Market research is key to developing relevant and effective business strategies as it helps you understand your industry, customers, competitors and market trends. Undertaking both primary and secondary market research can allow you to boost your business’ success if you utilise the information to improve your product/service and marketing strategies.
There are a variety of sources you can use to begin your research. To research areas such as your customers, competitors, industry and location, you can conduct primary research through things like:
- Surveys (postal, online or face-to-face).
- Focus groups.
- Customer feedback.
Meanwhile, useful secondary research can be conducted through:
- Academic journals and research.
- Social media and websites.
- Industry and trade publications.
Identify the best research methods for your goals and whether you will conduct the research yourself or if you will want to use a professional company. It is also important to consider the time frame and appropriate budget for your research. When conducting research questions and strategies, make sure that you are open-minded and don’t let your preconceived opinions or preferences affect your tactics.
Posted on 11 December '19 by admin, under business. No Comments.
With so many eager school-leavers looking for employment opportunities, hiring an intern can seem like a good way to offer work experience to someone without the risks of a long-term commitment of a regular employee. However, you should consider whether hiring an intern would be the best move for your business. Here are some pros and cons you may run into:
Pros:
Potential employment: If you feel that the intern fits into the workplace well, you could offer them employment later on. This is often a smoother introduction to employment as they are already trained and familiar with the business. However, you are not obligated to offer them a job if you don’t feel they are a good fit.
Social media insight: Most interns are young and tech-savvy and could offer important insights into the world of social media for the new generation. They could help you devise relatable, trendy content for your social media that you may not have considered.
Cons:
Inexperienced: If you’re looking for some to take on roles that require knowledge and experience, an intern may not be the right choice as they often have limited work experience in career based roles.
Less flexible: If an intern is still studying, then the hours they can offer you can be limited and variable depending on their timetable. As well as this, when exam periods arrive they could have an exam on a day they would normally work, or may ask for time off to study.
Posted on 4 December '19 by admin, under business. No Comments.
Entering into a business partnership can come with conflicts and misunderstandings between you and your new associate. This is why having a written agreement that clearly outlines your rights and responsibilities is important for maintaining a healthy business relationship between partners. Here are some key areas to include in your partnership agreement:
- Name of partnership: agree on a name for your business. This may seem simple but many partners have different ideas for what they think the business should be called.
- Contributions to the partnership: work out and record how much each person initially contributes to the business, whether it’s cash, property, or services, and decide what percentage each owner will have.
- Admitting new partners: agree on a procedure for admitting new partners so that you can equally decide on a new person.
- Distribution of profits/allocation of losses: decide how profits and losses are allocated to partner shares.
- Death, disability, or withdrawal: if a member of the partnership wants to withdraw from it, or is forced to due to death or disability, then a buy/sell agreement is needed to manage the situation. Consider who you trust to make decisions on your behalf, who would inherit the shares of your company etc.
- Non-competition clause: if you’re concerned about a partner leaving and then competing with the partnership’s business, you can include a clause that restricts them from doing so within a defined time period.
Posted on 27 November '19 by admin, under business. No Comments.
Running a business is hard enough without having to chase up payments from your customers. Here are some measures you can take to prevent yourself from having to deal with the profitability imbalance, negative client relation, and legal ordeals that come with chasing up owed debt.
Research the customer:
Before you enter into an agreement with a client or other businesses, make sure that you know who you’re dealing with and do some research. There are government certified websites available to check whether a company is registered and legitimate. Find out about their history, make sure they are reliable, still in operation and to look for any bad reviews and other people’s experiences with them.
Have a signed contract:
Regardless of how much you trust your client, it is still a good idea to have a written contract in place so that everyone is on the same page and you have evidence to refer to in the case of a dispute or confusion. The contract should consist of the terms and agreements, payment schedule, preferred payment method, the exact product or service to be completed and late payment policy.
Have a good invoicing system:
Make sure that you invoice customers quickly with professional and easy to understand statements. This helps you keep track of your customers and helps your customers understand the payment requirements. You can set payment terms and policies to ensure that you will be paid how you and your customer agreed.
Posted on 13 November '19 by admin, under business. No Comments.
In order to keep up with the growing demands of digital accessibility and convenience, many businesses decide to partially or completely move their business online. This can help with extending customer reach beyond the geographical boundaries of a physical business, offering customers easy access to your products or services, scaling and growth, and reducing costs on rent, staff, and marketing. Here are some steps to get started on building the digital side of your business.
Set up a website:
Your potential clients will often be getting their first impression of your business from your website, so it is important that you have an effectively executed layout, user interface and design. On top of your products or services, make sure your website includes key information about your business, such as an about page, contact details, FAQs, social media links, or call to action prompt.
Build a social media presence:
If you’re not already on social media platforms, or if your social media presence is weak, focus on creating engaging and relevant social media content for your audience. This can help you build a stronger relationship with your clients, share content they would find interesting and useful, and establish a brand image.
Keep customers updated:
Clients can get frustrated and feel uncared for if they are not told about important changes to your business that will affect them. Whether you’re moving partially or completely online, it is important that you keep your clients updated. This can be done through a simple email, having a sign in-store, and verbally telling them when you interact with them.
Posted on 7 November '19 by admin, under business. No Comments.
Businesses looking to improve their profitability may need to consider cutting under-performing products and services that are unnecessarily draining resources. It might be time to discontinue if a product fits the following scenarios:
- Low profitability.
- Stagnant or declining sales volume or market share.
- Maintaining your market share is too costly.
- Risk of technological elimination.
