Tag: bada business

Categories
Process & Business Expansion

ERP For Small Business: Going The Right way!

Transform your business using ERP solutions

Billionaire Entrepreneur Bill Gates has said, ’Vision without execution is day dreaming’. Managing business requires handling many functions and verticals and to align this together ERP software tools need to take center stage.  The advantages of using ERP solutions for small businesses are immense which will eventually help their companies to grow. Here are 8 benefits of implementing ERP small business software:

1. Cost Reduction

  • Implementation of the best ERP tools will reduce administrative costs considerably. This also helps in better turnaround time. Employees won’t have to waste time in doing manual jobs and entries into the system
  • Capability of your employees can be used for bigger and more profitable projects and plans 

2. Automation with Increased Efficiency

  • Automation in workflow will help avoid the possibility of human error. Hence, reduction in any delays or problems related to customer interface leading to increased efficiency
  • Industry best practices can be adopted and aligned with the company’s goal and vision
  • Increased Efficiency is one of the biggest benefits of ERP tools for Small businesses

3. Visibility and Transparency

  • Visibility & Transparency is one of the biggest selling points for ERP small business software. It allows access to most of the critical functions of the business by keeping a track of every department.
  • For e.g. you can keep track of your distribution network, your inventory in the store house and how much of it is in transit as well as your marketing spends & financial books.

4. Single Reporting Structure

  • In SMBs there are not too many departmental heads, hence with the help of ERP small business software, a single reporting structure is created making it easier to analyze, report and draw conclusions

5. Improved Planning & Departmental Collaboration

  • Since the software gives you accessibility and the ability to analyse and compare reports from across departments, it can help plan inventory and financial management in a better and efficient manner making ERP small business software highly beneficial

6. Inventory/Supply Chain Management

  • For businesses with inventory requirements, ERP solutions create the opportunity for another kind of savings in the form of inventory management
  • ERP for small business can help calculate demand for specific materials, decrease overstocking and track real-time supply
  • When supply chain management runs smoothly, the entire organization will benefit

7. Data Reliability and Security

  • Data is the heart of any organization and needs to be secure all the time
  • ERP tools have controls that can keep your data secure by having restricted rights of edit, copy and deletion monitored continuously
  • Since there is a single source of data, accuracy and security are most important

8. Mobility

  • Today organizations are working on the move especially Startups and SMEs, hence effective ERP systems help in giving the same opportunities to employees who are working on the field
  • Employees can have access to a central database where they can carry out work from any location and any device making them a productive asset for the company. 

ERP for small business is a boon that companies need to embrace and understand. The company needs to weigh which ERP solution is best suited to its goals and objectives and can deliver the ROI expected; hence decisions regarding ERP small business software need to be made strategically before jumping the gun.

Though every business has its own need and requirements, these are some of the Best ERP tools for Small & Medium Businesses

NetSuite ERP

Business Cloud Essentials

Sage Intact

SYSPRO

SAP Business One

Oracle ERP Cloud

Sage Business Cloud Enterprise Management

Epicor ERP
Categories
HR & People Management

4 Tips For Fostering a Feedback Culture in Your Business

Listen to Your Employees to be Successful in Business
 

Feedback is the most important and the only way to know what you are doing is working or not in your business. Every business has guidelines on how the feedback mechanism should work. A strong feedback culture in business can foster the growth of the teams, individuals, and the organization.

Your customers and employees are the only people who can make or break your business. Their voices & opinions should be valued. Companies with a feedback culture are investors of talent and this can in turn influence the growth of the business, boost employee job satisfaction and lead to a higher retention rate. 

Fostering Business feedback requires a lot of time and effort, so let’s discuss a few points to build a strong feedback culture in your organization:-

1. Ask your employees for feedback and ideas

  • Let them know that you respect their ideas by asking them to share their opinions. This goes for everyone- from the top management to your-entry level workers; let them share whatever they want to atleast initiate the feedback culture in business.
  • It is important to hear your managers and especially employees who take care of the complaints department as they have a first-hand experience of what the customers are struggling with and their immediate pain points.
  • Pay attention to each feedback as their valuable suggestions can help your organization grow.
  • Neglecting their inputs can cause a disconnection between the employees and the management.
  • Make sure your management welcomes all the feedback and considers it seriously.

