Sometimes you feel as if you are treading water with your business and are not making sufficient inroads toward success. Many times you will find selecting business goals to be troublesome. All entrepreneurs are looking to be successful and run a profitable business. But sometimes the road to this target is not clear. If you are looking for more profits from your small business than ever before, follow these tips to make it happen. Keep in mind that building a successful business is not a sprint but a marathon.
1. Concentrate on customer service
Always remember that half the customers that had a bad experience with your company customer service will not come again to your company for business. Many studies have indicated that it takes many positive customer experience reports to build a good reputation but just a single bad one to spoil it. Although repeat customers are generally easier to sell to make customer service your top priority. Scrutinize the current customer service and make suitable changes to ensure that your business is providing superior service to that of the competitors. For achieving this, you may wish to invest in revamping your return policy, staff training, and make some fundamental improvements such as prompt responding to emails and voicemails from the clientele.
2. Develop a word of mouth campaign
When you are operating your small business within a small community or even when you are catering to a large urban center, word-of-mouth publicity is more significant than ever. Most people these days turn to the internet for searching the reviews of the business they are interested in before they make an educated decision about where they will buy from. Therefore, building a top reputation is critical for the success of your small business. The next question is how to get the positive word to mouth campaign going? You need to provide professional customer service, build and monitor the business reputation online, and gain publicity by giving back to the community through sponsorships and support of local charities and organizations.
3. Expand the marketing efforts
Good impactful marketing is a key to raising your sales, however; there is no need to break your bank account for the promotions. There are several inexpensive ways of marketing the products and services such as,
- Creation and use of promotional kits.
- Sending out the promos with the invoices.
- Joining pro organizations.
- Getting the involvement of newspapers for your grand openings, charity events, and other moves.
- Providing free classes or workshops about your products and services.
- Creating business partnerships for cross-promotion with complementary businesses.
- Cold calling.
- Advertise the small business on your car by using vehicle wraps.
4. Using smart tools
Sometimes the old techniques might not be useful while dealing with newer business challenges. Therefore, you need to change the strategies by implementing intelligent tools and technologies. As we are living in a digital era for doing business where the latest technologies are evolving at a terrific pace, entrepreneurs must keep themselves updated by using the best available tools. You must be aware of what tools are popular and which ones have generated success. For instance, transferring large files is more than necessary to make the working process easier. Some other smart tools that can be used effectively for small businesses are Salesmate, Mailchimp, Basecamp, Grammarly, Slack, Wufoo, and Google Analytics.
5. Cut the business costs
It seems like the costs involved in running a business are always on the rise. Therefore, keeping them in check is a critical task for all business owners. However, keeping track of these expenses is tedious and time-consuming. Therefore it is a good idea to use technology wherever possible to simplify the jobs as much as possible. You can find several mobile apps for expenses tracking with many of them including cloud-based accounting capabilities. These tools allow you to automatically add the expenses to your accounting system. Perform annual or semi-annual reviews of all your major expenses such as business insurance, office space, vehicle expenses, and staffing. Find out where you can trim the expenses.
Conclusion
Remember, success is never given. If you are looking to make your small business more successful in the upcoming year you have to make certain necessary alterations to bring about the change. This may involve doing something simple such as investing in a new tool or something challenging such as changing your thinking about any of the business processes. Who knows, this year might just be the best one yet for your small business.
About author
Rachel Eleza, Growth Marketing Director at UpSuite and a part-time writer.
