arrangement. They will need to trust that your business will deliver. You can close more deals with investors if you know how to write a winning RFP response.

3. Market research and analysis

By the time you write your business plan, you’ve already done your market research. You know what is missing from the puzzle, and how your business can provide this missing piece. But you’ll need to dig deeper in order for your business to succeed.

You need to understand how your target market works. Do market research and analyze their buying patterns, market needs, etc. Know your market’s queries on search engines, what keywords they use, and other competitive advantages that you can use as leverage.

4. Poise yourself as an expert in your field

Contribute to your niche by providing expert ideas and solutions that come from trusted sources. Build your profile in your community. This builds trust between you and your potential consumers.

5. Design and optimize your website

Your website will be your online storefront. This is where you will communicate and exchange products/services online with your consumers. Thus, your website should be customer-friendly in order to give users a good experience. Some tips that you’ll need to keep in mind when designing a website:

  • Keep your website clean and simple
  • Make your website easily navigable
  • Every element on your website should contribute to converting your visitors to sales.

Final word

When you’re starting a small online business, you want to begin with your best foot forward. Get a step ahead of your competitors when you start your online business using these five easy steps!

How to Start Your Own Online Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start your own online business|Find out How You Can Start an Online BusinessStarting an online business has many advantages. You can work from any location, it requires very little capital, and it provides you access to a wide range of customers. Most people fail to realize that it requires just as much strategic planning as setting up a brick and mortar office.

So, if you want to learn how to start an online business, these are the best steps to follow.

1.The Right Work Model

The best online business to start will go nowhere without the right company model. Like most people, you probably want to indulge in something you are passionate about, but passion might not pay your bills. So, what do you do?

Before you settle for a job idea, familiarize yourself with Ramit Sethi’s Demand Matrix. It will help you choose a business model that is in demand and scalable.

2. Choosing Your Business Idea

There are numerous online business opportunities in the market today. The good news is, you don’t have to do something completely new; you can freelance using the skills you already have. Otherwise, you should make up a list of company ideas that best suit your talents.

What comes easy to you? In what ways do your friends often seem to rely on you most? Can you turn that skill into a profit? If yes, then you can jump to the next step.

3. Get Validation

Before you start an online business, make sure your chosen idea is validated. Do you have a website? Set up a landing page where you can promote your brand. Do you have competitors? Look through their customer reviews to get an understanding of your potential client’s interests. If you still feel unsatisfied, create your survey and send it to prospective users.

Their honest opinion will give you positive or negative validation. Use the feedback to determine whether the idea is worth the investment or to devise a solution for the current gaps in the market.

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start your own online business|Find out How You Can Start an Online Business4. Create Your Plan

Once your idea is validated, the next step to take is an online business plan. It is crucial because it will determine where you get the funding you need and the amount you require. It also serves as the backbone for your work foundation.

Draft a simple work plan. Then conduct a SWOT analysis. Use the information from the business survey you received earlier to define your competitors, price models, market type, and distribution methods.

Then analyze the cost of your venture and determine the appropriate methods to fund your idea. By the time you are doing the final review, you should have a solid business strategy.

5. Develop a Website

Setting up an online business will not work if you do not have a website unless you are on social media. This is the perfect online representation of your products, services, and brand.

A good website with Google Analytics will help you generate customer traffic and analyze your job performance. The process of creating a site might be a challenge, as well. You have to decide on a unique and memorable domain name, choose the perfect host, and figure out the design that will best work for you.

If all this is too much to handle, you can enroll a web developer instead of doing it yourself. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and has excellent image quality.

6. Legalize the Business

Start an online business only if you can make it legal. Read the online business regulations on the SBA. Once you decide the legal structure you want your business to adapt, register the brand.
Don’t forget to do thorough research on your tax obligations. If you have a shopping cart, configure it so that it can collect your sales taxes automatically.

Online Business Ideas

Sometimes, getting a business idea might be difficult. Those listed below are already making money for many online entrepreneurs. One might be just right for you.

