When you first get into business, you certainly have a lot to think about. Aside from planning out your products or services and forecasting the financials, a huge part of what you’ll need to do is pull together your marketing strategy. In the beginning, this can seem like a thing to do – but it doesn’t need to be. You can get started on creating the perfect marketing plan and get incredible results when you look to action it. Here are seven steps to follow to get started.
1. Get to Know Your Audience
The first thing you need to do here is think about who you’re looking to target. Figuring out your target audience can often feel like an overwhelming task to take on, but it gets to be a lot easier when you break it down. So begin by doing some research. When you start to research your market segment, competitors, and what your customers want, you can begin to form a better idea of who your target audience might actually be.
2. Solve a Problem or Meet a Desire
Then, as you’re starting to fine-tune things, you’re going to want to make sure that you know how you are different from what’s already on the market. It’s important to think about what you’re trying to achieve with your product and service and who it might best be suited for. You can then create a profile of the exact kind of customer you’re looking for.
3. Choose the Right Platforms
The next step here is to start thinking about where you want to market. Ideally, you’re going to take an integrated approach here, meaning that you’ll look to include a range of different marketing styles in your strategy so that you can cast a wide net and target as much of your audience as possible. So at this stage, you need to decide what. For many people, choosing the right social media platforms to be on is the first step. But you’ll also need to consider other areas such as SEO, paid media, email marketing, advertising, affiliate marketing, and more.
4. Mix Your Approach
Depending on your budget, you may be looking to do a mix of organic and paid marketing activity from the beginning. Or, you may start off with free methods and build up from there. Either way, it’s always a good idea to mix your approach where you can. This means you’re scooping up as many customers as possible. Here, looking to bring in paid media activity with Google Ads and social media placements can help. Mixed with SEO and organic social media posts, you will create a strong integrated marketing approach.
5. Get Creative With Your Advertising
When it comes to the advertising elements, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re nailing the visual side of things. The creative elements should also look to be, well, creative. Don’t be afraid to have fun with this. Think about ways you can capture your audience's attention, because this is essential in a crowded online space!
6. Use Clever Messaging
Alongside your advertising strategy, you’re then going to want to take a look at your copy. When you’re crafting the words for any parts of your marketing, it’s important to make sure that you’re using them to your advantage. Your messaging strategy needs to feed into your overall marketing goals, meaning that you need to be able to use persuasive copy that gets a response and encourages an action from your audience or customer.
7. Optimize as You Go
Then, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re checking in with everything as you go. You’re going to find that things are going to change as you start to track the results. You may find that certain campaigns perform better than others – but you can then apply those learnings and findings going forward to get better results all around.
Final Thoughts: Making Marketing Work For You!
Ultimately, what you’re trying to achieve here is to reach your goals! And you’re going to want to do that as quickly as possible. So this is why pulling together the right marketing strategy that works for you is essential. It’s not just about following everything that you read online or see others doing, you need to make it personal. It has to work for your style of selling, your products or services, and what you actually enjoy doing. Then, joining everything up with an integrated marketing plan and utilizing experts can help you take it all to the next level!
If you run an e-commerce business – congratulations! This is a rapidly growing field with a huge amount of potential, and you’re right at the forefront of it all.
Given the exponential growth the industry is experiencing right now, it’s important to do your best to stay on top of current trends and innovations, and not just in the buying and selling sense. Technology is improving all the time, and there are many different tools on the market you would benefit from that you might not have considered.
This article will explore some of them: here are flour novel tools you can leverage to improve the efficiency of your e-commerce business.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already changed the face of business forever, and it will only continue to become more deeply integrated into the way people work and society as a whole.
In the e-commerce world, there are many applications, but one of the most interesting right now is AI-powered marketing assistants. Marketing is an essential part of any business, but it can be a tough nut to crack; many popular tools such as those offered by Adobe and Canva have integrated AI suggestion and generation based on large language model (LLM) technology, which can help users with unique insights to develop their brand.
API-Driven Payment Solutions
Safe, reliable payment methods are at the forefront of any e-commerce business, and an online payment API guarantees the type of robust tools you need.
These solutions offer much more than just payment processing, of course, providing assistance with shipping calculations, reducing logistical bottlenecks, and even helping to prevent fraud, all with reliable support available should you need help with anything.
They also allow you to tailor the sort of payment experience you want for your specific business, and given the amount of business done via mobile devices these days, there’s usually full support on that end, too.
