by Contributed Post | Blog, Contributed Post
Launching a small business is much easier today than it used to be. The internet is a flexible environment where entrepreneurs of all sizes can bring their dreams to life.
However, just because there’s a lower barrier to entry for would-be business owners, doesn’t mean that all companies will be successful.
According to research from the Small Business Administration, only around half of all new businesses will survive their first five years.
Some studies report even bleaker statistics, saying that many businesses fail before reaching the end of their first year.
Figuring out how to avoid problems as a small business owner means learning about the most common reasons that small businesses fail and discovering what you can do to prevent those issues.
Here are a few insights to get you started.
Leadership Failure
Poor management is more of a problem for your business than you’d think. If you don’t have the right management skills to keep your team members motivated and moving in the right direction, you’ll struggle to accomplish much.
To avoid leadership problems, stop and think about how you inspire your team and help them achieve their goals.
Are you supportive when your employees need extra help? Can you provide the guidance that your team members need, or is your door always closed? Do you invest in the tools that your staff need to do their best work?
It might be worth investing in some leadership training to help you and the other supervisors in your team come out on top. There are plenty of courses out there that teach people how to master leadership in a way that boosts employee satisfaction and productivity.
Lack of Sales
Before you do anything in your company, make sure to plan exactly how you’re going to make a profit.
Start by evaluating your marketplace and choosing your target audience. You’ll need a complete buyer persona that describes the person most likely to respond to your business model and strategy.
Once you know who your target customer is, you can start building a strategy that addresses those people’s needs and expectations.
It’s also worth analyzing your competition from time to time too. Knowing who your competitors are will help you figure out where you need to strengthen your strategies to compete on a bigger scale.
There are few things more critical to any business than sales. You need to be constantly generating income if you want your organization to succeed.
Without a solid financial foundation, you won’t be able to sustain your current operations, and neither will you be able to grow over time.
Refusal to pivot
It’s important to have a plan that you can stick with as a business owner. This will prevent you from going on track whenever a new trend emerges in your industry.
However, that doesn’t mean that you should stick to one strategy no matter what.
Sometimes, trends in your landscape will come and go. But knowing how to keep track of what’s happening in your marketplace will make it easier to see what really affects your customers and your chances of sales.
It’s important to avoid getting so deeply entrenched in your plan for success that you fail to recognize when your strategies aren’t working.
Keep checking your marketing and sales methods to ensure that you’re moving in the right direction to suit the needs of your target audience. Reporting tools and marketing software will help you see which of your efforts are yielding the best results.
If you notice something that indicates you need to change track for a while, be ready to pivot.
Remember that the business world is always changing. Knowing how to change with it will improve your professional profile, and help your company to thrive.
Poor planning
There’s a lot more planning involved in running a successful company than most people realize. A business plan forces you to think more carefully about what you want to accomplish as a growing brand, for instance.
With your business plan, you can define your Unique Value Proposition and encourage investors to take notice of your business.
Planning out your marketing campaigns before you invest too heavily in them can help you spot any gaps in your strategy. This means that you don’t over-spend on an idea that may not generate results in the long-term.
Sadly, you can’t plan and prepare for every disaster that might strike your business. You can, however, set your business up for faster recovery and cushion unexpected losses at least a bit.
One of the essential documents you’ll need to create for your company is a disaster recovery plan. No matter what kind of business you run, there’s always a risk that something could go wrong.
Having a disaster recovery plan ensures that you can respond quickly to issues like lost data or damaged tools. This means that you can spring into action faster before losing too many customers.
Marketing Mishaps
Finally, business owners often underestimate just how valuable their marketing campaigns are. Remember, there are hundreds of thousands of other businesses out there. Many of those companies will be competing to attract the same audience as you.
If you want to stand out from the crowd and earn the right sales, you need a marketing strategy.
Start by identifying what kind of marketing efforts are going to resonate best with your target audience. You could conduct polls so that you can add more information to your user personas.
