How To Future-Proof Your Small Business

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According to Richard Branson CEO and Founder of Virgin “A business’s long history is meaningless if it doesn’t provide the best-designed, most reliable products or services at competitive prices and back up those offerings with the finest customer service. In these fast-moving times, longevity is more the exception than the rule. According to a 2012 study by Richard N. Foster of Yale University, the average lifespan of a company listed in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has decreased to just 18 years, from 61 years in 1958.

Are you becoming complacent?

Almost no products are so good that they cannot be constantly improved on. In the UK they have a great saying: like painting the Forth Bridge in Britain,” which is an unending task. This is because the painters of this massive bridge in Edinburgh were never done – once they had finished painting it, they then were needed to immediately start again. The task came to an end in 2011, because workers had switched to a new kind of paint. This is a great example how your businesses product development should be a similarly endless quest for improvement.

According to Bluecorona Small Business Statistics for 2016/2017

• 66% of small business owners say that finding new customers is a top concern.
• 40% of small business owners say that retaining customers is a priority.
• 43% of SMBs says that improving customer experience and retention is their top strategy to improve revenue growth.
• 30% say that keeping up with technology advances is a major concern of small business owners.

What is Future Proofing?

The term “future-proof” refers to the ability of something to continue to be of value into the distant future; that the item does not become obsolete. This information can be distilled into many principles depending on industry group which can then be applied to many areas.

10 Ways to Future Proof your Small Digital Business

1. Work with millennial and change your thinking.
2. Think from your client’s standpoint and create a positive product experience from this viewpoint.
3. Common Q&A if you get the same questions try re-writing your website copy to better answer common questions.
4. Focus on creating a long-term client not just a one-time sale.
5. Read about marketing trends and the directions on technology
6. Eliminate untrustworthy or toxic people from your life, this could be a lifelong friend, family member, a dishonest bank that has cheated for so long it’s become common practice, or even your mortgage broker who breaches your client trust and confidentiality.
7. Monitor What direction your top 5 closest competitors are doing and create an average for your new direction if a new change is needed.
8. Have a upsell strategy built into your product purchase process.
9. Train your staff right from the start on exactly how to carry out the tasks they are expected to complete.
10. Cut your costs, all businesses have expenses. Most businesses have expenses that can be cut. Don’t wait until you need to cut your operating costs to start eliminating unnecessary services and expenses from your monthly burn rate. Take a look into the expenses that don’t equate to your basic bottom line and ax them. Remember for every dollar you save it’s then directly reflected to your profit.

Small Business Digital Marketing that Converts

If you know anything about small business, then you know its overall mission is to attract customers that are interested in your products and services. You might have tried Google ads, or FB and social media marketing to some success. The problem with many digital marketing methods is you pay your money and cross your fingers that sales with convert. I have personally tried almost every type of digital marketing you can think of and the only one that sticks out for me is official email marketing. Email has been the only marketing method that provides the ability to grow massive contacts databases easily and responsibly. With email marketing you can send out thousands of emails an hour and have a web-based dashboard manage and automate the entire technical process. If I had to choose only one digital marketing platform to build my business it would be email marketing.

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