Giving Your Business the Best Chance of Success

This year, more and more people are deciding to set up their own businesses. This makes sense. Throughout the course of the pandemic, many people have had to, or have chosen to, reevaluate their working lives. There are those who lost the roles they were comfortable in due to lockdowns and social isolation guidelines. There are many who have been made redundant and struggled to find new roles. Then there are the countless people who have had time to reflect on their career path and who have decided that what they were doing wasn’t right for them. There are, of course, countless perks that come hand in hand with running your own business, so it’s not hard to see the appeal. You get to choose what industry or field you operate in. You get to decide what products or services you sell – you can choose something that genuinely interests you or that you’re actually invested in. You can choose where you work from, what hours you work and take breaks or time off as and when you need. When your business grows, you get to choose the team you surround yourself with. In short, you get a lot more control over your working life. Making a success of your business, however, is a different matter and will take a lot of work and commitment. Here are a few ways you can achieve this!

Outsource

Nobody is good at everything and nobody can do everything at once. Sure, when you first start out in business, you might bear the bulk of the responsibility and workload on your own shoulders. But as time goes on, you’ll find that you do need assistance to keep everything up and running in a professional manner. When you’re in the early stages of business ownership and development, you may not want to take on employees. Employees are great, but they do come with responsibilities. You’ll have to provide contracted hours and pay, regardless of whether your business is making enough to cover this, and you’ll find that you have to provide benefits, such as annual leave, sick leave, compassionate leave and more. While this may be fine later down the line, it might not be ideal while you’re still unsteady on your feet and generating your first profits. The good news is that there is an alternative option – outsourcing. Outsourcing is a process that involves giving work or tasks to a third party who is self-employed or to an agency or another business. The third party you choose will complete the work you provide them with on a project by project basis, for fixed and agreed rates of pay. They also tend to bring their own equipment, which means you don’t have to invest in this either. Popular work to outsource includes:

• Graphic design
• Web design
• Copywriting
• Product photography
• Manufacturing
• Accounting

Marketing

Your business should have plenty of different marketing projects underway. Sure, product development, market research, manufacturing and the other processes that bring your products to life are important. But you could have the best product ever at the most reasonable cost, and if nobody knows it exists, you’re not going to make much profit. There are so many different marketing campaigns you can work on. They don’t all have to be on a huge scale. Instead, fewer, more manageable campaigns tend to work more effectively.

SEO

When you’ve set a website up, it’s important that you spend some time considering SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimisation and is the process of getting your website to rank highly for relevant search terms. Most companies focus on Google, as this is the most commonly used search engine. When customers search for something you sell, such as “keyrings”, you want your website to appear top of the list for “keyrings” search results. Think about it. When was the last time you scrolled any further than the first page of a search engine’s results before finding what you want? It’s probably rare. By ranking highly, more people will visit your page and you’ll have the chance to secure their custom before someone else does.

PPC

PPC stands for “pay per click” marketing. This is essentially when you pay for adverts in different places online. They could be on social media, they could be in search engine results, they could be on websites or blogs. The best part of PPC, though, is that you only pay for the ads that people actually click on. You’ll agree to paying a set amount per click. Most small businesses choose to use a ppc management company to help them keep on top of this.

Social Media

You should make your brand a presence on social media. Nowadays, people are spending a lot more time online, particularly on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If people are spending their time looking at something, you should do what you can to put your brand and your products or services in their eyeliner. Setting up a social media profile for your business is pretty easy. Managing it will take some research, time and consistency. You need to curate posts that will catch people’s attention and encourage people to follow your page and visit your website. Many businesses leave this in the hands of freelancers or agencies to manage.

Social Media Collaborations

More and more businesses are choosing to collaborate with social media influencers. These are individuals with a large following. By posting your products on their page, they expose your business and products to their followers. Choose someone who is followed by your target demographic. Remember to do your research though. You want someone who is not controversial and who doesn’t have a negative reputation.

These are just a few suggestions to get the ball rolling. Some will apply to your business now, some might not, some might come in useful in the future. Hopefully, some of the information sticks in your memory and will prove useful to you and your business in the long run!