Entrepreneurs must be brave hearts, or else they would just not be able to withstand the shocks and stress that comes with setting up and managing any business. It is not just enough to be passionate about your business ideas. Still, you must have a good degree of risk-taking ability to succeed in your entrepreneurial ventures. They have spent three successful decades in marketing before hanging up his boots.  Dealing with specific risks is an inherent quality that every entrepreneur must have to successfully pursue their business goals.

Small businesses are the backbone of the industry, and several of these perform well while consistently making profits. But there are quite a sizeable number of small businesses; almost 20% fold up before completing the first anniversary. Another 50% survive for five years. Only a third of the total number of small businesses can live up to 10 years according to SBA’s data (Small Business Administration), confirms Eric J Dalius.

To avoid the pitfalls that cause the untimely death of small businesses and ensure that it survives for years, it is important to understand the reasons behind the failed businesses. It will help you understand the obstacles o that you know how to manage them better or avoiding them completely.

Financing problems

Lack of working capital is one of the most glaring reasons why small businesses fail. Most business owners are aware of the funds required to run the show. They take note of all expenses under various heads like payroll, meeting everyday operational expenses, paying for rent, utilities, and other fixed and variable overheads, and payment to outside vendors. However, they often fail to monitor the revenue generation, which can keep the company going. The gap in understanding the finances in totality results in shortfalls that can quickly make the business choke to its death.

Ineffective business plan

Having a well thought out sound business plan in place is a pre-requisite for starting any business, and many small business owners fail to adhere to it. The business plan must include all elements like a description of the business, employee and management needs for present and future, opportunities and threats, capital requirements and fund requirements, as well as competitor analysis and marketing initiatives. Not having a business plan will only result in business owners facing surprises after surprises that slowly drown them in the quicksand of mismanagement.

Inadequate management

When the management team or the business owner lacks business acumen, there is just no chance for small businesses to survive. For most small businesses, the owner is the sole management team that looks after the business for the first one or two years. It is not enough to have good business ideas and creativity, but good management skills are most important to make the business survive and gather momentum. Either the business owner himself is a good manager or creates an effective management team that can guide the business through the ups and downs and keeps it moving towards the goals.

Envisaging the company’s marketing needs and doing the business arithmetic correctly can save small businesses from failing, feels Eric Dalius

Today, social media platforms are an integral part of our lives. We cannot imagine a day without it. Business ventures of all scales use social media platforms for marketing their products. Small business ventures need to create a robust social media marketing campaign in order to grow and popularise their brand, and make more revenues. In this small article, you will learn more about this important marketing medium.

Why is social media important for small business firms?

There are plenty of small business firms that rely solely on social media for promoting their products and services. Social media helps expose a brand to a large global audience in a very short period of time. Additionally, it is free, and so a business owner can get free marketing of his products. However, business owners must make the optimum use of social media for boosting their business. Eric J Dalius notes that only a small percentage of business owners create a strong content managing system. This hampers their overall business marketing. 

To get more business revenues, business owners have to ensure that they can efficiently engage users in their social media posts. This single factor could generate over 50 % more revenues. 

How can social media help small business houses?

Small business firms should use social media to generate more leads and grow their reputation as brands. When a small business firm regularly updates its content on social media, it can get more effective results than traditional marketing methods. Social media actually offers brands a lot of control over the type of content that they post. Additionally, social media helps brands to communicate with customers and reach out to them. It also helps to generate more word-of-mouth marketing. These factors can greatly boost your brand’s image.

Know your target audience

Eric Dalius notes that social media helps small business firms to learn about their target audience. This allows firms to design effective social media marketing strategies. Brands can segregate their target audience based on their age, sex, online behavior, interests, preferences, and so on. 

Business owners can also market their products based on user’s birthdays and anniversaries. Targeting the right kind of audience is important for boosting sales. It helps brands become more focused and address customer’s concerns. This is why social media is so crucial. 

Gradual business growth

Small businesses will grow gradually. Social media can boost the process by helping these establishments get more sales than expected. It is important to constantly post original content on their social media pages, creating a sustained interest in the target audience. The posts should focus on the core expertise of the business firm. This will help generate more awareness about the products.

Conclusion

Small business ventures need to rely heavily on marketing for generating revenues. Social media platforms are excellent in this regard as they provide free marketing to small business establishments. Hence, small business ventures need to have a robust social media marketing strategy. 

Whether you want to start a product-based or a service-based business, there are certain common aspects that you would need to look into, like clearly outlining your business goals and objectives. This small article will outline the processes through which you can specifically set up a service-based business venture effectively.

Creating the distinction

Creating a distinction between product-based and service-based business is important as it allows you to define the main tools you should choose to enhance your business experience. These tools can help you to contribute positively to the way you run your business. Continue reading to know more.

Eric J Dalius, notes that several service-based businesses are centered on labor, which requires more focus on selling key service skills. This helps to produce an effective outcome that can generate more revenue for the business owner. Paying close attention to your services’ quality and efficiency and marketing them properly is important as it helps develop your brand and create a place for itself in the competitive world.