  • Online Gaming Business: Have you played the Double Triple Chance online? Was it addictive? That’s how you know that the online gaming business is making money. To start one, first, prepare yourself for legal issues. Then, consider whether you want to locate your company in offshore countries or not, based on your government jurisdiction. Choose the right gaming software, marketing strategy, and set your budget. Make sure that your games are worth playing.
  • Affiliate Marketing: If you already have a website, affiliate marketing will be an easy transition for you. All you require to do is to pick a product niche for your business and a partner like Amazon or CJ Affiliate that sells that product. Use the traffic on your site to market the service and provide the CTA for customers. You will receive a commission from every successful order.
  • Drop Shipping: Like affiliate marketing, you only need a website and marketing/advertisement capital to start a drop shipping company. Pick a product niche and partner with platforms like Amazon and Etsy. Once a customer purchases the product you are selling, buy it from the manufacturer at a lower cost and sent it to the customer through your drop shipper for free.
  • App Developing: Are you a coder with a great new app idea? Then becoming an app developer should be a no brainer. Start working on it, and once it is done, sell it to customers directly through social media and advertisements or to a more prominent company for an instant payday. If you do not know how to code, you can enlist a certified software developer to collaborate with your genius.

Conclusion

There are many other online business ideas that you can go for. Freelancing is especially a cost-free way to earn money online. If you have the experience, you can become an online business manager and help manage other companies.

The bottom line: don’t work on the model, idea, validation, website, and then forget to maintain the business. Management is just as crucial as any other aspect.

Have you started an online business? Let us know what your experience was like in the beginning.

About the Author

Thomas Glare is a passionate freelance content writer, always striving to inspire others and bring insight into the endless possibilities of the modern times we are currently living. He also spent a lot of time collaborating with some prestigious online casinos, thus being No. 1 expert in matters of gambling. He continues to improve his knowledge and is the co-designer of casinos online, Novomatic Games Representative.

How to Build Long-Lasting Customer Relationships? (A Step-by-Step Guide)

/in /by

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Relationships|How to Build Long-Lasting Customer Relationships? (A Step-by-Step Guide)With the advancement of technology, consumer behavior has changed. Today, marketing and winning over customers is not the difficult part. The biggest challenge faced by businesses today is to retain their customers.

With every passing day, numerous competitors are popping up in each industry. Hence, it is very easy for customers to switch to new brands that appeal to them more. In fact, according to InMoment, 50% of customers leave a brand for competitors who stay more relevant and satisfy their specific needs.

With these changes, maintaining customer relationships is what makes a brand stand out from its competitors. Laying a strong foundation of a healthy customer relationship leads to reduced churn and increased profitability for businesses.

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll get a quick overview of how you too can build strong, long-lasting relationships with your customers.

1. Add Value Through Content

The principle of reciprocity is super-important when we talk about building customer relationships. No relationship works one way. If you don’t add any value to your customers, they are not going to associate with your brand.

The best way to add value is by creating high-quality, useful content for your leads and customers. This is the 101 for starting your customer relationships the right way.

You can use the tried and tested content marketing strategies such as blog posts, ebooks, guides, and white papers. Or, you can even take it a step further by using content such as webinars, checklists, templates, videos, social media content, etc.

2. Increase Engagement with Prospects

Engaging your prospects in meaningful interactions is the best way to go about strengthening your relationships with them. Hence, you must prioritize user engagement.

  • Integrate customer service options such as live chat, chatbot with your website and social media platforms. This will lead to many fruitful interactions with your prospects and customers.
  • Ensure that you actively engage with your prospects on social media platforms. You can do this by interacting in the comments section. Or, you may even individually reach out to people who have previously engaged with your posts.
  • Build an email list and send out weekly newsletters through emails. Add clear CTAs in your emails and encourage replies to begin conversations.

3. Track Customer Data

For building and maintaining customer relationships, you need to store and track all your customer data in one place. It is important to track customer data such as contact info, previous interactions, purchase history, etc. Without this, you won’t be able to manage customer relationships in an optimized manner.