2. Send an anonymous e-mail survey

  • There will be some people in your organization who can feel uncomfortable in speaking up and sharing their ideas, in this case, you can send an anonymous e-mail survey and ask for their business feedback.
  • Many employees feel more comfortable sharing negative feedback or a botheration anonymously.
  • You can always use a different a mode of channel for the feedback survey. Provide your employees an opportunity to share their feedback in a way they are most comfortable with.
  • Here are some of the different methods of conducting an employee survey:

1. Anonymous vs. attributed feedback

2. Group vs. individual feedback

3. Face to face vs. written feedback

4. 1 on 1 vs. 360 feedback

3. Focus on Relationship-Building

  • It is easy to foster a business feedback culture in your organization if people have more trust in their co-workers and team-mates.
  • Put an extra effort into relationship-building activities of your employees and improve your workplace collaboration. You can shuffle the seats; have team building activities, organize special days such as the Pot luck day or a Family day, or maybe an outdoor activity for your employees.
  • You can felicitate or talk about the achievements of some of the employees before starting the meeting; it will also help you to develop a bond between the team members. 

4. Be Transparent with your team

  • Give your employees constructive feedback which can help them grow professionally within the organization. Be transparent with your employees to set a solid feedback culture in your organization.
  • If you cannot act on their feedback, explain to them why it couldn’t be implemented so that they get the feeling that at least their feedback was considered and not ignored.
  • Make sure you set the goal/objective of the feedback. You can also have regular and general business feedback surveys on management behavior, product innovation and the working environment. 

Building a strong Business feedback culture is a great investment if you want to your company to be one of the best places to work in. The process will take time to roll, so continue your consistent effort to implement the feedback culture in business. Your employees will surely be more productive and bring valuable ideas that can make your business grow.

Categories
Strategy

5 Tips to Build an Effective Crisis Management Plan

Be Prepared: How to build an Effective Crisis Management Plan

Every entrepreneur should understand that even the best of business plans can go off course during an unexpected event. Therefore a business crisis plan is a must. We usually tend to procrastinate while preparing a crisis management plan, but unfortunately, disaster can strike at any stage, and having no back up at that point of time can be risky for the business. Here are some tips to keep in mind while preparing for a business crisis.

1. Build a Crisis Management Team

  • It is important to have the leadership team involved in the crisis management plan
  • Involve people from different disciplines, so that all views and points can be accommodated in the final business crisis plan

2. Assess the Risks

  • Identify potential risks that can disrupt your business and work with all stakeholders to assess the risks
  • Devise a contingency plan for short-term as well as long-term. Once the potential risks are known, make a crisis management plan for a period of 3 months, 6 months and then one year. You never know how long the crisis can last
  • For e.g. no one anticipated the Corona virus outbreak and the lockdown that will follow. Hence businesses need to plan for the entire year in this case, to make up for the losses incurred by them and by the predicted slowdown
  • Carry out a Business Impact Analysis to evaluate which side of the business will be impacted the most. Will it be customer satisfaction, lowering of sales, payment defaults from vendors or damage in reputation in the market?
  • Once you know the extent and areas of impact, damage control measures can be listed and put into action during a crunch situation

3. Determine your Contingencies

  • Now that we have assessed the risks and the functions that can get impacted, the next step is to jot down how can the crisis be solved and what resources can be used efficiently to do so
  • Keep an emergency line of credit handy. You never know how long the crisis lasts so knowing from where you can get funds is always a plus
  • Include your employees in crisis communication management. Your marketing team, customer care teams and business heads need to know how they are going to communicate during a problem
  • A business crisis plan requires you to train your employees to tackle such situations and also be ready to take on additional functions to ease the pressure of on some teams. Also keep updating them with new skills, you never which one comes in handy during a crisis

4. Act Quickly

  • Though we advise you to act quickly during a crisis, but that doesn’t mean you take hasty decisions. During a crisis you need to be even more careful about how you battle the situation
  • For e.g. In the early 2000s, Cadbury was in the eye of the story when worms were found in their Dairy Milk Bars. In less than 2 weeks a PR campaign was launched for the trade followed by a nationwide ad campaign with Amitabh Bachchan on their new and improved poly-flow packaging.
  • Key learning here is that, Cadbury was quick in their damage control, they did bear a heavy cost of the damage but soon customer confidence was back and they started achieving their sales numbers
  • A crisis management plan needs to have steps that can help act faster

5. Keep your Business Crisis Plan updated

  • Review your crisis management plan on a regular basis for possible updates or market changes
  • We keep talking about the business environment being highly dynamic; there are changes in the market, technology up-gradation and sometimes there might be a case that employees who were a part of this plan might have left the organization. Hence, revisiting the plan will be beneficial for your business

One thing that Covid-19 has definitely taught us is the extent of impact a crisis can have on your business especially when there is no plan in place. If companies who are on the verge of a shutdown had a cohesive crisis management plan, maybe they could sail through these tough times. As they say, ’Better late than never’- there is no harm in having a general preparedness in place for your company to be financially sound in the long run.