Inventory Management Tools
Managing your inventory can be one of the most time-intensive and laborious processes you’ll engage in as an e-commerce business, so you should always be looking for ways to improve efficiency here.
There are plenty of advanced software solutions that you can use to help manage challenges and ensure things go as smoothly as possible – those that offer the kind of tools that enable you to track stock levels in real-time and offer deeper data analysis. They also greatly reduce human error, minimizing losses and other major failures across your supply chain, helping your business to run on without a hitch.
Wrapping Up
The above tools have the potential to greatly improve the speed and reliability of your day-to-day operations. Determining overall success is sometimes more about tweaking little things that add up to make a big difference rather than trying to implement huge changes.
It’s also important to remember that there are many other tools, technology, and services that can help you get where you need to be, so hopefully, the above options have inspired you to start investigating.
Employees and entrepreneurs are not the same. No matter how you want to cut it, they have different objectives and motivations. It’s simply not apt to call everyone “colleagues” when the underlying incentives differ so much.
Most employees are not entrepreneurs in the traditional sense. They have a different view of what working life should be and don’t even operate under the same assumptions. Workers believe that going to a job puts food on the table, while business leaders see their activities differently, often as a vision of “changing the world.”
As such, the differences between motivation levels between these two classes of people can be shocking. Entrepreneurs will give up almost everything to see their mission flourish, while workers may have other priorities in their lives.
An employee is someone who cherishes the ability to split time between work and home. They think that a full life involves doing both. They want to do their job (that’s part of their lives), but they also want to explore, indulge in hobbies, and enjoy a social life.
Entrepreneurs on the other hand don’t stick to these rigid lines. Critically, most don’t see a difference between their business and their home life. For them, it is all part of the same continuous whole.
Furthermore, entrepreneurs are okay with doing work whenever because, for them, it isn’t something that someone else is imposing on them. Instead, it is part of who they are. They’re in control and they’re trying to make something happen. If that means that they miss their child’s school recital, then so be it.
Competition
Entrepreneurs and employees also differ in terms of the competition they focus on. Colleagues are often battling among themselves to gain dominance within the group and earn the respect of others. For example, you might have sales team members trying to claw their way to the top of the leadership board.
For entrepreneurs, the fight is different. Their rivals aren’t people in their firms: they usually have full control over that. Instead, it is the other people in their industry trying to outsmart them.
A few startups lack any competition to begin with. However, it almost inevitably emerges over time, so it is something that business leaders must prepare themselves for in the earliest stages of their ventures.
Many of these fights at the company level are gladiatorial. Entrepreneurs have to think beyond the social dimension and get onto a strategic level where they can win. It’s this change that is the most critical, as it means that they constantly have to absorb new ideas, just in case they run across something that can help them thrive.
Entrepreneurs and employees also differ on purpose and impact at most companies, although strictly speaking, they really shouldn’t. Usually, employees find motivation from the money they earn, while employees get it from their self-created purpose, as embodied through their business. Ultimately, colleagues are people who are there because they have to be, while employers are individuals who are trying to achieve something.
Leveraging employee engagement can turn this situation around, though, and put business leaders and their workers on the same page. Many schemes attempt to align goals, helping employees also see the value in working toward a greater good. The best situation is when everyone at the company views themselves as an architect of the future.
Innovation
Differences on the innovation front between workers and leaders also exist. Employees are more interested in creative projects within the company and how they can improve their processes. Many will look for ways to enhance productivity.
Meanwhile, entrepreneurs aren’t so interested in operations. The most visionary focus on the next big thing instead, trying to figure out how they can disrupt the industry and get ahead of their closest rivals.
Usually, workers are tackling problems similar to those other people have taken on before. However, entrepreneurs aren’t like that. They want to solve new problems that other firms haven’t taken on or simply don’t have the people to address.
Legacy
Then, there are differences between the legacies these two groups care about. Employees’ focus is usually on their personal careers, the changes they make, and the companies they take part in.
However, entrepreneurs have a more grandiose vision. They want to build something that lasts beyond them and extends well into the future.
Steve Jobs was a great example of this in practice. He put his energy into creating products that would outlive him, allowing him to continue impacting the world well after he was gone.
Therefore, this is also something you’ll want to consider when running a company. Most employees see themselves that way and can’t imagine ever moving to the next step. Knowing this, business leaders must understand the “company man” and what he wants.
Decision-Making Power
Of course, decision-making power also contributes to the motivational differences between employees and their employers. Usually, workers have a say, but ultimately they don’t contribute to the running of the business. It’s a dictatorship, not a democracy.