- Poor fit with business’s strengths or declared mission.
When deciding whether to discontinue a product, there are a few ways you can examine your services and make the decision that is best for your business.
80/20 rule:
This rule states that businesses should focus their attention on the 20% of the products that generate 80% of revenue. Using this principle, companies should compile a shortlist of the products and services that bring in the most profit and scrutinise the products that fall short of this mark.
Trial run:
Try going a week to a month (no longer) removing all promotion and marketing for a product. This can help the business to visualise what it would look like without that service and see if there are any clients who miss it.
Harvesting:
Cutting the costs associated with the business or increasing the price of the product without increasing production or operation costs allows the business to continue generating revenue on a failing service. Once the product ceases to provide a positive cash-flow, it can then be discontinued.
Posted on 16 October '19 by admin, under business. No Comments.
Promoting your business can seem tricky to navigate and expensive, especially when there are budget and staff restrictions to think about. However, there are a number of ways to promote your business easily and cost-effectively.
Blog content:
Posting well-written and relevant blog content on your website can help boost website traffic while capturing the trust and engagement of potential customers. Regular content that aligns with the interests and needs of your audience will generally work best in gaining profile views.
Social Media:
While social media may seem like an obvious channel to keep running on as a background form of promotion, it can be worthwhile to invest more time and resources to get the most out of your business’s social media presence. Keeping the aesthetics and content of your social media pages regularly updated and relevant can be a great way to establish a brand image and gain attention from your target audience.
Email Marketing:
Growing your mailing list can be a great way to establish customer loyalty and to encourage customers to remember your business and revisit your website. Websites like Mailchimp and Benchmark are free email marketing services that are easy to use with predesigned templates.
Posted on 30 September '19 by admin, under business. No Comments.
Bad days can happen to the best of us, but that doesn’t stop work from needing to get done. Whilst working when you’re feeling down is the last thing you want to do, here are a few ways to pick yourself up and carry on with tasks you need to do.
Take a break:
Stepping away from the office to think can drastically improve your mood and help you look at the day more clearly. Going for a walk or sitting in the park on your lunch break can help you feel relaxed and better energised to go back to work. Even stepping out of the office for a moment to the bathroom can help remove yourself from a stressful situation. Don’t let yourself think about what has gotten you into a slump, think instead of what you can proactively do once you return to the office.
Express emotions appropriately:
Expressing your emotions is ok and necessary to feel better. It can be very easy to rant to colleagues or friends when you are feeling rough but there is a line between venting and gossip. Strong emotions such as anger can see you act out instead of thinking a problem through. Try to observe the problem through an objective lens before discussing it with colleagues or management and keep it strictly professional. This can help you to communicate better and avoid getting caught up in office politics.
Learn from the day:
Problems or unforeseen circumstances are opportunities to learn and grow. After a particularly trying day, take a moment to reflect on what didn’t go so great and possible reasons why. Evaluating what went wrong can help you to better understand how to avoid doing the same thing in the future, teaching you to be proactive, rather than reactive.
Posted on 24 September '19 by admin, under business. No Comments.
While email marketing remains one of the most effective platforms for businesses to reach clients on a personal level, it does not always deliver the results you may be after. If you’re finding that email marketing isn’t going as well as you had hoped, here are five simple ways to improve your campaign:
Experiment with your “from” name:
Seeing “from” information that isn’t clearly related to a person or place that clients know, is often a red flag for individuals who are becoming increasingly wary of email spammers. Make sure your recipients know they’re getting emails from someone they actually asked to hear from by making your “from” information as obvious as possible.
Target behaviour:
While segmenting an email list by demographics can produce results, it is much more effective to segment subscribers by their behaviour. Send clients targeted messages based on their service or purchase history, send loyalty offers to those who consistently open your emails or re-engagement campaigns to those who never do.
Remember mobile optimisation:
With approximately 53% of emails being opened on mobile devices, using mobile-friendly layouts and graphics will help with continued engagement. If the content doesn’t appear properly on a mobile device, chances are the subscriber will be less likely to open another email. Make sure images do not look stretched or take too long to load and use appropriate ratios on all platforms.
Posted on 28 August '19 by admin, under business. No Comments.
Business owners are faced with constant challenges and tough decisions to make on a day-to-day basis. Risk-taking is often necessary to achieve more in the business, but owners need to make informed choices to avoid potential damages. To manage risk effectively, a proactive stance needs to be taken in identifying and responding to risks before a crisis strikes.
Identify risks:
Risks can be hazard-based, uncertainty-based or opportunity-based, with both tangible and intangible items posing risks for your business. Owners may find it easy to list the physical items at risk such as assets and infrastructure, yet neglect intangibles such as injury to staff, loss of important business information and more. It is important for business owners to be aware of the risks they could face in their business.
Calculate your risks:
Making an educated assessment of both the likelihood and potential severity of risks can help prioritise your responses. Once the risks have been identified they should be ranked on the likelihood of occurrence and the severity of consequence it might impose on the business. Risk ranking can help you to determine what situations need more time, attention and resources.
Manage your risks:
Finally, the risks need to be managed effectively. Avoidance is not always the best or viable solution as there is no way to ever be completely risk free. Transferring is a common way of avoiding damage as the risk is no longer your problem, for example, insurance and product warranties. Reduction of risk comes from a sound knowledge of your business and little things you can do that make a difference. Acceptance is for those owners with experience and a clear mind. Nothing in life is without risk, the business owners who accept this and learn from challenges are the ones who find success.
Posted on 19 August '19 by admin, under business. No Comments.
