It’s a tough job running a business – many outsiders simply don’t realize how time consuming it can be. What can come as a shock to many business owners, however, is just how much of that time is spent on small repetitive tasks such as employee coordination and data management. It’s so easy to get into the habit of dealing with these on a day-to-day basis that managers lose track of how ridiculous it is – after all, most of them don’t require a great deal of skill, and it’s amazing to think about what might be accomplished if that time were spent on something else instead.…
Continue readingReachLocal’s guide to Online Reviews
The proliferation of the Internet has made it easier for consumers to conduct their own research and inquire with other consumers. In the same token, it has made it easier for anyone and everyone to become publishers in their own right. However, the anonymity of the online space also opens this up to deception and fakers who write embellished reviews beyond what they can show factually. In the legal sense, this is often referred to as defamation.
As the Internet industry matures, so do the legalities surrounding many variables that can happen in the online space – in most cases, the law simply extends itself to online.…
Continue readingHow to Make Your Small Business Marketing More Interesting
Marketing a small business is absolutely essential. Whereas larger companies tend to have already made a name for themselves, it’s usually the case that smaller companies have yet to achieve widespread recognition. Marketing your business is the best way of growing your company’s reputation and winning more customers.
Keeping the Customers You Have
Before you go off hunting for new customers, it’s important to make sure you’re retaining the ones you already have. It’s actually much more cost-effective to keep existing customers than it is to try to gain new ones, so you should concentrate some of your efforts on improving and maintaining satisfaction and loyalty.…
Continue readingRemaining Compliant as a Small Business Owner: 3 Things to Keep in Mind
While it is often overshadowed by the importance of commercial growth and performance, compliance with British laws and regulations remains extremely crucial. This is a challenge that has come into focus recently, with Google Glass business users being urged to ensure that they comply fully with existing data protection laws.
This is just one of the many compliance issues facing small business owners, however, as concepts such as health and safety, taxation and building regulations must be given careful attention at all times. If you fail to do this, you could impede your businesses long-term growth and ultimately cost you significant sums of money.…
Continue readingExpanding your Business: How to Tap into an Overseas Market
Whether you are a small or large business owner, the current economic climate is conducive to growth and significant expansion. Just because there is a clear and obvious opportunity to develop a commercial venture, however, this does not mean that the process is as simple as investing capital and taking on additional work.
In fact, business owners must adopt a strategic approach to investing their capital and cultivating growth. This is especially true if you are aiming to take a domestic business overseas and tap into a vast international market. The challenges of replicating national success on a wider scale are significant, regardless of whether you are a novice or a seasoned entrepreneur.…
Continue readingEstablishing Your Own Festival Supermarket
If you have a passion for both food and music, it makes obvious sense to combine the two and establish your own festival supermarket. Right now, we’re stuck in the middle of festival season, so if you begin planning and prepping to implement your own market, you should be ready to launch at the beginning of next summer, ready to provide happy festival goers with the produce they need. So, what will it take to get your festival supermarket off the ground?
What’s the Plan?
As with any business, you need to generate a robust business plan that includes, but isn’t limited to the following:
- The vision of the project and why you want to embark on it
- The aims/goal of the project
- Who will be involved in it
- What you intend to sell
- How you’re going to fund the project
You might have noticed that these questions start out relatively trivially, but that by the end, you’ll need to spend a lot of time researching and doing calculations to address the questions in the appropriate detail.…
Continue readingBusiness Insolvency: What to Do Next
Insolvency can be a tough time for you and your business. Just the terminology itself can be intimidating and unnerving. But it doesn’t have to be and there are ways of making the process transpire as smoothly and pain-free as possible. Business insolvency is legally defined as a company which is unable to pay its debts. This can be either one of the two; the company is unable to pay debts as they fall due, or the company does not have enough assets to cover its debts.
If your company is facing insolvency and you are struggling to pay your debts, help is available.…
Continue readingThe Art of Business Investment: How to Establish a Warehouse and Viable Logistics Operation
There is a genuine sense of optimism around small businesses in the UK at present, and this positive sentiment is encouraging entrepreneurs to spend higher volumes of capital. This trend is prevalent across multiple areas of business, with small and medium-sized businesses forecast to spend an estimated £8 million more on technology alone this year than they did in 2013.
The technology spend is expected to increase across software, outsourcing and office equipment, especially in the fields of warehouse management and logistic operations. For small business owners that sell and distribute products directly to the consumer market, it is imperative that they invest in a viable infrastructure that can help them to minimise costs and maximise profitability over time.…
Continue readingWhich Services Can a Taxi Company Outsource?
Outsourcing is a great resource for any growing business. It provides you with the extra facilities required to be able to take care of all of your company’s needs, even if you don’t have the resources to do so on your own. Done properly, outsourcing can save you both time and money, permitting your company to grow, expand and flourish.
This holds true when you run a taxi company. In rapid growth periods, outsourcing will enable your taxi business to keep up with additional or unexpected demands on resources. It can also help you to improve efficiency by outsourcing specific services to highly experienced providers, which can also ensure a greater degree of operational control.…
Continue readingHelp to Make a Decision on Creating a Mobile App
Creating a mobile app can be of great benefit to a business, both in terms of attracting consumers and increasing productivity, but there are a few things for you to consider before jumping in and developing your own; namely how much it will cost in both time and money, how the app will relate to your customers, and how it would be used internally, as well as the logistical elements involved.
Mobile apps can help businesses relate to their consumers; display content, products and services; provide sales support and promote themselves, as well as being used by employees. However, it may be costly and time-consuming to develop and maintain your own app, for example, or you may find that the market is already saturated with similar ideas.…
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