5 Questions to Ask Before Creating a Marketing Budget

A smart marketing budget is one of the most important things you can do for your business. However, a lot of small companies are afraid of it.

A small business owner recently brought up in a conversation saying that he wants to bring his business to the next level. Not knowing what the next level meant I asked him him to elaborate further, which he responded that he wanted more. After further probing I found out that he wanted more clients who could spend more money with him and that he wanted to do it in a profitable way.

Now the conversation was starting to become productive with a strong statement of intent, because there was a well defined objective. Our conversation after was heated and there was a sense of connection until the topic of budget was brought up. This is something all business owners / managers hate to hear.

There are multiple perspectives on having a budget. A bad perception on a marketing budget would be that having one would promote wastefulness. That is far from the truth.

An intelligent budget is the most important thing you can do for your business. It's as good as creating an action plan that would guide the actions required to accomplish an objective moving forward. It is important to figure out how to spend the marketing budget as much as figuring out how to do marketing.

Here are the 5 questions you to ask yourself before creating a marketing budget for your small business.

Q1: What are my needs?

Analysis: Do you need more leads? More sales? More people to know about your brand (also known as brand awareness)? With those goals in place you'll be able to better grasp the task at hand and to determine the actions you need to take moving forward.

Q2: What are you currently paying to obtain your sales?

Analysis: In running your day-to-day business we need to find out how much you are currently spending to obtain clients or to get people to know about your brand. If you have sales representatives the cost of their labor and benefits will be set against your new sales. On the other hand if you have a storefront in a prime address you are perhaps spending more than you need to for foot traffic.

Q3: How fast can you afford to grow?

Analysis: If you make RM 1,000 for every RM 5,000 in sales and you determine that you are willing to spend 20% on each lead for a sale, that's RM 200 you can afford to pay. Now you can ask yourself how many clients like that are you able to buy? (You can learn how to calculate your minimum and maximum ad spend budget here)

Q4: Am I able to take that risk?

Analysis: Marketing is testing. There is no way for you to know if you will indeed get 10 clients if you spend it and ultimately risk not getting any clients at all. There's always an apparent risk that you may not get the ROI you are looking for when you are marketing your business.

Q5: How do I minimise my risk?

Analysis: Before starting on your marketing journey and spending all of your money, even with you knowing that there are apparent risks involved with marketing, you should come to expect that you might fail. With a marketing strategy in place you are able to determine your maximum daily spend and you can therefore test in micro spends and hopefully it will lead you to your final objective.

Start your journey with SMS Marketing, it's cost effective and its delivery rate is 100% and direct to the consumer. Find out more information here.

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Learn The Secret to Unlocking the Content Marketing Treasure-trove

The phrase ‘content is king’ gets thrown around very frequently to highlight how important content is. In my view interactivity plays an important role and should not be discounted from the content creation process.

Interactive content is extremely beneficial for business as it attracts audience, boosts engagement, increases web traffic, and increases conversion rate. Businesses often neglect the importance of the interactive element as they are too driven to produce more content. Producing excessive content will make it seem generic and even make your audience lose interest when you see them swimming off to other competitors that are most focused on content that are engaging.

Think of it this way, if you’re planning to buy something online, what is the first thing you do? You'll want to make sure you check online to read reviews and when convinced you will try your level best to find the best deals you can get in the marketplace. Access to an array of information freely has caused today's consumers to be more savvy when making a purchase with online research taking a foothold in the decision making process before a buying decision is even made. This is different from conventional purchasing habits. However traditional recommendations from high-value connections in your network which consumers view and trust highly still play an integral role in the buying decision too. This is why ever more so you should facilitate a consumer's behavior by servicing their need for information with interactive thoughtful ideas to further enhance their decision to purchase from you.

Interactive content is the fundamentals of lead generation and conversion. It enriches your marketing plan as it elevates it to a different tier that creates an engaging experience for your customers.

Interactive content is different from traditional content as it seeks to engage and entertain its users. The mechanics of the internet and websites have allowed content to exist in different forms that can be presented in various ways.

