Month: May 2021

Digital Branding

Best Practices To Retain Customers On Your E-commerce Store

on May 20, 2021

Customer retention is the skill of maintaining your existing customers for an extended period. It implies converting your current customers into regular consumers. Once a person has purchased from your e-commerce site, establishing loyalty in them prevents them from going towards your competitors.

How does customer retention benefit you?

If you want to have maximum profit for your e-commerce store from a single consumer, building their trust in you is very important. The more they acknowledge you, the more they will buy from you.

Preserving your existing customer and maximizing their business with you is sevenfold more profitable than chasing new leads and customers for your e-commerce store.

There are different marketing tools available like SMS marketing tools, email marketing services, and social media marketing platforms through which you can engage and retain your old customer on autopilot.

Once the customers become trustworthy about your company, they explore your products further, which becomes more beneficial for you. Moreover, they promote your product to their colleagues and private groups.

Best practices for customer retention on your online store:

Reward existing customer

Everyone admires rewards in the form of gifts and prizes. So why not reward your customers for buying from your e-Commerce store?  

Rewarding your customers makes them feel gratified and creates an urge to buy from you again.It makes your relationship with customers stronger. Reward acts as an extra motivator for your business. 

You can reward your customer in the form of an additional deal or bonus on their purchase. Extra few percent off on a specific product from another online shopping site. 

Tell your customers exactly why they are being rewarded; it shows that you value them for their loyalty.

Send Relevant Email campaigns.

An email campaign is the best strategy to stay in touch with your customer. It is one of the most practical ways to keep an existing customer for the longest time. It enhances their experience with you and your reputation. 

You can send different types of emails such as:

Welcome Email: This email tells your recently joined customers who you are and simple steps that they must follow next.

Reminder Email: A simple, generous reminder email about some items they have left in the cart or any new suggestions for them.

Giveaway email: Short email telling them about ongoing or upcoming offers and rewards on their favorite items.

Though there are varied email campaigns, you must remember one thing: you should never send multiple campaigns simultaneously. Use different email campaigns at relevant times with some intervals between them. 

Expand Customer Service Channels

You should have outstanding customer service to retain your customers for a longer time. It is essential to be available for your customers whenever they have difficulty purchasing, payment methods, availing offers, etc.

In this era when everything is going digital, people are more and more engaging on social media. You should take advantage of this and use your official social media accounts to engage with your customers.

You can assist the customer in solving problems publicly on social media. For Example, on Twitter; You can upload a story asking about your customer’s problems and give a solution to them on the social media stories. It will build the trust of your existing customer as well as generate new customers.

Use Personalization to engage customers. 

Customers appreciate it when you keep it personalized. When you email consumers, make sure to start the subject with their first name, it makes them feel that you know them.

Send deals on their birthday and anniversary. Send them an email to wish them and then tell them about special offers on their wonderful day. Also, you can send an email a week before their anniversary and birthday and show options to buy gifts.

Tell them about the newly released products of their concern based on the last purchase. This level of personalized emails and contents encourages the customer to return to your e-commerce site and purchase again.

 

Get Regular Feedback and Suggestions 

Companies need suggestions to know where their customers are facing problems and so that they can improve customer experience.

Ask for customer feedback and suggestions after the purchase. Ask them: How was their experience shopping with you? If a customer unsubscribes your company’s email, ask them the reason for unsubscribing.

Conclusion

I am sure the strategies mentioned above will be able to maintain your customers lifelong and generate good revenue. Implement these strategies and retain customers in your E-commerce store.

Infographic created by Clover Connect, a payment integration solutions company

SaaS Branding

Employee-Directed Branding

on May 19, 2021

We all know how important customer directed branding is, but few businesses pay enough attention to internal brandings. Employee-directed branding, or “employer branding,” is becoming more necessary than ever. This is because it is becoming more and more difficult to hire talented workers, and this, in turn, also makes it hard to retain the talent you have. It is now a business necessity to build a strong culture and great atmosphere in which to work. Here we will explore some of the ways that successful corporations are branding themselves to their employees.

