​Innovation is as much about understanding customer needs as it is about passion, and customer feedback is essential to entrepreneurs. Here are four ways to use customer feedback to improve businesses.

A common word of advice for entrepreneurs is to build what they personally want, but this can prove to be a path to failure. After all, it's said that 90% of startups fail, and the number one cause of those failures is that there's no market need.

From Facebook's metaverse folly to the downfall of Juicero, the story of failed projects is littered with tales of companies that just didn't understand their markets well enough. While passion is, in the words of the late Steve Jobs, "the only thing that keeps you going" when it comes to the long journey of entrepreneurship, it isn't enough. It's equally important to understand the wants and needs of your customer base.

This means that customer feedback is essential for entrepreneurs. With in-depth customer feedback, entrepreneurs can better understand their markets and innovate smarter. It can help them develop products that customers actually want and need, rather than products that founders think they need.

Here are four ways that entrepreneurs can use customer feedback to improve their businesses:

1. Use customer feedback to inform product development

It's also important to use customer feedback to inform product development. This means that entrepreneurs need to take the time to read customer feedback and implement changes where necessary.

For instance, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said that many of the company's product priorities are based on customer feedback. This means that the team is actively listening to customers and making changes based on their feedback.

One early feature that helped Robinhood differentiate itself was a "Fractional Shares" option, which allows customers to buy partial shares of stocks. Another more recent example is Robinhood's decision to provide up to a 4% interest rate on customers' uninvested cash deposited in their accounts. This was based on customer concerns about the impact of inflation on their investments.

By actively listening to customer feedback and incorporating it into product development, entrepreneurs can ensure that their products remain competitive and meet customer needs.

2. Leverage communities for direct communication

An obvious question for entrepreneurs is how to collect customer feedback and hone in on what's important. Social media platforms like Reddit, Twitter and LinkedIn can be great places to start. For instance, Twitter Spaces is a feature that allows users to create a chatroom-like environment with a group of people.

This serves as a great way to get feedback from users. Entrepreneurs from Elon Musk to Neil Patel have leveraged such communities to get feedback from their customers. However, entrepreneurs can go further by establishing their own dedicated communities.

One strategy is to build a Discord server, which is a chat application perfect for connecting with customers and building a community. This works especially well for games and software products, as the format makes it easy for customers to provide feedback. This was the approach taken by Utkarsh Sinha and Siddharth Jain, the co-founders of Martian, a Web3 firm that recently raised $3 million. Sinha notes that their Discord server has more than 150,000 members who are providing valuable feedback.

Another strategy is to host online events, such as webinars. This allows entrepreneurs to get feedback from customers in real time, as well as to showcase their products and services. One challenge with this approach is the relatively smaller size of the potential audience, but it can be a great way to build a loyal customer base. Even if the turnout isn't huge, the feedback received can be invaluable.

3. Quickly ship products based on feedback

Another important way to use customer feedback is to ship products quickly. By moving quickly, entrepreneurs can get feedback from customers about their products and make necessary changes or improvements.

If your business is taking in that valuable customer feedback, but failing to act on it quickly, you might be missing out on a big opportunity. This was something that was highlighted by Siddharth Jain. Jain said that working closely with an engineering team was a big advantage for the firm, as it allowed them to quickly ship products and features whenever customer feedback was received.

In other words, while your sales and marketing or customer support teams may be more closely in touch with customers and their feedback, the engineering team needs to be able to act on that feedback in order to make real change.

4. Use customer feedback to pivot

Customer feedback can also be used to pivot. Pivoting is a term used to describe the process of changing the direction of a business. It's a strategy that some entrepreneurs use when their original product or service isn't succeeding as expected.

For example, when the team behind the video game Fortnite found they weren't getting the traction they wanted, they used customer feedback to pivot. They created a version of the game that was free to play, and the rest is history. Today, Fortnite is one of the most popular video games of all time.

The lesson here is that customer feedback can be used to pivot a business, and it's important for entrepreneurs to be open to using it. That doesn't mean blindly following customer feedback, though; it's still important to use your own judgment and expertise to make the best decisions for your business.

Customer feedback should be an essential part of any business's innovation process. By understanding customer feedback and using it to inform product development, leveraging communities for direct communication, shipping products quickly and pivoting when necessary, entrepreneurs can create products that customers actually want and need. This can lead to greater success for the business in the long term.



Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com

​Having emotional intelligence when running a business is indeed as important as showcasing impeccable organizational and leadership skills.

Owning a business is many people's dream when it comes to establishing career goals. Once aspiring entrepreneurs acknowledge and get rid of entrepreneurship's numerous misconceptions, they start witnessing the entire picture and focusing on what needs to be done in terms of personal development and career growth so that they reach their goals.