The few common and effective interactive content are:

i) Infographics

ii) GIFs,

iii) Videos

iv) Podcasts

v) Webinars

The examples above do not represent the boundaries of interactive content. Interactivity should be embodied by creative freedom. Innovative elements with the guide of thought to engage the audience by providing an experience can unlock a lot of potential in the content you produce. Rather than taking the side of the informant, why not gamify, request for an opinion, or start a conversation, because these are some of the building blocks to making highly successful interactive content. Have your audience engage and interact with your content and you would have developed a valuable community that shares and relies on the information you recommend to them, and this can indirectly lead to better sales opportunities and strong positive brand perceptions.

Now, the million dollar question: Why, and how is interactive content beneficial?

Enriches The Appeal Of Your Website

Interactive content contributes heavily to make a website seem well-designed. We cannot deny that humans like to be satisfied visually. We like seeing beautiful things and are always mesmerised by things that are visually stunning. This is why the way a website looks is crucial in attracting and sustaining your audience.

With that being said, the thing that truly engages them is the interactive content you have distributed over your website. Interactive content emphasises more on visual elements, which is much more appealing than normal content. It enhances the overall ‘beauty’ of your website and has a higher chance in making page visitors to explore your website because let’s face it, no one would be interested in navigating through a boring website that is lackluster in its design and content.

Entices Your Audience To Buy

Interactive content grabs an online user’s attention. Furthermore, it’s extremely informative and educative. The interactive mechanism allows users to understand the product more in an innovative way, along with relevant information that drives the users to purchase.

It also important to intelligently incorporate your interactive content with your website’s call-to-action (CTAs) widgets. Delivering content that entices your audience should also be capitalized, build content so that it translates to measurable goals. By incorporating these in your strategy your audience will be more convinced to interact with the product or service in which you have to offer.

Increases Social Sharings & Engagements

When people had hands-on experience on how remarkable your interactive content is, they will surely share it with friends, either by mouth or through social media. Word of your business will reach more people, increasing brand awareness.

Keep up the momentum and provide updates constantly to entertain your audience and keep them on the hook. Utilise social media as a tool to spread the news about your interactive content and get more people to visit it.

Boosts Your Business Revenues

Successfully improving readership and website visits means that there are more people who will mostly likely end up buying your products/services. It exposes your content to more visibility and more people will visit it and experience it themselves. The increase in readers/viewership automatically translate it to higher sales for your business as the chances of people buying your products/services are higher.

Most companies put attracting customers/readers/viewership as their utmost priority because your business needs to get a notable amount of visibility and exposure in order to reach the right people that are interested in your products/services.

Interactive content is the key to acing your content marketing strategy. It drives leads and conversions, which ultimately results in the boost of business revenue. Devise your content marketing plan carefully and be sure to produce interactive content that will lay an impact to your audience.

You can find more information on how you can deploy your interactive content here through EVERWORKS unique mobile distribution gateways.

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SME business ideas: Develop an online presence cheap

Here is why you will love this guide:

It is beginner-friendly, up-to-date, fast to set up, and best of all free. :-)

Step 1: Choose the best website hosting platform.

Before you start worrying about color schemes and domain names you have to first decide what platform you are going to build your website with. 

The objective of this guide is to give to you an easy guide to building your first website regardless of what you choose to start with; well almost all of the available services out in the world today should incorporate basically the same principles.

What do I mean by a "platform"?

Back in the days creating a website required prior knowledge of fancy codes (prerequisites: HTML, CSS and even Flash) and they require a great amount of investment in time to learn and were very challenging to master.

HOLD IT! Today much of it has changed and the past has contributed to much of what is today's conception that creating a website from scratch is difficult or requires a lot of coding and design skills - but rest assured that is no longer true!!

IN 2015, there have been a plethora of content management systems (CMS) like WordPress that have been making website creation accessible to almost anyone who have an interest to do so.

A CMS is a user-friendly platform for building websites and managing your own online content, instead of using a bunch of complicated HTML pages, constructed using pure code.

Amongst the most popular website building platforms are Wordpress (50.07%), Drupal (17.07%), and Joomla (6.44%). Just from those you can see that half of the internet is running on WordPress.

Why choose WordPress?

FREE. There isn't any other reason that beats that! The other part to it is WordPress is beginner-friendly, powerful, mobile-friendly, and a massive support community. There are others too such as Drupal which is popular with web developers and experienced coders but comes with a steep learning curve that makes it a terrible experience for beginners, and Joomla which still requires a little bit of technical coding to make it work the way you want, but this works fantastic for online stores.

