5 Essential Principles For Growing Your Small Business

It isn’t all it takes, but these five essentials will help you build a solid base and become one of the small businesses that succeeds.

Leading a small business can be more stressful than raising children or maintaining a healthy relationship with your spouse. Here are some basic principles to get you started on a sane journey toward growth.

When John Mackey and his then-girlfriend Renee Lawson opened a vegetarian food store in their Austin, Texas home 34 years ago, nobody–including the couple themselves–would have dubbed him an entrepreneur. Today, a clean-shaven Mackey is most likely unrecognizable to patrons of the bearded college dropout’s first shop. He built his venture into the $15.5 billion Whole Foods empire, with more than 300 supermarkets that boast organic and grass-fed meats along with an array of vegetarian fare.
Few will ever rise to the ranks of Mackey, who made the cut for Fortune’s 12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time. Mackey created a repeatable process of selling high quality natural and organic products in communities with the right appetite for a brand that relies on customer affinity. It takes a combination of understanding market demand and market size and having repeatable processes to support that market to have a scalable business. And Mackey had to strive to sustain innovation in a world where even Walmart peddles organic foods.

So many business founders come up with a good idea, yet they are unable to scale their companies for growth. Through my own journey as an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that every business is unique, but there are certain key precepts to follow for success. The few that do succeed do so with unmatched focus, discipline, and unconventional thinking.
Although it takes more than just this to be a success in business, here are five essential principles that you can begin implementing right away as you begin your journey toward growing your business:

1. Timing is Everything
The timing of your product or service must be right in the marketplace. Mackey bit on the organic and natural food revolution just as the public’s palate for these products oozed into the mainstream, but if the market isn’t ready and you are way ahead of the market, then you must possess the drive and the willingness to sacrifice in order to make that product or service work.

You will need to choose to either wait for the market to catch up (requiring the resources to survive during that period, and accepting the risk of emerging competition), or you’ll need to adjust your offering to something more palatable to the market’s current readiness.
Smaller businesses have the advantage of being able to make choices and implement changes without the exhaustive process and conflicting points of view that slow down major corporations. You need to anticipate your market and customers’ needs and constantly innovate to stay ahead. This requires leadership with agility, resilience, and a willingness to fail–and to recognize that failure quickly enough to adapt and move forward.

2. Brand, Brand, Brand
Today’s economy requires business leaders to create positive memories for customers and partners, like Mackey has, or customers will turn to a competitor in search of a better experience. Whole Foods shoppers are loyal and believe they are embracing a healthy and socially conscious lifestyle by shopping at the stores. If you want to create a scalable business, you have to understand just how crucial it is to build brand equity. The emotional attachment that links customers to your product, as opposed to any other, translates into sustainable growth.
Here are some basic rules to connect, shape, influence, and lead with your brand:

Choose your target audience. The surest road to product failure is to try to be all things to all people.

Connect with the public. Your objective is to make your audience feel an emotional attachment to your brand.

Inspire and influence your audience. An inspirational brand message is far more influential than one that just highlights product feature functions.

Reinforce the brand image within your company. Make sure employees at every level of your organization work and behave in a way that reinforces your brand image.

3. Scale Your Sales
Creating a unique product and a unique brand isn’t enough. It takes repeatable sales processes to create a scalable business. It is one thing to sign up a few customers; it is another thing entirely to identify, design, and implement repeatable sales and customer delivery processes. You’ve created a repeatable and scalable sales model when:
You can add new hires at the same productivity level as yourself or your sales leader.
You can increase the sources of your customer leads on a consistent basis.
Your sales conversion rate and revenue can be consistently forecasted.
Your cost to acquire a new customer is significantly less than the amount you can earn from that customer over time.
Your customers get the right product in the right place at the right time.
A repeatable sales model builds the platform to scale. Like the search for product/market fit, it can take major experimentation/R&D to find a repeatable and scalable sales model.