Categories
Strategy

A-Z Guide to Understand Your Business Balance Sheet

A-Z Guide to Understand Your Business Balance Sheet
A-Z Guide to Understand Your Business Balance Sheet

Understanding the Balance Sheet to maintain Financial Stability

Is your business in a position to expand?

Can your business handle financial setbacks? Or should your business take immediate steps to increase cash reserves?

As a business owner, you probably are aware & keeping track of what your business earns and owes to others.

However, if you don’t organize these key pieces of financial data in your business balance sheet, you may be setting your business up for failure.

Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to understand the balance sheet, if you’re willing to learn a few key concepts. So let’s dive in!

What is a Balance Sheet?

Balance Sheet = Financial Position of Your Business

Balance sheet is a financial statement of a company which includes the assets, liabilities and equity capital of the company, at a particular point of time.

Balance sheet communicates the “book value” of a business.

Book Value of your business = Assets – (Liabilities + Owner’s Equity)

Business balance sheet provides you with a summary of your company finance at a given point of time i.e. how a business is currently performing, how it performed in the past, and how it expects to perform in the immediate future.

Understanding the Balance Sheet: How to read a Balance Sheet?

Business balance sheet includes 3 sections:

  • Assets
  • Liabilities
  • Owner’s Equity

Assets:

Asset means any tangible or intangible resource owned by a company like machinery, furniture, land, etc.

Assets include:

  • Short-term Assets = that you expect to sell or convert into cash, within 1 year.

– Cash

– Marketable securities – traded investments easily convertible to cash

– Trade accounts receivable (Debtors + Bills receivable)

– Prepaid insurance

– Inventory

  • Long-term Assets = assets that will not get converted into cash in 1 year, and provide long-term value to your business.

– Fixed Assets: machinery, equipment, furniture, buildings, land, etc.

– Investments: similar to fixed assets; long-term investments, not to be sold within 1 year

– Intangible assets: franchise rights, patents, copyrights, trademarks, goodwill, etc.

Liabilities:

Liabilities means the money that your business owes to others, which could be in the form of loans, wages, taxes, or debts.

  • Short-term liabilities = current liabilities, to be paid within 1 year.

– Trade accounts payable (Creditors + bills payable)

– Accrued expenses

– Taxes payable

– Short-term debts

– Current portion of long-term debts

  • Long-term liabilities = liabilities not to be paid within 1 year.

– Long-term loans

– Capital leases

– Other long-term debts

Owner’s Equity:

The final section of the business balance sheet is owner’s equity (or shareholder’s equity).

Owner’s equity = Total Assets – Total Liabilities

In other words, owner’s equity is what you own after you subtract (reduce) what you owe from your total assets.

  • Capital invested by the owner
  • Retained earnings

5 Simple Steps to Prepare a Balance Sheet:

Step 1: Gather the required information from your books of accounts

Gather all the information (discussed above) needed to prepare your business balance sheet. Any source with updated account balances can be used, however, the most appropriate tool for collecting information is your business’ Trial Balance.

Step 2: Report all Assets

 

  • Report all the assets in the right side of the business balance sheet. Report all short-term assets separately from long-term assets.
  • Short-term & long-term assets should be subtotalled, then totalled together.

Step 3: Report all liabilities

  • After reporting all the assets in the business balance sheet, next step is recording liabilities of your business. Start by recording short-term liabilities, followed by non-current liabilities.
  • Short-term & long-term liabilities should be subtotalled, then totalled together.

Step 4: Calculate Owner’s Equity

Owner’s Equity = Assets – Liabilities

Compare the assets and liabilities of your business to calculate the owner’s equity.

Step 5: Add Total Liabilities to Total Owner’s Equity and Compare to Assets

It is necessary to compare total assets against total liabilities plus equity, in order to ensure you’re your balance sheet is balanced.