Calculate the costs and returns

Before starting a service-based business, you should assess how much your expense and returns will be. This will allow you to formulate effective marketing strategies. In labour-intensive businesses, you should first check the viability of running the business. You should check how many customers you will have for your services at peak times. This is essential as it helps determine the returns that you are likely to make at your maximum potential. The ultimate goal for business owners is to make their business generate revenues. If the nature of service is such that it always has high demand, you can expect to make consistent profits. 

Look for inspiration

Before starting your own business, you will need to identify successful service-based companies for inspiration. Learn from such companies on how to enhance your company’s potential. You will need to identify your company’s essential features that can be improved and those that should be properly marketed. This will help you to create a strong marketing strategy for spreading awareness about your business. 

Create good customer perception

Eric Dalius recommends you to create a good customer perception for your company. This is extremely important for your progress and future success and is the need of the hour. So, you should be able to identify the correct services depending upon your customer’s requirements. It is not enough to just provide good service, but you must also provide relevant and useful service. You need to conduct market research to get the data on what type of services customers require and provide that. This will help you to streamline your business potential immensely and help you in the long run. 

Conclusion

Starting a service-based business venture is not easy and requires a lot of dedicated research and strategizing. By following the steps mentioned in this article, you will build a successful business venture. Remember to conduct market research first and assess your expected revenues first before embarking on your business. 

Entrepreneurs who want to succeed with their small business must have good planning, be flexible, and possess organizational skills. It will be wrong to assume that assembling all the resources to start a business is enough to make it gather momentum, and revenue will start flowing in. The truth is that making money in business is a challenging task, much more complicated than you think, confirms Eric Dalius. 

To avoid failure in your business ventures, you must spend more time on the drawing board in making a solid business plan that covers all the steps necessary to start a business. 

Get Organized

Staying organized will help you take a methodical approach that leads to business success. It will help you complete tasks according to priority, and you will always tick all the boxes in your to-do list every day, which are the road signs that help you navigate your way towards success.As you complete each task in the list, check it off so that you leave none of the tasks unattended at the end of the day. Completing all tasks every day is essential for the survival of your business.

Maintain detailed records

Good record keeping is the hallmark of any successful business. When you have all the financial and other records updated, you know the status of your business and which way it is heading. You can identify the challenges that await you and prepare to tackle it effectively by creating strategies to get around it and move closer to achieving your business goals.

Understand Risks and rewards

To make your business grow, you must take some calculated risks. Evaluate the downside and understand how much impact it will have on your business so that you can envisage what could be the worst-case scenario. The knowledge helps you take some calculated risks that can be highly rewarding.

Analyze your competition

You must be ready to compete with all your might because only competition helps to get the best results. To succeed in business, have your eyes and ears open and gather as much information as you can about your competitors. By knowing the things they are doing right, you can implement those steps for your business, which cuts down the hard tasks and saves time.

Stay focused

Perseverance is one of the most important qualities of entrepreneurs that help them stay focused and keep trying relentlessly to achieve their goals which can bring success. Staying focused on your goal helps to give the time it needs to build brand awareness while achieving your short-term goals, explains Eric J Dalius.

 Be creative

You must always keep improving your business processes continuously by using your creativity and the ability to think out of the box. It will help to make your business stand out from the crowd.  Have an open mind to accept new ideas that help to approach your business in new ways.

Give the highest importance to the customer experience by providing great service, which makes all the difference between failure and success. Better is the customer experience more loyal they will turn and ensure faster business growth.

Customer engagement rules supreme in marketing, and all kinds of businesses, including small and medium businesses, must implement digital marketing in their overall marketing strategy. For small businesses, digital marketing is the only way to take their business ahead and meet the growth targets. Digital marketing includes all kinds of online channels for reaching out to customers and engaging with them. It includes everything from email marketing to social media marketing and search engine optimization or SEO marketing and bogs, PPC, and other means of connecting with the targeted audience online.

Gain a competitive edge in marketing

Fierce competition in the small business space is compelling more and more businesses to adopt digital marketing, which is both affordable and effective. Online marketing channels help to increase brand visibility and grab all attention by helping the brand stand out from the crowd.   Digital marketing can become easily recognizable your business and brand and bring the audience much closer through higher engagement, believes Eric J Dalius. Armed with digital marketing, small businesses can take on bigger brands and carve a place of their own among the audience that starts backing the brand.

Take the plunge

If you are not already practicing digital marketing for your small business, take the plunge without further delay. Every minute of delay can cost your business dearly as your competitors would lap up all the gains that should ideally have been yours. However, it might appear intimidating to figure out how to start and from where this article will show you the easy ways of getting off the blocks.

Use keywords extensively

Keywords help the audience discover your business online. These are special words that describe your business’s aspects that the audience normally uses to search for some of the products or services they are looking for.  Identify the most relevant keywords by using a keyword planner and spread these liberally across the website in various content like blogs, infographics, image captions, and videos.   However, do not overuse the chosen keywords but insert these naturally within the content. Keywords are the lifeblood of any digital marketing campaign.