Also, track the results of your promotional efforts so you can see which works best.
Remember to have a list of critical metrics in place that you need to keep an eye on too.
For instance, what’s your return on investment for different marketing strategies? Do you know how much budget you have to spend in each area, and how much reach you get from each platform?
Don’t Become Another Failed Business
There are many amazing opportunities available today for ambitious entrepreneurs.
However, the path to success is littered with challenges to overcome.
Making sure that you’re properly prepared can help you avoid some of the mistakes mentioned above.
Contributed post by Ashely Wilson
Ashley Wilson is a content creator, writing about business and tech. She has been known to reference movies in casual conversation and enjoys baking homemade treats for her husband and their two felines, Lady and Gaga. You can get in touch with Ashley via Twitter.
Photo by Tim Mossholder from Pexels
by Contributed Post | Blog, Contributed Post
The COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on all of us. In some ways, entrepreneurs have had it easier than many. You might have always worked from home, you might be safe, away from the risks of infection, and if you’ve had to move things around to take care of family or home school your children, it might have been easier than it would have been if you were an employee.
In other ways, life might have been far more difficult. You may have struggled to keep your business going. You might have lost customers, and so money, and you might have had to find new suppliers and providers. Working from home, without being able to see your team might have been tricky, and juggling everything while worrying about your health and wellbeing might have seemed impossible.
If you are feeling burnt out, you aren’t alone. This year has been harder than most, so here’s a look at some ways to cope with pandemic burnout.
Take a Break
If you haven’t had a day off since march, you certainly aren’t alone. Many of us haven’t felt able to step away from our businesses for more than a few hours since all of this started. But, you need a break. Your business will suffer more if you are too tired to give it your best. Take at least one day off, and rest whenever you can.
Get Some Help
If you are struggling to take care of your staff from home, get help with HR and Payroll from hris systems you could also hire freelancers for specific tasks, or a VA to give yourself a break.
If you work alone, even asking a family member to help out around the house can give you a bit more time during the day.
Celebrate Your Successes
After such a stressful time it can be hard to see any positives. But, if your business is still going, you have done fantastically well, and you are sure to have learned an awful lot about your business and yourself in the process.
Take Care of Yourself
The last thing that you want right now is to be ill. Practicing social distancing is a great start, but you should also make sure you get plenty of rest, you eat well and you exercise, to give your immune system all of the support that it needs.
Understand Your Stressors
Often the best way to avoid stress is to understand what it is that is stressing you out. Learn more about your triggers and you’ll have a better chance of avoiding them.
Accept Your Limitations
You can’t do it all. This might not be the best time to push yourself hard. Accept your limitations, and prioritize what you can do.
Unfortunately, the only thing that we know right now, is that we don’t know what is going to happen in the coming weeks and months. We’re still surrounded by uncertainty, and while in many ways, life is carrying on, who knows what restrictions and changes we may yet face? Stop your burnout in its tracks, and you’ll be fine!
This is a contributed post
Image by Comfreak from Pixabay
by Contributed Post | Blog, Contributed Post
Many companies have had business disrupted by Covid-19 this year. As a result, they have had to adapt their ways in order to keep making revenue. While some businesses have managed to adapt successfully, others have made costly mistakes. Here are some of the mistakes your business doesn’t want to be making during Covid-19.
Raising your prices
To help cover the costs of covid-19, some businesses have responded by hiking up their prices. It makes sense to try and earn some extra money this way (it’s certainly easier than trying to sell more products), but consider the impact that it may have on you current loyal customers. Those that are already financially struggling due the impact of the virus could see this as an extra kick in the teeth – which could have a negative impact on your customer satisfaction. If your competitors choose not to raise their prices, you could see a lot of your customers abandoning your service to try out that offered by competitors. Try to focus on reducing costs and finding new income streams rather than upping your prices.