Here’s an example of a finished Balance Sheet: Balance Sheet Format

Balance sheet in the books of _________ year ending 2020

Liabilities Amount (Rs) Assets Amount (Rs)
Capital XX Fixed assets XX
Loan Taken XX Current assets XX
Current liabilities XX Cash/Bank XX
Outstanding expenses XX Accounts receivable XX
Bank overdraft XX Bills receivable XX
Accounts payable XX Inventories (Stock) XX
XYZ XYZ

Balance sheet is one of the most critical and important financial statement of your business, offering a quick summary of the financial health of your business.

Learning how to prepare a balance sheet for business can help you understand the financial implications of business decisions leading to better decision-making and running of your business.

Categories
Marketing

8 Ways Your Small Business Can Get More Customer Calls

8 Ways Your Small Business Can Get More Customer Calls
8 Ways Your Small Business Can Get More Customer Calls

Your Ultimate Guide to Cold Calling

Is your business heavily dependent on the cold calling strategy? Allowing customers to quickly and easily contact your business through a phone call can help build trust and in turn improve the sales of your business.

Here are 8 ways your small business can get more customer calls:

1. Have web presence

Having a web presence is extremely essential nowadays. If your business is at an initial stage, then ‘Google My Business’ is a great place to get started with if you don’t have your own website yet.

This platform allows small business owners to display their business across all of Google’s products and platforms.

Tips:

  • Include your contact details at the top of every page so that it becomes easy for visitors to reach out to you.
  • Make sure you include a click-to-call link in the website, so that it becomes convenient for the visitors to call you without having to search for your number.

2. Use landing pages with a single call to action

Using one course of action through a promotional page increases the odds of your potential customers taking that particular route.

Tip:

  • Visitors are more likely to call when it is made clear that they should pick up the phone to receive a discount.

3. Speak at an event or host an industry gathering

Communities are a great way to capture a large segment of the market, hence if you have plenty of expertise in your field—why not get involved with the community?

By speaking at an event, sharing your experience and getting involved in your industry at a local level, you’ll have the opportunity to build your connections and give an impetus to your reputation as a thought leader.

4. Get your business listed in local directories

Marketing through listings in local directories can have a great impact to get more customer calls.

The idea is to make it more convenient for the consumers to find your brand, and one of the most assured and affordable ways to do so is to get your brand listed in local directories.

Tip:

  • Try to be as elaborate as possible by adding your company information in detail, the product/service that your brand caters to and most importantly your contact information.

5. Feature your number on all your marketing material

You never know which medium a potential buyer might choose to find your brand

You might be marketing your products or services through various channels such as outdoor media, catalogs, brochures, social media posts, search ads or any other form of marketing tools. All these marketing materials must include your phone number.

Assign a unique number to each of your marketing channels, as it will help you analyse which channel is driving maximum results. You can then shift the maximum focus there to boost the results further.

6. Paid advertising

We all know about the benefits that paid advertise can bring to the table.

This route is a sure shot way to get that phone ringing and to get more customer calls, if done right.

  • You can hire an agency that fits your budget to help you out with this.
  • Take small steps by allocating a small budget towards paid advertising and use core optimization techniques. Explore different paid channels such as Google Search Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.

7. Spend more on click-to-call (CTC) campaigns

Listing your phone number on your website is a great way to encourage people to call you.

You should focus to spend more on click-to-call campaigns.

  • You should add a click-to-call feature in your website, so that, if you’re dealing with people who are interested in talking to a real person, this feature could result in more calls.
  • According to statistics 52% of search queries come from smartphones, hence, a click-to-call feature encourages consumers to call your business & get answers as soon as they have a question.

8. Have Social Media presence

As the first step, you have to create a profile for your small business on each relevant social media platform.

  • Leverage these platforms by creating & sharing customised content to each of your social media handle.
  • An effective social media presence will encourage your followers to go through your lead funnel and eventually reach out to you by calling your business.
  • Make sure to include a click-to-call link on your social handles as well, so that it becomes convenient for the visitors to call you without having to search for your number.

With the advancement of technology, there are multiple ways through which customers can reach out to businesses, but, there is always a sense of satisfaction for the customer when they speak to an executive in person and this feeling surely can’t be replaced easily.

