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Budget-Friendly Tips For Enhancing Your Small Business In 2021
Running a business, whether it’s a small start-up or a large, sprawling organisation, is no easy task. That is why business owners across the globe are constantly on the look out for ways to improve their company to not only find more success, but to make the work easier for themselves as well as their team members.
Always searching for methods of improving your business is great, however those improvements can be incredibly costly at times and often can make you wonder whether it’s cost-effective at all. We’ve listed some of our budget-friendly ideas that every business owner should consider when looking for ways to bolster their success without breaking the bank.
Improve Your Customer Services
The relationships you build with you customers can dictate the overall success of your business. If you neglect these customers with poor quality products, bad service, or delays in shipping for your products, the chances are you’re going to lose many of them who will look elsewhere in the form of your competitors. In fact, poor customer service costs UK businesses billions of pounds every year. Instead, put some time and effort into improving your customer services and make it your focus to improve the way in which customers and clients see you. Show them that you care about their custom by creating a good customer service team, as well as providing them with loyalty rewards, and don’t skimp too much on things like deliveries. Some delivery services may be much more affordable but spending that little bit extra on professional services will reduce the number of mishaps such as lost or damaged parcels, which can often turn customers away from you for good.
Motivate Your Team
As important as it is to keep your customers happy, you’ll also want to ensure your team remains motivated and happy at all times too. If your employees are working in a miserable environment with unreasonable deadlines and inflexible working hours, the quality of work they’ll deliver for your business won’t be as good. Instead, find ways of keeping your staff motivated such as recognising quality work, skill development classes, and even remote working opportunities if possible. These will all serve to boost morale and will ultimately lead to a more dedicated team and in turn, more success for your business.
Company Tech
Another great way of motivating your team is to offer them devices and services to improve their work while at the office. Of course, you’ll need to supply your office team with their own computers where needed, but there are other items that can greatly improve the quality of work from your team, as well as the overall professionalism of your company. For example, providing your team with smart phones specifically for their work will allow them to separate their personal and work life reducing their reliance on their own phones in the workplace. Find some cheaper models that serve their purpose of making important calls and sending and receiving emails and purchase some SIM cards which you can keep reusing following any turnover in staff. There are lots of great deals out there, especially for businesses, and companies like Lebara offer SIM only deals which greatly reduces monthly costs.
Enhance Your Website
Good quality web-design doesn’t need to be expensive. Of course, the more you spend on these services, the better the end-result, usually. However, there are lots of talented individuals out there that are searching for an opportunity to prove themselves or expand their portfolio. Search for this fresh talent and hire them to improve your website. This can be a lot more affordable than paying for a more corporate design contract but remember to never offer payment in exposure. Designers and artists deserve fair pay for their talents and it’s entirely insulting to suggest that doing work for your business for free in the hopes of getting more jobs in the future is worth more than being able to pay rent. Nobody sees this as a kind opportunity that you’re offering—it’s blatant manipulation to get a free service and it could serve to greatly harm your reputation. Remember, designers and artists talk to each other and share their experiences, so building a good relationship with freelancers can set you up very well if you ever need to work with them in the future.
Automate Tasks
Adding systems that can automate some of your most mind-numbing and time-consuming tasks might incur some higher upfront costs, but in the long run you can safe a significant amount of money in your budget, especially if you end up cutting out the need for particular members of staff altogether. For example, if you have in-house social media management, you can cut down the number of staff members you might require by ensuring your team has access to quality scheduling software. For your customer services, you can also look at automating those systems to help guide customers to the right people without them having to queue for a staff member to redirect them.
Invest In Quality Marketing
Spending some extra money on good digital marketing will ultimately help to bring in many more customers and clients, effectively boosting your ability to turn a larger profit. Good marketing can convert your audience by encouraging them to click through to your website or engage with your social platforms, gaining you more exposure and reach. As a business owner, you’ll know that sometimes you have to spend money to make money, and this is especially true for marketing. In fact, cutting costs and trying to do your own marketing when you lack the expertise to do so, could actually end up losing the interest of potential customers and cause actual harm to your business.
Incentivise Referrals
Turn your current customers into marketing assets by providing them with small bonuses for their loyalty as well as incentivising them to refer friends and family to your business. While this shouldn’t replace your actual marketing campaigns, referrals can be a great way of drawing in customers that might not have even been swayed by your social media content for example. Having the referral of someone you trust is much more likely to encourage you to check out a product or service.