Data and metrics are critical drivers of a business's overall success. The more data streams you have, the better you can understand your customers, their needs, what works and what doesn’t. But collecting data doesn’t necessarily give you all this information. You still have to interpret it and use it to take actionable steps toward bettering your business. To help you do that, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council offer their best tips for turning data into action items for your business. 1. Ensure Your Data Is Accurate As a first step, gather good data. Often, companies have incomplete or raw data that is inaccurate due to issues like typos or data aging. You need to make sure your data is correct, accurate and complete. Second, you need to understand who these people are and what they like. You need to be reaching the right ones with the right message. You want to build out a 360-degree view of users to improve your segmentation. It’s always better to send fewer messages that are well-targeted, rather than many poorly targeted messages. With a spray-and-pray approach, you burn out your audience. - Kevin Marcus, Versium Analytics, Inc. 2. Experiment Great marketing requires data analysis. I use data to know which marketing avenues are the most effective. If I get 40 billboards, they will each have a different phone number so that I know which board was most effective. I do the same with digital marketing and experiential marketing. Make sure you know what is working so you can supersize that and drop the rest. - Sheila Nazarian, Nazarian Plastic Surgery 3. Correctly Configure Data Sets Before collecting data, you need to set up the data sets correctly. Ask the questions first, then set up systems to collect data that answer those questions. For example, let's say you want to know how visitors found your site and purchased your class. Your query needs to address those two data sets. The data will then show you those exact results. From there, you have the information to create actionable steps to increase traffic to your site (in this example). Most people collect data and then try to make sense of it. Make sense of what you want to collect, then set up queries to collect that data. - Jared Weitz, United Capital Source Inc. 4. Make Data Benchmarks One way that we use data is to create benchmarks for future campaigns. For example, we ran a survey for our users last year and this year we pushed to beat the number of responses we got last year. Using data in this simple way helps us understand how engaged our audience is and whether we're really growing. We can identify areas of stagnation in our marketing efforts. If it makes sense, use information like the number of users in your email list, how many downloads your product got, how many forms people filled and more as benchmarks for the future. Over time and with analysis, you should see where your efforts need to change and how to improve your work in the years to come. - Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner 5. Add A 'Why' What businesses need is to turn data into insights for decision-making. First, identify what kind of data is most relevant to your business. That will vary depending on your industry and goals. Some examples include customer demographics, purchase history, website click-through rates and social media engagement. Once you have identified and collected the right data, the next step is to add a “why” to the data to make it actionable. For example, if you're a retailer, data may tell you most of your customers buy products in the $10-15 range. However, when you add in the “why”—because people are more likely to purchase items they perceive as good deals—you can take steps to highlight products in that price range. You may also decide to offer discounts on products in that range. - Tonika Bruce, Lead Nicely, Inc. 6. Create Audience Segments The best way to turn customer data into actionable steps for your business is to create audience segments. Essentially, segments are targeted profiles that define the needs, goals and pain points of your visitors. These customer profiles can help you create relevant blog posts, offers, and events for your visitors.For instance, marketing firms create unique content for people interested in small business social media tips. Similarly, they would also publish blog posts focused on email marketing since that's another common topic in the industry.I suggest using information obtained from contact forms, on-site behavior and past purchases to learn about your audience and create accurate, value-packed segments. - Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights 7. Understand What The Data Trends Mean The key to making data actionable is understanding what the numbers and trends mean. Taken by themselves, numbers can be confusing or even misleading. For example, many businesses experienced steep declines in revenue during the height of the pandemic in 2020 to 2021. So a chart showing a downward trend would have to be interpreted in that context. However, it could even be seen as a positive if the decline was slight compared to competitors in your industry. That example also points to the need to look at your internal data relative to wider conditions that you can't control. You always need to ask the right questions about data so you can interpret it in a useful way. Data by itself seldom tells a complete story. - Kalin Kassabov, ProTexting 8. Design An Action Plan Data is a critical aspect of any business. It helps us make decisions, find insights and improve our processes. However, it can be difficult to turn data into actionable steps for your business. The data you collect should be relevant to your company’s goals and should help you make decisions about where to focus your efforts. You’ll want to create an action plan that will lead you closer to achieving those goals. Your action plan should consist of specific steps that will take you from one stage of the process to another in a linear fashion. It's important that these steps are measurable so that they can be easily tracked and measured throughout the process. - Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC Source: https://www.forbes.com/