What you can learn from successful corporations

If a company is highly successful, it makes sense to analyze what it has done to contribute to that success. With that in mind, there is a lot to learn from the ways that large corporations brand themselves to current and future employees. One way to do this is to examine a successful advertising campaign. While a large-scale advertising campaign is off limits to all but the largest corporations, it is worth taking a look at what large corporations are trying to accomplish when they launch such campaigns. For instance, in GE’s famous “Owen” campaign, the company is sending a simple, clear, positive, and repeated message: Owen is changing the world just as you are changing the world by working at GE. This campaign shows the importance of having a clear and repeated theme to your internal marketing. Ideas such as specific ways your company helps others or the ways employees are supported are good because they are a clear and simple message that can easily take root. Whatever that message is, it needs to be reflected in reality in order to succeed, and some of these examples below should help get you thinking along the right lines.

Updating the work environment: Given that most people will spend nearly half their waking hours at work, it makes sense that people would be greatly impacted by the nature of their work environment. A drab, cramped, and old office will not only increase turnover, but it will also decrease the quality and efficiency of the work being done. Happier employees stay longer and are more productive, so it is a worthwhile investment to update your offices. There are a number of simple changes you can make right now:

  • Add a water cooler system: Water coolers make employees feel cared about, increase employee health, and provide a good place for natural team-building to occur. Ideally, you can even step it up with a more advanced system such as a reverse osmosis system – this will multiply these benefits.
  • Re-decorate: This can be something as simple as changing the furniture, all the way up to a complete overhaul with new paint, light fixtures, and art. Given the enormous impact changes like these can make, they are usually well-worth the comparatively small investment it takes to implement them.
  • Add fun areas: Some of the classic communal areas such as break rooms and water coolers can be easily turned into a point of pride if you replace them with activities that encourage team-building. Even something as simple as a foosball table can help make work a far more pleasant place to be. If you really want to make an impression, many of the most dynamic companies have gone so far as to install entire game rooms and coffee shops.

Conduct an employer brand audit: You cannot craft an employer brand if you do not know what your brand currently is. To accomplish this, it is vital to use an employer brand audit. You are trying to find out the answers to two questions: how does my company present itself to employees and candidates? And how do employees and candidates actually perceive the company? To do an audit, first gather up everything that an employee or prospective employee might come across: internal communications, job postings, onboarding materials, social media profiles, etc. You can use these materials to determine how you currently present yourself to employees and applicants. Next, interview current employees to ask how they perceive the company and provide applicants with exit surveys. This information will give you information about how your message is received.

Attracting and retaining talented employees has never been more important than it is today. Unfortunately, it has also never been more difficult. Most businesses are used to cultivating a brand image when dealing with customers; however, it is now a business necessity to also cultivate a positive brand image within a company itself. The future of every business that has ever existed depends upon the employees that conduct business on a day to day basis. Take the time to review some of these ideas and develop an employee directed branding plan that will help take your business to the next level.

SaaS Branding

Benefits Of Starting Your Own Business

on May 19, 2021

Have you always dreamed of starting your own business? Have you had an entrepreneurial spirit for as long as you can remember and prefer to be your own boss? Well, what’s getting in the way? Maybe it’s fear of the unknown or fear of failure. On the other hand, you could be unsure of where to start. Many small business owners will tell you that they were very fearful in the beginning, but that it’s part of the journey. If you are thinking about starting your own business, the best thing you can do for yourself is research and weigh the pros and cons. In this blog post, we will give you some benefits of starting your own business and why it can be life changing if done right! 

Work/ Life Balance 

One of the biggest benefits to starting your own business is the ability to create your own schedule. Although it takes dedication and diligence, working for yourself allows you so much more flexibility than if you were to work for an employer. From working wherever you want, to setting your own hours, to wearing whatever you want while you work–who could complain! If you are someone who enjoys going to morning yoga at 10 am or you must pick up your son from school at 3pm, working for yourself allows you the flexibility to plan work around your priorities. Not only that, but if you plan a 2 week vacation in the Bahamas, you can bring work with you or even take a pause without having to consult anyone about it getting approved. Overall, the work life balance is spectacular if you start your own business! 

You Can Follow Your Passion 

Many entrepreneurs say that the long hours they invest in their own business don’t feel so bad because they are having fun while doing it. If you are passionate about what you are creating, it won’t feel like work. Not only that, but it will be like raising your own baby. You will see it grow, change, and evolve as time goes on. If you find something you’re passionate about and start a business around it, chances are it won’t feel like work! 

