Category: Business

Do you run a small, medium or large business? Does your business have a website? It is 2023, an era of everything online and if your business still lacks visibility in the internet world, you’ve got some serious worries. Among various reasonable and crucial things in a business, there comes the requirement of a website. The first thing that a potential customer does is head straight to the internet and look for your business website online. It doesn’t matter if your business is small or large, visibility and credibility are two of the most important things for any business.

Many business owners might be unaware of the fact that today almost 80% of consumers look for a product online before they actually go to buy it. And if your website has been optimized well for the search engines, that customer might end up buying that particular product from you. Now imagine if you weren’t up on the internet, you would have lost that customer.

The traditional sales and marketing techniques may get you a good number of customers but having a professional website will generate even more sales. Many people rely upon the usual business operations and having a website is the last thing on their mind. But what most of them don’t realize is that a website is an inexpensive and effective sales and communication tool.

How does a website benefit your business?

Let’s talk about the benefits that a website brings to the table.

1. Your presence at all times isn’t requiredA website is a tool for your business to be able to communicate with the customers. You might not be available at some odd hours but your website is always up there to answer every query that the customer has. This means that your business is always running even if you’re not. Say, you have a physical store that sells cupcakes to the customers. Your store is abuzz with customers visiting your store to buy the delicious cupcakes you make and sell. However, a physical store has its own limitations. There are limitations of store opening and closing time, workers and helpers on a leave and what not. Heads up! You’re losing your customers. Imagine, you put the same business online and decide to sell cupcakes online. Customers can visit your online store and place an order for your delicious cupcakes anytime and anywhere, be it midnight or a national holiday. Your store is now always open and accepting orders. You saved bunch of lost customers and often adding new to your list. See the difference!
2. Creates an online presenceSure you have a presence in the physical world but is it fair for your business to not have a brand image online? People associated with your business such as customers, partners and investors should have an easy access to your business. The only way for them to reach out to you online is through your business website. Thus, you create an online existence of your business and let it proliferate.
3. A website covers every aspect of marketing for your businessIt is also adequate to say that a website helps your business gain an easy and a higher ROI than any other form of advertisement. It is the most effective way of marketing and is also the best way to have an online identity or presence. The impact of visualized content is far more than any other content because pictures serve as a proof of your business. Your business website can readily offer brochures, catalogues and other information about your products and services. All this information can be certainly updated as soon as a change is derived in the business, establishing a dynamic business.
4. Increased reach of marketHaving a website gives you the opportunity to create a wider impact on the market. As many people visit your website, there’s a rise in the sales and thus, your reach in the market also expands. In addition to it, the chances of extending your services to the global market also increases. Also, in case of products and services, recommendations & referrals work well for your online business. If planned well, your website can be effectively used to convey authority and trust to potential customers.This helps the customers to have a better vision of your business, boosting the chances of them converting into a successful lead. Your website is like a star-employee for your business who works 24×7 without demanding a paycheck, whatsoever.
5. Let your competitors see the face of the earthIf your competitor has a website and you don’t, there’s no question that your customers will go to your competitor because they are likely to find them more trustworthy. The presence of your website makes it possible for the customers to have faith in your business and they would always know where to come back if something falls apart. You put your products and services on your website and let your customers choose if they’d like to do business with you and this creates a trusted customer base. Talk about authority, your website holds it firm for your business.

Getting Started with building a business website

To start with, it may feel a little more daunting to an end-user, as to how to get your website up and running. It is rather easy to get started. You can do it yourself if you know the how-to or to keep costs down, you can ask a friend to help, or you can hire a professional Web developer to do it for you at a modest cost.

If you have a basic knowledge of how things work behind the scenes with web development and want to kick start with your website, you would rather want to consider using a Content Management System. This will also help you control the costs and also handles the major load for you. If you’re just starting out, or if you value ease of use, customization and performance, then WordPress is for you. WordPress is continually evolving and powers most of the websites on the internet today. Click here to read why you should build your Website with WordPress as your CMS.

Today when almost every individual is already using a smartphone, a laptop and is present on at least one of the many social media platforms, it is a bane for your business to not have a website. The rate of growth in terms of sales, money and customers is predicted to crawl when you refrain from having a website and escalate rapidly when you have one. A website is not a luxury item for your business, it is rather a requirement to achieve tremendous growth and success.

We know reading this title will “Break Your Heart” and maybe you will have that strange and daunting feeling to increase the possibility of your success. Starting an online business has no guarantee of success, period! But that’s how running an online business is like, right? You have read all the success stories of entrepreneurs and it felt so great that you took action to set-up your own Online Business. Woohoo!! And then, there you are reading this piece – it means you are missing that kink in your master plan or maybe you want to identify the main reasons of online business failure before starting your business.

