7 Bite Sized Tips To Build A Better Business

There are many ways to tweak the components of your business to make it more efficient and profitable. With this article we look at some quick and easy wins to make your SME more beneficial to all your various stakeholders.

1. Adopt A Continually Innovating Business Mindset. There are scant few industries that don’t evolve. A business that stays stuck in the mud, without being alert for changing customer trends is not one that is likely to survive in the long run. Part of the innovation ideal should involve attaining customer feedback to verify how existing products and services can be improved – and to look out for new market gaps that can be exploited.

2. Develop The USP Of Your Brand. Quite often, it’s the Unique Selling Point (USP) of a brand and business that lie at the very heart of its success. When customers identify that your product has a particular set of unique traits, it can be a compelling reason for them to award you their business. However, even as we speak, your competition are trying to develop their own USP, and may well be trying to steal yours in the process. USP isn’t a “set and forget” concept – you have to keep working at it as your business and its environment evolves.

3. Focus On Efficiencies. By identifying bottlenecks and improving efficiencies a business can evolve incrementally over time. Most business disciplines may be improved upon – simply figure out the factors that are causing your business productivity and efficiency issues, and find out the most economic way to deal with them.

4. Improvement Through Key Metrics. To improve your business and make it hum with efficiency involves knowing its strengths and weaknesses. This is where business metrics can be really useful. Key performance metrics (often dubbed KPI’s) can reveal how your company is faring within disciplines such as finance, operations, productivity, gearing and more.

5. Take Marketing Very Seriously. Even the best store would struggle to sell a single item were it located in the middle of the Amazon. Similarly, your business needs to court publicity in order to succeed. The internet, while opening up a whole new world of clients to businesses, has made marketing far more challenging and time intensive. Aside from traditional marketing activities, business owners now also need to focus on SEO, SEM, mobile and various other types of online marketing.

6. Continually Baton Down Business Costs. As a business grows and evolves, it often signs off various expenses that could be better negotiated as time passes. Most businesses could make savings on their operation costs, and can do this through introducing a regular review on expenses.

7. Look To Exploit New Markets. One of the best ways to increase revenues is to break into new markets. There are several strategies for doing this – a business might wish to tap into new customers abroad by selling the same brand, or to break into a new market niche altogether with a different product. Yet another way of using your brand leverage to do this is by offering related products to your existing database of clients.