You Get To Choose Who You Work With 

Unlike walking into a work environment where you may not like everyone you work with, when you own your own business, you get to choose who you employ or hire. The greatest thing is, you can work with friends, family, or other business owners who you  have previous connections with. You deserve to surround yourself with people who give you the optimism and encouragement you need to move forward. Weed out the people who have a negative vibe, because let’s face it, who needs that?

Financial Security 

When you are successful in business, chances are you will be shocked at how easy it is to make money and create financial security. Given the circumstances of the 2020 pandemic, we all understand how quickly things we love, like our jobs, can be taken away from us. If you have your own business, you don’t have to worry about these things. Given, your business becomes successful, you can spend the extra money giving back to the community or shopping without the guilt. For instance, you can invest in the fine estate jewelry you were dreaming about for so long. Or, buy yourself a new wallet that you have been putting off for a while now. Point is, with more of your own money and success, you have additional financial security and freedom to spend as you wish, and as much as you want to be financially secure, your business need security like Krywolt Insurance as well.

You Can Challenge Yourself

No more doing the same mundane daily tasks at your office desk! If you start your own business, you can challenge yourself to take the risks you want. It will be filled with new opportunities to challenge yourself, sometimes without your consent! Starting a business will be difficult in the beginning, especially when you’re coming in without experience. However, human beings grow when challenged and you will learn so much about yourself through the process. You will learn something new everyday by simply having your own business! 

Insurance agreement
Legal Branding

Five Ways to Finance your Rebrand

on May 18, 2021

If you’ve been thinking about rebranding your business, there has never been a better time. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an indiscernible impact on the economy. Both individual businesses and specific fields at-large are having to pivot and change their trajectory.

Rebranding isn’t always cheap, however. Changing the name of your business, the graphic design associated with it, and all the associated products can be incredibly expensive. Still if it is time to rebrand your company, it is worth the cost. Below are five ways to finance the rebranding of your business.

Find New Investors

The first thing you need to decide is whether or not you are going to partially or fully rebrand your business. A partial rebrand is popular for companies who want to keep some of their clientele and attract new customers or clients. You can find new investors before a partial rebrand, but it might be easier to get people interested in investing by conducting a total rebrand. While it depends on what the goal of your rebrand and new version of the business are, if you are fully pivoting new funders could be interested in the new direction. It’s only natural that different people are interested in different things.

Cut Down Overhead

Another way to fund whatever kid of rebrand you have in mind is to cut down the overhead. There are a variety of ways to do this, one being to minimize your staff. You can move to new offices or inventory warehouses. Change how much of a product you are manufacturing or a service you’re providing. Move your business rebrand and marketing online. With many ways to decrease your overhead, there are probably ways to fund the rebrand that you hope will make you and your company more money and provide the ability to expand.

Take Out a Loan

Of course you could take out a loan. Loans come in a wide array of forms. Everything from low-interest business loans to one hour payday loans can be used to fund a business, but the larger the loan and higher the interest rate will modulate the risk.

Any business-owner should take into account risk and if you keep your risks low you will be able to keep going forward despite any failures. However, big risks may lead to big rewards. Loans are effective, but it’s vital to know what you are getting into before you agree to particular loan agreements.

Ask for Support

Is your business small? Are you beloved by a local community? Do you have a team that is passionate about your work and rebrand? Well then you might think about asking these people for support. Keeping your audience in mind will reap benefits. If you’re worried about the cost of rebrand, speak out about it. Be clear what’s at stake. When people truly care about what you are doing and are loyal to the management, they will likely provide their support in any means they can. Support doesn’t just come in the form of money. Think about what needs to be done and ask talented people if they can contribute to the process.

Do-It-Yourself

Which parts of the rebrand can you do yourself without hiring someone to do it? What don’t you need to buy? What can you make? You’ll be surprised how much you can save by doing-it-yourself. Put your team to use in new ways. Ask around about what they can offer the rebrand possible. Who knows what your staff is capable of? You might even find someone who can take hold of the graphics, art, and visual rebrand or someone who can reorganize your business and promote it to investors and new customer demographics.

Rebranding isn’t easy, but it just may be the best thing you can do for your business. If you’re finding yourself in a position to make a pivot, expand, and invest in the company, the process could be the difference between toiling in obscurity and taking the business to a whole new level.

The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over but there is a light at the end of this long tunnel. The economy will fully reopen, making now a great time to get your rebrand done and be ready for when people have more money to spend on your product, service, or investing in the new version of your company. 

