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If you’re struggling to get your business noticed in your local area, you shouldn’t worry too much. It’s one of those things that happens to small businesses that are starting out. However, that doesn’t mean that you should just ignore the problems that you are facing. Instead, you should try to make sure that you overcome these problems. Here are some tips to help you do just that.

Get Out There and Talk to People

You definitely need to get out there and talk to people one on one if you want to have an impact at the local level. People are more likely to buy from brands that they recognize. So, getting your face out there, as well as the name and logo of your company, is going to be key. This will show people that your business exists, and that’s the first step to making a sale. So, set up stalls and market your business to people directly. You can really connect with people this way. It can be tricky and challenges to talk to people who are strangers, but you run a business and that’s what you have to do.

Find Out What Your Rivals Are Doing Better

If your rivals are currently doing better than you are, you need to find out why that is. It’s not enough just to observe this problem. You also need to dig deeper and see what’s causing those customers to choose those other companies over yours. Is it simply down to the fact that they have a bigger advertising budget? Or is there a bit more to it than that? If there is, you need to try to get to the bottom of this. When you know what they’re doing better than you, you can take steps to make sure that you do better them in the months and years ahead.

Use New Marketing Angles and Ditch the Ones That Aren’t Working

Marketing is always important, and you will need to find the right marketing methods for you if you’re going to attract new customers. You have to be targeting the right demographics and targeting them via the right platforms if you want to find success. If you run a franchise, local franchise marketing is available. So, no matter what kind of business you run, you need to get your approach to marketing right. And as soon as you notice that a particular marketing angle is not working for you, ditch it.

Get Everyone Working Together to Get Your Voice Heard

Everyone needs to be pulling together and working as a team if your business is going to have its voice heard as you aim to grow it. You will just get drowned out by all the other small local businesses that are vying for customers unless you are willing to work together. There is no replacement for a good team ethic and the willingness to work together properly. If you don’t get this right, it’s hard to see how your business will thrive or even survive.

Regardless of the type of company you run, the customer should always be your priority. Without them, you’ll never gain the sales figures needed to achieve a profit. In turn, this will prevent you from ever accomplishing the dream of sustained success. As such, their importance could not be greater.

 In business, you will always need to stamp a sense of personal authority onto those activities. Nonetheless, it’s possible to learn a lot from other success stories. Here are some of the key lessons to be gained in the field of keeping customers happy.   

•  Tailor marketing strategies to suit your audience. All companies have their own niche, and finding a unique approach to win over a larger percentage of the market will have a killer impact. Appreciating the fundamentals of online marketing is essential for all modern entrepreneurs. However, you can gain a lot by looking at companies like Taco Bell and JetBlue Airways. Those brands always try to inject a little humor to gain a stronger response from their customers. Better still, the nature of viral content often enables them to gain new clients through this methods too.

•  Find the right balance between visibility and annoyance. As mentioned above, advertising products and services is crucial. However, going over the top can bug people, which detracts from what you are trying to achieve. Coca-Cola only uses TV advertising in a strategic manner, maintaining a softer approach in most situations. While you may not be in the same position as this iconic brand, it’s important to learn the importance of timing and coverage. Otherwise, your marketing endeavors could have the reverse influence of what you’re aiming to achieve.

•  Ask for their opinions. The main of any business is to give customers what they want, which is why the lack of internal market research in the modern arena is baffling. Every entrepreneur has heard the tale of Henry Ford claiming that his audiences would’ve asked for a faster horse. Of course, that underlines the fact that you can’t listen to everything that clients want. Nonetheless, you’re aiming to satisfy their needs and using these questions for guidance will allow you to do that. If nothing else, showing that their opinions matter can make clients feel respected. This in itself can be crucial.

•  Provide individual services. For a customer, there’s nothing worse than feeling that the support team isn’t trying to solve your problems. Most people have stopped using a company due to a poor experience in this field, which is why you must embrace excellent customer service. Let’s face it; this is one of the reasons that millions stay loyal to brands like Apple, who have dedicated “geniuses” on hand to help. Even if your SME isn’t at this level or in this arena, ensuring that each client is dealt with in a unique manner is crucial.

•  Offer special loyalty schemes for existing clients. Most businesses happily run promotions with the hope of recruiting new customers. While this can be a great way to increase your revenue, it can leave loyal users feeling undervalued. It’s quite common for large coffee chains to offer a free drink for every 10 bought while food establishments run similar schemes. This method, combined with free promotional t-shirts and mugs can go a long way to building a stronger bond. After all, consumers love getting value for money, and those items add to those sentiments.

