Tag Archives: Corporate Business Solutions consultants

4 Competitive Advantages Small Businesses Have Over Big Companies

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One thing that many small businesses don’t realize is that they have many advantages over large companies. While it may seem disheartening at times to only be a small business, the reality of it is that sometimes you are far luckier. Often, when small business owners are made aware of how truly lucky, they are, their outlook changes completely.

Check out these four competitive advantages that small businesses have over big companies from your Corporate Business Solutions Consultants to learn more.

  1. Faster decision making

Being a small business isn’t always a bad thing. It does come with a unique set of advantages. One of the biggest advantages is the quick turnaround for making decisions. While you may have a smaller number of employees, you can make decisions and be quicker in process innovation far easier.

To keep your small business afloat, you must be able to adapt, grow, and change. It can be harder to make those decisions when you’re surrounded by red tape and other voices.

  1. Targeting niche markets

It can sometimes feel overwhelming to be a small business surrounded by larger businesses. However, you should never forget your competitive advantages when it comes to your target niche market. By developing and maintaining a focused strategy, you can easily home in on and target your niche market.

This gives you leverage and power that big companies simply do not have.

  1. Empowering and developing your team

A strong and loyal team makes all the difference to business operations. Smaller teams can get the one-on-one attention that is needed for a team to thrive. Having a smaller team allows individualized attention that large companies simply cannot gain access to within their operations.

To make the most of empowering and developing your team, ensure that your employees can have their say in the direction of where the business is going. Leadership should also be accessible to all employees to address their concerns and questions. Ensure that time is also set aside to discuss personal development with each team member.

By implementing these practices, small businesses can grow and create an environment where each employee feels valued and listened to.

  1. Personalized customer service

Ranking high on Google, being a top market player, and having a large customer base is great. However, it all comes down to your customer service. Having a real and unique connection with your customers instantly makes you a flag-bearing business.

The problem many big companies make is in their one size fits all approach. Luckily, small businesses have the leverage, and capacity, to be able to listen to what each customer has to say. Then, they can customize everything accordingly. All small businesses should take advantage of this.

As you can see, small businesses have many great advantages that large companies could never dream of having. To get the most out of your business, use these advantages in your favor.

 

 

 

 

3 Small Business Marketing Tactics You Need to Know About

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Whether you are planning to begin your small business venture, or you already have a small business, its success will depend entirely on how you decide to market it. In the United States alone, thirty million businesses are competing to become successful in their chosen industry.

Even if you do not have an overly large budget, there is so much more that small businesses can do to attract their target audience and maintain their customer base. In turn, it is quite easy to focus on marketing strategies that boost your business.

Check out the tactics from CBS-CBS.com to learn about marketing your business in the best way possible.

  1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the unique and intelligent process of optimizing your business website to make it easier for search engines to find your business online. For example, if you rank high on Google, there is a far higher chance that your business will attract customers.

SEO is one of the most impactful ways to generate new leads as well as grow a business audience. As of now, only around 49% of small businesses are investing in their SEO. Here are some of the best ways to implement SEO:

  • High-quality backlinks
  • Creating a Google My Business account
  • Creating blog posts and videos that your local community relates to
  • Re-question reviews from customers
  • Optimizing your website with local keywords
  • Using location pages
  1. Social Media Marketing to Nurture and Engage Customers

If you are not using social media as a form of marketing to nurture and engage customers, you are not doing it right. Social media marketing is the perfect way to reach a larger audience and boost your business at the same time. On average, people spend 2.5 hours on social media each day.

That is why it is so easy to reach a large audience via social media. It is also very inexpensive. You can use platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or even Pinterest depending on your target audience.

Here are some great ways to use social media marketing to grow your business:

  • Provide quick responses to your customer’s queries and questions
  • Create high-quality content that triggers an emotional response
  • Create contests to get your followers to tag their networks
  • Create user-generated content using hashtags
  • Collaborate with influencers to establish brand trust
  1. Content Marketing to Improve Branding

Did you know that over 91% of businesses use content marketing to improve their branding? Studies show that over 70% of consumers learn about businesses through articles! Content Marketing focuses on being able to create and deliver valuable, consistent, and relevant information.

Eventually, it also drives profitable consumer action. Building a sufficient relationship with your customers as well as search engines can be time-consuming with this technique. However, if you do it correctly, it can make your business an industry leader!

Small businesses can grow significantly when following proven business marketing techniques and practices. It is also important to evaluate your results to identify which strategies work best for your business.

 

 

 

How to Use Color Psychology When Marketing Your Small Business

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Have you noticed the way different colors can make you feel? When you’re standing in a lush green field surrounded by blue skies, you feel complete serenity. Perhaps you have even noticed that the color red can make you feel slightly alarmed.