SaaS Branding

These 3 Writers Help Your Business Stay on Brand

on May 17, 2021

Writers are essential for your brand. They share the heart of what you do and who you are with your audiences. Talented writers help every aspect of your business. While you may understand that marketing writers are valuable, did you know that technical writers and content writers are also critical for keeping your message consistent on all platforms?

There are different kinds of writers who have different goals. The goal of a copywriter is to help sell your products. Content writers communicate information that can inspire or educate your audience. Technical writers create technical documentation to help others understand and learn. Each of them are an important piece of your brand writing and can help your brand in distinct ways.

The key is to make sure all your writers are on the same page. You want them to understand the company goals and the brand voice that they should speak in depending on the types of writing they will produce. It’s also important to note that different writers have different strengths. Just because someone can write amazing copy, does not mean they are right for creating technical documents. And vice versa.  

Copywriters

If you’re in marketing, you know all about copywriters. These guys help your company sell. It’s critical that they write in a consistent brand voice whether they are creating Facebook Ads or writing an email sales series. Your products won’t sell themselves, so you need a skilled and talented copywriter to help you create sales copy that connects with your audiences in real and genuine ways.

Copywriters know who they are writing to, they understand the things that will connect with them, and they tell stories. Let’s face it, a good story can keep anyone engaged, simply because they want to know what happens in the end. Copywriters weave stories that lead customers through the sales process so that in the end your company sells more of its service or product. They are one of the many front-faces of your brand. Their messages need to be consistent.

Technical Writers

While your copywriters might be your rock stars in the company, the technical writers are critical to help the company succeed. They take complex information and data and make it more useful. If you need to create a brand manual, their skills are invaluable. Technical writers break down processes and tasks into bite sized pieces to make them simpler to understand.

If you want to create a bridge between your IT department and marketing, often your technical writers help create that connection. During a re-brand, these writers help communicate changes internally so that everything flows seamlessly. Re-brands often impact multiple departments simultaneously so it’s important to have writers who can clearly communicate those changes. Additionally, these writers would be your go-to’s for creating courses, user guides for customers and so much more. Your brand depends on good technical writers to keep the information and documentation consistent.

Content Writers

Lastly, your brand needs content writers. While the technical and copywriters have a unique niche, content writers carve out their own space too. If you want relevant, helpful, and fascinating content, these are your writers. Content writers produce pieces for websites, social media, and online stores. The explain and describe things. They understand WordPress, SEO, hashtags, and so much more. Their skills help you connect to your audience. While the goal isn’t to sell, a content writer also weaves in an element of story to help audience stay engaged.

Your brand needs content writers who can produce pieces for social media and your blog. Need a piece about writing on brand? Ask your content writer. Need a piece talking about the company history? Use your content writer. Their pieces are the connections in between the sales pieces that help audiences know, like, and trust your brand.

You know writers are valuable for your business. Your brand needs writers in each area who understands the heart of your brand and can communicate it through their words. They are the messengers and can share how your brand can make an impact. With the right technical writers, copywriters, and content writers in place, your brand will have all the writing it needs to succeed.

Legal Branding

Digital Product Development from a Marketing Perspective

on May 17, 2021

Successful companies tend to departmentalize their operations to maximize productivity and improve management efficiency. With that said, businesses can’t function if their departments can’t find ways to work together. It’s especially true when it comes to the marketing and product development divisions of an enterprise.

While it’s true that marketing and product development should function separately for the majority of the time, the two departments cross paths at critical moments. Both sections will fall short without collaboration, causing the entire operation to struggle. 

With this in mind, marketing professionals need to understand their role in the digital product design and development process. Likewise, developers, designers, and product managers need to embrace the insights and expertise provided by their sales-minded colleagues.

Customer feedback

The most helpful information a marketing team can provide product development staff is an insight into the customer’s mind. A company’s marketing department will have the data and experience to fill in the gaps about customer wants and needs. Development teams that lack these crucial resources are at a significant disadvantage. Meanwhile, marketing personnel that can’t relay their findings are failing to reach their full potential.

Competitor analysis

Marketing professionals tend to be well-versed in what the competition is offering. That information can prove vital to the development of a popular product. While many digital product developers are understandably cautious about getting too wrapped up in what competitors are doing, that doesn’t mean that information isn’t useful. It establishes a baseline, encourages creativity, and drives ingenuity. It can also teach lessons on what not to do going forward.

