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Statistics all over the world show just how difficult it is to start up and maintain a small to medium-sized business. In fact, 50% of small businesses fail in the first year, with that number jumping to 95% in the next five years.
That being said, however, small to medium-sized businesses makeup almost 90% of the total businesses worldwide and are a great source of employment and innovative services.
55% of people have said that they want to start their own business simply due to the fact that they want to be their own boss, and globally, there has been a movement of employees to start their own businesses in their spare time.
If you are one of these people who have either started something or want to start your own business, there are ways and means of doing so. Luckily, in this day and age, the digital world has created a plethora of opportunities to create and then reach out to new customers.
In this article, we delve into a few tips and tricks that you can start implementing to both launch and grow your business. We took a look at the online tools and methods that you can start implementing to start transforming your business into a lucrative empire.
Improve Your Customer Touch Points
The first place to start is by assessing your customer journey in your organization. The customer journey starts as soon as your customer hears about your company and begins to ascertain whether you are someone they want to buy from or do business with. Having that first impression is important, but what is even more important is how you engage your customers.
What you need to keep in mind is that every customer is different. Each customer wants to engage differently. Some prefer phone calls, some emails, and some instant chat. Some will want to engage with you through your website, some on Facebook and some will want to have a more human experience and talk and even see someone (especially when it comes to troubleshooting and assistance.)
Emails and instant messaging can be cheap, if not free in most cases. However, when it comes to other communication tools, you will need to do some research into what will best suit your requirements and budget. VoIP, for example, could be a great option for your staff to communicate with your customers, especially if you have global customers, and if they prefer dealing with someone more face to face. VoIP Phone Service Buyers Guides are a great help when it comes to picking out which will serve you best.
Grow Your Email Database
Email marketing is currently still one of the most effective ways of marketing on a tight budget. Depending on how big your database is, and which campaign software you choose, you can get away with affordable packages and increase your sales month on month. Cold emails, despite their stigma, still absolutely work, and companies globally are still sending out emails to brand new contacts and still converting clients.
There are a few things that you need to get right first. You will need to be smart about sending out that first email. Make sure you personalize it, add their name into the email, use some sort of catchy subject line and ensure that the content in the email is relevant, educational and informative.
When it comes to actually acquire these email addresses, most companies have started shying away from buying databases. Not only can it be incredibly expensive, but in a lot of cases, the data that comes to the company needs a lot of work and is dirty. There are various other, savvy ways of getting new contacts.
Referral marketing, if done correctly, and if you offer incentives, can be highly impactful. Not only will you be getting clean data, but the chances of the referral being your target market is incredibly high as it is being shared by your customer. Things like side-bar opt-ins are highly effective, as well as monthly competitions. In some of these cases, you have to spend a little money to make some more money back.
Re-Look at Your Content
Tying in with what was said above, content is vital for your email strategy. But it doesn’t just stop there. Content stretches across your entire site, into social media and all the way to paid advertising. Content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and actually costs less. It is important for various reasons.
Let’s take a look at your site. The content that is on your site is analyzed by Google and your site is ranked according to the number of keywords found on your pages. Having the right frequency and types of keywords is vital for your SEO rankings, so you will need to make sure that your content lives up to this.
Be smart about your keywords, make sure you do your research into what keywords rank in your business, and then add similar too. For example, if you are insurance, add a frequency of “buying a car”, as when someone buys a car, they will be needing insurance. Just think out the box a bit.
The right content will also attract customers and convert them into loyal fans. A blog, for example, can be an educational source of reading and information for your customers. If they know that they can come to your site to read helpful hints, they know that they can trust you and are more likely to buy from you. Make sure in the blog, you include well-placed CTA’s to get those conversion rates up.
Last Thoughts
In wrapping up, make sure you look at your site as a potential customer would. Enter your site from various entry points; social media, emails and organically, and take the full journey through to check-out. Be harsh with what you drop from your site and how you simplify the processes. The longer the customer takes to get to the end result, the higher the churn.
Also, be brutal with the loading time. Not only does a long loading time of a page increase drop-off, but it also severely impacts your SEO ranking. Continuously test this and make sure that the customer has the best journey throughout your site.