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•  Ensure that all customers know their data is safe. The Yahoo scam perfectly identifies how important security should be for your business. Many of the 500 million affected users closed their accounts and went to a rival email service following the hack. So, if your business isn’t supported by the best security and data protection features, it could fall victim to a similar fate. Given all the hard work it takes to gain a customer in the first place, this simply shouldn’t be an option on your agenda.

•  Learn to operate in a greener manner. This doesn’t necessarily show a commitment to the individual client, but it highlights a desire to help the planet. Operating in this responsible manner doesn’t need to be difficult. It can begin with simple ideas like using eco-friendly packaging or using LED light bulbs in the office. If this solution gives clients another reason to invest in your company instead of the competitors, the results will be brilliant. If it’s good enough for giants like IKEA and Panasonic, it’s certainly good enough for you.

When it comes to security measures in business, it’s no longer just your physical possessions you have to worry about. While thieves will still target offices to get away with expensive technology and equipment, you have to consider your online security too. If your information falls into the wrong hands, it could lead to rinsed bank accounts, identity theft and a whole lot of lawsuits from unhappy customers. To ensure the full safety of your company, taking a multi-dimensional approach and covering all bases is key. Here are a few things to consider in regards to your business’ safety.

Get The Right Insurance

As a business owner, having the right insurance is crucial, and can be the difference between a minor setback and full bankruptcy if things go wrong. A contents insurance policy will protect your office, equipment, computers and things like smartphones that are both in and out of the office. Public liability insurance and employer’s insurance will protect you for both your workers and members of the public. If either were to get injured on your premises or as a result of your business, you’d be in serious trouble without this cover to fall back on. Insurance means that if anything were to go wrong, you wouldn’t end up out of pocket.

Update Your Office’s Security Systems

Burglars don’t just target houses- many like to go for businesses and offices too, since they know there will be lots of valuable items up for grabs. While insurance will protect you if they do get away with your stuff, of course trying to stop them in the first place is key. A high-quality CCTV system, and a burglar alarm (with a minimal number of very trusted employees who know the code) are good lines of defense. If you’re renting an office in a larger building chances are there will be security systems in place but make sure you give everything a thorough check. Work out if there are any blind spots or potential weaknesses. If you’re on a ground floor office, you could consider installing folding lockable shutters on the windows. In the day they can be slid over so you can’t see them, so it doesn’t feel like you’re in a prison!

Back Up To The Cloud

One way to protect your online date is by using cloud-based backup systems. These allow you to backup your files to the cloud (or remotely) and are encrypted for safety. It means that if anyone does get their hands on your computers, there’s no sensitive data on there for them to steal. It also means if your computers are damaged, whether it be due to viruses, fire or floods the information is safe. You can use everything from cloud storage to cloud email archive, have a think about what sort of systems would best suit your business.

Use Strong Passwords

Since most of your business will likely be run online, it’s essential that your accounts are secured with complex passwords. Thieves looking to remotely target businesses have been known to gain access due to simple passwords, so this is one area not to disregard.

One of the first questions people ask when they meet someone new is ‘what do you do for a living?’ What we do for work can say a lot about us as a person, and for those who have been in their career for a long time, it can define them. So when you lose your job, you don’t just have the practical dilemmas of less money to face, but you also lose part of your identity too. It can be a huge shock to the system and is probably one of the most stressful things you can go through in your adult life. Whether it was due to being fired, made redundant or the company being closed down, it’s important to remember that there is hope at the end of the tunnel if you’ve been put out of work. Here’s what you could do next.

Re-train or Study

If you’re financially able to take some time out from work, now would be a great time to get some more training or to study. It could be to give you a boost in your current field when you come to apply for work again, or it could be because you want to take a completely different path. Maybe you have been in a rut in your job for a while, in which case losing it could be a blessing in disguise. You might not have willingly chosen something else but put in the situation it opens up new opportunities. If you’ve outgrown your career, reached the end of the line or it’s not making you happy any more, why not look to do something else instead?

Go To An Employment Agency

If you need to get back into work quickly, a temp agency could be one way to go. In many cases, a temporary role can lead into a permanent one so it could lead you to your next job role. You inform the agency of your skills and experience and they will match you to suitable positions when they become available. You could continue to apply for other jobs in the meantime, but going through an agency to begin with gets you earning again far more quickly. That way you’re not waiting around for the companies you have applied for to get back to you about interviews.