Built-in allure

What company doesn’t want to sell a product that drives consumers wild? While not every business will develop the next iPhone or other revolutionary product, they can take steps to make their products as enticing and exciting as possible. More times than not that involves collaboration with marketing professionals with insight into what customers want.

Life cycle refinement

Quality products are designed with their entire life cycle in mind. Given the inevitability of obsolescence, it’s easy to see how marketing plays a vital role in mapping out the life of a digital product. When the marketing and product development teams work together, the product life cycle can be refined to transition to new generations. That way, customers aren’t blindsided by the need to upgrade. They’ve been briefed courtesy of the marketing department. Meanwhile, the product development team can incorporate marketing insights into their life cycle planning.

Elevated excitement

Designers and developers need a hype man in their corner. Otherwise, some of the most incredible innovations and improvements can be lost on the consumer. By getting the marketing team involved with product development, companies can develop more exciting ad campaigns. Companies should also consider the benefits of having marketing personnel participate in the product testing phase. That way, the marketing strategy stems from user experience rather than customer expectations.

Broader horizons

Products are geared towards the target customer. But what if the target market could expand to include a wider swath of consumers? The sales increase would justify the necessary tweaks during the product development process. However, the potential for market expansion is something developers will likely need marketing pros to explain. In doing so, they help shape future products and grow company revenue at the same time.

It’s clear that large companies perform best when tasks and responsibilities are divided amongst several departments. However, these various sections need to come together from time to time. That’s because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

With this in mind, product developers and marketing experts must understand the importance of working together. When it comes to launching successful products, you can’t have one without the other.

Legal Branding

How to Avoid Becoming a Victim of Your Own Success

on May 16, 2021

You worked hard for your success, and the change is rather sudden. As exciting as this time is, you mustn’t become a victim of this success, and the following tips will help you avoid that.

Invest in Wealth Management

As a business rises in success, expenses start to increase as well. You need to keep that in mind. Just because more money is coming in doesn’t mean you can spend it. Don’t inflate your overhead because you might have to reassess your expenses. Some business owners start to invest more money because they see success. You don’t want to do this without thinking things through. In short, business owners sometimes lose focus on wealth management, which hurts them in the long run. You want to look for firms specializing in wealth management in San Diego and other cities with a high concentration of entrepreneurs. That way you find an expert with the right experience to guide you through financial success.

Outsourcing is Vital

For a long time, you had to handle everything in-house, which makes sense. You didn’t have the revenue to spend money on outsourcing, but now you do. Move things around so that you can outsource some tasks for your business. This includes things like IT services, accounting, and anything else you know takes time away from you or others in your business. Your employees’ time is precious, and you need to make sure their time is used wisely. Keep in mind that outsourcing is a temporary fix. You may need to hire people later on when you’ve got a hold of your new success.

Time Management Focus

It’s essential to put a new focus on time management for your team. You’ve taken a significant step in that direction by outsourcing some work that isn’t too important to your business, but you need to invest in time management. If your team is no longer working on accounting, they need to understand their new duties. Train your employees to focus on what matters, and let them know what you expect from them every day. You’ve got more tasks, customers, and they’re all expecting a lot from your business. If you can’t figure out how to offer the same level of products, services, and attention to all of your customers, you’ll start losing them, and that’s not what you want.

Keep Eyes on the Prize

Success could also make it easier to get your eyes off the prize. Your business has a goal, and you can’t forget that. Most successful companies focus on what they can offer customers. The value you create is the reason you’re successful right now. Others see this value and continue to come back because of it. The problem is that success could cause you to lose sight of that and make you focus on the money. You have to continually find ways to make your offerings more valuable and let the cash come on its own. If you don’t do this, what you’re offering might become less valuable, which leads to failure.

Cautious of Personal Financial Problems

That wealth management company you’re looking for to help your business should help you, too. Success can make a business owner spend more money than needed because he or she sees a little success. You have to remember that this bit of success is fragile. If you make the wrong moves, everything can come crashing down. You need to protect yourself now. The urge to celebrate in style, buy a new car, upgrade to a bigger house, and other emotional purchases gives you greater financial obligations. That success you’re seeing will become smaller if your expenses rise suddenly. Stay focused on finding balance before you do anything significant in your life.

There you have it. You have some things that could make you become a victim of your success. Hopefully, you stay clear of any mistakes and stay focused because your business needs that.