At the very beginning, we direct our efforts at management, leadership and implementing impeccable organizational skills. Essentially, we do our best to improve those entrepreneurial aspects only to soon realize that there is an enormous piece of the puzzle missing. Once we start our businesses, we begin witnessing setbacks in the relationships department — both with our employees and customers. So we then wonder what could have been going wrong this entire time.

And then suddenly it hits us — while it's of great importance to keep the highest standard possible when it comes to management and leadership, showcasing emotional intelligence in business proves to be as significant and fundamental.

Here's why establishing emotional intelligence skills is absolutely crucial for a business's long-term success.

What is emotional intelligence and where does it stand in the business department of career development?

If we go by definition, we'd say that being emotionally intelligent showcases one's ability to understand their own and other's emotions, as well as being able to distinguish them and figure out useful ways to deal with each emotion's consequences.

Many entrepreneurs, especially at the very beginning of their career path, may wonder what this has to do with owning and running a business. But the thing is this — in business, one inevitably communicates with people on a daily basis. Essentially, it's how we communicate with others that drastically increases or decreases everyone's time spent doing the job which ultimately affects the business as a whole.

It would be rather naive to think that emotions don't play a role in business, even though many business people try their best to distinguish themselves from them. But in reality, it's all about how we manage to handle emotions and emotional situations at the workplace that shape one's ability and competence, above other things such as team and project management and leadership.

The next time a business owner witnesses an employee going through a breakdown, a client expressing discontent with a service or a team experiencing hardships in delegating tasks, it's the CEO's emotional intelligence that needs to step up and deal with this plethora of dynamic situations.

As we can see, emotional intelligence plays a significant role in owning and running a business mainly because there are people involved and where there are people, there are emotions as well.

Without any further ado, let's observe and discuss some emotional intelligence characteristics that promise to help any business owner in the long run.

Communicating with people in a business environment requires a certain level of emotional intelligence — if the business owner isn't quite aware of their own emotions as well as how emotions portray in others, there's a high chance the overall communication will suffer. The consequences? Misinterpretation, misunderstandings and burnout subtly creep in.

In order to avoid all those shortcomings and unfortunate situations, I advise business owners to nurture the following emotional intelligence characteristics when it comes to personal development.

1. Being aware both of yourself and your surroundings is key

The ultimate path toward emotional intelligence goes by first being aware of yourself in terms of your emotions, what causes them, what triggers you to react in a certain way and how you process them. The same goes with your surroundings — paying close attention to what happens around you and how people react in certain situations gives you plenty of useful information. In business, this ultimately navigates you in how you communicate with others — now you know how to address issues and important matters without triggering negative reactions. If by chance those happen, you will know how to handle them in a productive and caring way.

2. Empathy is way more important than you might think

Cognitive empathy is being able to understand why a person feels a certain way, while emotional empathy is the ability to almost feel what other people are feeling. This channeling of emotions works wonders in business since it allows you to better understand your team's predispositions and triggers. Empathy also helps people to bond, which is incredibly important in building team spirit. Having this emotional intelligence characteristic helps team members establish a sense of trust and mutual respect, both of which are crucial for business success.

3. Judging others is not the best way to go
Being emotionally intelligent goes hand in hand with seeing beyond the surface and acknowledging that there is a reason behind every reaction or type of behavior. In business, we often witness employees making mistakes or mishaps — but if we are quick to judge, we might never be able to go to the bottom of things. Discussing matters and engaging in honest conversation is always the best policy before coming up with certain decisions. This also elevates the team spirit and strengthens the bond. We all know that a strong team brings success to any business.

4. Being flexible and open to change teaches everyone a thing or two about success

A rigid mind is oftentimes trapped in fears and uncertainty — in business, this manifests as obstacles being seen as failures instead of as important lessons. The emotionally intelligent leader is always willing to learn and adopt new approaches when it comes to business; they also teach their team the same lesson and thus everyone steadily becomes resilient to getting stuck and stopping development from happening.

I hope this quick review of emotional intelligence characteristics has given you a great perspective on why it's so important in the context of successful businesses. Nurturing those traits is a proven way for any business leader to elevate their management and leadership skills, as well as to enhance their overall relationships with peers, employees and customers.



Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com

These strategies will help you win and position yourself and your company in the best way this year.

A marketing strategy is the "plan identifying what marketing goals and objectives will be pursued to sell a particular product or product line and how these objectives will be achieved in the time available." Keep in mind that you need to consider the following three pillars in your marketing strategy plan before execution:

1. Core audience demographics
2. Pricing and marketing budget
3. Business goals

The following seven marketing strategies are vital for connecting with your target audience, achieving your marketing goals by promoting products and services, increasing brand awareness and engaging with your target audience through various channels.

1. Email marketing

Email marketing is an old concept that will be very relevant in 2023. Having lists of targeted audiences with a differentiated email structure for each can provide you with a great and "cheap" way to showcase the developments in your company and sell your products.