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In today's world of rapid startup growth, branding your company is essential to stand out from your competitors and find success. Competition in business today is tough, yet more and more businesses are entering the arena than ever before. While many companies never make it through their first five years, some hit it big overnight. There's a treasure trove of wealth to be made for those of us who know how to unlock it, but times have changed, and these are unprecedented business waters. With more avenues to reach consumers than ever before and more businesses starting up every day, all brands know they have competitors out there, but they can still take steps to stand out. To rise above the rest, a clearly articulated and targeted brand identity is key. Here's how to do it right: 1. Brand everything Remember that just as important as branding your particular product or service is branding everything that goes along with it. Think about how your brand can define every aspect of your company's identity. On your website, make sure your call to action is appropriately branded. Make sure your blog posts or social media branding all flows in line with the same branding inspiration. Especially when you put money into your company, make sure that every investment is going to be worth it for your brand identity in the long run. A cohesive brand that represents a company's mission, vision and values shows a level of professionalism people trust and gets companies noticed. Find creative ways to get your brand out there, including how you brand yourself. Focus on personal branding and shine a spotlight on your company by promoting your own expertise at the helm of it. Publish your insights as an industry thought leader or, for the really ambitious with a lot to say, publish your own book. The more ways you can infuse your efforts into creating a memorable brand, the more people you reach that will start to think of your company before your competitors. 2. Define your customer To decide how you want to brand your company, narrow down your audience to the people you actually intend for your product or service to reach. Trying to be the brand for "everyone" would be wildly expensive. Targeting a niche market instead is a more affordable, efficient and effective way to reach new customers and grow. You can tailor your spending to a specific brand message more likely to attract the right people away from the competition and generate more business. When you focus on reaching "your consumers," you can more effectively compete for their attention, and win it. Ask yourself: Who is my customer? Really dive in and figure out who you imagine will be best suited for the product or service you offer. If that offering is geared toward senior citizens, then the aspects of branding you need to consider will be totally different than an audience of Millenials. You can still explore other markets with sub-brands, but don't try to make your brand one-size-fits-all. The better you can match your brand with what your consumer wants to see, the better your chances of standing out to them in a crowd. 3. Don't be cheap Instead of bearing the responsibility yourself and potentially wasting your valuable time and effort coming up with a flop, hire a professional that can brand your logo, website or slogan in alignment with your company's mission and inspiration. Within our infinity logo is a symbol – small, nothing fancy – but unique and representative of our company because a professional designer knew well enough to include such a memorable detail. When it comes to branding, don't be cheap, especially in protecting your brand identity. After spending all the necessary money on developing your logo, slogan, and company name in general, pay what it takes to trademark it. It might take about $1000 to get it all done, minimum, but even if it costs a little more, with all the competition out there, I still say it's worth it. Every advantage counts these days, so put your money where your brand is. 4. Utilize your competitors Having just recommended that you protect your own brand identity, this is not to say anyone should go out and rip off other brands, but rather look at what your competitors are doing and redesign their approach in a unique way that aligns with your branding strategy. For our company, we came up with a take on Budweiser's "King of Beers" using the tagline, "King of Boards," and had similar shirts made but with altered details to match our industry. Piggyback off of the success of a competitor, not to clone their ideas, but use them as inspiration for new ones. The slogan, "Just Do It," was one of the brand elements that skyrocketed Nike from a small startup to global fame and now, they get free advertising daily every time someone uses the phrase. I'm not saying take the Nike slogan, but find inspiration from the Nike experience. Think of some common phrase in your industry that people might use and reframe it around a memorable line you associate with a popular brand. Benefit from the preexisting success of others, like Subway's "Eat fresh," or Staples' "That was easy," by finagling it into something more specific to your product or service so that common phrase now makes people think of your company. Even a new company can unlock success with the right brand identity. Many of our competitors have been in the industry much longer than us, but we're being talked about more because we successfully made ourselves stand out. Your brand should echo throughout the company and flow through the organization around an identifiable inspiration — loud enough for consumers to hear — which makes design, marketing and public relations critical. Prioritizing these elements in today's competitive world is the edge your company needs. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/ Image credit: image from Pixabay.com
Here are five ways to make more time for your small business and increase your productivity. While having a small business may be something you have always dreamed of — planning your own working hours, being flexible, living wherever you want in the world, the list goes on — it is, nonetheless, a difficult undertaking. Having your own venture may feel like you need to excel in all aspects of your business, from budgeting to hiring staff. However, that kind of mindset might just be the one that makes you feel like you have no time left on your hands. Are you working a solid 16 hours a day without the impression that you are getting anything done? Do you keep seeing your to-do list getting longer and yet have no clue how to even get through half of the points? If so, you may feel like you just need more time. What if, instead, we found ways to reduce your workload and increase your output? Here are five ways to make more time for your small business and to increase your productivity: 1. Planning, planning, planning One of the main mistakes many small business owners make is trying to work on everything, all at once and without a certain order to follow. The problem with this approach is that while certain things might indeed get done, there is no long-term planning. This is a mistake, because you aren't able to plan how you will manage all the various small items to get done throughout the day as well as over the next few weeks. You need to plan more! With specific targets, milestones or goals to achieve, you are able to break down the parts of your work that take the most time, and hence, you can figure out what needs to be rearranged. 