Start a blog

Whatever content you publish on your website ensures that the audience finds it useful and derives some value that makes it more meaningful. Start using blogs to educate the audience and share valuable information about your business and products so that it builds trust for the brand. When the audience starts trusting your brand and business, they would be eager to share it with others, and in the process, your business gains high popularity.

Use video content

Video content is most powerful in digital marketing because of its high appeal that generates high engagement and enhances brand equity. Well-crafted video content helps the audience gain more clarity about the brand by sharing more useful information, increasing conversions, explains Eric Dalius, a successful marketing veteran. Video content is a hundred times more appealing than text content as human brains are more receptive to images.

Optimize the website elements to stay tuned to the best practices in SEO that improve search rankings and gain higher visibility.

The internet offers business owners unlimited opportunities to develop their brand and be financially successful. The internet is also the best place for business owners who want to create a more flexible work environment. Starting an online business venture can be extremely profitable, and it is definitely something that budding entrepreneurs should consider. In this article, you will learn about some important reasons you can consider starting an online business. 

Raise your scale

Online business ventures have the ability to take their business to the next level easily. Because of the simple fact that there is zero human interference, you can generate multiple sales simultaneously through several platforms. You can also increase your marketing campaigns easily by both paid advertising and free social media campaigns. You can get plenty of free marketing through social media by posting high-quality content. This will allow more people to visit your website and learn about your business. Overall, you will increase your revenues by a large margin through the internet. 

Low initial start-up cost

You do not need to take a large loan to start an online business. Eric J Dalius, mentions that online business ventures easily fit your budget when you start them, and hence, it is cost-effective. You can begin with whatever budget that you have and continue to grow and develop the business. You can invest in paid marketing to grow your business more in the future. This is not possible with traditional offline businesses. You will need to rent out an office space, buy furniture and other hardware, and so on. There would be plenty of expenses.

Have more control over your business

Running an online business will help you have more control over both your business and your life. It will take some time for your business to generate enough income to become your main occupation. However, the internet will offer you a lot of flexibility. You can work when you want and wherever you like. 

Additionally, you will get to choose and decide how you want to run your business and take all the decisions by yourself. You will not have to worry about meeting specific targets every month to pay your office rent and so on. After your business starts generating sufficient income, you can even consider leaving your full-time job and concentrating solely on your enterprise. You will be your own boss.

Work from home or anywhere you like

An internet business venture offers a lot of flexibility regarding your working hours, and it allows you to work remotely from anywhere you want. This is an attractive proposition for many people who do not like to work in localized workplaces. Eric Dalius opines that this flexibility is an alluring feature of internet-based businesses because it offers people the chance to work even when traveling. All you need is your laptop and an internet connection, and you are good to go.

Conclusion

Internet-based business ventures can be amazing for entrepreneurs as it offers numerous benefits. 

Normally, small business owners wear many hats, but as the business world becomes more complex, it is extremely difficult for them to be inexpert in all the specialized disciplines that their business demands. They must be apt to manage finances and generate and manage cash flow to customer acquisition, which must be their forte; they must not rely too much on their own capabilities to run the business smoothly. Instead, they must focus more on building business relationships with support from a reliable team.

Members of the support group

From customers, employees, bankers to lawyers, tax specialists/ accountants and insurance representatives to skills trainers, sales/marketing professionals, as well as technology consultants, the list of the members of the support group can be quite long depending on the nature of business.

Here is how you can proceed to develop relationships.

Employees

The relationship between a business owner and his employees marks the beginning of the owner’s financial duties and perhaps one of the most important relationships to cultivate, confirms Eric J Dalius.  Good employees are assets for the organization, and the time and effort given to building relationships can give a good return on investment. Employees to whom the owner lends a patient ear, respects, and appreciates are generally high performers as they feel motivated to excel.

As employees represent the company to customers, customers’ business experience largely depends on the quality of interaction with the employees.  When employees are happy, they tend to keep customers happy too.

Tax specialist and accountant

Having a good relationship with the accountant is important so that the business owner can be confident about the timelines, clarity, quality, and understanding of the financial reports that portray the company’s current health and where it is heading to. A good relationship with an accountant influences the business credibility to bankers and other financial organizations that support the business. Sometimes the accountant doubles up as the tax specialist that saves cost, and more convenient for business owners as it saves time. The accountant must have broad experience in Taxes in the respective industry in order to play both roles efficiently.

Bankers

Maintaining a good relationship with bankers is an obvious good for meeting future expansion needs, and routine business as capital would be necessary for overall business growth, buying a building, increasing inventory, bridging gaps between receivables and payables in the short term, or coping with the seasonality of cash flow typical to the business. The more familiar the banker with the owner, the better the prospects of securing finances at times of need.

Marketing professional

Since the marketing team can make or break a business, it is a basic need for business owners to maintain a good relationship with the marketing professionals.  Implementing a well-defined marketing plan is the only way to make the business grow, and a healthy relationship with the team will help achieve the targets with ease.

As per Eric Dalius, since many of these skills are never available in-house, business owners must develop and maintain a close relationship with these outside resources before encountering any emergencies.