The SuperOffice Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool can help you organize all the data related to your customers. SuperOffice CRM will help you:

  • Manage lead and customer information at a commonplace so that your sales team can pull up entire customer history at one go with ease.
  • Track all your customer touchpoints and have a birds-eye view of how many customers are coming through your sales pipeline.
  • Provide omnichannel personalized experience to your customers leading to increased customer satisfaction.
  • Manage your entire pipeline and close more deals.
  • Track all your success metrics using visual dashboards and in-depth reports to help you find any gaps in your pipeline and fix them.

4. Use Loyalty Programs

Customer retention can be much more profitable than customer acquisition for most businesses. In fact, returning customers tend to spend 67% more than new customers.

Using loyalty programs is a brilliant way to make your one-time customers return to you again and again. If this doesn’t strengthen the relationship with your customers, nothing else will!

The way to build a successful loyalty program is to provide attractive incentives that your customers won’t be able to resist. You can offer incentives such as special discounts, redeemable reward points, free feature upgrades, and similar more offers.

5. Gather Feedback and Iterate Based on that

The final and most important step to building strong customer relationships is to gather feedback from customers and keep updating your products or services based on that. If you don’t take this step seriously, you might start seeing increased customer churn rates.

  • Collect customer feedback from every touchpoint. You can use means such as chatbots, live chats, emails, surveys, or in-app messages to gather feedback.
  • You should also look for any customer complaints or feedback on social media platforms. People tend to use social media for providing negative feedback.
  • Track and analyze all the gathered feedback. Come up with improvements or upgrades in your products and services.
  • You can also creep on your competitors and look for any common customer complaints. This will help you to identify any gaps in your competitors’ products. You can update your products to fill in these gaps.

To Conclude

Studies show that a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to 25% to 95% increased profits! And, laying foundations for long-lasting customer relationships is the key to maximizing your customer retention.

Hence, start implementing these steps today and watch your business grow to new heights in 2021.

How to Run a Successful Janitorial Business

/in /by

Efficiently and successfully running a janitorial business takes time, strategy, and consistency. Due to the ways that janitorial businesses can differ from other companies, there are very specific steps that are most advisable for success.

As a business that focuses on meeting the maintenance, repair, and cleaning needs of others, it’s important for everyone to be on the same page. In order for this to happen, workers, managers, and business owners must effectively do their jobs.

This is where adhering to the following steps comes in handy.

1. Use Time Tracking Software

Time tracking software is a valuable tool for any company; however, janitorial businesses can especially benefit from using this tool.

Janitorial Time tracking software allows you to not only know when your employees are working, but also where they’re working and which tasks are underway. If you employ remote workers or freelancers, then time tracking software can especially come in handy.

Additional benefits of using time tracking software to run a successful janitorial business include the following: knowing where company funds are going, tracking task productivity, and saving time from manual data entry into timesheets.

2. Maintain Contact with Your Clients

Clients are the lifeblood of any business, including janitorial ones. Staying in contact with your clients ultimately helps ensure that your business is meeting their needs.

If the janitorial business is checking all necessary boxes, then having that confirmation is advantageous; if there are areas in need of improvement, then catching this sooner rather than later (and acting accordingly) is always the best protocol.

When communicating with your clients, be open to feedback, suggestions, and even complaints. In the long run, this can only benefit your janitorial business and enable its success.

3. Market Strategically

Strategic marketing is another imperative measure for successfully running a janitorial business. In order for your business to thrive, the free market needs to know about it. Contrary to certain beliefs, the importance of a marketing plan doesn’t disappear when clients arrive.

Even as your janitorial business thrives and grows, marketing will remain a necessity. Keeping your business before the eyes of consumers allows for room to increase your profits; it also puts you and your janitorial staff in the position to remain afloat (and profitable) even if certain clients go elsewhere for whatever reasons.

Running a successful janitorial business is not an overnight process; although, with the best time tracking software, communication with your clients, and strategic marketing, you can successfully run a janitorial business one step at a time.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Raya KhashabRaya Khashab is the CEO and co-founder of ezClocker, a time tracking and scheduling software for small businesses. She is passionate about customers and building products that change the way people run their business. S

Essential Leadership Skills All Business Owners Should Develop

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Leadership Skills|Essential Leadership Skills All Business Owners Should DevelopA business is the most commonly chosen option for income, as its number continues to grow. More of both small and large scale companies keep on springing up in every field of work. That’s has pointed out a predisposition to this trend, which is the rapidly growing competition.

