Category: Tips and Tools

Today’s business world is nothing like the business world of old. The internet has changed everything, from how we connect with customers and suppliers, how we market our company, and where and when we work. It’s also allowed us to employ people who don’t only live in a different city from ours, but sometimes a different country altogether. This has allowed companies to find the best talent for the job, regardless of where they’re based. It has, however, also changed the game when it comes to managing employees, and not all of it is easy. Below, we offer some useful tips on how to get the best from your employees, even if you’ve never met them.

Share the Legwork

Just as with any traditional company, you shouldn’t assume a position of being above your employees. If you have an employee who works on the other side of the world, then it’s not always their responsibility to be online when it suits you. If you live in New York and have an Australian employee, then it might be the middle of the night when you need to speak to them. Keep this in mind, and share the responsibility when it comes to connecting with one another. If that means late night phone calls, then so be it.

Constant Contact

You’ll have to trust your remote workers to get their work done with minimal supervision, but you’ll have to stay in contact throughout the day to ensure that everyone’s on the same page. This is where technology can come in. Some services will allow you to make free international calls and there are also apps that will let you message one another throughout the day. Aside from helping your company, it’ll help your employee if they’re able to get a hold of you when they have questions.  

Don’t Make It All About Work

You might rarely see your employees in the flesh, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real people. They have their own lives going on, and you should make an extra effort to get to know them on this level. If you’re only talking about work whenever you speak with them, then you won’t be engaging with them in a way that all employees need. You don’t have to go over the top: simply setting aside five minutes of the conversation aside from personal chat is all it takes.

Don’t Forget the Perks

All employees want to receive perks from time to time; it’s no different from remote workers. Keep them sweet by making sure they’re able to share in the success of the company. Nothing will pick up an employee more than some company swag arriving at their front door.

Arrange Meetups

You’ll be able to do most of your work remotely, but it’s also a good to arrange meetups so the company can get together face to face. This will enable your employee to feel closer to the company, and will also help foster personal relationships that can fuel better worker productivity.

Photo: Claudioscot

Your office has a wide range of things, that all need to be kept safe and secure. From computers, data, files, and your employees, there are many reasons why putting your office’s security as a high priority is a good idea. When you take precautions to keep your office secure, it not only helps to keep your business running, but it can keep costs down for things like insurance. Peace of mind is also a massive help for any employees that you do have. They are going to enjoy coming to work when they feel that they work in a safe and secure environment, especially in this day and age.

So here are some guidelines to help you choose the best way to keep your office secure. It will vary from business to business, depending on your requirements and what you need to keep secure. Which will work best for you?

Monitored Alarm System

Having an alarm installed should be one of the very first things that you think about when it comes to getting your office setup. You’d have one on your home, so one for your office is also important. Seeing that a building has a security alarm in place is a big deterrent for potential thieves. And let’s face it; thieves know what they will find in an office. Technology, electronics, and even cash. So they can be an easy target without a secure alarm system.

Install CCTV

Along the same lines, having some CCTV installed can be a visual deterrent to potential thieves. It can also work to make the workplace a much safer environment too. You will have video evidence of what your staff are doing, including things like theft and attacks. So it can help your staff to feel more secure and protected, as well as acting as a deterrent for bad behaviour too.

Use Effective Lighting

A lot of robberies and theft will be late at night when there is no one in the office. So having lighting to put people off even trying to steal, can be a good way to go. Lighting inside the office, as well as outside, can all be good to help deter.

ID Badges

Having a secure system for people checking in and out of the office is a good way to go. It shows who is meant to be in the office, as well as identifying any visitors. It can mean getting some sensors, name badges, and ID badges, but it will mean a safer and more secure office in the long run. Granting certain people access to certain areas is a good idea too; if someone doesn’t need to get to a certain area for their role, then they don’t need to have access to it.

Keep Documents Locked Away

A lot of the data that you have will be online and in computers. But there are some things, like employee contracts, client information, and banking statements that you will have hard copies of. So keeping them secure in a locked cabinet and room is imperative. Things like that can’t get into the wrong hands.

 

Let me begin by apologising to the Dads out there who are responsible for running both their business and their family, for what will seem like a biased article. At the time of writing, however, it remains a fact the majority of family and work life juggling is done by Mums – so, sorry…

In fact, only last month, the Office of National Statistics reported that the number of mothers with dependent children employed in England has surged by more than a million over the past two decades.

One of the main facilitators of growth in Mums in work is the massive helping hand that has come from consecutive governments who have made encouraging women back to work a priority. Eligible Mums can now receive up to 30 hours free childcare per month, which goes a long way to taking the pressure off. Breakfast and afterschool clubs are a massive help, too, as are grandparents who often act as unofficial, unpaid nannies.

Juggling babies between work and carers is a mammoth task – physically and emotionally. Getting through the working day can be fraught and you look forward to that moment when your baby is quietly snuggled up in their cot and you can relax.

But if you’re an entrepreneur and own your own business, the clock never stops.