Cutting back on marketing
When considering cutbacks, you should avoid cutting back on marketing. In fact, now is the time to spend more money on marketing. With less people mingling, you’ll find it harder to attract customers via old-fashioned word of mouth – which means that you have to advertise and promote your brand yourself. Cut back on marketing, and you could see a dramatic reduction in the amount of new customers you receive. Unless you really don’t want to attract new customers at this moment in time, refrain from cutting back.
Investing in offline marketing
Now is not the time for offline marketing tactics. With social distancing laws in place, marketing events are generally not feasible. Meanwhile, billboards and posters are less likely to get spotted due to less crowds on the street. You’re much better off pouring your time, energy and money into digital marketing during Covid-19. Strategies such as social media marketing, SEO and email marketing are likely to have a much bigger impact given that people are spending more time indoors and more time on digital devices. Allow yourself to get creative when pursuing digital marketing strategies.
Arranging in-person meetings
In-person meetings are also not practical in a pandemic. This could be a team meeting with employees or a meeting with clients. Unless the task can only be carried out as a group in person, you may as well conduct the meeting via video call or phone call – or you could simply have an email exchange. Some clients may be put off if you insist on having an in-person meeting. Some employees may also feel that you are putting them in unnecessary danger and could possibly sue. If you do have to arrange large meetings in person, make sure that everyone has PPE.
Reducing staff, but not reducing the workload
As a way of saving costs, some companies have furloughed or even laid off staff members. This can sometimes be a necessary cut back, however you need to be sure that the workload is also cut back. If you demand the same workload from your remaining employees, they will likely struggle to get it all done. You need to have a team that’s large enough to take on all the day-to-day roles. If employees are having to take on responsibilities on top of their existing responsibilities, they’ll get overly stressed and likely hand in their notice. This is something that you definitely don’t want to happen.
Micromanaging remote employees
Many companies have allowed employees to work from home. While this has helped to keep people socially distanced, it has made team communication a little harder. Less trusting employees may feel that they have to keep communicating with employees to check that they are still on target. This style of remote micromanaging could be stressing out your employees and may be something that you want to limit. So long as employees are meeting targets and deadlines, there’s no need to keep checking up on them. Your employees are likely to be more productive if you’re not constantly trying to have conversations with them.
Not supervising remote employees at all
While you shouldn’t micromanage remote employees, you also don’t want to ignore them completely. Some of your employees may realise that they’re not being monitored and may take advantage of this. This could result in corners being cut and certain work not being done. Using some form of software for tracking employee activity will allow you to see how far projects are coming along without having to constantly chase up employees via phone or email. There are lots of software solutions out there that can do this.
Ignoring the pandemic altogether
The worst thing you can do is ignore the entire pandemic and try to continue on as usual. You’ll likely get into legal trouble and it could negatively affect your reputation. For instance, if you run a restaurant and decide to put absolutely no measures in place, you can expect a lot of customers to not feel safe and some may report you to the police (especially if there’s no attempts to abide by social distancing rules or supply hand soap). Employees may even leave if they feel that you are not taking the virus and their health seriously.
Conclusion
If you want your business to keep making money through the remainder of Covid-19, you need to make the right changes to your business model. Anything that involves or inspires social gatherings cannot go underway. If you choose to take on a remote workforce, you need to understand how to manage them without micromanaging or being too relaxed. You also need to resist increasing your prices, instead finding other ways to recover from the costs.
Image: Pexels. CCO Licensed.
This is a contributed post
by Robyn Bennett | Blog, Contributed Post
Byran Weiner, CEO of Comscore, once said that ‘social marketing eliminates the middlemen, providing brands the unique opportunity to have a direct relationship with their customers.’ So how can you nurture and build those relationships? What does it take to improve your online presence in 2020?
1. Present yourself as human
In 2020 people like brands who appear as human and authentic. They don’t want corporations with no relatability or personality. When you’re posting content on social media, keep it down to earth, fun and transparent. It could be in the form of memes, TikTok videos, or articles that showcase your values.