So for those businesses that depend & focus more on calling as a point of contact, you now have 8 more tools in your arsenal to get more customer calls and begin tangible conversions.

Categories
Finance

Advantages of Tally in a Small Business

स्टार्टअप

Automate Accounting with Tally!

If your business still uses manual systems for accounting and data entry, you may end up spending a lot of time keeping a track of paper documents, finding useful information and keeping your details secure. 

To survive in today’s competition, it is essential that your business adapts to the current technological trends by using tools that give you deeper insights about your business & strategy.

Small businesses usually hesitate to switch to an ERP even though they have the financial capacity to do so. Below are some of the advantages of tally that can do wonders for your business:

1. Multipurpose Use
 

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need ERP software to manage 3 essential functions of the business:

Tally for small business
is a one-stop solution and can be used in all these areas with its easy-to-use interface that manages complex activities of the software in the background, without any chances of errors.

2. Facilitating decision making

Since Tally seamlessly allows to manage accounting, inventory and compliance of business within a single software, its becomes easier & convenient for a small business owner to assess the financial impact of various functions on their business and take day to day decisions based on data. 

Tally for small business acts as the backbone of your company by providing estimates, detailed analysis, and overview of your business at your fingertips, which can further help in the decision making process that can boost the growth of your business.

3. Instant access to records

Small and medium enterprises need to monitor the cash flow and revenues of their business before making decisions, as they are typically hard-pressed for finances.

For Example
Decisions like whether to take a loan from a bank or other sources.

One of the advantages of Tally is that these critical business decisions can be taken, just by looking at the financial reports of the business available at the click of a button.

4. Inventory management

Small and medium enterprises need to keep track of their inventory data i.e. the current inventory in hand, to ensure that the business is not investing heavily in maintaining inventory by paying huge interest costs.

  • Tally for small business provides Stock Ageing report which helps manage inventory in the business.
  • Small business owners can take decisions such as giving new purchase orders to suppliers, based on stock clearance status by simply looking at the report.

5. GST ready

GST filing has become a monthly affair for small and medium enterprise business owners, since its introduction.

  • To file GST return without any hassle, small and medium enterprise business owners need a software for recording business data in GST compliant formats.
  • Tally ERP software is GST ready, giving business owners an advantage over their competitors by enabling them to become GST compliant.

6. Remote access to data

Tally enables a business to give remote access to the employees of the organization.

For example, An inventory manager who works from a warehouse location and not the office location could get access to appropriate information so that he can generate delivery challans using Tally at the warehouse itself.

Employees can get access to all the data by simply logging in using a unique ID and Password.

7. Acts as an Audit tool

Tally acts as an audit tool for compliance as it helps out in conducting regular audits of different companies.

Tally for small business does a thorough compliance check at the beginning of the financial year and ensures all monetary transactions are smoothly being carried out in the business.

  • With the help of Tally, Tax consultants can remotely perform audit without the hassle of transferring data.
  • For better coordination, auditors can leave their comments on the vouchers and business owners could take further action as required.

8. Multi-user

Tally enables business owners to manage multiple functions with multiple user logins. Owners can assign different access rights to their employees based on the data used to run the business.

Tally for small businesses enables its users to work remotely with accounts of multiple companies simultaneously and update the information in real-time as soon as the voucher entries are made.

Tally software has helped many small and medium enterprises to manage their tasks cost-effectively by saving time & increasing efficiency

There are multiple advantages of using tally, facilitating the digitization of bills and signatures, making business transactions a task of seconds.

With the aid of Tally, even a small shop owner can manage bills, customers, inventory, and daily financial transactions more effectively.

Categories
Marketing

5 Proven Ways to Improve Your Video Marketing Strategy

How to Build a Unique Video Marketing Strategy!

The year 2020 marks the rebirth of video marketing. More than 50% of customers want to see videos from companies & brands, more than any other type of content. A video marketing strategy is within the reach of virtually every business despite its budget & size.

Videos are capable of increasing conversion rates by over 80% on the landing pages.

Here are 5 steps to build a perfect video marketing strategy for your business to enhance your brand:

1. Identify your Goal

The first step in order to creating a perfect video marketing strategy is to know & assess your video’s goal.

Every decision taken during the video creation process will lead back to your video’s end goal and what action you’d like your audience to take after watching it.

What’s the goal?

