In today's digital landscape, everyone needs to change. Whether you're a rookie entrepreneur or a veteran business owner, you need to adapt and learn how to do things differently in order for your business to survive. This is especially true for small-business owners.
You need fresh strategies that work and luckily for you, we have 8 such strategies that will help to make your business more successful.
1. Have a Business Plan
The first step is to create a business plan. Without a plan, the potential success of your business will remain but a dream. A good business plan doesn't necessarily need to look like a 400-pages book. However, it does need to contain several pages which outline your business goals, strategies, marketing, and sales plan, as well as financing. This plan will not only act as guidance for you and your team, but it will also help you secure funding.
2. Focus on Providing Outstanding Customer Service
Check these customer service statistics out:
- Nearly 50% of customers say they will stop buying from a company if they have a poor experience.
- More than 76% of customers say that it is easier than ever to take their business elsewhere, so today, they're 4x more likely to buy from your competitors if the problem is service-related rather than product or price-related.
When you have a base of loyal customers, it will be much easier for you to sell your products and services to them. That's why providing superb customer service should be one of your top priorities.
Start by evaluating how good your current customer service is so you can make the necessary changes in order to make sure that your company constantly provides excellent service that is better than your competitors'.
Don't know where to begin? Make sure to check your social media profiles, research your competitors, email regularly and respond to messages in a timely manner.
3. Write Awesome Business Proposals
Business proposals are much different from business plans. As mentioned earlier, your business plan should contain your company's financial and operational objectives, while your business proposal is created for a specific job opportunity. This means that your business proposal should be customized in accordance with a client's specific needs and convince the client to purchase your product or service.
Creating a business proposal is not easy but fortunately, you can use proposal software to make the process much simpler and easier.
4. Rely on Positive Word of Mouth
If you're still not convinced in the power of word-of-mouth, just know that:
- More than 90% of consumers believe suggestions from family and friends more than advertising.
- Nearly 90% of consumers trust online reviews left by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from family and friends.
- Nearly 75% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a crucial factor in their purchasing decisions.
- However, only about 30% of businesses are seeking out and collecting consumers' reviews.
Whether you run your business online, in a large urban center or in a small community, positive word-of-mouth is the easiest and most effective way to succeed.
Here are a couple of tips to get you started:
- Make sure to always provide excellent customer service and build your online or local reputation.
- Get involved and give back to the community with an aim to build publicity. You can do this by supporting and sponsoring local organizations and charities.
5. Build a Strong Online Presence
Today, it's no longer a question whether your business should have a website – having a website is a must for businesses of all sizes and industries! Studies have shown that about 70% of consumers tend to conduct online research before making a purchasing decision.
You might think that you don't have the time and money to build and maintain a website, but building a professional-looking site is quite a simple process that will help you grow your business tenfold! Here are some statistics to help you figure out what your website should look like:
- In 75% of cases, judgments on a company's credibility are based on the company's website design.
- Nearly 50% of website visitors look at a company's products page before visiting any other section of the website.
- Users spend approximately 5.6 seconds looking at a site's written content.
- In almost 95% of cases, first impressions are design-related.
- More than 45% of consumers say they make a decision on whether a website is credible based on its visual appeal and aesthetics.
6. Invest in Marketing
When we say invest, we don't necessarily mean you should invest money. Increasing your sales requires an effective marketing strategy, so that's where you need to invest your time and effort.
There's a number of inexpensive techniques that can help you to market your products. For instance, you can offer free workshops related to your products and services, cross-promote with similar businesses, or send out promotions and coupons with each invoice.
7. Reduce Your Expenses
Keeping your expenses under control is vital for the success of your business. This isn't easy but here are some ideas to help you get started:
- Re-evaluate your significant expenses such as vehicle expenses, office space, and business insurance every 6 months. If you're located in a big city where there's plenty of available office space, consider relocating in order to save some money on rent.
- Review your major supply costs regularly and think of ways to cut expenses.
- Encourage your employees to spend less money as well.
8. Use a Great Database Solution
When it comes to working with data, having the right tool can make a huge difference. Nowadays, many companies dive into advanced analytics or machine learning with an aim to get ahead of their competitors, but their efforts often cause more harm than good due to a lack of a strategic approach.
If you are a company that is looking to draw insights from its data, you should consider using MySQL. MySQL is a proven and cost-effective database solution that will help you to reduce the cost of your database software infrastructure by more than 90%. You can also integrate MySQL with Power BI to turn your data into actionable insights.
PowerBI has a plethora of capabilities, such as data updates in real-time, direct access to various data sources, easy analysis with natural language queries, as well as an ability to share dashboards and reports across different departments of an organization. PowerBI visualizations include KPIs, charts, bubble charts, scatter plots, and maps.
Final Thoughts
Never stop reinventing your business. If you've tried certain strategies and they have failed to yield the desired results, look for new ways to improve. The important thing is not to give up. Being a small-business owner is your choice, so you need to find a way to make it work!
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