2. Live stream
Live streaming on social media is an excellent way to improve your reach, increase engagement and connect with new audiences. Facebook Live and YouTube Live are a great place to start streaming. According to Vimeo, ‘ live streaming is going to be a $70.5 billion industry by 2021.’ They also reported that ‘48% of consumers have shared a brand video on their social media profile.’ Live Streaming allows you to speak to your audience about a topic that means something to you. You might prefer to demonstrate a new product.
3. Analytics tools
If you want to improve your successes on social media, you’ve got to have some way of analysing your performance. There are plenty of social analytics tools out there which can help you to do that.
Google Analytics: GA is a great tool which can help you to monitor your social media campaigns and track your social ROI.
Snaplytics: Snaplytics is an analytics tool for Instagram Stories and Snapchat specifically. Here you can view various metrics and see where your engagement peaks and or decreases.
Using the right data you can improve your campaigns and get your business noticed online.
4. Creative content
Above all, your content has got to be creative to boost your online presence. With lots of similar brands in competition, it’s important to set yourself apart from the rest. So how can you make your Instagram photographs stand out?
Aerial photography: Using drones can allow you to get some seriously stunning and original photographs! For more information about drones take a look at www.drdrone.ca. Perhaps a member of your team fancies a go at taking a few drone shots? If not, you can always hire a photographer!
When it comes to writing your blog posts, you need to provide content that brings something different to the table. If you’re short on ideas, you can use ‘Answer the Public’ to search for the more obscure questions that people are asking online!
5. Customer Generated Content
People love customer-generated content because it’s authentic. It’s not always about heavily photoshopped images, but real people using your products and having a good time! CG content is inexpensive, and many customers will produce it naturally (and then tag your biz)! Employee generated content is similarly effective to improve your credibility and extend your reach. Of course, you need to set your employees guidelines about what they can and cannot say while using your social account. (Without instructions, EG content can fast lead to a social media scandal)!
Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels
This is a contributed post
by Robyn Bennett | Blog, Contributed Post
Everyone is trying to get their products and services in front of users online. But with such limited space, being effective is a constant challenge. You might have a great business, but spreading the word is notoriously difficult.
What you need is a trick – something you can use to shoehorn your pages into the line of sight of your target audience – but that doesn’t break the bank.
Your rivals are becoming more sophisticated in their approach. That doesn’t mean, though, that they’ve exhausted all opportunities. Even small businesses can get the edge with the right know-how.
Are you struggling to get noticed online? Check out these little tricks that can make a big difference to your marketing.
Create Punchy, Innovative Content That Surprises
Many companies put their professional hat on and churn out lengthy white papers they hope will garner attention. Rarely, however, is that an approach that works in reality. Most audiences already have all the informational resources they need. You could wind up wasting a lot of time putting together something comprehensive that people don’t want.
What’s the solution here?
The answer is to make your content innovative, punchy, and surprising. Most audiences don’t realize it, but the thing that they really want is novelty. They want to experience the feeling of the unexpected. It’s that immediate sense of gratification when they try something new or hear something funny, which is the kicker.
TikTok is an excellent platform for doing this. Just do something fun that appeals to your customer persona and wait for them to come flocking. Providing information is great, but being entertaining is even better.
Make Your PPC Ads Bigger
PPC ads are something of a godsend for small businesses. Without them, you’d be completely stuck. Organic SEO takes time. They are an easy way to get people flocking to your site without putting in months of work building links, creating content, and optimizing.
A lot of companies, though, don’t understand how to do them right. They believe that once they create the ad copy, their job is done. Sorry – but it’s not.
The fix, though, is super simple: Google callout extensions.
Even if you haven’t heard of these, you’ve almost certainly seen them when browsing the internet. They’re essentially additional details you tack onto the bottom of your PPC ads that provide more information to prospective customers. And they make a big difference.
