What is a business? Wikipedia says, any project set with an intention of profit. It does not have to be a corporation necessarily, it can be anything, and range from a street peddler to General Motors. In simpler words, it is nothing but the art of selling your products or services profitably, and in order to make a profit, you have to focus on key aspects of promoting your businesses.
This complete guide to a thriving business is basically a blog highlighting the areas that require your focus to boost your businesses. Let’s focus on some of the major areas.
1) E-commerce or Online Marketing:
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With the announcement of a total lockdown, all physical stores had to go virtual overnight since there was a complete restriction on non-essential services. With only essential services like medicines and basic groceries besides protection gears being permitted, online bookings and deliveries through couriers and postal services gained momentum. Resultantly, the online businesses increased a lot.
You should ensure your business too has an online presence and visibility over the internet. Create an app, market it properly, and back it up with a wide area of distribution – all this can surely give rich dividends. Another aspect that needs to be incorporated is varied payment methods like net banking, card payment, payment through apps like Amazon Pay, GooglePay, etc that will give a customer more options than restricting them to a chosen few. It very often happens that when they don’t find the payment gateway they are looking for, they even leave. We don’t want that.
2) Email Marketing
One can create their own list of target customers and send bulk as well as customized emails based on their preferences. Now, this is one potent and effective way of marketing your product to potential customers without the fear of getting blocked, banned, or deactivated accounts as is prevalent on various social media. You can rely on an e-commerce email marketing agency like the Inbox Army to kick start your email marketing.
3) Build Brand Loyalty besides winning New Customers
You have to be sure about the audience your product is being marketed to. Which segment is it going to target? Which age group? What income group?? These questions need to be asked to make sure your brand positioning and marketing happens right. When you target the right group, you make sure the product happens to satisfy that group.
This makes one loyal to a particular brand. Once you have a loyal customer base, it’s easy “word of mouth” publicity. Remember “It’s five times most costly to get a new customer than retain an old one”. Don’t lose one to your competitor.
4) Keep track of Resources and Plan for Contingency
The availability of resources for your business is a vital aspect that needs to be closely monitored. Whether it’s financing or availability of raw material or warehousing or resource persons for services, you have to ensure that these are taken care of and not left to chance. Contingency planning will always go a long way in periods of crisis. But don’t overdo it.
5) Innovation and Adaptation
You need to wear an innovator’s hat all the time, be it a start-up or an established firm. The taste and the mood of customers vary with time, and so, the one who is able to predict it and launch a product matching the requirements will never be out of business. Royal Enfield is the live example of such an innovative thought process, wherein the established brand value of Royal Enfield was revived by adapting to the market demand of the latest technology and youthful vibrance in colour options other than classical black colour of the bygone era.
There is no dearth of run-of-the-mill products or services in the market. However, the innovative products, ideas, and ways to protect your product will definitely make it stand out amongst competitors. The market is ever-evolving and barring a few exceptions, there is a constant change in preferences of customers that are required to be tracked constantly. You need to get the pulse of the market in order to retain saleability. Think ahead, feel the need of the customer base, and modify accordingly.
6) After-Sales Follow-up and Services
It cannot be denied that follow-ups and after-sales services play a major role in developing customer satisfaction and thus, in the long run, they win you more user loyalty. It is more economic to retain an older customer than earning a new one. Brand loyalty can be earned through good and exclusive products, maintaining high standards of quality, and providing prompt after-sales services whenever required. “Customer is King”, so keeping your customer satisfied is and will always remain a key focus for a business to thrive all the time.
There is nothing like a successfully thriving business and raining profits that make you grin ear to ear. Go ahead Focus your energy and resources on your area of interest and just do it.