No matter how level headed or organised you think you are, nothing quite prepares you for the crazy first few weeks following the arrival of a new baby. Your world is turned upside down. So here are some simple tips that may help you save some valuable time and money:

• Make the most of the precious time with your new baby and save work that needs your 100% attention until their bedtime.
• Whether you’re based in the office or at home, think about cutting down on wasted journeys to suppliers. Arrange for suppliers to deliver to you or direct to your clients. If they can’t accommodate you, change suppliers – there are many who will. This will save you lots of time whilst out journeying and a good deal of money on fuel too.
• Use delivery services such as TNT to do your running around for you. Like deliveries from suppliers, many hours can be consumed either by delivering goods by hand or standing in queues at the post office. Plus, they have a range of services and rates to choose from that will ensure your delivery is made on time and on budget.
• For those times when you absolutely must have meetings with clients, choose a venue that also has a crèche. Use companies like Office Crèche, who offer professional meeting rooms for hire and a professionally run crèche for your baby.
• Outsource – don’t waste time trying to do everything. Think about employing a student as an intern to help you do less business related critical tasks. Additionally, get yourself a cleaner. You’ll be amazed at how much time and pressure this release. It doesn’t often pay off for the MD of the business to be doing tasks that can be done easily and cheaply by someone else.

Image Source

 

Are your marketing campaigns optimized for the highest possible conversions? Conversion optimization is a critical element of successful marketing. Even if your campaigns generate a positive return on investment (ROI), you can achieve a higher ROI through conversion optimization.

Understanding Conversion Rate

As explained by the Nielsen Normal Group (NNG), conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action after seeing an ad. If 10,000 users see your ad and 1,000 buy the advertised product, your ad has a 10 percent conversion rate.

While conversions are typically triggered through sales, they can consist of other actions as well, including email signups, form completion, app downloads and calls. Any desired action can essentially be a conversion.

Conversion Optimization Tips for Online Ads

So, what steps can you take to optimize your online ads for a higher conversion rate? Well, each advertising platform requires a unique approach. When advertising your products or services on pay-per-click (PPC) networks like Google AdWords and Bing Ads, for instance, you can split test multiple ads to see which one delivers the highest conversion rate. Instead of running a single ad, you can run two or three simultaneously. And after they’ve generated a decent amount of data, you can keep the ad with the highest conversion rate and replace the ad with the lowest.

Using a dedicated landing page instead of your main website can boost the conversion rate of your online ads. Some business owners make the mistake of sending traffic directly to their main website, believing this offers the greatest results. But because websites are typically designed for multiple purposes — publishing content, brand visibility, customer support, etc. — they aren’t as effective as using a landing page.

A landing page is essentially a small website that’s designed specifically for conversions. They normally feature a call-to-action (CTA) someone above the fold as well as other elements to promote a high conversion rate. Upon landing on the page, a user will immediately see the CTA, increasing the chance of a successful conversion.

There are also digital marketing firms that offer conversion optimization. Using this service, you can maximize your conversion rates and improve your online presence.

Boost Conversions with Multi-Channel Marketing

Conversion rate isn’t the only thing you should focus on. You should also strive to increase the total number of conversions you generate.

Multi-channel marketing, also known as omni-channel marketing, can help you generate more conversions. It involves marketing your products or services across multiple platforms. If you currently advertise on Google AdWords, for instance, you can expand your reach by creating similar campaigns on Bing Ads and Facebook Ads.

Alternatively, if you currently use search engine optimization (SEO) to promote your business, you may want to consider social media and/or PPC. Venturing into other channels such as these will increase the total number of conversions you generate.

Reinforcing your digital marketing campaigns with conversion optimization will give you the upper hand on your competitors. Keep in mind, however, that it requires regular monitoring and adjusting. If something isn’t working, you should try a different approach.

Image: Pixabay

If you are thinking of initiating a successful service providing business you need to be very clear about what you are getting into. Of course, you will have the same old advice in mind about how one should be friendly and bow down to the demands of all your customers and how customer is always right along with a load of similar stuff. But once you get your business, you will find out there is a lot more to it than what meets the eye and that’s exactly what we will be discussing today in this post. So without further ado, here are five things you must know about running a successful service business. Apply them with your own unique style and reap the benefits they bring you.

Be Unique

Try to have a competitive advantage of any sort over your competition in the market. This will be the main reason why people will be choosing you over somebody else. For example, you are providing tuckpointing services to houses constructed with bricks. Such services are designed to prevent the decay of bricks in houses. The prevention is done in an attractively decorative way. In this case, the quality of work is something everyone will be promising, but if you complete the work quickly then that will make you unique. I have taken this example from Point Brik tuckpointing, a nice company with professional craftsmen who always complete work faster than expected. So the handle in this case is, the Point Brik company is fast!

Understand your Customers

Understand the needs of your customers and give them exactly what they are looking for. Make effort to figure out about their needs and what actually motivates them to opt for services you are offering. Once you have clearly understood your target market, now see how you can reach them and how you need to present your services. It becomes particularly easy once you have perfectly understood the needs of your target market. How to do all this? Start simply by asking questions and paying attention to feedback.

Right way of Marketing Services

Find the right way of marketing your services. This thing differs with different kinds of businesses. Do research, run some tests and find the best way to reach your customers. Try finding a marketing combination that actually unlocks the cash flow. Just by testing various methods of marketing and studying their results, a prudent businessman find which methods are paying off and which ones need to be dropped. Some methods of marketing may take several months such as developing a TVC or making a website, but looking for customers on craigslist can bring you customers immediately.

Utilize Technology

Running a service business requires you to do a lot more stuff than just offering the service you have with you. You need to take care of accounting, quoting, marketing, setting up accounts, handling legal matters, managing payroll, etc.  I think it is important to make use of technology wherever possible. Automating certain tasks can really save you time to focus on other things. These days, you have an app for everything so try to be tech savvy and save a humungous amount of time and effort.

Try these tips and tell us how they worked for you.

Image: 3dman_eu