Digital Branding

Tips To Grow Your Law Firm

on May 16, 2021

All solid investments take time, patience, management, and strategy. Ideally, the more you pay into an investment, and the more you wait, the higher your return. The thing is, surrounding features of that investment must be carefully groomed. When running a legal practice, personnel, office space, equipment, and clients all represent investments.

The way you manage these time and resource expenditures for your business will do much to stimulate or prohibit its overall growth. For example, working with some clients may lose money over working with others, so it becomes important to determine defining features of the best possible clientele for your particular firm in advance.

In contrast, the location where your law firm begins is less important, provided offices have a modicum of professionalism and cleanliness defining them. In fact, in the wake of decentralization, things like Zoom are making location even less important. So in the bigger picture, location isn’t as impacting as clients you choose or personnel you hire.

Marketing is another considerable factor, and focusing on specific areas of legal expertise is wise to keep a burgeoning firm from becoming overwhelmed. Priority in business investment specialization for your legal firm is as important as the rest.

There’s much to consider. Here, we’ll cover these and other more precise tips to help get your law firm off to a great start. Let’s see what people who are already successful in this area have to say about this:

Offshore Protection

To grow your law firm or legal service business position yourself so you can capture new markets or look to capitalize on where the global or regional markets are headed. For instance, divorce rates have jumped over the last year as well as crypto. Offering services that capture some of this new market can include anything from offering second passports or asset protection services to those who have cashed in on the crypto market.
 
 
It is important to invest in young talent as law students of today will be the lawyers of tomorrow. Offering work experience and junior roles to student lawyers will enable your firm to give law students an insight into the legal profession, allow them to develop the key skills needed in the legal profession, and enable the student to make an informed career choice. Providing work experience and entry level roles to law students and graduates will also benefit your law firm as it allows you to hire the fresh new talent you need to help your law firm grow.
Work balance
SaaS Branding

Basic Pre-Launch Checklist: 5 Things to Double Check Before Going Live

on May 15, 2021

Before you land your first service contract or take your first product order, you owe it to the longevity of your business to double-check your pre-launch plans before even thinking about going live.  While it is true, a soft launch can help iron out a lot of the wrinkles, it’s still a good idea to review certain business details to make sure all the kinks are sorted before going official.

Launching a business is a serious commitment. It’s best to prepare for business success than miss details that could ultimately lead to setbacks or failure before you even get your business off the ground.  Here are a few basic to-do’s you may want to check before moving forward with opening, launching, and going live with your business.

Re-Check Your Business Name: This may seem like the most obvious advice in the book, but you might be surprised how many businesses crumble when they realize their business name, website domain, or business slogan is infringing on the preexisting presence of another business identity. You’ve likely done your due diligence and researched to ensure you’re not stepping on any existing business title-holder’s toes. But do yourself a favor and double-check your business name is clear of any competing conflicts before going live.

Get a Second Opinion on Branding: Too often an entrepreneur is so in love with their message or brand, they lose all objectivity. This could lead to big misconceptions from the public and bigger problems after going live. It happens to the biggest moguls in business. For example, Kentucky Fried Chicken once botched its famous bi-line, “finger-licking good” by mistakenly translating it in Chinese to read, “eat your fingers off.” Save yourself the embarrassment and costly mistakes by getting additional opinions about your logo, brand, message, and motto before going live.

Confirm You Are Compliant: Are you sure you’re licensed to sell your products in Alaska as well as Nepal? What about taxes, are you charging the right percentages? If you’ve hired employees, do you have proper OSHA certification for your business and the safety of your staff? You get the idea. Double-check your business is compliant with city, state, national and international standards before launching. There’s nothing worse than tasting the success of a business only to have it shut down due to noncompliance.

Review Your Business Website: If you’re like most trending startups these days, a huge amount of your visibility (and liability) comes directly through your online presence. That means it’s crucial to sandbox your business website to confirm everything is in tip-top working order.  Double-check your online order forms. Do testing to make sure the shopping cart works and payment transactions go through successfully. Check your contact page and confirm customers can message you easily to the correct email address.  Run a grammar check on all your landing pages. It might seem innocuous, but a sales page with even the slightest typos or grammatical errors can leave a bad impression which could mean the difference between a sale or a click out of your website. Have a neutral party do an audit on your business website so you can rest assured you are making the best online impression possible.

