If you are reading this article, chances are high your business probably is in the initial startup stage. Being a “startup owner” seems so cool in people’s minds but only an entrepreneur knows how tough it is to take a business to the next level, which is the Growth Stage. Sure, hard work is required for reaching the next level, at the same time you need some strategy and hacks. So, what are some business hacks that can make your entrepreneurial journey little bit easier and reduce the chances of failing as an entrepreneur?
The B2B and B2C marketing game are changing at a rapid speed, but you still have to stay within your own budget limit. So, here are some business hacks that firms of all types and sizes can use to change their marketing plan to get the best return.
Small Business Solutions that All Business Needs
1. Stop Spending on Marketing Hoaxes that don’t Work
Any approach that doesn’t generate leads or have any substantial impact on business solutions should be thrown away. But the question is, how are you going to find out which marketing techniques are going to work and which ones are most likely to fail? This decision is not an easy one to make because different industries and business niches have their own way of doing things.
If you are a B2B business industry, inbound marketing along with referral and outbound process is your best hope for expanding the business. If you are in B2C business industry, outbound along with push strategy is a great idea. That being said, the market is evolving constantly and customers have created a barrier around them; one that is hard to penetrate. It’s a good idea to do A/B testing to find out which methods are working the best. Keep in mind that no single marketing approach is going to get you success in a short period of time.
2. Start Spending on Numbers
Here’s a scary truth: in this era of digital marketing, everything can be measured. As a result, businesses are making a lot of investment in business data.
If you don’t get a feel about your niche and can’t analyze previous year’s data, how are you going to reduce your unnecessary spending? Spending on numbers will not only give you a sense of hierarchy, those numbers also can be used in future decision-making processes.
In a way, the data becomes your property and you can gain leverage from it as a part of sbusiness hacks.
3. Invest in Content, one Way or Another
Exclusively making content which only talks about your business won’t do you any favor. People will not be interested much in those kinds of content because people don’t want to be pitched through content.
But if you provide some small business solutions, you are bound to get good word of mouth. You can educate your customers through your content about how your product works the best and what they should and shouldn’t be doing to get the most out of it. Content creation is all about earning someone’s interest through making and publishing the right material.
If you have something important, new, helpful, or original to say that speaks to your target audience, you can be sure that they will be willing to trade their name and email to get that piece of information.
4. Put Efforts on Social Media Marketing
Why should I use social media marketing? Instead, you should be asking, to what extent do I use it to maximize my benefits?
According to numerous surveys, the popularity of Facebook is skyrocketing. But in B2B market Facebook is not that appealing, at least not at this moment. So, depending on your business start doing social media research to find out where your customers spend most of their time to learn or where they go for procrastination.
Post your updates on Twitter, keep your LinkedIn business page fresh and educative; so that your audience come back to your brand for their specific niche of information.
5. Stop Killing Leads and Invest in Lead Nurturing
Let’s say you’ve done a lot of hard work and devoted a lot of your budget on lead generation. But what is the use if you don’t find qualified leads. Without proper qualified leads, your leads are as good as dead. Outsourcing lead generation jobs can be a long term solution.
50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. (Source: Gleanster Research)
Sadly, after lead generation, many are dropped or never followed upon. What a waste of budget! If you are dropping leads, then it’s probably time to start thinking about putting a lead nurturing program into your marketing plans and strategy.
65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
For B2B lead generation, Twitter and LinkedIn have the most potentiality. Make sure your marketing and sales team is on the same page. If they don’t get along, your business won’t generate much leads or conversations. Make sure the marketing team does a thorough research before giving it to the sales team.
6. Offshore Some of your Workload
When you are just starting out, finding competent and qualified employees will be hard. Candidates always want to work for the big companies; on top of that you won’t be able to offer them a handsome salary right off the bat. So here you have to make some adjustment as a part of business hacks.
Offshoring had a negative tag on it in the past, because it was hard to maintain remote employees. This is not an issue anymore. Employees or departments can be handled remotely with full supervision; thanks to new monitoring tools you will be able to keep track of your offsite team whenever you feel like.
According to a market standard in developed countries –
- A Software Engineer/Developer/Programmer receives an average of $73,957 per year, but salaries go up to $110,000, depending upon location, according to PayScale.
- Inc.com reports that software engineers across the nation make $104,000 a year on average, but for companies like Apple and Amazon, salaries are around $200,000 a year when you include equity and bonuses. The article cites a report by The Information and notes Airbnb is at the top of the heap with compensation in the realm of $312,000 per year.
- A Senior Software Engineer or a Senior Backend Developer can command $130,000 to $150,000, says Built In NYC.
The average salary for any customer service employee in UK – 15,000 – 40,000/Year.
That’s a lot of data to process, I know. The gist is, for every in-house employee you hire, your ROI doesn’t add up to be a profitable decision.
Here’s why,
You have a small e-commerce business. Initially, you are struggling to sell your product or service. But you need employees to run day to day activities. For your tech support, you need a couple of developers who will maintain your site or web applications and keep it up-to-date. But as I mentioned earlier developers cost a ton. But hiring a developer from Orbit Informatics isn’t costly at all. You also can outsource your customer service work at a flat price.
Key Takeaways
In order to lift your business from startup stage to growth stage, you need to reduce initial investment. Because then you can save up and later use that capital to create new opportunists and face off new challenges as a part of business hacks.
- Find out the right marketing fit for your business
- Spend more on research
- Make audience consumable content
- Get rid of the freeloader employees
- Keep your brand at the front of social media audience
- Be the social media marketing guru
- Put together the right team. This is especially important because without an efficient team your other work will be in vain.
You can also check out –
8 Signs That Indicates You Need Customer Service Outsourcing Right Now