Category: social media blog posts

Business Blog

Go Big Or Go Home To Market Right

Getting your marketing right is so important. It’s the one thing that really drives your business aside from your services or products. It’s the one thing that helps your business to feel like it’s moving forward, because as soon as you start running a marketing campaign, you should instantly see a few sales coming in! But getting marketing right is hard, and businesses are doing so little to try and make sure they’re using a range of different techniques, from a range of different sources. Marketing is so vast, and it has so much potential to boost a businesses profits, you just have to make sure you’re using all of the different techniques in the right way. Which is why we’re going to help you to go big, or go home. When you start taking a few risks with it, it becomes so much easier to understand what the different techniques are doing for business!

The Most Ignored Marketing Technique

For smaller and for bigger businesses, we think there is one marketing technique that people might not even consider a marketing technique, purely because there’s not an actual campaign being ran. But the biggest marketing technique of them all is one that gets you out and about and facing the public, whilst marketing your products person to person. It’s easy enough to do it, you just have to find an event that’s going to suit your niche. We are of course, talking about a trade show event, or just a business conference. You have to think about how many potential customers and clients that you will be faced with, and how much potential there is to earn from something like this. There’s nothing better than you personally being able to talk about your products or services, selling them in the best light that you possibly can. A bespoke exhibition stand and a payment to secure your place in the event is all you need. Just make sure your stand stands out, so that you’re not the one hidden away in the corner that everyone walks past. Make sure you have your best sales technique on show as well. You only have a short window to connect with people, but it could be the window to success you’ve been looking for.

 

Big Marketing Campaigns

You might have only gone for the smaller marketing techniques at the minute, purely because you know how safe and easy they are to use. But now is the time to really spread your wings with it, and try techniques that you might not have used before. One that’s commonly ignored by smaller companies is SEO, and there’s so much you’re missing out on with this one if you have. SEO is going to get you the attention you need, in the place you need it the most, the internet. The internet is crowded at the minute, and SEO is amongst one of the few techniques that’s going to boost your ranking within search engines, and bring you that exposure you need. Exposure then leads to profit, which is exactly what you should be looking for!

 

Business Blog

Brilliant Ways to Beat the Competition

Any business wants to beat its competitors. It is why sometimes consumers get special offers, as the business, whether online or offline wants the customers to choose them instead of someone else. If you are a business owner, have you ever wondered the best way to go about ensuring you are better than your rivals?

 

Look At Their Websites

You can learn a lot about a business by spending just a bit of time on their website. Look at it as though you were a customer and find the things you like and do not like. Then do the same with your own website and see whose fairs the best.  If their site comes out on top, ask yourself why and take a closer look to see what they are doing right and you are getting wrong.

You will always find things on competitor’s sites that you do not like, and you should learn from the mistakes they make.

 

Take A Survey

Take a survey among your customers and find out what they would like you to sell that is different, or how they would like you to change the way you do things. They are the ones that keep your business going, so their opinions are important. You will never be able to do everything they ask, but even implementing some minor changes suggested by them will help to build some customer loyalty.

Quality Service

Your business could be offering a service rather than selling a product. If this is the case, you should always make sure that any materials or products you use to provide the service are of the highest quality. Even something as simple as using higher quality linear motors in your production process, for example, can ensure your customers do not go elsewhere because they will enable you to met customer needs and ensure you offer a superior service. If you make sure every aspect of your business from production methods to quality of finish are the best they can be, then you will always be in demand.

There is also customer service to consider, no matter what line of business you are in. Consumers will often pay a little extra for goods if the service they get excels. When things are delivered on time, the goods are the quality your website suggested, and they perhaps get an email asking if everything is OK, they will remember that more than the fact that one of your rivals sells the same products for 50p less.

 

Use Innovation

Never be afraid to try something new. Innovations can make you stand out from everyone else and increase your sales because of that. You want your business to be different to everyone else’s and then it is more likely to get noticed.

Just think back over the last few years and recall some of the giant companies that have disappeared because of a lack of innovation. Nokia and BlackBerry are just two examples of names that are no longer in the mobile phone markets, and stores such as Woolworths have gone from our high streets because they remained stagnant and didn’t try anything new.

 

 

Business Blog

The Easy Way To File Your Business Taxes

Filing business taxes is such a pain, but unfortunately, it’s an important part of being a business owner. If you get it wrong, you could end up paying a lot of penalties and if you’re just starting out, you probably can’t afford to spend that money. You also don’t want to spend valuable time dealing with taxes when you could be spending that time improving your business and generating revenue. What you need to be doing is filing your taxes accurately without spending too much time on it. These are some of the best ways to take the pain out of filing your business taxes.

Keep Good Records

You need a lot of information about your income, your spending, and your employees when you file your taxes. If all of that information is disorganized and some of it is missing, you’re going to spend ages trying to pull it all together so you can fill out your tax forms. That’s why keeping good records is absolutely essential. Make sure that you’re keeping all of your invoices and receipts and you’ve got good financial records. Most importantly, file them properly right away, rather than leaving it until later. It takes a second to file one receipt properly, it takes days to collect them all and do it in one go.

 

File Online

Once you’ve gathered all of the information you need, it’s time to start filling out all of the forms. You can still fill out a paper form if you would like to, but it’s so much easier to file online. It’s a lot quicker and you can send it over right away. The new Making Tax Digital for VAT that the HMRC are introducing next year will make it compulsory for businesses to file online anyway. It’s likely that all of your taxes will need to be filed online in the near future so you should start familiarising yourself with the process now so you’re prepared.

 

Invest In Your Business

If you want to reduce the amount of tax that you’re paying, it’s important that you invest money in your business. Any money that you put back into the business is tax deductible so you can massively reduce your tax bill by improving infrastructure, hiring new employees, increasing wages, and expanding your operation. All of these things are going to help your business to grow and it’ll make your tax bill a lot more manageable as well.

 

Clear Employee Definitions

More companies are using remote workers and freelancers on a regular basis and that raises a few tax issues. It’s up to you to deduct income tax from full-time employees but freelancers that are considered self-employed have to handle their own taxes. However, it isn’t always clear whether somebody is considered an employee for tax purposes or not. If you list somebody as a freelancer and the HMRC disagree, you’ll still have to pay their income tax even though you haven’t deducted it from their wages. It’s important that you’re clear on your employee definitions and you know whether you need to deduct their tax or not. If you’re aren’t sure, it’s best to consult an employment lawyer and get their opinion.

Filing your taxes always seems like a daunting task but it doesn’t need to be if you just follow these steps.