According to research conducted by Bloomberg after the failure post-mortem of the companies, it states that 8 out of 10 companies fail within the first 18 months. That’s a whopping burn rate of 80 percent or simply we can say that a new business has 1 in 5 chances to survive in less than two years. That’s pretty depressing! While as an entrepreneur when you study how businesses succeed, you should also learn about the darker sides of online businesses failure. Surely, you don’t fail until you totally give up. Remember Henry Ford? His first two automotive efforts turned out to be a failure. We see him as an innovator who knew what might look like failure to some is a real innovation. But then you have to hit the road just one time. That’s it!

Why most of the Businesses Fail?

Business failure is a harsh reality. You could fail 10 times and reinitiate your business 11 times. If at any of the next attempt you made it happen, you didn’t actually fail because you didn’t give up. There are some specific reasons why businesses are failing. You build successful business strategies, statistics but if you fail to realize some crucial things or just overlook or push aside certain things, YOU’RE GONNA FAIL. Let’s put together a summary of mistakes entrepreneurs or business owners typically make in running an online business; where do they go wrong and most importantly, how can YOU avoid making these fatal mistakes? So if you don’t want to be a part of the 80 percent category there are some ways to combat it.

1. Reason #1 – You have no Customers because there is no market need

   According to CB Insights, tackling problems that are interesting to solve rather than those that serve a market need was cited as the No. 1 reason for business failure, noted in 42% of cases. It is far simpler: the companies didn’t solve a big enough problem.

   This is like self-evident. Let’s get to the basics. Even though it feels obvious, it is not! And, let me warn you this is HUGE. Businesses fail all the time because they are trying to solve a problem that nobody really cares about. If you put your product or service out there and nobody buys it, there’s a good chance you should look for a more important problem to solve. If no one wants your product or service your company isn’t going to succeed. Simple, right! Also, a lot of people, go into business with a different or a wrong perception, they see a business and they are like, “Oh, this is awesome, I can do it too.” Seriously! Remember, for every $137 billion company like Amazon, there are countless number of frivolous online businesses that never make it.

   The Fix – Just think about this, you receive a service or product that totally blows your mind. And, what you are going to do next is to recommend the product to your network, “word of mouth”, you see. Why? Because you found it useful, something that is delivering value. It’s all about VALUE.

   First, find a Market. What is your market? Don’t say, “Um, everyone.” That’s not your market. You need to identify the group, the cluster of people whom you will be helping. The second thing is Need. What do people need? What are people looking for? Whether it is a market of recruiters searching for a perfect candidate or a super easy tool for accountants, your product or service should be able to universally serve with a scalable solution. Remember, you must be having great technology, data, expertise or reputation but your technology should solve the pain points of your target market; ultimately making their lives easier. It is always about delivering VALUE to market that will eventually pay you like spades in future.

2. Reason #2 – You are not listening to your Customers

   An amazing thing happens when an entrepreneur sees a potential opportunity in the market and addresses the need with a new idea of a product or a service. But things don’t go well when you don’t have a complete understanding of your customer which is actually crucial to your product and company’s success. Businesses fail when they neglect to stay in touch with their target audience, their customers and don’t understand what they need and the feedback they offer. How do you know if the problem you solve is important enough? Have you been listening?

   The Fix – Customers are the final arbiters and will tell you what they really think about your product or service. Remember, there’s a reason why “the customer is always right,” because without customers you don’t have a business. Listen to your customers, like for real. Walk 1,000 miles in the shoes of your customer. Your customer is the key. Don’t just pay lip service and even 280 characters of your tweet won’t count. Make real conversation with real customers. This is one of the most important ways to avoid online business failure.

3. Reason #3 – You are not able to compete in the market

   Your competition is not always startups; there are large companies too that are incubating ideas. In fact, you need to look out more on the giant ones. When the competition is fierce especially in lucrative markets where the stakes are high, companies get out-competed in the race. Sure, you may have the first-mover advantage but second-mover advantage can allow companies to quickly incorporate what you have validated and sink your ship in a blink.

   The Fix – Let’s take an example of Nokia, there was a time when the company ruled. Nokia failed when the smartphones took over the market. The company was much behind in terms of functionalities and innovation and was the one to enter late in the market. Whether a giant company or small startup, you have a competitor for your business to watch out. You need to be different, innovative and ahead of your competition in every aspect. You need to find ways and stay in business.

4. Reason #4 – You have no Marketing Strategy

   It is vital that a business puts ample efforts into marketing at the bootstrapping stage. No matter how great and useful your product or service is, it will gracefully fail if no one knows about it or is not able to find the customers. Poor and inefficient marketing has always been one of the major causes of online business failure.

   The Fix – While you don’t always need a fully dedicated professional PR team to market your offerings but you need to make the target audience aware of the product or service existence in one or the other way. The goal of marketing is to connect your business’ value to the right customer. Start marketing and advertising your products or services online with social media marketing, content writing & marketing, email marketing campaigns or print media whatever suits your business well.

