How do I promote my business?

How do I promote my small offline business?

This is a very common question small business owners often ask - "How do I promote my business?". In this post, we will address this question for small offline businesses. These are businesses that cater to customers within a specific locality or area. These could be both B2C or B2B. A gift shop, a beauty salon, hardware store, interior decorator, furnishing store, dairy products shop, dentist, coaching classes are a few examples of such businesses.

What are the challenges for such small offline business owners?

Before we jump to the solution and suggestions, let us try to understand their challenges and constraints.

• These are mostly family run businesses or a new business started by a passionate individual or small group of family and friends. They are either good at what they do or passionate about the product or service. An individual skilled or passionate about cooking and foods would start her own cafe. Someone good with teaching skills and subject matter expertise may become a teacher or start a coaching class. Being skilled at what they do and sell does not make them an expert at all business disciplines. They may have very little or no expertise in recruitment, sales, marketing, finance etc. To make it worse, not all may have immediate access to a trusted expert.
• A lot of these businesses are solely managed by one person. At best, it could be a couple of owners or members of a family. They are too occupied with the daily operations to have time for planning sales and marketing. Usually, they just go with the flow.

Sales Case Study with Example

Sales Case Study - Banking and Insurance 

This is a sales case study with two examples. Minu, a banker and Suraj, a relationship manager with an insurance company meet Rajat to convince him for investing in respective schemes. What made them lose or win the sale?

Video Link for the Sales Case Study

Sales Case Study Video

Rajat works as a customer service manager with an e-commerce company. He has two personal items on his agenda for the day:

• He needs to visit his bank to deposit a cheque
• One of his policies with the insurance company is about to mature next week. The relationship manager from the company had scheduled a meeting with Rajat

Rajat decides to visit the bank early in the morning.

11 B2B Marketing Statistics to know in 2020

Marketing and lead generation are dynamic processes. You must always be up to date with the latest trends and developments.

Here we present 11 B2B marketing statistics every business owner and marketing professional should be aware of in 2020.

3 simple tips for leaders to inspire and help their teams WIN more often

All successful teams have an inspiring leader who leads them through crisis. A leader shows them the way when the going gets tough. A leader who enables the team to find answers and solutions.

How do good leaders inspire and help their teams to win?

How do leaders challenge yet motivate their teams to achieve their true potential?

These are three traits of great leaders:

• Don't set TARGETS. Set GOALS: targets are meant to be achieved whereas Goals inspire people to go beyond. Targets can restrict individuals and they only think, plan and strive to reach that number. Goals on the other hand motivate them to surpass their previous best and aim higher

• Focus on WHAT but focus more on HOW and WHY: a lot of managers and supervisors stop at letting the team know what needs to be done. However it is more important to show them the way. How to get something done and Why is it important. Employees take more ownership when they understand the importance of their role and contributions

• Make feedback POSITIVE: giving a feedback is not a fault finding exercise. It is an opportunity to identify and discuss ways to improve. Mistakes and missed deadlines or targets need to be discussed as opportunities

How to market your small business at a low budget?

Businesses are planning their strategies for the remainder of the year with the Unlock phase 1 and 2. The three months long Covid 19 lockdown has put small businesses under a lot of stress. They are uncertain about how and when will customers come back. Marketing and promoting their small business is very important, however the budget constraints need to be handled.

Here we will discuss some DIY and easy ways to market your small business at a zero or low budget.

1. Create or update your “Google My Business” page. If you have not created a Google my Business page yet, put that on the top of your list. If you already have a page, update your profile.
1. Google has marked businesses as “temporarily closed” during the lockdown. You would need to go and change that manually to let customers know that your business is open now. If the status says “temporarily closed”, customers may not call for enquiries
2. Update latest images about your office, shop, team and products
3. If you can come with a good offer or discount, update the details on your page

Are you using videos for social media marketing?

YouTube is no longer the only platform users would opt for to watch video content. Video content is being published and consumed on all platforms. It has become the most prominent content type especially for brand and product promotions. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter - they and almost all other social media platforms give preference to video content. Are you yet to consider using videos for social media marketing?

87% marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool.  Click HERE to check the infographic from Oberlo about "10 video marketing statistics that you need to know in 2020".

Do you monitor the risk of losing customers?

As per an analysis by Gallup, "indifferent customers are less likely to want to expand their business with their existing vendors or be an early adopter of new products or services". B2B companies are at a constant risk of losing their customers to their competitors. Do you monitor the risk of losing customers?

How do you track the engagement and risk status for each of your clients? At least for the high priority and strategically important customers.

How do you ensure that your team does not ignore those subtle, unstated early warning signals a customer might give. Signals such as a passing comment about dissatisfaction with some product features or service quality. Or constant delay in payments or irregular response to your emails.

Not just a word. "NO" is an effective business strategy

The humble "No" is not just a word, expression, exclamation or symbol of denial. "No" in itself is a very effective business strategy.

Just like in life, in business too, we often fail to say "No".

The failure on our part to say "No" could have a huge impact on the overall business outcome.

It is very important to have absolute clarity regarding:

• The category of clients you should work for
• The service boundaries for each client
• Strict service level agreements for all stakeholders including the client

Image by Claudio Scott from Pixabay

A few scenarios when we need to say "No"

• No to a new business opportunity when the scope and brief does not fit the ideal client profile. For example, Preeti is the owner of a small website development firm. High quality design, well written original content and an easy to use user interface are the key promises they make and deliver. Low Price is not a promise they make.

The Monster HR Challenge

Managing employees and inspiring them to give their best has always been a challenge for businesses. Most businesses would score just about average points, a few just mess it up while a very very few find the secret sauce.