Here are three examples that you can implement in your email marketing. The first one is to increase your email interactivity. People are used to social media and the engagement they can give when reading or viewing content. Add videos, sliders, games and carousels of images that people can swipe.

The second one is the use of storytelling in your email copy. People are looking to connect to a brand's values, and one of the best ways to do that is to tell your brand's story. Tell them your origin story, show your personality, the company's culture and team. Use videos, quotes and memes to build a relationship with your subscribers.

The last one is personalization. Personalization in the email body can improve your open rate by 13% and can increase the clickthrough rate by 28% while reducing the bounce rate by 18%.

Email is still thriving as you control how you approach your audience based on your marketing objectives without the need to comply with rules imposed by the platform you use.

2. Social media marketing

Social media marketing is here to stay, and we need to find the right platform for us to create content, connect with our audience and show our expertise or products. This will be dictated by your target demographics and where they spend the most time at.

It is also important to note that Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) companies will have specific platforms that can be used for their business model. For example, LinkedIn for B2B and TikTok for B2C. Remember that your audience can move to a different platform down the line.

One thing that you can integrate into your social media marketing strategy is to think of ways to incorporate user-generated content. This can be in the form of reviews, unboxing, tutorials, and product reviews. According to Stackla, 88% of consumers specify authenticity and relatability as crucial decision drivers to complete in-app purchases and increase their brand engagement.

The most important thing is to use your authentic voice and showcase the people in your company and their expertise, values and personalities.

3. Public relations (PR)

Another old-fashioned concept that still has a place in your marketing toolbox, especially in 2023. PR is relevant and can help you increase awareness around a milestone you've achieved or a product/ initiative you are launching. Media mentions will also help you with the SEO of your website/ brand name and how you rank in searches as you get authoritative websites mentioning your company.

According to Statista, the PR industry is expected to be worth $129 billion by 2025 or an increase of 68% from 2020, worth $88 billion.

4. SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a must-do strategy in 2023. SEO aims to increase the searchability of your brand name and specific keywords relating to your offers while helping you grow traffic and sales.

Organic SEO can help you rank your content for specific keywords. I recommend learning how to do the basics of SEO in your content and focusing initially on long-tail keywords, as it will be easier for you to rank.

The main pillar in your SEO strategy should be creating high-quality content and targeting your customers' needs and questions engagingly while targeting keyword phrases. Create evergreen content that will help customers understand your company and products better.

SEO can be integrated with paid ads so your articles can show on top of the search results.

5. Influencer marketing

Collaboration with influencers can help you scale your business in a short period by increasing your brand awareness and reputation. The key here is to research and get numerous quotes from different influencers so you can decide on the best deal.

I'd say that it's not always beneficial to go for the biggest names in a particular niche, as your business might not be prepared for that growth. A better strategy will be to find smaller accounts with a more engaged audience so both parties can grow simultaneously and be more sustainable.

One growing trend in influencer marketing is live stream shopping, which means that potential customers can buy products through a live video. Influencers can showcase products, give opinions and answer questions from their followers about the product they are presenting. Instagram introduced Live Shopping in September 2022, which allows users to purchase products from Instagram Live directly, so expect this to be prioritized on the platform in 2023.

6. Virtual events

Virtual events are here to stay, especially after the last couple of years when travel was almost non-existent. Showing your expertise and value through online events can help you increase your brand awareness and reach. The list of attendees can be reused and segmented in your email communication, which will benefit your company in the long run.

Another strategy is to attract experts in the industry you are operating in and create an event where they talk about various subjects related to your company. The event videos can also be reused on social media in long and short-form videos.

7. Video marketing

The most important strategy in the last few years is video marketing. Closely related to hosting virtual events, video marketing can help you present your company from various perspectives.

People from your company can have topics they are working on and record video presentations for the world to see. Behind-the-scenes and company events can showcase the human side of your team, and the sky is the limit regarding creative ways to create video content.

Authenticity here is key as your willingness to open up in front of the camera so people can connect with who you are and what your company stands for.

Short vertical video content will be one of the biggest trends in video marketing in 2023. According to Zippia, 85% of U.S. adults own a smartphone as of 2022, and on average, Americans spend 5 hours and 24 minutes on their mobile devices daily. As vertical video content can take more real estate on a device and people are using TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, you need to focus your time and creativity to investigate that type of video content.

The world is moving towards personal branding, and video is one, if not the best, way to open up to your audience.

Win with marketing in 2023
To summarize, test and see what works for you and your company. Do not focus and do all the strategies mentioned here simultaneously — experiment with what resonates with you as a personality and your business niche. Adapt and develop the best marketing mix for your desired outcome that will help you win in 2023.



Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com

In the first quarter of a new business year, companies set sky-high goals, but most fall flat. Executives looking to take their businesses in a new direction should follow a proven formula to hit attainable milestones.
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Business leaders are constantly setting lofty, impressive-looking goals for themselves and their companies. But what good are those goals if they've been thrown out the window within a couple of weeks? It's time for business leaders to take charge and set intentions that can actually be achieved — not just high-minded ambitions that will fade away soon after.

Instead of settling for vague directions, they should strive to make their objectives actionable and attainable with the right activities. Now more than ever, it's essential for businesses to have tangible outcomes rather than empty promises.

Let your managers manage

Sitting in the C-suite brings its perks, but it also removes you from many of the day-to-day operations your company executes. Your team leaders, however, are in the trenches. While executives set the direction, they should require their team leaders to set the milestones. These critical front-line players have an intimate understanding of how their team performs and what attainable milestones are.

Without practical goals, employees risk simply shutting down or meandering aimlessly through flavor-of-the-month objectives. With realistic milestones, teams are fueled by purpose. Encouraging your team leaders to set these milestones ensures they are realistic and translates to buy-in.

It bears repeating that your team managers require some direction. A clear, unbiased look at the last year can help set them on the right path. Executives should look at what was successful in that past year, determine why it worked, and figure out how to carry those same successes into the next year. Provide your front-line managers clear guidance on company goals and next steps, then step away. If you become a micromanager, you will squeeze your company to death.

Hold regular Azimuth Checks

Once you've established realistic milestones for the year, it's time to hold your team accountable for meeting them. One way leaders can do this is with quarterly reviews. And look, I get it. These meetings seem like a time suck. In practice, if it's not ten minutes or less, I'm trying not to zone out on you. But at the end of the day, these quick check-ins can ensure that you and your team are on the same page and that everyone is clear on their expectations. Quarterly reviews vastly improve transparency as well as give leadership a chance to reinforce a united front.

Regular meetings provide a great opportunity for communication down to the lowest level and create a more personalized feel than the typical canned newsletter. Most people send those newsletters straight to their trash folder anyway. Your employees want to know what's going on in the organization and where they're headed, and they want to hear it straight from the top.

However, C-suite leaders can't be the only ones presenting these ideas and goals. During these presentations, the entire leadership team needs to bring their A-game; the rest of the company needs to feel their excitement. We don't have time to be company cheerleaders at every given second. More importantly, most people who work for your company barely see the CEO, so the front-line managers need to take that vision and share it with the rest of the team.

Regular company-wide check-ins assure employees that their jobs are secure, that they're working for a company with an actual vision and supporting goals, and that their leadership is motivated to succeed. On the ground level, I tell my team leaders that I want every single presenter to come to that room with three things they're going to do this year to improve themselves as a manager, which helps them set personal goals that hopefully align with the company goals.

Implement accountability to track progress

Organizations move by the minute, so you must monitor progress and hold your people accountable. Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) is a must, and it can be good practice to make progress open knowledge throughout the organization. My company displays everyone's KPIs on centralized screens in our offices. This may cause many leaders to recoil in horror, but this transparency provides several key benefits.

First, it helps your team look out for teammates. I don't believe you should automatically eliminate your bottom 10% — you should motivate them instead. Displaying everyone's progress on KPIs lets your subordinate leaders notice if someone is suddenly underperforming so they can spring into action and figure out the issue.

One of our employees started missing KPIs, and our open tracking allowed her managers to notice. After some investigating, we found that her mother had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and she had tried to leave it at home to avoid burdening the rest of her team. You can't leave things like that at home, though, and instead of jumping to conclusions and terminating her, we were able to help her get through this trying time by letting her work remotely so she could care for her mom. With this accommodation in place, her KPIs skyrocketed back in no time.

The other benefit of KPI tracking is that it fosters healthy competition in your team. One of my companies had a banner year last year, and the top performers were able to double their salaries through bonuses. Peer pressure isn't necessarily a bad thing. By encouraging some competition among your team, you can help them reach milestones you wouldn't have thought possible. Your team may very well be capable of reaching new heights, but if you're not holding them accountable, they almost certainly won't.

Your team deserves success

A key responsibility of a good CEO is to develop the next generation of CEOs. I want my employees to be CEOs someday, and I want them to be millionaires. But to do that, we need accountability measures. You will always have individuals trying to set the bar as low as possible; you have to hold them accountable.

The most important thing to remember is that you need to be self-aware when setting these goals and milestones. As a CEO, I have a BHAG. But that doesn't mean your employees have to have the same. Be fair, be realistic, but encourage them to push the envelope whenever possible. Treating your employees like future leaders can help them develop the maturity and sense to carry out your company's vision. Your team deserves success, and you owe it to them. Crafting realistic and attainable goals is only one small way to do that.



Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com