Small businesses can involve a lot of complicated elements that make it difficult to see success. That’s why it’s important to make sure you’re staying on top of all the elements that make a store operate with as few setbacks as possible.
Read the tips and tricks below to help make your store thrive!
1. Get to know your customers
One of the most important aspects of business ownership and management is understanding your customer base. This is a necessary point to be mindful of since you will want to identify with your clients who hold a genuine interest in the products and services you have to offer.
Connecting on a personal level with your customers will help you strategize more effective ways to gauge their interests and to improve your selling methods and products.
- Phone calls
- Face-to-face interactions
- Video calls
- Multiple customer contact points through surveys, customer service, and events.
Building meaningful relationships with your clients that place value on their feedback and experiences will help you serve them more effectively.
2. Stay organized
Organization is key to ensuring that your business operates smoothly and productively. Proper time management, streamlined documentation, automating tasks can help significantly with maintaining good structure.
Some key points to keep in mind with organization:
- Set and hold deadlines – Manage administrative tasks by utilizing project management software.
- Plan, plan, plan – You should be planning as much as possible with things like social media campaigns and email marketing. Use social media scheduling software, email marketing automation to help follow up with new leads. Communicate with your team using Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc. to keep up with daily tasks and necessities.
- Keep records of business-related finances – Make sure you’re staying on top of your finances. Stay on top of every copy of invoices and receipts related to every transaction for bookkeeping and tax purposes.
3. Be flexible when you can
Flexibility is an important quality to embody as a business. It will help you navigate changing market conditions, unexpected problems, and deal with situations that you haven’t planned for. Be receptive to your data and lean into it, and don’t be afraid to alter your course of action if it’s not what you originally expected.
Take customer opinions and feedback seriously, and don’t allow your own perceptions to weigh you down and prevent you from making the right decisions for your business.
4. Add personal touches
Small businesses have an advantage in terms of being able to offer more personal touches than a typical big-box business. Especially if you have a smaller team, including things like personal thank-you notes, simple gifts, and offering freebies in exchange for reviews can go a long way.
5. Automate what you can
With repeatable tasks: choose to automate them. This will not only save you time, but it will help prevent things from falling through the cracks. Utilize accounting software to automate daily bookkeeping, follow-up on abandoned shopping carts with automated emails to customers, automate payroll in Excel, and create a chatbot to answer customer questions and respond to queries outside of business hours.
6. Make your website great
Websites are often the first impression people will have your business, so it’s crucial to make sure it’s great. Along with visual appeal, websites should be easy to navigate, uncluttered, and efficient to use.
The design should be simple and clean, and make sure your branding is consistent. Have a section that clearly outlines your brand’s values and mission, use helpful descriptions and high-quality images, and highlight key features.
Speak with your REM Sales Rep to discuss how we can build you a professional business website that not only looks great but is also user-friendly so potential customers can get the info they need quickly.
7. Craft unique content
Set your business apart from your competition with unique content that’s specific to your company. The content your business chooses to post will help make a positive impression on your current and prospective customers.
8. Review your costs
Cost control is crucial in keeping your business afloat and running smoothly. Look at budget variances and aim to streamline your expenses. Compare expenditures in your budget to see what matches up, and where your estimates might be off. Looking at areas where you can cut down on spending can be hugely helpful in being as budget conscious as possible.
9. Invest in data analytics
Data analytics – web analytics, social media, and financial analytics – are necessary to evaluate and fully understand as a business owner. This data is essential in understanding the health of your website, customer behaviours, and seeing what social media platforms and methods work best for you.
10. Cut down on distractions
It can be easy to become hung up on small, unnecessary details that distract you from larger priorities. Make the most out of project management software and don’t try to do everything for everyone all the time.
To maximize your productivity, experts recommend working in one hour time blocks with 15-minute breaks in between. If you’re looking for a good time management system, take a look at the pomodoro technique.
11. Make customer support a priority
The customer experience can often rival the products you sell in terms of importance. Make it simple for customers to get ahold of someone through social media, email, or messaging apps. Your business should be accessible, and you should be actively listening to pain points to better investigate problems and find solutions.
12. Look into your competitors
Critically evaluating your competition can be very beneficial in assessing aspects that may work well for your business, as well as what their weaknesses are. Look out for a digital marketing strategy and their target audience.
13. Build up a strong niche
Specialization can become your best friend as a small business, especially if you can offer a service or product that no one else can. This will help you push the value in your business and better define a target market.
14. Keep up with marketing trends
Marketing trends change and fluctuate all the time, so it’s important for you to keep up with them. Staying on top of current content trends are helpful in ensuring that your business doesn’t fall behind on social media platforms. You want to stay current and relevant, and that means regularly monitoring marketing trends.
If you need help with getting noticed online speak to our Marketing Director. REM offers several marketing services to help get you more visitors and clients. Sit down for a free, no-obligation digital marketing conversation today.
15. Build up a strong team
The people behind your business can help make or break it. Recruit people who genuinely care about your business.
16. Be passionate about what you do
Passion is one of the most imperative aspects of running a business. If you’re passionate about what you do, you’ll be able to better showcase your investment and belief in the products you sell to your customers, encouraging them to purchase them. Don’t lose sight of why you started your business and what it means to you.
17. Encourage customers to engage on social media
Encourage your customer base to engage with your business on and off social media. For example, if possible, have an aesthetically pleasing area in your physical storefront that you can use to encourage visitors to take photos and post on Instagram with a business-specific hashtag. Additionally, push your customers to interact with your posts on social media by liking and sharing your posts.
18. Generate interest with special offers
If you offer your consumer base special offers like discounts, freebies, and small gifts with specific purchase amounts, you’ll be able to entice buyers into choosing your business.
19. Think about strategic partnerships
Seeking out strategic partnerships can be incredibly beneficial for a small business. You can build a stronger reputation, increase word-of-mouth marketing, and reach new audiences faster.
20. Have fun
Through all this advice, remember to not always take things too seriously. Operating a business should be a rewarding experience. You should be able to channel your passion and dedicate your time to something you really love.
Conclusion:
Running a business can be challenging, but if you apply some of these tips and tricks to your plans, it should make the process go more smoothly.