Set Up a Business

If you’ve always been keen on the idea of being your own boss, what better time than to start your own business? Ideally, you will have enough savings to get you through the initial period until it starts earning money. But setting up a company and working on something you’re really passionate about could be far better than going back to a job that doesn’t completely fulfill you. You could start a small business from home and build up, or work with a partner or investor. You could even buy a franchise. Either way, losing your job could be what you needed to give you this push!

As the owner of a business, you have a lot of different responsibilities on your shoulders. You’ve got to be able to juggle a dozen different things at once in order to keep the whole business from completely falling apart. This is something that you should learn quickly because it’s better to understand it sooner rather than later. Obviously, the responsibilities that you have with change depending on your business but there’s one skill that every single business owner needs to have no matter what kind of business you have: leadership. As the business owner, it’s your job to be the leader that your employees look to in order to find out what kind of direction the business should be going in. However, that’s not always an easy thing to do. Here are just a few simple tips to help you become the leader that your business really needs.

Never stop learning

If you think that you already know everything that you need to in order to be an effective leader, then you’ve already lost. The one thing that every great leader understands is that there is always more to learn. Whether you’re earning agile qualifications, or you’re discovering other management courses that can help you more effectively support your employees, you should always be on the lookout for ways in which you can increase your knowledge and understanding. Even things like reading business blogs and publications in order to stay as relevant as possible is important since it allows you to more accurately understand your business in the context of the world around it.

Listen to others

Just because you’re the leader and business owner, doesn’t mean that your opinion is the only one with any value. In fact, you should always be willing to listen to your employees since they have a perspective on the business that you don’t. You might have a bird’s eye view of everything, able to see how all of the pieces fit together, but your employees are down in the trenches which gives them a much better sense of how each individual elements is functioning. Make sure that you listen carefully to them when they come to you with issues, criticisms or suggestions on how things can be improved. Having a fresh perspective is one of the best things for both you and your business.

Be willing to be wrong

There’s a lot of pressure that comes with being the leader of a business. Because of this a lot of business owners tend to be terrified of getting something wrong. Of course, wanting to get everything right is no bad thing, it’s a great way to improve your business and protect it from risks. However, that doesn’t mean that being wrong is the end of the world. If you get something wrong, that just means that you’ll have that much better of an understanding of how to improve it later down the line. Not only that but if you’re getting something wrong, it means that you’re probably trying something new and taking some risks, which is one of the most important things that you can do when it comes to growing and improving your business.

Microsoft Sharepoint is arguably one of the most successful pieces of software in history.

The application is incredibly versatile and many businesses consider it an essential tool for collaboration and document management. In fact, it’s estimated that 80% of Fortune 500 companies use the product. Hundreds of millions of licenses have been sold to over 65,000 organizations, with one in five workers accessing the application as part of their day-to-day work.

There’s no denying that many consider it an essential tool for their business but only you know if it’s something that your enterprise needs.

While it’s easy to find Sharepoint consulting services that can help your business to use the application optimally to get as much out of it as possible for your business it helps to know a few essentials before you make that call.

Organizations that get the most out of Sharepoint tend to fall into two camps.

Camp A- SMEs with around 50 or fewer employees who use it to handle their basic document management needs.

Camp B- Larger organizations with more complex needs e.g. knowledge management, collaboration, employee engagement and interdisciplinary communication.

Sharepoint use for SMEs

Sharepoint’s versatility makes it a useful tool for addressing a range of specific business needs in an efficient and cost effective manner. Many SMEs choose to use Sharepoint as a centralized workspace. In real terms this means:

• A secure, searchable repository for storing and maintaining documents (it also creates backups).
• Accessing a document from just about anywhere with internet connectivity.
• Sharing and disseminating information to team members.
• Protecting access to sensitive information and controlling permissions.
• Use of calendars to arrange communications and collaboration.

Any one, or indeed all, of these can be implemented quickly and easily by pairing Sharepoint with Office 365. By jumping on the Sharepoint bandwagon while your organization is small, you will be able to integrate it into your day-to day operations and since the application shows no signs of going anywhere it will likely be there for you as your business expands and your demands of it become more complicated.

Which brings us to…

Sharepoint use for larger organizations

What if your operations cover more than one geographical location? What happens if dispersal of information becomes more complicated? Fortunately, Sharepoint’s versatility can facilitate information sharing and employee engagement over a broader canvass too!

Larger enterprises have different priorities when it comes to assuring productivity and engagement and the controlling of information. Sharepoint will likely be able to meet these by way of:

• Intra and inter-team collaboration.
• Document management and knowledge management.
• Process automation.
• Workflow management.
• Intranet and internal corporate communications.
• Creating personalized portals and workspaces.
• Building employee communities.