For beginners, WordPress is a good place to start.

You won't need to install or set up anything because in Step 2 will explain choosing a domain name and finding a great hosting plan for your website;

and in Step 3 you will be guided through a step by step process to install and customize a WordPress website.

Step 2: Choose a Domain Name & 

Website Hosting for your website.

To get a new website online you are going to need two things:

1. a domain name (www.yourname.com)
2. hosting (a service that connects your website to the internet)

As you are already aware the WordPress platform itself is free, but a domain name and hosting will cost you a fee. For a more targeted approach to your Malaysian SME business obtaining a www.yourname.com is relatively inexpensive and should cost you from RM55 onwards a year depending on the availability of the domain name.

Having your own hosting will ensure that your website loads quickly and won't go down for hours at a time (this is really important for everyone who visits your pages).

Where to get a domain name and hosting.

You can get your domain name from here and hosting from here.

It is affordable, has good customer service and comes with some good deals. When you get a domain name you will also get a personal email account(s): you@yourname.com which is more professional sounding than a generic Gmail or Yahoo Address.

Step 3: Set up your WordPress Website.

Once you have setup your domain name and hosting you should be well on your way. Now is the time to get your website up and running. The first thing you will need to do is install WordPress to your domain.

Installing WordPress.

Some hosts provide 1-click-installation. But to install WordPress Manually. All you have to do is:

1. Download WordPress from here.
2. Create a new folder on your desktop and unzip WordPress in it
3. Look for a file named wp-config-sample.php and rename it to: wp-config.php
4. Now open the wp-config.php (with notepad for example) and fill the following lines: (1) define ('DB_NAME','database_name_here'); - Database name (if you don't know it ask this from your hosting support), (2) define ('DB_USER', 'username_here'); - Your hosting username, (3) define ('DB_PASSWORD','password_here'; - Your hosting password. After you have filled the gaps, save the file.
5. Now log into your hosting ftp (download FileZilla for that). The FTP address is usually ftp.yourdomain.com, username and password are the same that you used to register your host.
6. If there is any file name "index" - delete it. After that upload all the files from your WordPress folder to your FTP server. (You should be able to use "drag n drop" function in FileZilla.
7. Once you have completed the previous steps go to your URL: yourname.com/wp-admin/install.php

You should see a form and fill it in and you are ready!

Choosing a theme/template for your website

Once you have successfully installed WordPress to your domain, you will see a very basic yet clean website:

But you don't want to look like everyone else now do you? ;-)

This is why you need a theme. Go to your name.com/wp-admin and you should be able to find over 1500 free themes, along the side bar on the left for "Appearance" and then "Themes".

If you want something more professional you could find a professional website designer or head over to ThemeForest.net where there is a really big library of themes to choose from with varying costs!

But before you do that take time to browse free themes as they are very professional.

IMPORTANT: Changing themes won't delete your previous posts, pages and content. You can change themes as often as you want without having to worry about losing what you have created previously.

How do you add content and create new pages?

Easy just look along the sidebar in the WordPress Dashboard for "Pages" > "Add New" and once you have clicked on it you will find a screen that looks a lot like Microsoft Word. Add text, images and more to build the page you want and then save it when you are done.

Adding pages is similar to adding new postings. Click "Appearance" > "Menus" in the sidebar of the WordPress Dashboard and find the page you have created and add it to the list by clicking the checkbox next to it and then "Add to Menu".

Setting up a static front page.

Some people have frustrations where they say that their frustrated that their home page looks like a blog post. You can fix that by making your home page "static:.

A static page is a page that doesn't change as the name implies, and unlike a blog where the first few new articles show up at the top every time, a "static" page will show the same content overtime someone comes to the site - very similar to a home page you have designed.

To set up a static front page:

Go to "Settings" > "Reading" and choose a static page that you have created. "Front Page" denotes your home page, "Posts Page" is the front page of your blog (if your entire site isn't a blog).

If you don't choose a static page on your own, WordPress will take your latest posts and start showing them on your homepage.

Installing plugins to get more out of WordPress

"Plugins" are extensions that are built to expand WordPress capabilities, adding features and functions to your sites.

Basically shortcuts to add to your website without having to build the feature from scratch.

How to start installing a new plugin?