  • Is it to increase brand awareness?
  • Is it to sell more event tickets?
  • Launch a new product?
  • Ultimately, what action do you want your viewers to take after watching the video?

How will you determine the success of your video?
 

Decide several key performance indicators that match with your video goal, to determine the success of your video.

2. Focus on Your Target Audience

Now that you know what the goal of your videos is, it’s time to figure out who is your audience 

This is a very crucial step; if you create your videos without a specific audience in mind, it is going to fall flat. Your target audience will not get to watch it and those who watch it accidently won’t result in a conversion.

If you want to very specific on who consumes your content, then you would need to analyse the buyer persona. They are mostly used by B2B companies and are subsets of the ideal customer profile.

To finalize your target audience strategy, just make sure you know where your target audience hangs out
’ this will help you with right distribution of your video.

3. Provide Incredible Valuable Information

Quality content was and will continue to dominate if it reaches the right audience. Once you understand who your target audience is, you should start working on creating incredible valuable content for them.

What does your audience want to see? What is the burning problem of your audience?

  • Make the effort to study & understand what your audience wants. This can add a huge amount of value to your content, as your content will be relevant & informative for the audience.
  • Listen to your audience through your social media conversations, questions, replies, and through frequently asked questions from your support inbox.

How to create an impactful video?

  • Start with a Strong Hook Statement
  • Include data to support rational mind
  • Include stories & examples to engage the visualization of the mind
  • Focused Central Message 

4. 10x Your Content Marketing Consistency

Since more and more businesses are realizing the value of a well-developed content marketing strategy, competition in the space is increasing.

  • One of the most important ways businesses can distinguish themselves from their competitors is by increasing their content 10x i.e. by providing valuable content consistently to their audience.
  • Providing high-quality consistent content helps businesses enhance their brand and establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry.

Consistency in your content has a direct influence on your brand’s credibility. The more consistent you are, the more credible your brand becomes.

  • Consistency builds brand awareness
  • Engages the audience
  • Helps in generating leads
  • Improves website traffic and SEO

5. Measure Your Performance

Test. Analyze. Modify. Retest.

If you want your video marketing strategy to work, then you must test, analyze, modify, and test again.

You need to produce, release, then review your video’s engagement data in the same way as you do to track key performance indicators (KPIs) for written content.

This data will help you justify the investment that you’re making in videos and gauge the performance of the videos as well. 

Hence, the bottom line is ’ overall strategy and data should drive your video marketing strategy.

Video marketing strategy is very useful particularly for startups and small businesses as they want to get recognised fast and build a recall in the minds of the consumer.

Follow these 5 steps to enhance your brand through the right video marketing strategy and see the wonders visual treatment can do for your business.

Categories
Marketing

Advantages of Having a Mobile App for Business

Look at what you’re missing if you don’t have a mobile app for your business!

What is the one thing today we can’t live without?

It’s our smartphones. According to recent research, people spend an average of 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phones with millennials spending 5.7 hours per day. People check their phones 58 times a day on average with more than half of those occurring during working hours.

Businesses from all over the world that offer a varied range of products have moved on to mobile applications, and if the increase in smartphone usage should make you do so too! If you want to prepare for the future, you’ll need a mobile app for business.

Here are 5 benefits of mobile app for your business:

1. Provide More Value to Your Customer

Business is all about adding value in the lives of your customers, which they can’t get anywhere else by solving their burning problems.

One of the ways to do this is by creating a loyalty program for your customers within your app. How does this work?

  • The more customers interact with your business and your product, the more loyalty points they earn, which can be used for great deals or cash backs on the products they already know they want.

For Example: 

Starbucks uses their mobile app for business to their advantage by offering rewards exclusively to their app subscribers, which then motivates their customers to buy more coffee from them.

Similarly, you can create such loyalty programs that have app exclusive offers for your customers in your mobile app for business.

2. Personalised Content

  • Studies show that users love personalised content for a fascinating experience.
  • Offering personalised content is like offering a tailored or customised communication in the language that your users speak and understand and the users love it.
  • Mobile apps make it easy to cater to personalized experiences, which can be based on your customer’s interest, behaviour, location, culture, etc.
  • The application will observe their habits, behaviour and engagement, filter updates for them depending upon their actual location in real-time

3. Push Notifications and Instant Updates

The ability to send instant and non-intrusive notifications to your app users is one of the primary reasons why companies should build a mobile app for business.

