Making an impact on the World Wide Web can be daunting for small businesses. The initial instinct is often to appeal to the largest audience possible online. However, when your brick and mortar business is located in a provincial town, small businesses can benefit better from local SEO than an all-encompassing search strategy. Optimising local search listings can help small businesses increase their online presence with limited budget.
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Many small business owners make the mistake of assuming they can’t afford to hire a recruiting firm. In reality they cannot afford not to retain expert assistance when it comes to expanding their labor force. Not only can busy small business owners save time and money, but they can also be relieved of a stress by delegating recruiting to the professionals who can provide qualified candidates both quickly and efficiently.
Recruiting firms help small businesses in multiple ways as shown below.
Relocating your business office requires a lot of planning and attention to details. You may have to temporarily close or scale down your operation, which can result in financial loss. Your new location may inconvenience your existing customers and business associates. In your hurry or enthusiasm, you may overlook many things crucial to the success of your business. Therefore, you must plan your business relocation with utmost care and execute every step meticulously.
Here are 6 tips on how to relocate your small business office:
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Most companies now use at least some level of social media to promote their business. Assuming your company uses this method of promotion, it is important to ensure that your online message is professional and consistent.
Large companies create detailed social media policies to make clear to staff exactly how their businesses can and should contribute to these online platforms. This ensures that the company creates the correct impression across all of their online presence – from blog posts to Twitter “tweets.”
Given the high visibility and spontaneous nature of social media, it is fair to say that creating a social media policy is equally important for a smaller business, to ensure that costly mistakes are not made when interacting with customers online.
According to a nationwide survey conducted by the National Cybersecurity Alliance, 73 percent of small businesses rely on trusted Internet connections and 77 percent report that information security is of the utmost importance. Despite this, over 87 percent of small businesses are unprepared for data breaches that may occur online or through other, traditional methods.
If you are like most small business owners you don’t pay enough attention to saving for the long-term. After all, when you can invest money in your own business and get higher return than saving at a bank why wouldn’t you reinvest in your business instead of saving it. Many business owners do not even keep their personal and business finances separate. Their accounts and expenses are intertwined moving money from personal to business and vice versa all the time.
This could be a big mistake. As much as you would like to invest your money back in the business this can create number of issues potentially not only impacting you, but your family too. First of all, if something goes wrong with the business you could lose it all with no rainy day fund to tap into. The tax authorities will also come down hard in audits if you cannot show how your personal and business finances are kept separate.
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By now, most in the business community have heard about the ouster of Ron Johnson as CEO of JC Penney after only 17 months on the job. This was a stunning reversal of fortune for Ron Johnson who was regarded as retail Guru based on his accomplishments in transforming Target to “Cheap Chick” retailer and hugely successful launch of Apple Stores. When he was hired at JC Penney he was viewed as a savior who would rescue JC Penney from the downfall it was experiencing for several years.
However, things have not turned out to be that way. In 17 months JC Penney has been in complete turmoil. Sales in 2012 declined 25% compared to prior year representing a staggering $4.3 Billion in lost sales. In 2012 it recorded loss of $1 Billion. No other company has seen such a precipitous loss of value in this short time. So, what went wrong and what lessons can small business owner learn from this?
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There are few decisions as important as hiring employees when running a small business. Hiring the right person can take your business to new heights. On the contrary, it doesn’t take long for the business to go in the ditch if a wrong person comes onboard. After all, all businesses, large and small, are largely dependent on their employees to keep them going. The owner or the manager alone cannot take care of everything.
Attrition remains a big problem for all small businesses. It is not surprising to find replacement of the entire workforce within a year. Many small business owners feel as if they are in the constant hiring mode – advertising, interviewing and onboarding employees. How can you expect to do rigorous job when you are always in the hiring mode? However, taking right steps early on and spending extra effort in finding and retaining good employees can pay off in reduced attrition rate, taking care of the nipping the problem from the bud. In an earlier post, I discussed 5 things small business owners must do when hiring. Here we will look at the corollary. What are the traps small business owners should avoid to ensure they don’t end up with bad apples in their employee crew?
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The goal of pricing a product or service for any small business owner is to charge the maximum amount that customer is willing to pay and maximize profit. If you charge lower than what customer is willing to pay you leave money on the table. If you charge higher customer will walk out the door and you will lose profit.
To some it may seem like Black Magic, but pricing is combination of art and science. Big corporations, such as Wal-Mart, do lot of research and number crunching to figure out to the pennies exactly how much they should charge so that they get the maximum profit. This is the science side of pricing. No matter how much number crunching and data analysis you do human behavior and psychology plays a big role in customers determining whether a given price is a good deal or not. This is where art comes into play. There are number of ways in which business owners can convey the message about good deal (aka pricing) and take advantage of how customers react to that message.
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The success of any business is largely dependent on its employees. Good employees can help improve the business, and by the same token, bad employees can sink it into bankruptcy. That is why hiring good employees should be of paramount importance to all businesses, and particularly so for small businesses.
In my observation, most small business owners consider employee hiring a necessary evil they have to deal with when current employees leaves. They approach the hiring process in an ad-hoc fashion and try to get someone quickly so that the business can get back on track. The problem is hiring this way does not get you the right employees you need to make the business successful. Eventually, either you will need to fire the employee because he isn’t the right fit or the employee himself will leave. In the end, the cycle has to repeat and soon you find yourself in the endless hiring loop.
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