By using Sharepoint in these ways you can improve team collaboration and manage your documents more effectively whatever the size of your organization. You will likely also notice the following benefits:

• Regulatory requirements for the handling of information can be handled near-effortlessly.
• It is easier to find and manage stored, reusable content.
• Information can be shared securely and in real-time.
• Your IT infrastructure is streamlined (again due to the application’s versatility).
• Employees are more engaged and employee engagement is more quantifiable.
• Employees can access anything they need from one location.

For any entrepreneur it’s only natural to be concerned with keeping the overheads down. A watchful eye on the purse strings now could save you a whole heap of trouble and expense later, right? The finest line many startups walk is between ensuring that initial costs are kept as low as possible while making sure that quality is up to scratch, without cutting corners.

The assumed truth of offshoring

It’s easy to assume that the attractively low costs of locating your manufacturing operations offshore are a given, but looking at this link you’ll find plastic injection molding services can be cheaper to keep on American soil, as production costs rise overseas.

Reshoring operations to the US has helped numerous businesses that rely on manufacturing and the benefits go beyond the monetary.

Quality Assurance

When you’re starting out, the last thing you want to risk is the possibility of associating your business’ image with a shoddy product. Today’s consumers demand a level of quality that can be difficult to attain if you’re choosing a manufacturer solely on the basis of cost from a country with lax manufacturing laws. Low cost manufacturing tends to be done with low quality tools, using low quality parts and assembled by low quality labour. Moreover, with the inherent delays caused by transatlantic or transpacific shipping you might not notice an inferior product until it’s already too late.

You’re in the driver’s seat

Entrusting your operations to an overseas manufacturer can feel like letting a stranger into the driver’s seat of your car, shutting your eyes and hoping for the best.

However much you do your due diligence on a prospective manufacturer it can be difficult to build trust and communications with the inevitable language, cultural and temporal barriers.

Locating operations in the US not only allows for quicker and clearer communications but allows you to assert greater control over the quality of your product. You can also be safe in the knowledge that you know your own country’s manufacturing laws and can trust that workers on the factory floor are adequately trained, adequately paid and working in a fair, safe environment.

Streamlined Production

There are unavoidable complications and costs when it comes to overseas manufacture. Your business may or may not be able to wait for several weeks while goods are transported from overseas and undergo the inevitable myriad customs checks. The transporting of goods from factory to warehouse, to store or consumer is made inherently longer and prone to unknown variables.

Bringing the process to US soil simplifies the distribution process, reducing your time delays and saving you additional international shipping costs.

Your products will also be in closer contact with the lucrative home market, enabling you to respond to national and regional demand with greater agility so that less stock is wasted or poorly distributed.

The Macro Economic Benefits

By keeping manufacturing operations in the US you’ll be creating much needed jobs. More jobs means more marginal propensity to consume which means more growth for everybody. You’ll also be feeding innovation through manufacture and doing your bit to solidify the country’s status as a player on the world’s manufacturing stage.

No one wants to get on the wrong side of the law, especially business owners. It will result in very high legal fees, and you could waste a lot of time if you need to appear in court. In the very worst-case scenario, you might even end up facing a hefty fine or substantial jail time!

So, there is no wonder why most businesses spend a considerable amount of time making sure that every part of their company is completely above board. It certainly pays off in the long run!

Not too sure what kind of legal stuff you need to sort out for your startup? Here are some tips straight from lawyers.

Legal Marketing Is Good Marketing

There are a few different ‘black marketing’ techniques that some entrepreneurs use in their company. It’s true that these often bring very good results, but you will find it much more advantageous to stay well away from them as most of them are barely legal. Take some tips from a lawyer SEO company who would normally work with law firms. They will know exactly which marketing methods might look bad in the eyes of the law and can help you keep your marketing strategies on the straight and narrow.

Budget Well For Potential Legal Costs

You never know when you need to pay for legal costs. Don’t worry; you shouldn’t expect to get on the wrong side of the law, but you do need to budget for things such as getting a signatory or for those times a lawyer needs to double check the wording on a contract. So you should always have a sum of cash left to one side for these potential costs. It’s a good idea to budget a lot more than you might need. Hat’s because it can be easy to underestimate legal costs, and you don’t want to be caught out by a huge bill!

Get To Know A Few Different Attorneys

It’s a wise move to have a few different lawyers in your book of contacts. That’s because all attorneys and lawyers specialize, so you will need to seek out someone who specializes in the area of law that you need help with whenever you do need a lawyer. If you only know a family attorney, they won’t be able to help you with some financial law problems. Next time you are networking, try to meet as many lawyers as possible so you will have a wide set of names in your phonebook that you can turn to whatever the situation.