With several contenders in action, business owners need to take charge and participate actively in their work. They need to establish a dominant leadership to ensure growth and progress. Most people neglect or fail in this department, which ultimately drives the team, and consequently, the business to collapse.

A compromise on the leadership could mean a lack of motivation, loss of objectivity, and low work efficiency. All these things are easy to spot from the team’s attitude and the outcomes of your activities. You will notice a steady decline in finances, returns, and the amount of work you are getting from your clients. And if so is the case, you need to intercept this abysmal state before the damage is beyond repair.

Fortunately, there are several tried and tested methods to enhance your leadership skills. Institutions teach many of these as part of the college curriculum or develop them through training and workshops. There’s also a chance that you pick them up while working with some of the most successful leaders. An example is Kuba Jewgieniew, whose success appears contagious to his fellow workers.

On the off chance that none of this works out, you can still work on improving them through practice. Here is a list of the few essential leadership skills all business owners should develop over time. Promoting them should help with both your individual and professional growth.

1. Set Goals & Advance Strategically

Coming up with a business plan and acting on it might get you started, but it won’t last you. You need to set realistic goals and have a vision about your progress. These milestones will help you track your growth and if you need to make adjustments to your practices to meet them.

The second part of this task is to strategize your advancements towards these objectives. Work on getting the kind of orders you need to bag and financial returns you need to secure. Direct your team’s energy into these ideas to make sure that there’s a collective effort. That will increase the chances of accomplishing these goals and make you a better leader.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurial Insights Newsletter

2. Communicate Effectively

A leader needs to convey plans and details effectively. They should tailor their words so that every member of the team can understand the ambitions behind them. Try to keep them transparent and delivered with every success and failure, so your team knows how they are doing.

Also, sometimes your employees need to find hope in your statements. These can be regarding personal or professional matters, and they need your support to get through it. Since they look up to you, it’s easier for them to trust or agree with you. Ensure that you are using this privilege well and not letting it go to waste or exploit it. That will make you a more reliable and dependable leader.

3. Acknowledge Talents & Retain Them

You can have a staff of 5 or 500, but all of them can’t be on par with each other. Every individual will be better at fulfilling some duties than the others. Make sure that you are on the lookout and can identify this talent when you see it. Focus on refining their abilities so that you can delegate them more responsibilities.

Also, make sure that you keep them satisfied and retain them for a long time. Finding such employees can be difficult. Plus, even if you discover their potentials, there’s also the time to train them to perform. So as a leader, recognize and acknowledge their contributions to keep them working for you to guarantee your success.

4. Delegate Work & Empower Employees

As a leader, it not so rare to have trust or ego issues with your workers. People wouldn’t want to distribute their work or share responsibilities that they feel are outside their employees’ domains. But it can have adverse effects in the long run and can harm your business.

More competent leaders know their limitations and when they need to start taking help from others. Act on this model and know when to delegate tasks to your team. Make sure that you prepare them for this stage and empower them on occasions where it’s needed. That should help you build a strong network of work and lead it effectively.

5. Discuss Plans for Input

Regardless of your expertise and command over knowledge, never overestimate your potential. Remember that you are as likely to make mistakes and errors as others. That’s why you need to have people that can review your work.

Ask for their input on your designs and models to point out any possible flaws. Listen if they have something valuable to offer that could refine the work or improve its efficiency. Having multiple think tanks working on the same plans should help evaluate its risks and overcome its challenges. That, in turn, will make you a more effective and accomplished leader.

6. Make More Leaders

Lastly, you can find leaders within your organization. These people exist and function in all positions and levels of work. All you need to do is sort them out and work on developing their leadership skills with yourself. Turn them into the kind of employees you want them to be with your mentoring and support. That way, they can share your burdens and offer a leader’s dependability more conveniently.

Summary

These were some essential leadership skills all business owners should develop to advance their companies. Effective use of these should set a favorable trend for you that can guide you to success. Just remember not to give up on certain areas even if they test you or you find yourself ill-equipped. Strategic persistence and experimentation will help you break those barriers and make you a better leader all the way.