No matter the color that popped into your mind when you read the first sentence of this post, it is likely that you have fallen victim to color psychology. As crazy as it may sound, colors have a huge effect on the human psyche.

It is all part of color psychology. Check out this little guide from CBS-CBS.com to learn more about color psychology.

What is Color psychology? 

Color psychology is the way different colors determine or affect human behavior. You can readily use color psychology in advertising and marketing to evoke and change emotional reactions to what you are advertising. While that sounds simple enough, there is plenty to know about color psychology.

How do colors influence people? 

Color meaning and color psychology can easily and powerfully change the way people behave and make decisions. Within only a few minutes, people can make subconscious judgments about a person, product, or environment. With the right colors, you can impact people’s initial impression of you and your business.

As a business promoting your brand, you should know all about tints, hues, colors, and shades to evoke emotion and promote action. Through specific color choices in logos, signage, packaging, and advertising, brands can easily influence consumers to buy on impulse or choose their product over another.

For example, when you think about your favorite brands, think about how they make you feel. Do their logos stand out because of their bright colors or do you prefer black and white? That is color psychology in its finest form.

How colors can make people feel…

Here are some colors and how they may make people feel:

  • Red- Red often creates a sense of urgency. That is what makes it perfect for clearance sales or breaking news. It is also frequently used by fast-food chains as it often makes people hungry. People may often associate red with passion, movement, power, and excitement.
  • Green- Green is most often associated with health, wellness, and general wellbeing. It is clean, clear, and brings a sense of nature into your brand. The color green can also create a feeling of harmony and encourage decisions.
  • Purple- Usually, the color purple is associated with wisdom, royalty, and respect. It greatly stimulates creativity.
  • Blue- Funnily enough, men prefer the color blue in advertising and marketing over any other. It is associated with reliability, peace, tranquility, and water. The color blue also promotes trust in a brand.
  • Yellow and orange- Both colors are cheerful and promote optimism. However, used incorrectly they can make people cautious.

Color psychology is a powerful stimulator when it comes to how people view your brand. How you incorporate color into your brand will essentially say everything about your business. While there are no “best” marketing colors, there are colors that impact people better than others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Can Upselling Benefit My Small Business?

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Without knowing it, we deal with upselling every day. Have you ever been through a McDonald’s drive-through only to be asked if you like to upgrade into a meal? When you’re a customer, noticing an upsell attempt is easy.

That is why it is hard to put an upselling strategy into place as a business. You relate to all the times people have tried to upsell you. You also remember just how annoying it can be.

However, it doesn’t have to be annoying. There are ways to effectively upsell without annoying. Check out this small guide from CBS-CBS.com to learn how upselling can benefit your small business.

What is upselling?

Upselling is the act of offering an additional product, feature, or service to a customer or client after they have decided to purchase from you. Upselling benefits your business by increasing the profitability and size of each sale.

Upselling comes into play when the customer has already signaled intent to purchase and is ready to complete the sale. They are already interested in doing business with you. Now, all you need to do is improve the bottom line to get customers to add to their purchases.

Once you learn how to identify it, you will see that this technique is used every day.

How to make upselling benefit your business

Check out these three things you have to know to make upselling benefit your business:

Understand your costs

Before trying to upsell, you need a good understanding of your profits. To do it correctly, you must understand:

  • The cost of your products and services- How much does it cost to deliver and produce your product?
  • The cost of customer acquisition- How much does it cost for you to acquire a new customer? 

When figuring this out, talk to an accountant or bookkeeper to further identify your costs. Don’t just consider the basic materials. Ensure that you consider packaging, commissions, labor, branding, and any other costs.

Identify your upselling goals

Once you understand your costs, separate your products and services into two margins. The high-profit margin, and the low-profit margin. Then, you need to pick out your high-margin items to upsell. That is where you will get the most leverage.

It is a good idea to identify your upselling goals and understand how much you want to profit from the upsell. With upselling, you get more profit for little effort. After all, upselling is nothing more than simply asking questions.

Create intriguing offers

When upselling, ensure that you pick out offers that are more than complementary. The basic offers as well as the upsell should appeal to the same buyer. However, the items should remain unique enough that the buyer sees the added value.

By creating intriguing offers, your customers will be more likely to accept your upsell attempt.

The bottom line

Make sure that you’re not too pushy or overbearing. Some customers will jump at the opportunity while others remain uninterested. If you push too hard, you could turn your customer off completely.

 

Always let the buyer make their own decisions.