Go to "Plugins" > "Add New" and simply start searching. There are over 25,000 different free plugins so you have got a lot to choose from!.

Installation is easy - once you find a plugin you like just click "Install".

Congratulations - you are ready to launch!

If you have followed the steps in this guide, you should now have a fully-functional WordPress website!

I hope you have found this guide useful.

Share this page if you like it and if you have any issues leave a comment and I will try to solve them for you!

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How to create a winning online marketing campaign

Have you come across a website and noticed it hasn't been updated for the past few years, pictures look outdated and the layout of the website isn't very appealing; giving the impression that the website has been neglected. When navigating to a competitors website it looks fresh, graphics are crisp, content is current and there is consistent communication through their social media; chances are people are likely to choose their competitors.

On the Internet you have less than 8 seconds to make an impression on a customer, and dependent on the impression you have imparted on them it gives them motivation to continue on. A website should load quickly, and should have features that can give your business scalability and flexibility, because anything less would likely lead an internet customer (potential lead) to move on before any of your carefully prepared content has been presented.

For any small business owners, the internet can be a powerful marketing tool as there is a great pull factor with the attraction of the ability to reach millions of potential customers with one advertising campaign. However exhilarating it may sound it can also be overwhelming. One burgeoning question is how do you make sure that you are seen in the thick of the crowd? Why are there clear distinctions between companies where some are very effective online, but others aren't? Like most advertising plans there are multiple methods to creating great online marketing campaigns.

Unfortunately it won't be a simple task and I won't be giving you false promises to say that it will be. Creating an online advertising campaign requires effort and dedication like most other traditional methods of advertising. 

In this article we will look into:

1. What are the pre-stages to planning required;
2. Tools required;
3. the importance of having the right management;
4. and choosing a good hosting provider.

The pre-stages to planning required before you create an online marketing campaign.

1. Before beginning any marketing campaign it is important to find out what is the purpose and goals to the campaign;
2. You will need to identify what resources are available and ready to be allocated without proving to be too much of a burden to ongoing business operations and constraining cash flows;
3. identify where your customer bases are and what habits they perform daily;
4. conduct a risk analysis on the target positions, and risks involved in the inherent venture;
5. consider the nature of your competition, and what they are doing;
6. and identify the characteristics of your product/service (whether it would be beneficial to demonstrate the product/service through video or an image?)

Develop a brand name and image before starting communications.

Develop a fixed image that reflect your company ideals and culture of your company;

combine your ideas, with your company name and logo so that you can use them in your online marketing;

and there should be a certain degree of standardization to allow for potential leads to continually meet preconceived expectations.

Tools required.

Social media - the peer pressure provided through key social media influencers adds weight behind a product, service, or cause as current users are dependent on provided reviews (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, and etc.;

SEO - this tool isn't dead and still provides a great deal of amount of relevance in your online marketing campaign, it will help greatly to have your online marketing campaign to search for on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing;

Less intuitive point - choosing the right hosting provider for your website.

Advertising campaigns and marketing initiatives however innovative they are won't be effective without a reliable central reference hub that directs all customers and leads to participate in the product or service your small business wants to sell. Choose an external hosting provider to outsource your IT needs to reduce your overall business overheads, and pay one flat fee with unmetered data transfers to avoid any surprise fees.

Final point: Track your results.

Performing any activity or task should be fully reflected upon to learn and provide an accelerated growth curve for the company in its future endeavors. Launching an online marketing campaign can be either rewarding or costly. It requires attention to detail and a great amount of planning, but the upside could extend potential company growth.

© photo by Yahoo

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Why should SMEs choose to host externally?

Technology over the years have influenced and shaped the business world. There is a large amount of users and especially small business owners that have turned to the Internet to help them to deliver some type of service or function as it is evident that the Internet can help to perform a lot of operating business activities. There has been a rise on the need for external hosting. Why? The attraction of outsourcing business activities and directly saving costs is among one of the big factors in influencing this change.

The reality is that external hosting is customizable to fit almost any budget and project - as shown through these hosting packages on offer. When working with an external hosting provider it is important to know which features you really need and how they will help your small business grow. Once these goals are aligned, the options which are on offer become very attractive to any business.

