Business Development l Grow Your Business

If your business depends on obtaining new leads regularly, there are some available options that help you to achieve it. In today's technologically advanced environment, there are many companies that tend to focus on electronic means of contacting potential customers, such as social media or email marketing. While these can be effective, you should never overlook the possibility of direct mail and use these lists to significantly increase the success of your business. Here are some benefits that will be seen when you use this type of marketing and physically send your list instead of automatically.

How to brand your business? Part-2

A perfect branding takes time to develop. You cannot achieve overnight. He needs proper guidance, nurturing, and strategic expertise. So, here's a list of some don'ts that you may need to consider:

1. Do not make your business services or real company brand products. Your corporate brand should be the spokesperson for your products or services. It should lead your business to its highest peaks.

2. Do not make your company logo of your company's brand. Your logo should describe what your corporate brand stands for.

3. Do not create a logo that is apparently in line with newer models. It might not look appealing after 10 years and will just give an outdated impression on your corporate identity.

Therefore, keep in mind that the company logo is an information element that serves as a reminder of a particular brand. For example, the logos for Apple, Google, Nike and Puma, they transmit all dimensions of their marks in a single glance and components are clean, simple, catchy, effective and memorable. These are the types of company brand you want; something that creates basic introductions and bears the name of your business wherever it goes.

GOOD LUCK

How to brand your business? Part-1

The most important step in effectively to the development of the brand is to create a logo that conveys a message behind the business to everyone around the world. Its essence is to make corporate branding for your business. It is a way to design a functional representation for a company and the company name.

Probably, you already have a design in mind about how you want your logo to look better when displayed for your brand. However, you may need to consider a guide for your overall brand development into a reality as stated in the below guidelines.

1. Find an experienced and trusted team that offers branding services.

2. Present the entire design, color and the specific fonts you might want to incorporate into your logo design to your brand strategist.

3. Make reasonable use of bright colors! It may attract more attention.

4. Make your logo simple and uncomplicated, without ignoring creativity. 

5. Your logo design for the company's brand should be created in a way that it can be used on different platforms without affecting its vividness in terms of appearance. It must always deliver the same message for your business.

Tips to Boost Your Business- Part 2

There are a lot of general tips you should follow to boost your business such:

        1.    Use a personalized paid email address: In case you are using a free email address          like yahoo, hotmail, msn or any other free email, please stop using it immediately as                you are harming your business by doing so. Free email address look very                               unprofessional and create a poor impression about you. So start using an email                     address which is like yourname@yourcompany.com as soon as possible.

       2.    Build your company website: If you are in business and you do not have a website           you are losing business. No matter what your argument may be, a website is becoming           a qualifying criterion for buyers to select people they want to talk to. Not having a                    website reduces the number of people who would be interested in talking to you.

    

       3.    Make it easy for people to contact you: The below three points are a basic minimum:

         A. Having voice mail on all your phone lines: Basically, you must have a system where       a person can leave a message if your phone is busy or no one is there to attend it so             that you do not miss anyone trying to contact you.

         B. Having a dedicated fax line: Faxes nowadays are mostly being sent by some fax              software. So if you have a system where a fax tone is given on request, chances are            you will not receive the fax.

         C. Always including complete contact details in all emails you send. A simple way is         to use signature files.

        4. Review your website critically: If you have a website, look at it critically from a buyer's      viewpoint and see if your website does the following:

           A. Make the visitor believe you know your business well.

           B. Provide more information than competitors.

           C. Enhance your credibility.

           D. Make the visitor feel like contacting you.

           E. Is your contact information easily accessible?

       5. Understand the mindset of your buyer: Learn to listen and understand the pulse of the      potential buyer. Find out what drives him. Although I know all of you will jump and say           'price', you know that there is millions of dollars of business being done at a price much           higher than the 'best possible price' even when buyers know that. It is being done                   because of timely delivery, quality assurance, excellent communication, comfort level             or special customization, etc. Each buyer has some factors he holds as key.                     Once you know that, you should be able to reassure him on that front.

Tips to Boost Your Business- Part 1

To safeguard your business interest, you should follow the following quick tips:

(1)	Never send money by Western Union: It is tempting as it is very simple and you can send quickly. But it is illegal for business use in most countries and it is non-recoverable and non-traceable. So the chances of getting duped are very high if you pay by Western Union.
(2)	Never remit money by Bank Transfer to a personal name: Always send to a company name. Many use this trick and I am surprised how many keep falling for this. No matter what the other guy says, if you send a bank transfer to a person, chances are high that it will be the last you will hear from him.
(3)	Avoid being a victim of the ADVANCE FEE SCAM: Never try to sell anything to anyone who insists on some payment from you before placing an order for your goods. They usually promise a very large order to tempt you. Various tricks used are fee for foreign exchange transfer, registration of your company with authorities, etc. Basically stop dealings with anyone who places an order with you and then wants you to send some money first for some reason or the other.

Learn How to Attract Your Customers Attention

After your success to find customers to your business as mentioned before Identify Customers for Your Business  then you need to know:

-       How will you attract your consumer’s attention?

-       How will you get them to purchase your product?

-       How they come back to you for repeat purchases?

The answer will be the marketing and advertising which should answer the following questions:  

     ·    What is your (Unique Selling Point) USP –how should you transmit that message?

     ·    What can you do to assure customer retention?

     ·    How can you exceed customers’ expectations?

     ·   Can you offer some type of guarantee?

     ·   What are the best advertising routes to reach customers?

Some of the more common advertising routes include Websites, Social networking sites (such as Face book, LinkedIn, twitter, Google+ ), Radio, Television, E-mail marketing, E-bay, You Tube, Internet, magazines, newspapers. Trade magazines, Forums and Billboards.

Social media advertising, blogging, and use of other online social forums, has rapidly become one of the biggest platforms on which to advertise your business.

What type of advertising will work best for your business depends on who you are trying to reach, your budget, and your product. You need to find the most cost effective method for you.

All of this information will be valuable in formulating your business plan. Having all this information at your fingertips will give you an edge over your competitors, an understanding of your client base and will improve your businesses chances of survival.

Identify Customers for Your Business

Finding customers is the most essential and difficult part of running a business. But without customers you don’t have a business, so you should do some demographics research in addition to market research(as stated before Learn How to Run Your Market Research) to establish who your customer is.

Make sure you know as much as possible about who will be buying from you.

For instance, if you’re marketing to consumers, you should find the answer of the following 13 questions:

What is their gender, age, marital status, religion, ethnicity?

Where do they live?

What is their economic status?

Do they already buy the product or service you’ll be offering?

How are they purchasing these products or services?

What issues do they have with your competition?

What do they like about your competition?

How much are they paying now, and will be willing to pay for your products or services?

What do they do for a living?

What are their lifestyles like?

What do they think of your product or service?

Why will they buy from you and no one else?

How will you tell them about your business?

Knowing the answers to the above questions will help you promote your business much more effectively.

12 Factors Make Your New Business Fails !.

As mentioned before that only about half of new small businesses will survive 5 years. Here are some of the factors that often contribute to a new business’s failure and must be taken into consideration during planning a new business:-

1. Lack of capital, often due to poor planning or unexpected costs.
2. Poor cash flow management.
3. Unexpected market factors-growth or reduction in market size.
4. Underestimating the competition.
5. New entrants to the market.
6. Technological problems.
7. Not having a strong business plan in place.
8. Lack of understanding of the market.
9. Poor advertising or marketing.
10. Weak product.
11. lack of selling and marketing expertise.
12. over trading or over expansion.