 

 

 

 

How Text Message Marketing Can Help Your Business

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Text messaging is often seen as a way for people to contact their friends. Did you know that it is a powerful marketing tool? The majority of people all over the world own mobile phones.

Most of them use their mobile phones to send and receive text messages. After all, phones are for texting more than they are for social media. On top of that, mobile phones always alert their owner when they receive a text message. 

Usually, those text messages get read mere seconds or minutes after delivery. Though, many business owners have avoided text message marketing because they think it is ineffective. Realistically, it is the best form of marketing. It is affordable, easy to use, and valuable.

Reviews for Corporate Business Solutions have three ways that text message marketing can help your business.

  1. It is very affordable

Text message marketing is a great way to market your business affordably. Small business owners can benefit greatly from this form of marketing. Instead of spending hours creating marketing content, a text message is cheaper, quicker, and easier to send out.

It could also be far more effective. While prices vary, many platforms will allow you to send text messages for only a few cents per text. There are also bulk packages that send hundreds or thousands of text messages per month for only a fraction of the cost you usually pay for marketing.

  1. It is quick

Many people like text message marketing because of the speed for both the advertiser and consumer. Text messages are usually a few sentences long, whereas email marketing can be lengthy. That means that people are far more likely to read your text message and act on it.

The consumer can also choose when they want to read the text. Telephone calls, on the other hand, can be intrusive and disruptive. On top of that, text messages don’t take long to plan or send. Overall, they are far quicker in many ways than other forms of marketing.

  1. It has a further reach

Pretty much every person in the world has a mobile phone these days. That means that text messaging casts quite a wide net. Email marketing is much the same. The only difference is that text messages usually feel more direct, personal, and urgent than emails.

For example, a promotion delivered right to your phone number would feel far more personal than a promotion to your email address that people can easily find. The urgency of texts can help your business reach far more people in a quicker time frame.

Not many people receive promotions in their texts.

Overall, text message marketing is an easy, affordable, quick, and reliable way to promote your business. It is proving time and time again to be a powerful marketing tool, especially for small businesses. If you are looking for a promotional tool that is effective and affordable, there is no better option than text message marketing.

How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Small Business

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Facebook is one of the best free marketing tools for small businesses. If you are looking to engage your customers or attract new ones, Facebook is an outstanding platform. However, it isn’t as easy as simply posting a photo and leaving it at that. 

You must follow the guidelines to ensure that you get the best out of your advertising. Facebook offers many great promotion tools. To maximize your promotion efforts, you should use them as much as possible.

Every small business should use social media as much as possible, especially Facebook. It has several great advertisement options, groups, statistics, and paid promotions, among other things. Though, with so many ways to promote your business, it can be hard to find a starting point.

To help you out, Corporate Business Solutions Consultants have three easy ways to promote your business on Facebook.

 

  • Post regularly

 

There is nothing worse than finding a business on Facebook that hasn’t posted since 2018. That is why posting regularly is so important. Using Facebook to promote your business is far more than just making a business page. You need to ensure that you are posting regularly for your customers.

Once per day is a good rule of thumb or every 2-3 days is a great option. It is a fine line when it comes to posting because both too much and too little can be bad for your business. Posting regularly is incredibly important. Though, it is just as important to post good quality content.

If you can only post good quality content 1-2 times a week, that is better than posting bad quality content every day. As stated before, it is a fine line. 

 

  • Post high-quality content

 

What you post on your Facebook page is highly important. Nobody wants to visit your Facebook page and see low-quality photos. Even worse, nobody wants to read captions that are riddled with spelling errors or are hard to read. 

Here are some great ways to ensure that you are posting high-quality content:

 

  • Post different content- Don’t always post the same thing. Make sure you have a variety of posts on your Facebook page. Including gifs, photos, videos, blogs, and even press releases. Your audience will be far more captivated when you post different things all the time.
  • Ask questions- People love to feel included. That is why asking questions is a great way to engage your audience. At the end of each post, try asking a question. For example: “Check out this great blog that outlines the importance of stress management in the workplace. How do you manage your stress at work?”
  • Run a giveaway or contest- Your page will become far more engaging when you run contests or giveaways. By offering the opportunity to win a prize, you can boost sales while increasing your engagement levels.

 

  • Create a strategy- When posting on Facebook, try creating a strategy. It should complement your marketing, sales, and public relations activities. Content calendars are a great way to create a strategy that works for you.

It can also help you understand your strategy better to get the best out of your promotions. Things to add to the calendar should include important holidays, sales, business announcements, and other important dates.