Furthermore, many workers are okay with this. Most don’t actually want to be in charge, even if they grumble from time to time.
Meanwhile, entrepreneurs crave that authority. They know that the decisions they make can make or break the company, taking it in different directions as they see fit.
Source Of Income
The source of income also plays a role in engagement. Entrepreneurs care a lot about the company’s performance because it determines how much they get paid. Meanwhile, workers get paid the same every month regardless of income until the firm goes bust.
Because of this, employees usually seek comfort in a steady paycheck and other perks, like health insurance. Their primary motivation is fear and a loss of the meager possessions they own.
For entrepreneurs, the motivations are different. They want to strike out and make massive earnings, even if their incomes are inconsistent and sometimes change substantially from one month to the next.
These differences affect incentives. Workers know that they can go to a different job that pays similarly whenever they want, while entrepreneurs are usually stuck with the companies they own unless they are geniuses able to create new ideas at will.
Motivation also comes into play when considering risk tolerance. Employees prefer the safety of job security. They don’t like the idea of an unstable career or losing a lot of money.
Meanwhile, many entrepreneurs can’t stand this idea. They often get a rush whenever they take financial risks which sees them through and out of the other side, regardless of how challenging making money becomes.
Furthermore, they like the idea of outsized rewards. They know the chances of winning are slim, but they also understand that they’d be no better off usually if they went down the conventional career path.
Recognition
Finally, the level of recognition between workers and employees can also impact motivation. Workers sometimes get a pat on the back or an award ceremony to celebrate their achievements. However, entrepreneurs can sometimes go down in history and have the raw satisfaction of knowing they tried something different.
These key drivers explain why business leaders are often more willing to put in the hours. For them, it’s higher stakes, while for workers, it is just a way to make money.
A significant number of small businesses close within a couple of years. Yet, while that can sound ominous to new small business owners, if you’re aware of why they close, you can decrease your chances of following the same fate.
A staggering 82% of small businesses close due to a single reason: poor cash flow. If you make this aspect of your operations more robust, then you’ll be greatly increasing your chances of making it through the first few difficult years.
Easier said than done? Yep. But there are things you can do to improve your cash flow, as we’ll see below.
It’s one thing to have to close your business because of money problems. It’s even more frustrating when you have to close even though you had money that would eventually come in. Offering a discount for clients who make prompt payments is a great way to give your cash flow a boost. Your clients will save money, and you’ll get the money owed in the bank — it’s a situation that benefits everyone. The discount doesn’t have to be massive; even 3 – 5% can be effective.
Avoid Big-Ticket Purchases Where Possible
All businesses need equipment in order to work efficiently. In some industries, that equipment can be extremely expensive, which can have a knock-on effect on the businesses’ cash flow. It’s not hard to see how investing in a piece of heavy machinery would make a small business more financially vulnerable.
Before buying equipment, it’s worth checking whether you really need to make the purchase in the first place. There will likely be an option to lease/rent the equipment, which will give you access to the tools you need in a much more budget-friendly way.
Get Professional Help
Businesses often run into cash flow difficulties for a very simple reason: they’re managing the financial aspect of their operations in-house. In many cases, it’s the business owner who’s in charge of managing the finances. That can be fine if they have experience and expertise in this area, but if they don’t, then things can quickly become complicated. Handing the responsibility over to an experienced accountant will ensure that your business has effective cash management procedures in place, which can go a long way toward keeping your cash flow in tip-top condition. Plus, this will also free up your time, ensuring you can spend more time on value-adding tasks that push your business forward.
Analyze Your Clients
You’d like to think that all of your clients will be fair and honest in their dealings with you. However, that’s not always the case. Some will be slow in paying, or, in some cases, avoid paying altogether. It’s just a reality of the business world. One way to avoid this problem is to perform a credit check on your clients, especially ones who are making a big order and who aren’t paying upfront. It can take a bit of work, but it might just save you a lot of problems further down the line.
As your business grows and develops, you may no longer be able to manage your inventory, shipping, and logistics alone. That’s where you may need to partner with a Third-Party Logistics (3PL) provider. However, outsourcing something so important as the last mile delivery to an external company comes with risks.
In this guide, we’ll look at a few strategies to ensure that your partnership works in your favor – from ensuring you're choosing the right outsourcing partner to maintaining high standards of communication. Let’s dive in.
Partner With A Logistics Company That Aligns With Your Values And Goals
The first aspect to focus on is the importance of choosing the right partner. You’ll need to find a company that can showcase its expertise and reputation, but you’ll also want a partner who meets your budget needs and future goals.