Look After Your Intellectual Property

Many companies now have blogs and are posting articles and other intellectual property online. If you are too, you need to ensure that this is correctly protected. After all, anyone could simply copy and paste paragraphs from your articles and then try to pass them off as their own. This is also the case with photos, which can easily be downloaded from your website. Without any intellectual property protection, you won’t be able to take the offending person or company to court to claim compensation. Ideally, you should speak to a lawyer about they type of protection that you need. There are different kinds suitable for intellectual property, such as copyright, patents, and trademarks.

Always Use Legal Disclaimers

Whenever you sell products or services, you need to make sure that they each have their very own legal disclaimer attached. This protects you against any major complaints. Not only that, though, but it also ensures that you, your products, and your services aren’t responsible for whatever outcomes they cause for the people who purchase them. At the end of the day, the legal disclaimer ensures that each party is aware of their own responsibilities once money has changed hands. It is also important that your legal disclaimers are easy for customers to find. Make sure they are on your website, even if you have to add them in the form of small print. Not making them visible enough could land you in court!

As you can see, it isn’t too hard to ensure that your company is running all above board. If you are ever unsure, you should always contact a lawyer who can review your operation methods for you. It might even be worth for you to hire an in-house law team to continually review your practices and contracts. Many companies find that this is necessary once they have been established a couple of years. So, if it’s too early for you to think about that for your startup, it’s something you can look forward to!

The world of work is rapidly changing, and with this comes a wave of digital nomads who are working from beaches in Asia, coffee shops in Europe and airport lounges all over the world. More and more people are turning to a life of freedom and freelance – and why wouldn’t you when you can run your business from tropical climes?

Both as a full-time career and a side-earner, freelancing is a growing trend all around the world. However it may seem like a dream to travel the world, or work from home, rather than commit to the daily grind every single day, but there are some things that will need to be considered before jumping headfirst into the world of freelancing.

Contracts

Often, companies employ freelancers for a short-term project which needs to be completed by a certain date but who do not have the resources in-house to complete the work. It is essential for freelancers to write up contracts for clients to sign as this protects the freelancer and makes it crystal clear about what is involved for everybody. A contract will state all of the work that is required, deadlines, as well as payment terms and agreements

Taxes

Now that you are a freelancer, you are responsible for your own taxes. After you have invoiced your client, they will not hold back any percentage of the money to go towards what you will owe at the end of the tax year. It will be up to you to put aside 25-30% of your income. A good way to do this is to set up a separate bank account which you cannot access with a debit card, where 25% of your earnings automatically go each month. Remember that there is a deadline for filing your tax return each year, and although you won’t get a personal call from Antonio Horta Osorio telling you off, you will be required to pay a fine if you don’t file on time!

Holiday and sick pay

As a freelancer, both holiday and sick pay don’t really apply to you. If you are sick and can’t work, you will not get paid that day. If you go on holiday, you will not be paid for the days you are away. Simple. However, the perks of being a freelancer are usually that you earn more to work less, so just make sure to put away money on a frequent basis to cover rainy days and any sickness.

Time management

Now that you are working for yourself, there is nobody breathing down your neck and making sure you are working properly. You will need to be strict with yourself, and try not to get distracted by the TV, the sun, or spontaneous lunches with your friends on Friday afternoons, unless, of course, you have the time to do this. When it comes to managing your day, it’s best to work with what you naturally do: if you are an early riser, then work in the mornings and finish earlier in the day, if you prefer a lie in, then wake up and finish work later.

There is a surprising amount that can go wrong in business. Knowing this might not necessarily make you feel any better about your startup, but it does mean that you should do whatever you can to help protect your business against the many potential threats facing you. To be able to do that requires that you know well what problems your business could face, and that is where this post comes in. In it, we are going to go through some of the major problems that any startup can face, even early on. Study the following scenarios and do everything you can to prepare your business for them. You will be glad you did if you find that it becomes necessary later on in your business’ life.

Theft

Sometimes it is the case that a business is threatened from within by one of the members of staff. One of the most common problems in young businesses is theft. Your employees might steal from the company at any time. Although you don’t want to think of your employees as doing this, the fact is that it is incredibly common, and you need to be doing everything you can to protect your business as much as possible. Usually, the theft is not money itself (although it can be) but other, smaller things. Although smaller, these are generally no less worrisome, as over time such instances of theft does make a big difference to the company’s profits. Theft is the kind of problem that grows over time to become a much bigger one, so it is in your interests to put it to rest as early as possible.

