Your home business becomes a member of your family. It’s there at breakfast and it’s still there at bedtime. Let’s look at some management tips to help things go as smoothly as planned.
Become brand aware
If brand awareness has totally avoided your radar thus far, don’t worry, we’re going to get into it (also check out this definition of brand awareness).
Brand awareness begins with why you’re doing what you’re doing. Do you know what motivates you? If money is the answer, give in now. Nobody wants your snake oil. If your sole aim is to hold people up by the ankles and see how much money falls out, you’re not an entrepreneur, you’re on board the SS Get Rich Quick.
Now, the problem with getting rich quick is that you get found out. Fast. And you have to move on to your next project. Many fake-preneurs believe this is how business works. They’re wrong. That’s how stress and living a shady life works.
Do something you love and the results will shine through in the end product. How? Because being brand-aware means choosing suppliers and marketing techniques that keep growing your business to please your audience, rather than choosing to go about your business in a way that gains maximum exposure at speed without a product of service based on integrity – your audience can spot your intentions a mile away. Investing in ORM packages that could help you build your brand and reputation online could be one of the ways in which you could up your business game!
One of the best ways to improve your brand awareness is through storytelling. Stories are a powerful way to connect with your audience and make your brand more relatable. When you share a story about your brand, you’re able to communicate with your audience on a more personal level. This helps build trust and loyalty, which are essential for any business. Many business owners today work on improving their storytelling skills and collaborate with a professional storytelling coach to captivate their audience and leave a long-lasting impression on them.
Define Core Business Values
Another important step is to clarify what your core business values are. Your values should explain why you created your business, i.e. tell more about your mission and vision. If you want your core business values to matter, they must define how you want your whole business to operate. Also, you can think of your core business values as a moral code. Every decision you make will be ultimately made considering your values. Moreover, when they are carefully defined your core values will help you build a thriving business environment.
Think about packaging
This point very much ties in with your brand awareness. Your packaging is the number one way you can get your customers to remember your brand and also add to their overall customer experience
If they order a product from you and it arrives in a boring, brown box with just an address label on it, this isn’t memorable. However, if you go to a custom box company and design your own packaging with bright logos all over it, this will provide a much richer experience for them. They will be able to see the time and effort you have put into your business and they’re much more likely to remember your brand.
A lot of the time, small businesses think that custom packaging is an unneeded expense but it’s been proven to increase customer loyalty as well as make them more likely to suggest your brand to other people. In today’s day and age, there’s a product for everything so you need to find a way to stand out.
Automate as many administrative tasks as possible
Things take time. Too much time. That’s why any administrative aspects of your business that you can sensibly delegate to software should be packaged off and assigned to the hard drive faster than you can say, “OK, what are the most important things I need to achieve with my time today?”
Think about customer care. Do you manually thank each of your customers for their business? That can be automated. And while we’re talking about customers and automation, invoicing is another aspect of your business where an invoice software can easily take a tedious job off your hands.
Think about your business accounts. Do you have to stay up late at night typing in all of the details of your expenditure and revenue?
Automated systems can save you the time you need to focus on core aspects of your business, like growth, exposure, and profitability. There are only so many working hours in a week. Spend them wisely.
E-commerce website
Get an e-commerce website started to promote your business. If this is where you’re going to be selling your products or services from, you’ll want to make sure that it is well-designed and thought out.
Make sure to place the listings clearly so that people can see what products are available. You will also need to find a payment gateway service too. This will allow you to accept payments from different countries. Without a good payment gateway, your business will struggle to make money. Perhaps you could consider using Unicorn Payment as your gateway solution. You will then be able to accept multiple different currencies, allowing your brand to go global. This should increase success.
Start networking (& keep learning)
Networking. It’s a business word that gets thrown around almost jokingly. Every conversation on a train with a stranger can technically be counted as networking. Matching with someone on a dating app and telling them that you’re the Managing Director of MyHomeBiz.biz can be laughed off as keeping up with your networking duties.
Networking is so much more than that. Networking means reaching out to industry thought leaders to compliment them on their recent work – and inviting them to look and comment on your brand. Starting conversations isn’t easy. And you’re completely reliant on the other side being open to your message. That’s why you need to get serious about networking in numbers. How else are you going to learn? YouTube roulette? You can (and must) do better.