4. Embrace Technology
Nearly two thirds, or 64%, of the recent
Bank of America (BofA) Small Business Owner Survey respondents said they wish they took better advantage of technology innovations to help manage their business. If a small business can identify a genuine need, technology likely exists to fulfill that need both locally and globally. There are few barriers to entry in an age where anyone with wireless can cheaply and quickly access the enabling technologies needed to execute their business model. It comes down to creating the right operating blueprint that connects the dots between your business model and the application of accessible technologies.

5. De-Stress for Success
Most small business owners consider managing the ongoing success of their business to be twice as stressful as maintaining a healthy relationship with a spouse or partner, nearly three times as stressful as raising children, and more than four times as stressful as managing their own personal finances, according to the same Bank of America report mentioned earlier. The survey indicates that small business owners routinely forgo physical fitness and other personal priorities to keep up with business demands.
Thirty-eight percent of small business owners maintain full or part-time jobs while running their own business.
The stressors can be relentless. But if you’re not happy, healthy, and motivated, you can’t create a business model that provides a positive market experience. You also set the tone for everyone who works with you. Nobody wants to do business with a grouchy, bitter, and exhausted owner. Therefore, investing the time and effort to adequately take care of your physical and mental well-being will further increase your chances for long-term success. Mental health is not just about going to the gym to let off steam. It’s about achieving a state of mental calmness to see you though the relentless challenges–but that’s another topic in itself!

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Ten benefits of SMS marketing

Bulk SMS is great Marketing Tool because of the following reason, As marketers, we’re constantly thinking up creative ways to get our message out to existing and potential customers; whilst also ensuring we get good results from our efforts. One of the basic practical rules in marketing is to think like your audience, to keep up-to-date with their buying habits and where they are looking.
Whatever your product or service is, it’s important to ensure its visible wherever your customers go, with a ratio now of four mobile devices to every computer, it’s clear where our customers are. Mobile marketing is no longer something you can afford to put on the to-do-list for the future; you need to make sure you’re on a mobile device, now.

Below are the reasons you should choose Sms marketing.

1. Immediate:

There’s no long waiting time for designs to be mocked up or campaigns to be printed, just decide what your message is, sending a bulk SMS to your customers takes no longer than sending a text on your own phone. So, not only will you free up some precious time, but with over 90% of messages read within 3 minutes of being received you could see results immediately.

2. Mobile-friendly:
Making your business mobile-friendly is no longer something to consider ‘later’. Mobile is here and it’s not going anywhere. SMS is compatible with pretty much every mobile phone so you won’t need to worry about alienating some users, or getting your customers on board with brand new technologies.

3. Customers love:
SMS is a really simple and accessible way of engaging with each other and with an open rate of 98%, it is heads and shoulders above any other communication method in terms of read rate. Most people send and receive text messages on a daily basis so we know your customers will like, have access to and know how to use SMS .

4. Eco-friendly:
In comparison to email, direct mail and face to face meetings; a text message has the lowest impact on our Carbon Footprints In fact it’s almost a Carbon Free way of communicating, so if you’re looking for ways to make your business greener, SMS marketing is a big step in the right direction.

5. Direct:
Most of us don’t leave the house without our mobile phone, in fact it’s probably within arms-reach 24/7. Besides meeting face-to-face or calling each customer, I can’t think of a more direct way to communicate your message whilst ensuring the message is delivered straight into the right hands, at the right time.

6. Simple:
As we try and juggle our busy lives, it can sometimes feel like we have too much information to take in. Emails go unread, adverts ignored and leaflets discarded. SMS is small and simple and gets the message across instantly without any messing around. How many text messages do you receive that you don’t read?

7.Trackable:
Most service providers will offer simple delivery reporting to check your messages have successfully been sent. If you’re looking for more intelligent tracking, the top players in SMS marketing will not only tell you when your messages have been sent successfully, but will also provide you with details on who, what and when links have been clicked ensuring you get the most from your campaigns.