Experts think they’re super effective for two reasons:
- They provide additional information, making your company seem more legitimate and professional
- They make ads physically larger, enhancing visibility
Try adding them and see whether you get more traffic. Almost certainly, you will.
Make Links With People Who Can Get The Word Out
New websites get buried in the mountain of content on Google, and there’s not much you can do about it. Fresh businesses have to bite the bullet and just work their way up the ranking like everyone else. It takes time.
Making links with people you know to get the word out, though, is something that you can do right now to boost your appeal online. The more people you rope into helping you, the better.
If you have a great product, this shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. There’s bound to be an influencer out there somewhere willing to give you a platform. Think carefully about how your product might help their audience and then sell it as hard as possible.
Team Up With Another Company
Similarly, you can try teaming up with another brand and offering a co-product with them. Often companies will allow you to tack your brand onto theirs, immediately increasing recognition.
Create Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are very different from regular PPC. Here, you’re not looking to sell immediately. Instead, you’re trying to create more brand impressions, introducing people to what you do.
People use Facebook for different reasons than search. They’re on there to talk to friends and generally chill out. Rarely are they on the hunt for products. Businesses, therefore, need to adopt a slightly different strategy with their advertising methods.
You can think of Facebook as the first stage in the sales funnel. It’s the tool you use to make it, so people know what you do. Once you’ve built the groundwork, you have a better chance of thinking about you when they want what you have to offer.
Getting noticed online can be a significant challenge for new businesses. But with the right approach, you can boost who sees you, increasing your revenue immediately.
This is a contributed post
Featured image by: Pexels – CC0 License
by Contributed Post | Blog, Contributed Post
Even though the year is 2020, there is still a huge disparity when it comes to the number on the paychecks of men and women. It is a problem that is found across almost all sectors and is a great division within society.
The focus on equality and diversity in the workplace has brought the gender pay gap front and center and more companies are now confronting it head-on and adapting their policies.
Businesses of all sizes can help close this gap by adopting a new approach.
How Wide Is The Gender Pay Gap?
In the US, women earn around 79 percent of the salary of their male counterparts. It might not seem like much, but over the course of a career, the average woman could earn 500,000 dollars less than a man! That is not an insignificant amount for doing the same job.
Progress has been painfully slow, even with the current progress, gender pay inequality will not be achieved until 2060.
This effects women across all industry sectors and despite the fact that over 60% of graduates are female.
There is some positive momentum towards change, with companies such as Microsoft, Weibel Scientific, and government departments all taking steps to encourage women into traditionally male-dominated areas of the economy.
The Many Benefits Of Closing The Gap
Not only is providing equal pay the right and moral thing to do, but there are also other benefits, including:
Attracting the best talent – people want to work for companies that treat their employees fairly and act in a socially responsible way.
Employee engagement – employees who are treated fairly have higher levels of engagement, which is good for morale and productivity.
Good PR – with companies forced to be more transparent about their pay structures, bad PR will be an inevitable consequence of not tackling the pay gap. You risk customers voting with their feet and wallets and boycotting your business.
Legal action – companies leave themselves open to costly legal action if they continue to pay men and women unequally.
Assess Your Own Company
Pay structure – review the salary of your employees by the team, level, job responsibilities, and gender. Don’t forget to look at bonuses and benefits too.
Management structure – these people have the most say over who gets hired, pay raises, and promotions. Company management should be as diverse as possible.
Hiring policies – don’t base salaries on those of previous jobs, this is unfair to women who were probably paid less in their last job too. Assign pay scales to seniority and job roles instead.
Don’t Be Afraid To Own Up To Your Mistakes
If your internal company assessment unearths inequalities and pay gaps, then you need to address these. Chances are that your employees already have a sense of this inequality in the workplace.
Some issues will be easier to rectify than others. Changing someone’s salary is a simple process, tackling the systemic inequalities that caused it will take longer.
Featured image by You X Ventures on Unsplash
This is a contributed post