  • When your user opens an app on their device and receives a notification, it is called as In-App notification.
  • On the other hand, push notifications are received on the device regardless a user opens an application or not. 

Moreover, you can send regular updates of your application with all the latest features, images and your product listings via play store, iTunes and windows store. 

It will also allow you to promote your product and services regularly, leading to an increase in sales for your business.

4. Branding and Design

’Your mobile application becomes your business’ brand ambassador’

A mobile app for business is an effective tool for building your brand awareness and recognition.

  • Your mobile app for business works like a blank billboard sign. A business owner can do whatever he/she wants; make it stylish, functional or informative. But what you would really want to build is an app that your customers would love, while at the same time it’s well-designed & easy to navigate serving your purpose well.
  • How soon the customer will be inclined to buy your product is directly dependent upon how often you can get your customers engage with your app.

5. Interactive Engagement

This is one of the most important benefits of a mobile app for business. 

Communicating to the customer is essential for marketing, reverse communication is equally important for businesses to maintain customer loyalty.

  • Studies have shown, customers feel wanted when their complaints and their concerns are heard out and resolved within a limited time frame. This helps businesses build a loyal customer base and brand loyalty.
  • Mobile app for business helps to maintain the critical relationship between customer and the business through online help desks and support systems.

The increased accessibility of your product and services to the customers combined with reduced cost is a cherry on the cake to build customer engagement.

Other Benefits of Mobile Apps:

Apart from the above-mentioned benefits of mobile app for business, there are a few critical differentiators of adopting a mobile app strategy.

  • Access to analytics and data on how people interact with your app
  • Location data: Where most of the people are purchasing your product
  • Stand out from your competitors
  • Reach out to a younger demographic

90% of the companies plan to increase investment in mobile app for business in 2020, and if you don’t, there’s a good chance your competitors will get ahead of you.

Entrepreneurs should know that if they want to focus on customer engagement and build a loyal user base, mobile is the way forward. The power in their hands can make all the difference!

Categories
Strategy

Strategies to Make Your Product Stand Out

Make Your Product Stand Out in 3 Simple Steps

Do you think your company has a unique product & offers?

Here’s the truth; you probably don’t, and there is nothing wrong about it.

Some of the world’s most successful products are not totally new, original or unique. Take the classic example of Google. Google’s founders ’ Larry & Sergey didn’t invent the search engine, yet the one they found out is generating crores of rupees in profits.

This is because they differentiated their product from the sea of other search engines over the years.

So, if you want to truly differentiate and make your product stand out from the crowd, here are 3 proven tips to help:

1. Target Audience: Define your perfect audience

’If you try to appeal to everyone, you will end up appealing to no-one’

Defining and choosing a specific target audience helps you make your product stand out from the rest, as long as you don’t choose the same target audience as your competitors.

For example:

  • McDonald’s target audience includes students, employees and professionals within the age group of 8 to 45 years, belonging to low & middle-income groups and having an easy-going personality.
  • Facebook: The target audience of Facebook has evolved with the company. In the initial years of its operations, Facebook targeted college students of the United States. 

But now Facebook has widened its target market focusing on millennials (25-34 years) and mobile using adults in 157 countries.

Choosing a specific audience for your brand is a start, marketing is the next step.

Marketing that doesn’t hit its intended target audience is classified as a waste, and marketing that does hit its target audience is classified as effective & efficient. The key here is to give your target audience something that interests them.

  

  

2. PSP Formula: Problem Solving Product (Value Proposition)

’You don’t grow when you try to make money, you grow when you try to offer the right value to your customers’

– Dr. Vivek Bindra (Founder & CEO, BadaBusiness.com)

Your value proposition tells your customers at a glance, what you do, and how you’re different & perhaps better from your competitors. 

It might not be the actual features that make your product standout from the crowd, but the way you deliver your service or a disruption brought about by you in a traditional function (think Ola Cabs or OYO rooms, for example)

Examples of Strong Value Proposition include:

Twitter: ’See what’s happening in the world right now’

Khan Academy: ’You can learn anything’

WeWork: ’Space to elevate your work’

These are all recognizable statements from companies that stand out from their competitors in their respective industries for their branding and positioning. 

Having clarity on what your value proposition is and what makes your business unique will help your customers understand what’s unique about your brand too and make your product stand out.

