Entrepreneurs are faced with myriad start up costs whether it’s renting office space or hiring employees or finding ways to market their business or building a professional team such as a business coach, lawyer or accountant. This could mean a large outlay of cash. What can you do to cut back on some of that outlay?
I have tips for marketing business on a shoe-string budget and these can get you started until you have the money coming in to lay out cash for a more intensive marketing strategy:
Face-to-face networking don’t cost much and can do more than you imagine for growing a business. Why? Because people like to do business with someone they “know, like and trust” and the best way to do that is by getting out of the office and shaking a few hands.
Word of mouth and referrals from current customers don’t cost anything more than the time you spend asking for them. Warm leads are better and easier to close than cold leads.
Share your expertise by writing blog posts or sending out newsletters to your list. Writing about your area of expertise shows potential clients that you’re the expert in your niche. Newsletters not only share your expertise, but keep you front of mind — and in the inbox — of current and potential clients.
Offer free information. While you don’t want to give away the farm, you can give information that is useful to your prospects that gives them a sense of what you do and who you are and leaves them wanting more of what you have to offer.
To get individuals to take a chance on you and to leave a known entity, provide them with a guarantee of your services then exceed their expectations.
Don’t forget that social media is an ideal — and for the most part, free — platform for sharing who you are and what you do with potential clients. Remember, though that the operative word is “social” no one wants to be sold to all the time.
What are your best marketing practices that don’t break the bank?
Goal setting isn’t just a January 1 setting your resolutions for the year ahead type event. Goal setting is something that business owners should do on a regular basis. Yes, you will have goals that may take a year to achieve, but I bet that you have mini-goals that you want to achieve weekly or monthly, right?
How can amp up the probability of your achieving your goals? Here are steps you can take to help make them happen:
Choose a concrete goal. One that is achievable. Don’t set a goal that will set you up for failure.
Write the goal down. Whether you write it on a file in your computer, on a note book or a sticky note by your desk, having written it down makes it not only visible but helps give it a life of its own.
Don’t keep your goal a secret. Announcing your goal — whether to a loved one, a business colleague or on a social media page will help hold you accountable.
Get to work on it. It doesn’t help to set a goal if you do nothing about it. Once you’ve determined what it is and have written it down and shared it, get to it!
If you don’t know what goal you should focus on or are at a loss as to which goal you should do first, contact me and we can work through the goal setting process so you will be on your way to goal achievement!
Stress happens. Not to be flip or cliche, but in every life, whether you’re an entrepreneur or not chances are you will experience stress. How you deal with that stress can make a difference in your overall health and productivity.
Here are my tips for dealing with stress in both work and life:
Take a hike. I love being in the out of doors — away from electronic devices and work. I hike the mountains, clear my mind and come back refreshed. Additionally, exercise helps you maintain overall physical and mental health.
Breathe deeply. If you can’t get away from it all and take a walk, push your chair back from your desk and take some deep breathes. When you’re stressed, you tend to take shallow breaths and this leads to muscle tension.
Eat a healthy diet. Eating potato chips when you’re in a stressful situation, won’t help alleviate it. Eating an overall healthy diet, though, can cure a lot of ills and can help boost your immune system and may help you deal with stress better.
Get involved in a hobby. Whether you read or swim or crochet or do woodworking or pottery, having a hobby that you love gives you something to focus on and helps relieve stress and tension.
Stay connected with your friends. When you’re in a highly stressed state it is tempting to isolate yourself. Staying connected, getting out of the house and having coffee at a coffee shop is much better than being alone. Pick up the phone and connect with a friend who is far away. Ask for support if you need it in a stressful time.
At the very least, I recommend taking a ten minute break every hour or two to simply reconnect with yourself, take a walk around the house or the office. Relax. Recharge.
There aren’t too many times when I make a sweeping statement as it relates to business ownership, but when it comes to blogging, I believe that every business could benefit from having one. Why? There are myriad reasons, but I will share my top three here:
Your blog is a platform to share your unique knowledge and expertise. If you are the expert in your field, then you need a platform on which to share it and your blog is the ideal place for that knowledge-sharing. Provide your readers with hints and tips that are in your area of expertise and that will help make their lives easier.
Use your blog to announce specials, promotions, coupons or other deals you may be offering. While you will also want to share that information on your social media platforms, use your blog as the jumping off point.
Ask your clients or potential clients questions and use the blog as a platform to answer them. If even one individual writes to you, they are in the midst of a pain point and if you can offer a solution to that pain, they will continue to look to you as the resource.
Consider, too that adding a blog to your website — and updating your blog regularly — means that your website will keep being ranked by Google. That is because Google loves fresh content and “rewards” you for it by keeping your site higher in the search engines. PS frequent posting isn’t the only way to get your site found — you need to employ quality SEO, but that is the topic for another blog post.
As business owners we must track and monitor our business efforts so we can tell whether our actual efforts are yielding results. How, though, can you determine what you should be measuring? What are your key performance indicators? That isn’t a trick question, but most businesses have different variables that they want to, or need to, track.
Here are a few items you may want to track for your business:
Determine your business goal. Is it to bring in X number of new clients? Do you want to make X amount of money is sales? Put a number to it then you will know what you’re tracking and whether you’re achieving what you’d hoped.
Break the goal down into achievable steps if necessary. If, for example, you say you want to bring in 50 new clients in December, it might be best to break that down by the week so that you’re not tempted to put off bringing in those new clients until December 31.
Make sure you’re comparing the results with the goals you’d set. If you’re not achieving them, take a step back and determine why. Were the goals too lofty? Did you truly not work hard enough on achieving them? Procrastination can be the death of many-a-goal being met.
Your business success can hinge on whether you’re setting goals. If you don’t know where you’re going and what you consider to be a “successful endeavor” how will you know if you’ve arrived?
Entrepreneurs need to embody many traits — chief among them being, leadership. Whether you’re hiring a staff to help you in your business endeavor or whether you’re a solopreneur, the traits of leadership cover almost all aspects of a business operation. What is leadership? Peter Drucker, a leadership expert, says it’s “someone who had followers.” John Maxwell describers leadership as, “influence.”
Regardless of what definition you have for leadership, there are traits and qualities that most leaders possess and they are:
Decisiveness
Loyalty
Courage
Tenacity
Emotional stamina
Dependability
Competitiveness
Self-confidence
Credibility
Responsibility
Do you see yourself or your strengths listed above? Do you feel you possess some, but maybe not all, of these traits? If you need assistance in strengthening those areas in which you may not excell, we help through our coaching programs. Give us a call and we will help you assess your strengths and develop your weaknesses.