For business managers the relation in choosing outsourcing as a business strategy should be reasoned with alignment of business goals and objectives, available resources, push factor; whether there is an internal need to pursue hosting or pull factor; due to attractive external propositions and proactive environmental scanning to determine what best fits your current needs.

What you should look for when outsourcing your hosting needs:

1. a dedicated 24/7 phone & email support deployed to help you with your day-to-day IT needs. This comes with no additional human capital requirements on top of the service fee charged.
2. Unmetered data transfers; no hidden terms that would severely limit your business potential and not reflect on your investment and prove to be expensive poorly reflecting on your return on invested capital.
3. Allows you to try without fear of commitment, on offer should be a 30-day money back guarantee with no questions asked to accommodate the notion that not all services provided, although designed with good intention, fits everyone.
4. One other important distinction that you should look for is the ability for your outsource hosting provider to be able to accommodate your infrastructure extension requirements. A big misconception is that an externally hosted environment once deployed becomes an island that is independent/isolated from your businesses future expansion requirements. 

As more and more small businesses are seeing the benefits of moving towards outsourcing their complex IT needs. Your business will be able to enjoy both the cost benefits and ability to adapt to an ever changing business environment that is highly influenced by a hyper-competitive IT integrated ecosystem.

photo by © Brennan

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3 Ways To Transform Your SME Business (for Malaysia)

As Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed, Minister of International Trade and Industry highlighted in Fokem 2012 that it is evident, Malaysian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) will be a major driver (expected contribution of 41% of GDP by 2020) of the future economy. 

Today the small business landscape is globalized with growing interdependency, and one key internationalization driver is the advancement of technology, with benefits of implementation of technology, as proven by Delhaize America, an operator of grocery chains, having managed to transform its business by adopting technology through running Big Data on the cloud to study the impact of local weather on store and category sales (Forbes: IBM 2014). 

According to Ali S. Saleh, Victoria University and Louis Burgess, University of Wollongong; 74% of respondents (of a sample of 100 Malaysian firms) of SMEs surveyed, indicated that they believed Informations and Communications Technology (ICT) will improve their competitive position, and in regards to future implementation of ICT 50% of Malaysian SMEs indicate they want to do so.

Here are three ways that you can transform your SME business:

1. Adopt a data mindset to your business.

Capitalize on a hidden market opportunity. With the adoption of ICT your SME business is keeping 'on-track' as there is a prediction of increase to 43% of big data technologies over the next 10 years, with the accelerated adoption of the cloud. More companies will look to technology as a strategic advantage to successfully scaling to meet new global economic demand (Joel 2013).

2. Let computers work hard for you.

Enhance your capabilities. ICT enables your SME business to digitally perform daily rudimentary tasks by having reallocation of existing and new human capital to more resourceful positions that would potentially contribute to your SME's economic benefit. In a research, it was found that through data processing advances in the 21st century it allowed Moore Corp. Ltd. to better access the Internet for e-delivery of document viewing, e-billing, e-commerce and web design (McClatchy 2007).

3. Focus on communication.

Build reputation. Daily business activities can overwhelm, and it is easy to miss small touchpoints that can have a large influence over your business. Email, a functional product of ICT, can transform the way we work and communicate with important stakeholders to disseminate accurate information that will ensure smooth business transactions.

There will be problems and here are two that are being faced by Malaysian SMEs:

Adoption of ICT is difficult. Findings in a study by Junaidah Hashim, Associate Professor show's that adoption of ICT is difficult as this is significantly correlated to the period of adoption. However, adoption of ICT can occur over structured planed phases to ease the process, for example with Delhaize America's gradual adoption of technology eventually leading it to become a key competitive advantage. Understandably even early adoption may pose problems to a SME business, but there are structured services that allow easy adoption into ICT.

Lack of resources. On a side note, is globalization cum internationalization just limited to the 'big boys', multinational enterprises (MNEs)? The answer is no; there has been a large degree of early adoption of internationalization of 'new' companies (the SMEs) in a classification of companies known as "Born-global firms" (one example is Technico). Where internationalization is at the core of the beginning of conception of their business. High adoption of ICT allows these Born-global firms to quickly capitalize on key international markets, meet competition directly, and enhance capabilities to customers with quick implementation of innovative new methods to accommodate tight resource constraints. ICT can be expensive, but as with most industries there are competitive pricing on services that allow budget friendly alternatives to facilitating ICT.