3. Customer Service: Providing consistent & quality customer service

Your product is only one half of the equation in making your brand stand out. Strong customer support & service is the other half.  A perfect balance between the two decided whether the consumer will make the initial purchase from you and whether they’ll continue to buy from you in the future.

  • Statistics shows that 45% of customers will immediately exclude products that come with additional shipping fees during an initial product search.
  • Similarly, other areas that matter includes warranty coverage, fast shipping, and hassle-free exchange & returns.

As a brand, your goal should be to provide consistent & high-quality experience to your customers, right from the moment a customer places their order till it reaches them at home.

Making your product stand out from the competition is getting more challenging nowadays. But it’s also becoming a necessity. Starting with these 3 fundamentals will help you breakthrough.

As the marketplace gets crowded, business owners need to leverage all the moving parts of their business in order to survive. Focusing on your target audience, the value proposition of your product and excellent customer service will help you make your product stand out among an increasing sea of sameness.

Categories
Strategy

How to Evaluate Your Small Business Marketing Plan

Ingredients to Evaluate Your Marketing Strategy

How do you know if your marketing plan is working out or not? 

How to improve your marketing campaigns?

The success of a small business marketing plan depends upon 3 key factors:

  • Developing a strong plan
  • Executing it effectively
  • Evaluating the plan to measure its effectiveness

Evaluating your small business marketing plan is very essential for an entrepreneur, as it helps the business owner to know which campaigns and strategies are working well, and where to focus his time, money and energy to get the best results.

Here are 6 smart ways to evaluate your small business marketing plan:

1. Brand Recognition & Establishment

Grabbing people’s attention, getting people to know your business & brand, and building a relationship with your customers should be the first objective of your marketing plan.

This can be measured by finding out:

  • The size of your fan base on your social media handles
  • Mentions of your brand name on social media sites
  • The number of positive reviews left by customers about your company on social media as well websites like Google Reviews
  • Inbound website visitors from social media handles
  • Total number of conversions resulting from traffic generated through social handles or any other form of advertising

By analysing these factors, you can determine what form of engagement is working to your benefit and how you can drive it further. Increase in traffic on your website and social media handles, retail channels or enquiries on your website/call centre means that your marketing campaign is working out well.

2. Lead Generation

Not all marketing efforts are directed towards generating sales, however, marketing plans must fuel the sales funnel of the business by generating leads.

How to evaluate your small business marketing plan in terms of lead generation:

  • Increase in subscribers to your mailing list
  • Increase in appointments
  • Increase in customer response for your products or services

You should set quantified goals to track & measure your leads generated over the period of a week, a month and a year. 

3. Reviewing Sales Numbers

This is simple: Sales should be going up!

Reviewing your sales numbers is fundamentally the fastest way to determine the effectiveness of a marketing campaign.

For example:

If pre-marketing campaign sales of your company was Rs.500,000 and after the marketing campaign, the sales increased to Rs.800,000, it is a safe assumption that the campaign was effective and your sales have grown due to its effective execution 

4. Customer Response

Customer response in any or all its varied forms can help you determine the type of reaction your marketing activities create. 

  • You can create a funnel for surveys that can be posted online or taken in person from the customers. Customer feedback can help you figure out the reaction & impact of the marketing campaign on the consumer
  • Ask Simple Questions such as:

’How did you hear about us? 

How did you find out about our seasonal sale?

Will you try & recommend our product?

Such simple questions can reveal which marketing initiatives are reaching the right customers.

5. Business Expansion

When your marketing plan is working out well, your business begins to grow with more customer calls, fresh leads, sales and expansion

  • Good marketing campaign makes each customer, employee and stakeholder a marketer of your brand.
  • When you start getting customers from new regions and geographies, it simply means that your marketing plan is working well!

6. Return on Investment

Return on Investment (ROI) is one of the top concerns of any business owner, when it comes to running marketing campaigns.

  • The idea of knowing the ROI is simply to find out whether the amount spent or invested in a marketing campaign has resulted in a profit or not.
  • This can be measured by comparing the amount spent on the campaign versus the amount of sales each campaign has brought in specifically.

A business owner must consistently and carefully evaluate its small business marketing plan to spread brand awareness, spend wisely on activities and maintain its growth momentum.

If the objective & outcome of each marketing campaign has been defined clearly, business owners can not only make smarter marketing decisions but convert potential leads into life-long customers much faster.