Tag Archives: Business Owner

6 Tips on How to Successfully Run an Online Business

August 23, 2023 By in Freelancing/Self-employed Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Starting an online business is no small feat! Despite the e-commerce industry’s prominence and increasing profitability, 90% of online businesses fail within four months. 

Therefore, successfully running an online business requires more than just courage; having the right information before delving in is essential. That’s why we’ve prepared a list of six valuable tips to keep in mind when starting and running an online business. 

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  • Determine your product market fit

This is the stage at which you ask yourself important questions. Which product or service are you hoping to offer? Will it solve actual problems and meet the needs of potential clients? Who’s your target audience? It’s imperative to clarify these things before starting out. Even when you’ve already begun, these questions can help you refine your strategy.

  • Build a website

Just like a store or office makes it easy for customers to physically locate a business, think of a website as a place for internet users to find you without leaving the comfort of their homes. Creating a functional website with e-commerce websites like Shopify, Wix, or WooCommerce, while utilizing SEO to help customers find your site helps build your business credibility and reach. To reinforce the link between SEO and the sustainability of an online business, research shows that about 53.3% of site traffic comes from organic search results.

  • Harness the power of social media

Building an online presence that extends from a website to social media can be a goldmine in the era of profitable social commerce. Research has shown that about  57% of internet users discover new brands or products through social media. Beyond that, social media allows you to connect more easily with your target audience. Creating helpful and fun posts that resonate with people is a way to build a community around your business. This builds trust and ensures that people immediately think of your business when they want to solve a problem.

  • Email marketing

 Once you’ve established your business in people’s minds through a website and an active social media presence, now you have to keep your business in their minds. Email marketing is an easy way to do this. A solid email campaign involves consistently releasing newsletters, ads, and personalised reminders to customers to revisit your online store. 

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  • Financial management 

With all these online business strategies in place, there will naturally be an increase in your finances. So maintaining a good strategy for managing your finances is essential. Some important things to keep in mind are properly managing your books, separating personal funds from business income, developing a good invoicing system, making suitable investments and sticking to your budget.

  • Prioritizing customer satisfaction

Customers are the lifeblood of any business. Keeping them satisfied is instrumental to keeping your business thriving. Have a good customer care strategy in place to resolve complaints and offer assistance when needed. You could also create customer satisfaction feedback systems to get a sense of how well you’re doing in this area. Remember that the “customer is king.”

With these few tips in hand, you can be well on your way to establishing a successful online business that thrives.

 

Create A Sense Of Organization Among The Small Business Chaos

November 18, 2019 By in Freelancing/Self-employed Tags: , , , , 6 Comments

*Collaborative post.

A sense of organization is something that every single business needs to feel, but how easy would you say that that is to do? Especially as a small business, it’s so easy to feel a sense of panic and despair, rather than feeling as though you’re actually comfortable with what you’re doing. Especially if you’re a new startup, organization most definitely isn’t going to be your strong suit, but we know there are a few things that you can do to pull it all together. Because although it might not feel as important to you to focus on organization whilst you are just a small business, it won’t be long until the lack of organization will catch up with you as your business grows. Plus, there’s nothing worse than feeling like the small business that you have, is all over the place in terms of organization. So, keep on reading, and we’ll show you the organization that you need, and how you can go about creating it.

 

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Realise The Scale You’re Working With

So the first thing that you need to do, is realise the scale that you’re working with, and how quick your business is growing. We carry this label of a small business around with us for so long, but the scale you’re working with could be much more, especially in terms of data. Data is one of the biggest targets in business at the minute, with cyber thieves are always on the lookout to take anything that they could use in terms of data, even if that just be email addresses and passwords of customers that you might have stored, or indeed your own. So one of the best ways to keep your data safe, is to use managed servers so that your information is more safe and secure.

 

Make Integrating Far Easier

Being able to integrate better with your own business is so important, especially if you’re growing at a rapid rate, and are expanding and making connections with other businesses. Not only that, but if your team begins to expand, you really need to focus on making working easier. One way of doing so is looking at Dynamic Personalization, which allows you to better share documents with the relevant people, as well as better track who is using them. Document integration is one thing a lot of businesses fail with, but they all need nearly every single day.

 

Manage The Daily Chaos

Daily organization is the one that business owners probably struggle with the most, and it’s mainly due to the lack of daily planning. A simple plan to start the day gives you something to stick to, rather than just flicking from job to job. Plus, it helps to keep your mind calm and collected, and teaches you which way is the best way to manage the day. You might also benefit from taking regular breaks throughout the day to simply have a drink and something to eat, and to let your mind switch off for a few minutes. Doing that will surely help with the sense of organization. Something all business owners seem to forget to do! 

 

6 Ways to Work Smart and Not Hard as a Business Owner

September 14, 2017 By in Freelancing/Self-employed Tags: , , , , , , , 27 Comments

As an owner of a growing business, it is important to make sure that your productivity levels are always on top. Of course, it is every business owner’s dream to run a business that gets a lot of projects and gigs. But with more work comes a strong need to get the work done quickly and efficiently so that you will have more time to focus on other important things in your life. So how do you work smart?

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Most people believe that a business is successful because you put in a lot of hard work. Although this may be true, people have mistaken “busy” or being “occupied” as working hard.  The truth is that you get more work done when you work smarter and not harder.  Here are 6 ways you can achieve more by working smarter and not harder.

Plan everything in advance

This has been something that has helped me in my business. I plan everything! From all my activities for the day, what I wear, the content I put out on social media and on my blog to even the pictures I’ll use for the articles, several days in advance.

I make weekly, monthly, and quarterly plans and goals. Planning in advance works as a guide to help you know what to do next. It saves you time and keeps you focused on getting the work done. If you like, you can make use of software to help you plan more effectively.

Build an efficient and trusted team

There is only so much one person can handle. That is why it is important for a business owner to have an efficient and trusted set of team members to whom he or she can delegate work. Your team members will help you do the work while you gain time to work on something else. When you have a formidable team, you can rest easy knowing that everything will be done to precision with a lot of care. Software such as Qualtrics can empower employees to own their development and learning, with feedback and personalized reports, helping to build the team further.

Get organized

I think one of the things that are a hindrance to a smooth-running and efficient business is a lack of organization. When you have all the information, stationery, or data you will need organized, it makes working easy. You save time that would have been spent looking for something you need or being worried about not finding what you’re looking for. The workflow is swifter when your office is organized and everything you need is within your reach. If you are looking to organize your work a bit better, try this scheduling software to improve efficiency and time management.

Time yourself

This is a pretty useful hack to help you work smarter. Although not many people like deadlines in their 9-to-5s, having a deadline will help you be more focused on only what is important and thus, make you work smarter.

Keep a timer close by whenever you want to start working. Try to finish each project within 45 minutes. This will help you push away all distractions. As you get used to having work done within 45 minutes, you can reduce the time allocated to 30 minutes and work accordingly. This way you train yourself to work faster and more efficiently.

Stop being a perfectionist

There have been debates about the pros and cons of perfectionism in business, but when it comes to working smart perfectionism loses. When you want to get everything perfect the first time you end up spending a lot of time bothering about insignificant details and you either don’t get the work done or you are unable to start at all.

To work smart, your main preoccupation is to have work done. Perfection and attention to detail can come at the end. For now, you have to focus on completing each task. You can always tweak it along the way when you’re done.

Automate

Thanks to automation tools, you can get your work done for you with one click. So if you create your content in advance, your automation tool can help you publish your content on your blog and on social media all by itself. This is what I do when I want to schedule all my posts for the week.

How do you work smart? Please share your tips in the comments section below.

Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy!

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