To avoid theft becoming a central issue in your business, you need to make sure you do everything you can to discourage people from doing it as soon as possible. The easiest and most effective way to do this is to hold regular training sessions in which you talk about security. If you let staff know that a big security issue is theft, this will ensure that they know you are keen on reducing it, which means that you are watching out for it closely. This is likely to reduce much of the theft in the business, so it is well worth doing. You should take new employees through this training session too so that you minimize the amount of shrinkage your business sees as much as possible. If nothing else, this will help to keep your economy that little bit stronger.

Burglary

Of course, the amount of damage to the business that your employees are likely to do is relatively little compared to those from outside the business. Something which all startups need to think closely about is burglary, as this is a common problem for new businesses. Typically, new businesses do not have very strong security measures on their premises, which means that people can easily break in and cause damage or steal stock and supplies. If you can be the exception by ensuring you have a strong focus on security in your building, you will do a lot for reducing the likelihood of being burgled. This is one of the most common ways for a new business to lose out, so protecting yourself against this particular danger is hugely important.

Make sure you hire a security team as soon as you can afford it. Having an actual presence is the best way to ensure that people do not try to break in, and much more effective than cameras alone. That being said, you should not skimp on cameras, as a security system of that sort is one of the best deterrents against break-ins and burglaries. Do everything you can to prevent this, and you will be most of the way to protecting your business in the long run.

Data Loss

In this day and age, it is important to recognize that data is as important as anything real and physical in your business. Most businesses store a lot of data, and generally quite a lot of it is particularly sensitive. This could be that it is sensitive in terms of your business’ onward goals, or that it is information you hold about your customers which you have a legal duty to protect. Either way, it is essential that you find some strong ways to keep your data as well protected as possible, so that you can be more confident in your business’ ongoing security. One of the most essential and basic steps towards this end is to find some decent IT help. With IT consulting services working with you, you should be able to ensure that you minimize the likelihood of your data being lost or stolen. You might also be able to find ways to get data back if something does happen to it, and that alone can help prevent a considerable headache within the business.

Natural Disaster

Although it might be quite rare, you really can’t afford not to take everything into consideration in business, so you need to think about this as much as anything else. You never know what is going to happen, and when it comes to natural disasters the results can often be particularly damaging for the business. As it happens, there are ways to ensure that you know what you are doing if a natural disaster does occur. If this happens, you should be clear with your staff on what exit routes to take and what the best course of action is. The most important thing here is to protect your staff, and after that your stocks and supplies. Look after the people first and foremost, and the rest will usually follow. It is vital that you have proper procedures in place for when this kind of event happens, so that you can protect everyone as well as possible. If you don’t, you could be in trouble, and your business might suffer in the long run as a result as well.

If you’ve started a business during the last twelve months, you’re probably creating a growth plan at the moment. That’s fantastic news because it means you’ve made a decent profit. Now you just have to work out how you’re going to expand into new markets. The tips and advice one this page should help to point you in the right direction. You need to consider all the points made below if you plan to trade overseas and boost your income. Of course, this isn’t a complete guide, and there are many other moves you’ll have to make. However, the suggestions on this page should assist, regardless of the nature of your operation.

Perform a lot of market research

Before you do anything else, you’ll have to carry out a lot of market research. You don’t want to waste your profits, and so you need to make sure you have enough potential customers overseas. Thankfully, that task is easier than ever now we’re living in the digital age. You can use the internet to discover most of the information you require. Social media is an excellent place for research of that nature. You could also publish forms and surveys to give you a better insight. At the end of the day, you just need to be 100% confident the market is large enough for you to make a profit.

Build relationships with translators

You’ll probably have to deal with people who speak different languages when expanding your operation. For that reason, you’re going to require assistance with all aspects of translation. That’s everything from communicating on the telephone to writing letters and creating promotions. Again, the internet will make your life easier. You just need to search online for companies that focus on that niche. You should also read reviews to ensure you’re making the right decision. You can then get in touch with the experts and explain your requirements.

Get some legal assistance

There are many legal stumbling blocks when it comes to selling products or services abroad. With that in mind, you’re going to need the help of an experienced lawyer if you want to avoid issues. People working in that profession should understand all the ins and outs. They are in the perfect position to give you a heads up and ensure you don’t make any wrong moves. While you’ll have to pay for their assistance, it’s worth the expense. That is because you could find yourself in court if you get it wrong. Find a decent lawyer as soon as possible, and you shouldn’t have too many concerns.

Now you have a better understanding of the expansion process; we hope you will make the right decisions this year. When all’s said and done, there are going to be lots of problems along the way. Success lies in your ability to identify and deal with them as fast as possible. You’re only going to manage that if you have an excellent legal team and translators who can explain everything. Remember that as you move forward this year.