 

3 Ways to Create Time for Your Side Hustle 

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Even if only for a short time, every person in this world has had a business idea. There are a plethora of people out there who have great business ideas that are destined to be good. You could even be one of those people. However, very few people continue the process to see their business succeed.

Perhaps they have been talked out of it, or maybe they just didn’t have the time. Whatever the reason is, every business deserves a decent chance at success. So, what is it that is keeping you from taking the next step? If it is time, we have you covered.

If a lack of time is to blame, check out these 3 tips from your Corporate Business Solutions Consultants that will help you create time for your side hustle.

Join groups

There is no better way to create time for your business than to find a group of like-minded people to discuss it with. Even meeting up once a month to discuss strategies and encourage each other will help to create valuable time for your side hustle. This works well because it holds you accountable to other people and that can give you the extra push you need.

It can be hard to gain and keep motivation if the only person holding you accountable is you.

Outsource

Many successful people outsource work to get help with their side hustle. For example, reaching out to platforms with freelancers or simply automating most of your social media can help drastically. Usually, it will cost you money, but it isn’t the worst when it comes to saving time.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or stressed, outsourcing work is completely okay. There is nothing to be ashamed of, so don’t be hard on yourself.

Make appointments

By making appointments, it doesn’t mean you should book appointments and lose even more time. What it means is that you should consider the time you work on your side hustle as an appointment. That way, you have a set start and finish time that you have to be held accountable for.

Try to make the most of this time. Emails, messages, and returning phone calls can wait. This is the time you want to spend working on your side hustle alone. How you prioritize your time will make all of the difference in the long run. Creating a list of tasks is also incredibly helpful.

With these three helpful ways to create more time for your side hustle, you will also have more time for friends, family, and play. Just a few hours every week to work on your side hustle will bring results and soon enough, everything will begin to fall into place for you. Even if you only have five free hours every week, that calculates to 260 hours per year that you spent wisely.

Your dream life isn’t too far away, so keep up the hard work.

Keep the Office Happy: 4 Stress Reduction Tips for the Workplace

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Stress is a constant factor for many individuals around the world. Add the recent global pandemic into the mix, and stress continues to be very prominent in our everyday lives.

Although, as the employer, there is only so much you can do to help out, there are things you can do to reduce stress in the workplace. By starting there, you can help create an environment for your employees that minimizes their stress and positively impacts their overall health.

Your Corporate Business Solutions Consultants have four tips to help reduce stress in the workplace.

Make Wellness a Priority

Do you encourage your employees (and yourself) to take care of both their physical and mental health? Promoting wellness in the workplace can have a positive reaction and help reduce stress.

There are a few things you can do to help with this. If your office has somewhere staff can purchase snacks, offer healthier alternatives like fruits and vegetables. Offer subsidized gym memberships for those you like going to fitness centers, or you could even have an area in the office dedicated to quick workouts. Encourage all your employees to take breaks throughout the day to stretch, let their minds recharge and have casual, non-work-related interactions with colleagues.

Offer Flexibility

For many families, stress comes from trying to schedule work, family, activities, and everything else in between. Offering flexibility with hours and even working remotely can help ease the stress of many working families.

Going this route does have the potential of adding more stress to you, so ensure that if you offer this option, you trust that they’ll get the work done. However, you may notice that not only are employees less stressed with the flexibility, but they may also be happier about their job given the opportunity to prove they can work independently.

Offer Counseling Options

Many individuals either don’t know how to handle stress or don’t know how to manage their stress levels appropriately. That is where something like an onsite or virtual counseling setting could be beneficial.

Counseling encourages people to open about issues that are causing stress and frustration in their lives, and it also helps develop coping skills so that the stress doesn’t take over your life. If there isn’t one available to bring to your employees, offer an incentive for them to find their own, like reimbursing the cost.

Be a Good Leader

Many employees find their stress comes from a lack of leadership or poor management. If you’re working at a place that provides little to no direction of what you should do in a day, a boss that’s constantly looking over your shoulder, and management that runs a very tight schedule, it’s bound to add more stress to your life.

Be a good leader for your employees to help ease their stress levels. Avoid micromanaging and, instead, show that you trust your team to get the job done. Set realistic deadlines and goals, and be available for feedback if something isn’t working.

If you can help create a workplace environment that reduces stress, anxiety, and frustration in the office, you’re more likely to have happier and healthier employees. Make your business the place people want to be.

Wake Up Refreshed – 5 Sleeping Tips for the Busy Person

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You’ve likely heard it over and over again or even said it yourself to someone – make sure you’re getting enough sleep at night. We all know it, yet getting enough sleep isn’t always the easiest task.