Why is managing employees such a challenge? What makes it so difficult?

Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay

The Mismatch: Skills vs Expectations

Most employer and employee conflicts at work are a result of employee skills and employer expectations mismatch. Honestly, there is no clear formula to fix expectations and hence it is often difficult to locate the sweet spot. Both the employers and the employees, need to be more liberal and accommodating to each others' expectations.

We should refrain from trying to find a direct correlation between employment benefits and outcomes. The more you pay does not impact the outcome or results in the same proportion. Variance between human resources doing the same job is very unpredictable compared to variance between non-human resources doing the same job. There are processes and tools to standardise the work process and hence have a better control on the outcome, however the human factor is still at play and hence will produce variations.

How Important is Business Strategy?

Image by GraphicMama-team from Pixabay

Before we answer the question "how important is business strategy?", let us look at the definition of business strategy:

• "Business strategy can be understood as the course of action or set of decisions which assist the entrepreneurs in achieving specific business objectives." - Business Jargons
• "A business strategy is the means by which an organization sets out to achieve its desired objectives. It can simply be described as long-term business planning. Typically a business strategy will cover a period of about 3-5 years (sometimes even longer)." - CIO Wiki

So what is business strategy?

It is a plan on how to achieve your business goals and objectives. The strategy could be short term or long term. 

How Does a Small Business Contribute to the Economy?

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Small Businesses are credited as the engines of job creation. Creating jobs positively impacts families, the community and the overall economy.

Let us look at some research numbers to validate the tag of "engines of job creation":

• As per a research by Entrepreneur magazine, small businesses in the United States account to more than 60% of all US jobs
• A study published by Google and KPMG, "India has 51 million small and medium businesses and they employ about 120 million people. SMBs account for 37 percent of India's $2 trillion GDP

How Can a Small Business Survive Competition?

Image by Thomas Walter from Pixabay

The competition is getting tougher. The barriers to entry for a lot of businesses are being either eliminated or reduced by a large extent. Technological advancement is to blame for the fierce competition and disruption in every industry. How can a small business survive competition? Competition from bigger companies. Competition from existing competitors. Competition from new entrants.

It is needless to say that continuous improvement, innovation and adoption of technology is essential for sustainability. Businesses are not just competing with other similar businesses. Players from different sectors and industries are disrupting existing business models. Think Uber, AirBnB and Netflix. These are primarily tech companies disrupting existing business models.

Small Business Growth Strategy - "Keep it simple"

"Business Strategy" is being discussed everywhere - conferences, social media, professional networks, business management books, blogs, networking and coaching sessions. Everyone, everywhere is talking about business strategy.

Do you need to be a cost leader? Do you need to add more value? How to identify a niche segment?

There are questions and then there are answers. However, quite often, especially small and medium businesses lose their focus as they spend a lot of time planning a strategy. The complete plan often does not see the light of the day.

At an early growth stage, at times the mantra is to "Keep it Simple". Keeping it simple could be the best small business growth strategy.

Speed and flexibility are the major advantages every small business has when they enter a new market or compete with larger players. A lot of time, effort and resources spent in strategic planning tends to slow them down. This neutralises their advantage.

At an early growth stage, spend most of your time, energy and resources in execution. Talking to clients, visiting them, ensuring follow-ups and deadlines are not missed add more value and fuel a company's growth.

todo.vu - CRM for Small Business, Consultants and Freelancers

Small business owners, independent consultants and freelancers often look for FREE or budget friendly options for their business requirements. Software and tools meant for larger companies tend to be too complex and costly. Here, we give you an overview of todo.vu - an integrated CRM, task management, project management, time tracking and billing software.

todo.vu claims to bring all your customer management and project management into one place, with built in time tracking and billing. Check out the todo.vu intro video:

todo.vu packs in all the necessary features required by freelancers, consultants and small teams. Along with the features, it also meets the budget needs.

How to Retain Employees?

Small businesses, like all organizations, often struggle with their hiring and retention strategies. Owners and the Management spend a lot of their productive time dealing with human resource issues. However, unlike large organizations and MNCs, small businesses do not have dedicated human resource departments or executives to hire, retain and manage talent. The office HR rep is more often than not a shared resource. She is busy with other functions such as admin, purchase or client relations along with managing her HR duties. Hence, human resource management tends to be a neglected department. The need is felt when there is a sudden pressure to hire new talent or when an existing employee decides to move on. While hiring the right talent is very critical, our focus here will be on how to retain employees?

How can a small business create value for employees?

Tips to retain employees

• Fix your hiring process. Yes, the focus of this blog is retention. However, hiring the right talent is indeed the first step. Most small businesses fail to plan their hiring requirements. The result - they always issue urgent hiring requirements. The urgency does not allow adequate time to screen profiles, research and ensure the most suitable talent comes on board. It certainly is difficult for smaller companies to create hiring forecasts.

How to choose a CRM for your Small Business?

Sales in the last few years has become omni-channel and multi-channel. Businesses no longer rely on one or two sources for lead generation and new customer acquisition. The multiple sources or channels need to be aligned and synced for improving results and conversion. It has also become easier than ever before to interact with customers and prospects using multiple channels. Data collection, integration, analysis have hence become critical for success in sales. This has made CRM (customer relationship management) software immensely popular in the last one decade. There are plenty of options available, both free and paid. How do you choose the most appropriate CRM for your small business?

The first step when your start your research for a CRM for your small business?

While the overall lead management and sales process remains more or less similar for every business, each firm may have a few steps unique to the way their team functions. These steps and processes are usually the results of years of following a particular way of work. These steps also could be the best practices which cannot be ignored. One of the major reasons of failure for any new software or technology implementation is the non-compatibility to existing system and processes.