When you’re just starting out with your own business, you might think that this is what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life because there’s no way you could do anything else. But life doesn’t always pan out that way. Someday, you might seriously have to consider stepping aside. Now, stepping away from the day to day running of the company doesn’t have to be a bad thing; after all, you might have started this business in the first place because you wanted to fly to a different country whenever you wanted. You can’t do that if you still have to oversee everything years after you’ve launched. Or maybe your business is failing and you want to get a maximum exit value. Whatever your reasons for standing down, here are a few ways to do it quietly.

Train your replacement

One of the biggest reasons letting go is so hard is because you’ve put a lot of yourself into your company, so you want it to go to the best possible hands. In your mind, however, there are no hands more qualified than you, and this thought process can lead you to keep delaying your retirement. This reasoning could just be an excuse on your part, but it might also be true that you don’t know anyone who will run your business with the same values you possess. If this is the case, then you should try to train your own replacement. It could be a family member who has been involved with the company for years, or it could be an existing employee who shows a lot of potential. It can take a lot of time to prepare someone to take over, so don’t leave this until the last minute. Additionally, it might be good to have some backup plans in place; life happens to everyone, so even though your candidate might be eager to fill your shoes, events might compel them to make other choices.

Sell your business

If it doesn’t look like your business will be viable over the next five years, it might be more sensible to sell it to a third party. There are several ways to go about this depending on the kind of business you have. If you’re mostly a web-based company then you should look on Income Diary and get in touch with a website broker to find a buyer. If there are owners within the business, consider a buy-sell agreement where your share of the company can be sold to your partners or other parties.

Much like you would spruce up your home before selling it, you might want to increase the appeal of your business by taking steps to improve cash flow, shutting unprofitable divisions and paring back extra inventory. You may also want to consider strategies to ensure the employees will stay with the company. There’s no need to shake up their lives just because you’re ready for the next phase of yours.

If your business does not have a website, you are simply not going to succeed in the modern marketplace. The fact that you are reading this right now demonstrates that you acknowledge the importance of the internet, so the fact that you could be using it to promote and grow your business becomes rather obvious. The numbers justify this interpretation as well. With the global e-commerce market worth about $22 trillion, if you are not online, you will not be able to earn a single cent of that money. The brilliant thing about the internet is that it is available to everyone. Of course, getting a computer and an internet connection costs money, but once you have got that far, you are ready to start creating an online presence and finding customers around the world. The only problem is that lots of people are already trying to make their voice the loudest. There is a lot of competition. One study suggests that there are about 110,000 e-commerce sites that make a meaningful amount on the internet. There are probably over a million in total. But if you are smart about how you go about marketing yourself online, there is no reason why you cannot become a success. Here are some of the basics of online marketing and how you can make it work for you:

There is a lot of jargon that you need to learn to become fluent in e-commerce, and one of the most important terms that you need to learn is SEO. This stands for search engine optimisation. At its simplest, it refers to the practice of trying to improve the position that your website has when somebody searches using a site like Google. There are lots of rather complex algorithms that calculate which sites are worth showing. The metric that is used to decide this is, in part, whether a particular website is mentioned on other reputable websites. It is not called the web for nothing, after all. This is why some website owners will try to improve their SEO rankings by paying for their site to be mentioned in sponsored posts on lots of different blogs. It is an added benefit if a prospective customer reads one of those posts and goes to that particular site as a result, but otherwise, it is useful because it gives them a better chance of being noticed by Google’s algorithms. There is an entire digital economy that revolves around this practice.

Another crucial technique that some companies use to drive traffic to their website is what is called PPC. This stands for pay-per-click. A website might pay a small fee to have their link and a small synopsis featured at the top of a list of search results. Search engines can make a lot of money by allowing companies to jump to the head of the queue in this way. PPC management is also an important part of the new digital marketplace. A lot of people now utilize ad blocking plugins so that they do not have to see any of these paid advertisements. Strangely, some ad blocking companies are now offering to exclude certain websites from being blocked. Cookies may be something that you have heard a lot about. When you go to a lot of websites, they may tell you that they use Cookies and will accept the continued use of their website as tacit permission. These help search engines to target people with ads that they think will appeal to them. If you spend a lot of your time online reading about art or literature, for instance, you may find that you see online ads that feature museums and book festivals. This is obviously no accident, but a use of the information that is collected about nearly everyone all the time while they are online.  