How important is sleeping in our daily lives? Well, chronic fatigue due to not enough sleep can lead to many serious physical and mental complications. When you’re sleep-deprived, your mind doesn’t function like it would with a good night’s rest. On the physical side, not catching enough z’s may put you at a higher risk for medical conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, and obesity.

Ready to get more sleep to work to the best of your abilities? Corporate Business Solutions has five sleep tips that will help you wake up refreshed in the morning.

Set Yourself Boundaries

A significant contributor to poor sleep is not taking a break from work. If you’re waking up thinking about work and crawling into bed, and finishing sending an email, it makes it difficult to turn your mind off so you can sleep.

Your body needs time to relax and unwind. That means no work. So, do yourself a favor and set some boundaries. After a certain hour, disconnect from work so you can focus on yourself.

Have a Regular Sleeping Schedule

Our bodies love a rhythm. We have what’s called our circadian rhythm, which is the physical, mental, and behavioral changes that occur in a 24-hour cycle. Sleeping at night and awake during the day is an example of your circadian rhythm.

Having a regular sleeping schedule helps your circadian rhythm and gets your body (and mind) into a good sleeping routine. So, if you like going to bed at a particular hour, try to do that every evening.

Keep Distractions Away

Although we like to think otherwise, watching television or browsing through our phones while in bed won’t help put you to sleep. Having too many distractions in your bedroom will only make it more difficult for you to fall asleep.

Keep your bedroom peaceful and relaxing by getting rid of distractions. If your phone is an issue, charge it in a different room. Remember, your bedroom is usually meant for only a few activities, and sleeping is one of them.

Limit Caffeine

If there is any tip that could be the hardest to implement, it is limiting your caffeine. If you’re always busy, chances are you love your hot cup of coffee to give you a little boost.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with having a cup or two in the day. When it does become an issue, though, it is when you’re drinking it later on and closer to the evening. The caffeine is meant to keep you awake, which is counterproductive if you want to head to bed soon.

Speak to Your Doctor

If you still struggle to fall asleep and get a good night’s rest after trying everything out there, it may be time to speak to your doctor. Constant exhaustion and continuous restless nights could be a sign of something medically (both physically and mentally) that needs addressing.

Try implementing the tips above into your daily routine. Sometimes even the smallest of habit changes can have the biggest effect on our sleep.

3 Tips to Keep Your Business Afloat During Challenging Times

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It’s been well over a year now that we’ve maneuvered through a global pandemic. Through this pandemic, many businesses have learned the hard way how to adapt on the fly. Unfortunately, many other companies could not make ends meet through rolling shutdowns and, ultimately, closed their doors for good.

Now, as the world rolls out the Covid-19 vaccines in hopes of gaining control over the rapid virus, many business owners look back at 2020 as a way to help prepare for other challenges they may face down the road.

Although we hope not to implement backup plans, it’s a good idea to have a plan for challenging times ahead that many businesses are likely to face. To help, your Corporate Business Solutions consultants have three tips to keep your business afloat during challenging times.

Avoid Reacting to the Situation

It’s common for people to react to a situation. When someone reacts to a challenge in front of them, they often do so with emotion, leading to an irrational reaction rather than a thoughtful process. Reacting head-on may work in some situations, but not all.

When faced with challenging times, it’s best to slow down and look at the big picture before doing anything. The issue with immediately reacting to what’s in front of you is that a quick decision now could have even more damaging effects later on. Instead, take the time to think things through, develop a thoughtful plan and then react with a calm mind.

A good example would be you have an employee that keeps messing up with inventory. Frustration may take over, and your initial reaction could be to let the employee go. However, if you take a moment to dig into what’s going on, you could find that the training process wasn’t thorough enough and the mistakes the employee is making aren’t actually their fault.

Have an Emergency Fund

When faced with difficulties, many businesses find themselves nervous about not having enough profits to pay the bills. Having a cash reserve meant for emergencies is a crucial backup plan to have. That way, if you end up having to close your doors for a bit, you’ll be able to make ends meet with your emergency funds.

Revamp Your Marketing Strategy

As the world goes in and out of challenging times, your marketing strategy needs to reflect that. If you continue to push the same marketing strategy regardless of the situation around you, your return may not be what it was a few months ago.

Have a couple of different marketing strategies to implement based on what is going on worldwide (or in your industry). For the recent year with the pandemic, businesses could benefit by changing their marketing strategy to showcase the value in what you offer, even if the budget is tight.

The point being, it’s about reflecting and being sensitive to what is going on around you and adapting your marketing strategy to reflect that.

No matter how prepared a business may be to face difficult times, our plans do not always work. However, by preparing for the “what ifs,” you could save your business and stay afloat.