For example, if you are looking to expand internationally, you’ll need a provider that can comfortably handle large inventories and worldwide delivery. Also, be sure to review the set of values of the company you are going to partner with to ensure you both value customer service, product quality, sustainability, and business longevity.
Review Their Customer Service Standards
Next up, be sure to review the customer service standards of the company you are looking to entrust with the last-mile delivery of your products. Premium 3pl customer service is important because the delivery specialists and technicians who will deliver your products will be the ones in touch with the customer personally. A customer will associate them with your product or company, which can make or break your reputation.
Ask Your Customers For Direct Feedback
If you are struggling to gain an idea of the quality of a certain company or their services, ask your clients directly. You may follow up after a sale to verify that the delivery happened in a timely, quality manner. This can help you supervise the last-mile delivery aspect, which may not have direct control over.
Pro tip: Asking your customers for feedback after the delivery occurred can help you gain insights and prevent them from writing public reviews that may mistakenly associate the poor service quality of a delivery company to your brand name.
Ensure Clear Communication With The 3PL Provider
Outsourcing aspects like delivery, shipping, and logistics management is essential for any growing business. However, outsourcing such important aspects of your business can also have some challenges, such as decreased service quality and security concerns. To address these risks and prevent damage to your company, be sure to keep the lines of communication open with your 3PL provider. This can help you build a relationship of trust and respect, which is necessary to continue growing your brand.
Invest In The Right Tech Tools
Last but not least, be sure to take advantage of the right tech tools to boost your logistics strategy. These include inventory management software, route tracking tools, and real-time tracing. These tools are just some of the ones that can help you build trust in your chosen 3PL provider and ensure a high-quality last-mile delivery service.
In today’s rapidly evolving work environment, staying relevant and competitive requires continuous learning and adaptation. One way to ensure career longevity and growth is by actively pursuing upskilling opportunities. Whether you are just starting your career or are an experienced professional, developing new skills can unlock fresh opportunities, increase your value to employers, and enhance your personal growth. Here’s why upskilling is essential for career success.
1. Stay Competitive in a Changing Job Market
The job market is more dynamic than ever. With advances in technology and shifts in industry practices, many jobs today require a different set of skills than they did just a few years ago. If you don’t keep up with these changes, you risk falling behind, while colleagues and competitors with the latest skills move ahead.
Upskilling allows you to adapt to the ever-changing demands of your industry. For example, learning to work with emerging technologies or mastering new software programs can make you more efficient and valuable to your employer. For those in specialized fields, such as IT, marketing, or healthcare, staying on top of the latest trends is critical for maintaining a competitive edge. Even in traditional fields like logistics, upskilling by taking lessons from a commercial diving school can open doors to new roles or industries.
By continually expanding your skill set, you not only improve your job performance but also demonstrate to employers that you are proactive and adaptable—qualities that are highly sought after in today’s workplace.
2. Boost Career Advancement Opportunities
Upskilling can also play a major role in advancing your career. Employers often promote individuals who show initiative and a willingness to learn. By acquiring new skills, you position yourself as someone capable of taking on more responsibility, which can lead to promotions or salary increases.
In addition to helping you climb the career ladder, upskilling can also provide you with the flexibility to change roles or even switch careers. If you’re interested in pursuing a different field or industry, upskilling allows you to build the competencies required to make that transition smoothly. This flexibility can be especially important during economic downturns or times of industry disruption when certain skills become more valuable.
Furthermore, upskilling helps you stay engaged and motivated in your current role. Learning new things can reignite your passion for your work, making you more enthusiastic and productive.
3. Adapt to Technological Advancements
One of the biggest reasons upskilling is essential today is the rise of automation and artificial intelligence. As more tasks become automated, certain roles are becoming obsolete, while new ones are emerging. Upskilling helps you stay ahead of these technological changes, ensuring you remain relevant in your field.
For instance, industries such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing are increasingly relying on data analysis and AI tools. Learning how to use these technologies can future-proof your career. Moreover, by acquiring technical skills, you can work more effectively alongside new technologies, improving both your individual performance and your team’s productivity.
In a fast-paced world where skills are constantly evolving, upskilling is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. Staying competitive in the job market, opening doors to career advancement, and adapting to technological changes are just a few reasons why investing in continuous learning is crucial for your career growth. By taking steps to enhance your skill set, you not only ensure job security but also position yourself for long-term success in any field.