Finally, not every aspect of online marketing has to be so seemingly devious. If your company does not have a social media account, you are not likely to be able to compete with your more innovative rivals. Facebook now has an estimated 1.9 billion unique monthly users, while Twitter can boast 328 million. It is free to join both sites and start extolling the virtues of your products or services, but you can also pay to advertise on both sites and once again use the users’ data to target potential customers. However, one of the most effective ways to reach a lot of people is to try to produce viral content. It is not easy because you have to try to figure out what would appeal to hundreds of millions of people enough that they will voluntarily share it. However, it is cheap and effective.

It’s exciting – and a little daunting – to expand your small business into a bigger company. However, there is always room to branch out further. One of the most limiting things you could do to your startup is restrict your business to a national level. When the time is right, perhaps your should look into branching out to international customers. This might seem a little terrifying, but who is to say that your products and services aren’t needed in other parts of the world. Here are a few suggestions to help you move from a small startup to an international corporation.

Translate your website

The best way to test whether your business is economically viable outside your home country is to translate your website into different languages. Of course, this is only the first step; just because your business concept works well at home, doesn’t mean it will be received the same way in a country with a vastly different culture.

Learn a new language

Although foreign business owners are likely to have a good grasp of other languages, or access to a translator, you should never assume that everyone speaks English. There are many different ways to learn a new language, so it’s easy to find one that works for you. While it would be really impressive if you managed to become fluent in Chinese, your potential partners will still hold you in high esteem if you make an effort just to say a few key business phrases in their language. Make it clear that you’re still learning the language, however, as this might forgive any unfortunate mispronunciations.

Take advantage of mobile connectivity

Thanks to technology, there are more channels of communications open than ever before. With platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Whatsapp, we can reach people halfway across the world with a single press of a button. Take advantage of this as much as you can; after all, it’s doesn’t cost you a penny.

If you have a social media page for your business, use your existing business connections to put out some feelers for international connections. Alternatively, you could put your new language skills to the test and start posting your content in at least two different languages. This will let potential customers know that you are interested in expanding to their country, and someone might get in touch with you.

Narrow your options down to a perfect fit

You might have a vision of your product being successful in a certain country for personal reasons, but your priority should be finding the right market for your business. Various factors could be whether he country’s economy is growing or shrinking, a market’s digital marketing capabilities, marketing infrastructure and average consumer expenditure, among other variables. Getting the right market is essential for the expansion of your business, and for financial reasons. If you get it wrong, you could waste a lot of time and money.

Perfect your pitch

Once you’ve removed a few language barriers, and determined whether there’s any international interest in your services, you can start working on a new pitch. Regardless of however you’ve sold your business previously, when entering a new market in a new location, the pitch needs to be adjusted to meet local standards. This could mean either a massive overhaul of your current pitch, or just a few tweaks to make it comprehensible to a foreign audience. It’s also important to look at the market you’re hoping to broaden to. Do some research into cultural barriers, assumptions, and biases that could endanger your business abroad. When possible, talk with, learn from and spend time with people who represent the audience you’re hoping to reach. Learning about and respecting other cultures will help you localize your brand’s message.

Understand regional laws

You may have a basic understanding that marketing standards will vary from country to country, but you won’t realize quite how much until you start doing your research. To do conduct your business as effectively abroad as you do at home, you need to fully understand the advertising regulations, product laws, and regulation of sales tactics in your target countries. Even if you intend to have partners in said countries to do most of the actual selling for you, as the head of the company, you need to know everything so you don’t commit faux pas at best, or break laws at worst.

Optimize your SEO

You might have perfected your SEO strategy at home, but now you need to come up with a whole new strategy for your international bases. International search engine marketing is a mixture of choosing the right search engines, localizing content and understanding keywords. You first need to find out which search engines are used by your target countries – most English-speaking countries will use Google, Yahoo, or Bing, but this might not be the case everywhere else. Often, local markets are best served via local search engines, because the English-language search engines don’t always suffice for niche, local content.

Secondly, while it might seem easy to just translate your keywords into foreign languages, this isn’t the most effective strategy. After all, keywords are shortened thoughts used by the Internet browsers, and influenced by culture, to try and find particular types of content. To make sure your international customers are finding the correct content, you should work with native speakers trained in search marketing to figure out native keywords that would be best associated with your website and its content.

Always remember your current success

Breaking into a new market is scary, and there will be no shortage of challenges on your way to establishing a secure business abroad. However, you should never forget that you’re able to attempt this because you’re already successful in your current market. Of course, your track record in your previous market doesn’t automatically guarantee success in this new venture, but it does make your pitch stronger, it makes you more confident, and as a result it does generate new success.