8. Generate leads:
Keywords are easy to set-up on an SMS shortcode and can be anything from your brand name to a memorable word. Advertise your keyword on your website, printed media or in your store, allowing customers to opt-in to your mailing list. E.g. Text SMS to 52525 for exciting news and special offers.
Not only does this provide you with lots of new contacts to communicate with but it also generates an instant lead with little effort required from you or your customer.

9. Personal:
Most peoples email and direct mailboxes are swamped with junk mail and spam. Customers will only opt-in to SMS updates from companies they want to interact with, so you know you’re delivering the message to the right person without it getting lost or ignored. If you want to make your customers feel really special, it’s easy to personalise each message and won’t take any extra time.

10. Cost-effective:
Not only is an SMS campaign affordable for budgets of all shapes and sizes, but you’ll also see a healthy return on investment from SMS marketing. At just a few pence per messages, you can be really targeted with your campaigns without it breaking the bank.

If boosting sales and improving communication with customers are on your list of resolutions this year, but you don’t have a hefty budget and hours of spare time; SMS is a small, yet powerful, marketing tool not to be overlooked.

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The Keys to Success for Marketing Your Business

Marketing is the process of interesting potential customers and clients in your products and/or services and persuading them to choose them over those of your competitors.
The key word in this marketing definition is "process". Marketing involves researching, promoting, selling, and distributing your products or services ( the four P ’ s of marketing — Product, Price, Promotion, and Place).
It's a huge topic, which is why there are tomes written on marketing, and why you can take a four-year marketing degree.
Whether you’re running a large corporation or a small business, marketing involves everything you do to get your potential customers and your product or service together.
The purpose of marketing is to drive sales. Good marketing can get potential customers through the door or onto the website and even put a product into a potential customer’s hands, but it’s not successful marketing until the customer has bought it.
6 Keys to Success for Small Business Marketing.

1. The first key to small business marketing success is knowing what you’re really selling. It's said that people don’t buy products or services —
they buy emotions and experiences. For instance, the Keg Steakhouse moves a lot of steaks, but look at their ads: What they’re really selling is good times with family and friends. Why did Michelin use a baby in a tire with the tagline “Because so much is riding on your tires” for years? Because Michelin is really selling safety, not just tires. And the baby in a tire campaign told people that one way they could feel like good parents was buying Michelin tires.

2. Once you figure out what you’re really selling, you’re ready to target your market . As a small business, you can’t afford blanket marketing; you need to get your marketing message directly to potential customers, not to everyone. Target marketing lets you zone in on those who have the highest likelihood of buying your product or service.

3. Know the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan .

4. When you're putting together a marketing plan for your business, concentrate on the basics. These are the four key components of any marketing plan :
•Products and services: What goes into this section will vary depending on whether your company is creating an original product and developing it from ideation to prototype stage and onto market or marketing a product that’s already fully developed. Remember too that marketing a service is different than marketing a product. But whatever you’re selling, this section will focus on what is unique about your product or service and contain your Unique Selling Proposition .
•Pricing: The starting point for any pricing strategy is a breakeven analysis . After all, you want to make money, not lose it! But beyond that, the ideal price is a combination of how you want to position your product or service and what the market will bear. Learn more with this Guide to Pricing Strategy.
•Place (Distribution): The details of how and where your products and/or services are sold. As you’ll see when you look at the Sales and Distribution plan section of the marketing plan, this section outlines the distribution methods going to be used, the transaction process between your business and your customers, and your sales strategy.
•Promotion: The section of the marketing plan that describes how your company is going to present your products or services to the buying public. Your challenge here will be choosing the promotion activities best for reaching your target market but within your
marketing budget. The marketing tools section below will help.

5. Invest in market research . It’s market research that lets you learn which customers will be most interested in your products or services and gain specific information about them, learn about your competition and develop competitive strategies, keep abreast of economic trends and even find new markets.

6. Make sure your marketing campaigns are aligned with your marketing strategies and plans. For marketing success, you have to have consistent messaging. Integrated marketing will keep your marketing focused and
increase your sales .

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