5. Reason #5 – You are not being able to decide on Product Pricing

   Finding a balance between the selling price and cost of the product is a real challenge and tipping to either of the sides can be disastrous for a company. Businesses always suffer between pricing good enough to maintain positive margins and covering all the operating costs, while also to price low enough to lure customers.

   The Fix – You need to find out that sweet spot of not too expensive and not too cheap price for your product while simultaneously maintaining the healthy margins. How do you do this? First, know your customers, figure out the segment you are targeting. Second, know your costs, your revenue target, your competition most importantly. Do keep track of outside factors that will impact the demand for your product in the future.

6. Reason #6 – You are not optimizing your conversions

   Optimizing conversions is not only about more clicks, more money, more growth. It is so much more than that. Most of the entrepreneurs and business owners forget to address this important aspect of business success. With the implementation of several other strategies and techniques to target and drive customers optimizing your web pages for conversions can impact so many other areas of your marketing. Entrepreneurs and business owners should understand that you can always get more traffic but you can thrive only when you are able to capitalize on the existing traffic. And, this is where most businesses fail.

   The Fix – For a sustainable business and positive ROI ensure that you start optimizing conversions at early stages of business. Remember the reason you are optimizing conversion rates is to provide a better experience to your users who will ultimately be your customers. Ensure that you follow fundamentals to optimize your conversion rate with creating a powerful lead magnet, by increasing organic traffic with search engine optimization, A/B testing for your web pages according to demographics, conversion funnel, and other digital marketing activities. The better you do it, the more potential you have at churning a profit. Now is the time to get your website conversion rate optimized!

The Final Fix to avoid Online Business Failure

While there can be several other reasons for business failures like no business plan or model, losing the focus, product misfit, not having the right team and resources however according to industry experts and entrepreneurs the above-mentioned remains to be the main reasons for a business exiting the market.

No matter what, don’t let the fear of failure stop you from trying anything. Despite talking about reasons of failure we will leave you with the words of Thomas J. Watson – “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.”, a planned and continually improved approach will help you stay afloat in the competition.

Have you been looking for ways to incorporate digital marketing strategies lately? Or do you just want to explore the world of online marketing? Email marketing could be the answer in either scenarios!

In this mayhem of corporate world, every company is battling with their competitors to acquire more and more conversions. There are numerous ways to generate leads and revenues and every business has their marketing strategies aligned right as per the books.
But do they know how things keep evolving as we go and how businesses take an unpleasant turn even if a single marketing strategy goes wrong. Apparently not! Experts know that marketing is paramount and this is why they pay maximum heed to it.

A marketing team finds the most valuable data to create enlarged constructive content such as blogs, infographics, videos and many more. In 1988, Nike launched a marketing campaign called ‘Just do it’ to promote sales. The campaign was so successful that today ‘Just do it’ has become Nike’s trademark. Need we say more about marketing?

With so many kinds of marketing strategies such as social media advertising, influencer marketing, content marketing, purpose driven marketing why do we want to talk about email marketing? Emails have been around the corner ever since the internet was introduced and almost everybody checks their emails today. Many would say that email marketing is obsolete today. We say NO as we see many top notch companies leveraging email marketing strategies to get a large number of leads.

So what exactly are these benefits that we keep talking about?

1. Stronger and Loyal Customer Base – Having a strong email list means having a loyal customer following. Your social media followers might miss out on your recent content but your email list customers will take over as they signed up for your products in particular. When a customer signs up for your email list, they feel entitled to receive updates such as newsletters, new product or campaign launches.
2. Brand Awareness – Email marketing techniques such as sending recommendations after a customer bought a product or sending customized emails when a new product/ campaign is launched, etc. are sublime ways to acquaint more customers with your business. Typically marketing experts add a ‘call to action’ button in their emails with a captivating one liner to encourage the customer to click. These tactics are proven methods, which eventually increases brand awareness and click-through-rates.
3. ROI – It has been observed that emails are 40% more effective than any other social media platform. As per Constant Contact, when a business spends $1 on email marketing, they receive a revenue of $38. Many marketing opportunists are already aware of this fact and have achieved laudable goals such as highest conversion rates, wider audience reach, increased click-through-rate (CTR) on their website and an increased ROI out of their online business.
4. Cost Effective – If you have a budget set aside for marketing purposes, you may want to consider email marketing. Since the customer following is usually dynamic, it is rather easier to recreate, redesign, and re-purpose your content with an allocated budget.
5. Direct Reach – Receiving an email with “Hello” or “Hello Dave”, which sounds better? The one with your name, right? Such email tactics ensure that the customer feels valued enough. Email marketing is a tried and tested method, which allows you to segment your customers as per demographic trends. And this works brilliantly in reaching out to a targeted audience.

Having a business with great revenue is excellent but building a valuable relationship with your customers is even better. If you have not been able to utilize email marketing yet, the time is now because ‘better late than never’.