Check Your Backup Plans: Speaking of your business website, make sure you have proper backup systems in place. If you experience a surge of online customers during your grand opening, make sure your site host can accommodate a hefty amount of online traffic to your website.  Have a backup server or an external hard drive to back up all your online data so if systems go down, you have everything saved without missing a beat. If you have employees, make sure you have clear instructional manuals available showing them what to do and where to go in case of failures or emergencies.  Also, make sure you have financial preventative plans in the event of unexpected overdrafts, and always take measures to prevent cyber hacking with your financial practices as well as your online business transactions. 

All of these double-checking tips may seem like no-brainer tactics. That may be true, but you know how the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  When you take the time to double-check these business basics before you expose yourself (and your reputation) to the public, you can save your business a ton of time, money, and headaches in the long run.

Digital marketing agency at work
Legal Branding

Why Your Company Needs To Be More Flexible Moving Forward

on May 13, 2021

What was once considered strange with remote and virtual work has become the norm, and that trend may not change any time soon. 

The disruption from the traditional work model of 9-5 schedules, with everyone on-site and accessible, has forced many businesses to re-examine and rethink their office processes. While most companies were forced to adopt some form of remote work, the goal is to reopen slowly and bring staff back, in at least some form. 

Remote work proved itself advantageous over the years, plus that it’s been widespread. However, while most remote workers report higher levels of job satisfaction, there are also some challenges associated with being remote. 

Workers report feeling happier working remotely but more inclined to work longer and take fewer breaks due to working from home, which can cause stress and burnout among remote workers. 

One such challenge reported is the lack of interpersonal communications and problem solving taken for granted before the pandemic. That situation has put businesses and team managers into a bind trying to find a workaround solution to conflict resolution, problem-solving, and motivation. 

These problems and the increase in overall job satisfaction aren’t isolated to office work either. Technology, logistics, restaurants, and retail all have been disrupted as well. 

The pandemic has created various issues for the traditional model, but some sectors have an unprecedented opportunity to pivot and flourish during the transition back to a more “regular” society. 

Industries that specialize in Software as a Service (SaaS) or other digital products are well situated to build on their client base. Artificial Intelligence is another industry that has a great opportunity. 

Fulfillment Centers As The Ideal Model

Another area that business may flourish is by focusing more on remote work and less in-person structures. However, as discussed earlier, remote work isn’t a panacea. 

It should be approached with a very logical process of troubleshooting and team building, and improving team communications. Still, the opportunity exists for a company to be more flexible as things return to more “normal.”

One in-person advantage is with the use of fulfillment centers rather than traditional warehousing. With a warehouse, you have overhead and expenses ranging from property leasing, insurance, labor, and physical inventory. That doesn’t take into the equation other factors such as packing and shipping costs. 

With utilizing a fulfillment center, your business is looking for flexibility in providing your products to your customers at a cheap cost and timely delivery. 

A fulfillment center is a low-cost option to house, pack, and ship your products without adding massive expenses. In today’s instant culture, getting your product to a customer fast is the name of the game. So speed is of the essence.

With traditional warehouse models, you have to house, pack, and ship your product. Depending on the location of your warehouse, that process and distance may slow down the timeline for your product to arrive to your customer. 

Fulfillment centers are located throughout the United States, and the closer proximity to a buying customer will allow a faster delivery time for your product to arrive. 

Amazon is one of the largest and most apparent fulfillment centers, but did you know companies such as Coca-Cola operate almost entirely through fulfillment centers? 

For Coca-Cola, syrup and water are the basis of their product. These ingredients are easily operated through fulfillment centers. Coke’s move over the years to fulfillment centers in lieu of warehouses used by Coke has made them much leaner in their overhead and much more profitable. 

The businesses that can pivot and change their procedures are most likely to come out of the pandemic disruption the healthiest. 

One of the better solutions for retail or any other business that relies on physical products is to consider cutting costs on traditional warehousing and explore the advantages of fulfillment centers. 

Taking a flexible approach to providing the best customer service at the cheapest and fastest return times is crucial for businesses as they emerge from the pandemic disruption. 

For tech and SaaS companies, that flexibility is partly built-in already. Of course, not every business is as adaptive, but all should be considering thinking about their operations in an “outside the box” type of way to better position themselves for both the short-term and long-term. 

However, those companies that provide physical products need to rethink their business models and consider utilizing a fulfillment center as a profitable alternative to operating a physical warehouse. 

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