2. Use block scheduling While planning, you may realize the following: While you thought you were working 16 hours a day, you were actually busy getting distracted every few minutes by a new email coming in, a Voxer Voice message or something along those lines. These distractions add up. As such, using block scheduling can help you avoid them. Block a few hours at a time (one and a half to two hours is usually a good amount) and stay focused on this specific task throughout the entirety of the countdown. This will save you time that you usually spend being distracted! 3. Outsource time-consuming tasks Next, think about the tasks that you are not very good at or knowledgeable about. As mentioned earlier, we may feel like we need to constantly be doing everything on our own, at least until we can afford full-time staff. Right? Wrong! Doing it all on your own takes a lot of time away from you that could be spent on scaling and growing. Outsource the most time-consuming tasks you have, such as hiring a virtual assistant or finding talent on websites such as Fiverr.com and Upwork.com. 4. Simplify and streamline your marketing One of the main activities that can take a lot of your time is marketing. The reason for this is simple: If it is done step-by-step or post-by-post, you may feel like you are spending hours on social media every day trying to market your business. Instead, free up some of your time by creating a content calendar and batching your content. This way, you are not spending valuable minutes and hours on apps as it will all be done in advance. 5. Take time to rest Finally, and yes, this may be a bit cliché, you need to schedule some time to rest. While solopreneurs, founders and entrepreneurs love to work, we also struggle to stop ourselves from overworking ourselves quite often. The result? We end up burned out and can't stay focused on a task — and that's if we can even get ourselves started on it in the first place. With this in mind, you need to take the time to reboot yourself once in a while. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/ Image credit: Image from Pixabay.com
A majority of professionals claim they want to start their own business, but an extraordinarily small percentage actually do. Excuses include family obligations, bad timing, risk aversion, not enough savings, etc., but the most common excuse I hear is that they're just waiting for the right idea to "come to them." We have a cartoonish fantasy that one day a lightbulb will flash in our heads as we strike pure inspiration for an idea so original or so nuanced that we feel utterly compelled to become an entrepreneur in order to bring it to market. While lightbulb moments may exist for some select entrepreneurs, for most great product or business concepts out there, you need to be highly intentional in how you chart a path to uncovering them. I founded an innovative and profitable small business that took me all the way to Shark Tank, Forbes 30 under 30 and over $1 million in revenue in just a few years. The idea didn’t just come to me. Instead, it took four months of highly organized and intentional time to find it. If you want to find your startup idea, here are the steps to follow: 1. Commit to an intended outcome, a schedule and a timeline Start by making your ideation process have a beginning and an end, along with a specific schedule of working sessions. My business partner and I committed to a six-month period of meeting at least twice a week in the evening for 5 hour blocks on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Our intended outcomes were a product concept with a strong enough G2M plan that we felt confident enough in to fully commit to. If we still didn’t have our idea in six months or weren’t feeling confident in the one we had, then we would scrap it and call it quits on this round. If you don’t set a strict end date, you risk losing the sense of discipline that comes hand in hand with urgency. 2. Get your family on board with the commitment Don’t hustle in the dark. From day one of your commitment, share the plan and time investment with your family, and emphasize why this is so important to you. Most likely, they’ll cheer you on and be some of your biggest advocates. Not being open about your ideation journey will likely lead to resentment. If your family is loving enough to let you put all this extra time towards your idea, be sure to pick up the slack by taking on additional chores around the house or planning a few extra date nights. It never hurts to show them how much you appreciate their support. 3. Form guardrails derived from your interests, expertise and appetite for risk Start by defining soft and hard guardrails to help narrow your ideation path. My co-founder was an architect, and we both loved woodworking. Okay … so maybe something made out of wood. We both were avid conservationists, so maybe something to do with nature. We weren’t eager to invest a lot of money upfront in the business, so maybe a product that could do well on a crowdfunding platform. Most were soft guardrails that played to our strengths and areas of interest, which typically lead to better outcomes anyway, but at the end of the day, the purpose of putting in guardrails is to focus your ideation. You can’t boil an ocean, but maybe you can boil a pool full of seawater. I highly suggest spending your first few meetings crafting these guardrails before diving into open brainstorming. 4. Embrace diverse brainstorming techniques and immerse yourself in stimulating environments Don’t just sit in a room and stare at a screen. Instead, research and adopt a wide variety of brainstorming techniques (i.e., cocktail mixers, stepladder, rolestorming, etc.) all while sticking to the four key roles of brainstorming: focus on quantity, withhold criticism, welcome wild ideas, and combine ideas for more ideas. The best thing you can do is surround yourself with a wide array of stimuli. We would spend hours at a time strolling down the aisles of Walmart just mentally mashing different products together in our heads. Walmart is a candy store for product brainstorming. 5. Iterate, challenge, evolve Once you’ve amassed a number of possible ideas, you enter the evaluation phase. This is where you can start getting critical with your ideas — evaluate how they align to your guardrails, use matrices to determine feasibility rankings, etc. Pay attention to your excitement during this phase. Which ideas do you find yourself advocating for the most? Why? Even if some ideas have more challenges than others, your passion will fuel you and help you overcome them when you later decide to bring it to market. 6. Once you commit, don’t doubt yourself Once you come around to that idea that you’ve poked enough holes in to the point that you are feeling really confident, just go for it. Remember, you didn’t decide to become an entrepreneur just off of a single fleeting lightbulb moment … you just invested months of highly intentional time to come to a well-vetted idea. Have confidence in that, and take it to the next stage. Stop waiting for your lightbulb idea to just come to you, go out there and find it. What are you waiting for? Source: entrepreneur.com Image Credit: Photo by Pixabay
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