If you’re a new business owner, one of the best things you can do in the beginning is get your approach right. If you go it alone at the start, you might realise that you’ve actually made lots of mistakes. Mistakes as a business owner are common, and oftentimes, nothing to be worried about. They can teach you a lot about what works and what doesn’t. However, if you want to avoid many of the most common mistakes and get straight to growing and expanding your business, read on for ways you can improve your approach. Many of these pointers are an absolute must in 2021.
By Team Savant
Image: Toa Heftiba
Get To Know Your Audience Properly
Do you know your audience? If you answered yes, how well do you know them? You should have a solid idea of who your audience is. This includes their age range, living arrangement, family status, relationship status, likes and dislikes, and more. Surveys, research, and creating customer profiles can help you to figure out who they are. Knowing who they are means you know exactly how to target them in your approach. If you don’t know who you’re targeting, you could completely miss the mark when putting content and things out there. There’s going to be a huge difference between audience members who want to buy galvanised pipe fittings and those who want to buy baby carriers, and you will need to communicate with them differently. Having a broad idea of who you are speaking to is unlikely to work.
Get To Know Your Team Properly
As well as knowing your audience properly, you need to know your team properly. Your team is your backbone, and if they feel like you don’t appreciate or care to know them, they are unlikely to put as much effort into working for you as they could. Getting to know your team from the get-go means building strong relationships, encouraging loyalty, and creating a more pleasant work atmosphere. Plus, loyal team members are more likely to work harder for you and stay with you for longer. Just remember, this is an ongoing process. Give them praise and recognition, remember their names and other things about them, start conversations, help them in any way you can, and make them feel like a valued part of the team.
Offer Unbeatable Customer Service
Unbeatable customer service is key. Now, the thing is, people don’t just come to you for your product or service — no matter how great you think it is. It might be good, but they come to you for the experience. If somebody doesn’t like the experience of working with you, they’ll go elsewhere. Making sure the entire experience is great, from the initial email to aftercare, is essential. Hone and improve your customer service approach as you go — if you can have a dedicated customer service team, that’s even better. Make sure everybody is fully trained.
Use Social Media
You can’t get away from using social media in 2021. It might not be your strong suit, in which case, you should hire somebody else to take care of it for you. Social media is a wonderful way to attract your target audience, and it can be free! Ads cost money, but you can get a lot of traction for free simply by posting regularly and adding value to the lives of your followers. You need more than just accounts, so make sure your content is updated regularly. You don’t necessarily need to post several times a day, as long as your content really is quality. It can be better to post a little less, providing your content is hitting the mark with your followers. Make sure you check your analytics to be sure that this is the case!
Attend Networking Events
Networking events are a fantastic way to spread the word of your business, get new custom, and even build business relationships. Networking can be oh so powerful in business, and it’s something you should focus on to see if you get results. You never know who you might meet, so go in with the intention to learn from other people. You never know who they may know, or how they may be able to help you.
Give Back To Your Community
Giving back to your community is a wonderful way to build your reputation, meet more people, and encourage them to work with your business. Not only that, you may get some positive write ups in the local news. Giving back to your community is also a good idea if you want to reduce the negative impact that business can have on its surroundings and environment as a whole. Get creative, as you can do this in a number of ways.
Keep Your Staff Engaged and Motivated
Your team needs to stay engaged and motivated if they are going to help you constantly build your business. Learn what motivates them, and get feedback from them so you can encourage more productive outputs. Always listen to insight from your staff, as this will offer invaluable ideas when it comes to growing and improving. Some of the best ideas out there will come from the people who are closest to the issues at hand, so don’t keep yourself under the illusion that you know best. There are many ways you can help to keep them motivated, including:
Offering more than the bare minimum — bonuses, days out, free food, gym memberships, and more incentives.
Flexible working arrangements.
The ability to spend a little time working on their own projects from time to time.
Investing in their growth and learning.
Discussing their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their goals, and helping them to come up with a plan.
Praising them, providing recognition, and getting to know them better.
Know Your Limits
Successful business owners always have a clear idea of what their limitations are. When you know what your entrepreneurial personality type is, you can better manage your resources and look for areas of weakness that will help you to grow in the long run. You might be great at sales, for example, but not great at the accounting side of things. When you know exactly what your limits are, you can stop wasting time and effort doing these things yourself and instead outsource the job or hire somebody else to do it.
Don’t Be Afraid to Take A Break
Business owners need breaks, both breaks in the day and vacation breaks. Running a business is hard work, and failure to take time off to recuperate can lead to burn out and falling out of love with what you do. The last thing you want after putting all of that hard work in, is to forget the reason you started in the first place. A vacation could be just what you need to reignite your passion. Never underestimate the potential value of spending some time away from the work. You might feel guilty, and you might even be tempted to work from your remote location, but avoid this if you can. A true break is crucial. Chances are, you’ll return with a clearer head, more ideas, and more optimism than ever before.
Are you ready to improve your approach as a new business owner? Hopefully, these pointers have helped you to put things into perspective a little bit. Ultimately, you need to be able to keep things into perspective and get in touch with your gut. Nearly all business owners have strong intuition.