--

Technology will be here to stay, and will in one way or another influence your business, and ultimately the decision of whether to accept technology as apart of your business or to acknowledge it only when it is necessary ultimately rests with you. Something positive you can take back from this could be that now you know you are looking for ways you could transform your SME business, and you have already taken the first step.

Photo by Yuxuan Hou

References:

Hashim, J 2007, 'Information Communication Technology (ICT) Adoption Among SME Owners in Malaysia', Vol 2, No 2, International Islamic University of Malaysia.

Joel, Y 2013, Young: Technology opens new business opportunities, Kelowna Capital News, Kelowna.

McClatchy, SJ 2007, Technology creates business opportunities, Tribune Business News, Washington. 

Saleh, SS and Burgess, L 2009, 'Factors impacting the adoption and use of ICT in the Malaysian SME sector', Research Online, Faculty of Commerce, Papers, University of Wollongong.

Note: 

If you like articles like this please bookmark this blog as there will be more similar and other topics regarding technology, business, telecommunication, and EVERWORKS related updates. Feel free to leave your comments on this topic below.

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8 New Year Resolution Ideas

The new year is just around the corner! With the new year comes many little things, such as celebrations, feasts, deals, and all kinds of good things. As humans we all want to set new goals to achieve every year, and businesses also sets new goals to achieve without any exceptions. It can be hard to determine the exact goal to go for, but everything starts with a simple question:

What does your business aim to 

achieve in the new year? 

Just to help you save some thinking time, here are  8 New Year Resolution Ideas, for any small business.

1. Learn How to Delegate More

When running a small business there tends to be a million things to do. Faxes to send out, email to reply to, accounts to settle, bills to pay, staff to manage, business meetings to attend, issues to resolve, trying to meet monthly sales targets, and the list goes on and on. This is tiring, and it has very bad negative effects on your health. Look at from this perspective, if you are laid out 'cold' for a whole week without any productive work being done, rather being slower in finishing your productive work rather than in 1 day, but in 2 days (perhaps). Your small business has staff that are paid a salary to do work for you, and these staff of yours are excited to learn, grow, and be part of your business. Giving a little bit of empowerment goes a long way. The conclusion is, delegate more and do it more often.

2. Give Something Back to the Community

Make the new year a year when you get involved in your community to give back, give a free seminar, provide free workshops, or even donate some money to a notable cause. Find something that you believe in and support it. Through your honest intentions you could potentially meet new clients, or spread positive awareness about your company. Along the way hopefully generating a large loyal following for your business.

3. Drop What is Not Working, and Move On

Having a conundrum that doesn't seem to go away? Maybe it is time to cut your losses and just move on. Some problems are not meant to be solved immediately, but rather it may be solved in due time. Drop what is not working and move on to something more productive, and potentially more profitable. Why waste your valuable resources, and time into something that is really not working? Put all of your talents and skills into something that would make money, and hopefully through that new venture, it generates more money than what the previous hold up cost you.

4. Learn Something New

Learning something new doesn't need to be limited to your industry, or anything related to what you do. It could be learning Photoshop if you are a service business, or learning engineering if you are in the design field. All of everything you learn will have a benefit in the future, like the two examples used, if you are a service business with some handy dandy Photoshop skills you could whip up beautiful posters that could be used in your advertising endeavors, and for a designer to know engineering, would also be profitable in the future when he/she wants to design anything that requires a little bit of engineering know-how. Pick up something new and don't worry about it, because in the near future, everything you have invested time into will somehow reap its rewards. How do you make more time? Well delegation works right? ;) (Not all education is expensive you can study new things here for free)

5. Set a Savings Budget

Your business is flying online with great new ideas. So hold on to your horses, because in all businesses there are always ups and downs to everything. There will be happy times and also very gloomy times. Set a savings budget, to make sure that you have a safety net to fall onto when there are bad times. 

6. Create a Spending Cap

With money flowing in and out the tendency to overspend available monetary funds can be very tempting. Consider putting a spending cap on monthly activities, and for a more macro view a yearly spending cap to ensure that expenses don't exceed the benchmark you have set. This maximizes efficiency and allows you to make critical spending decisions to ascertain whether what you spend is truly making you a healthy profit.

7. Go Mobile

Now that your business should be somewhat underway (I am assuming that it is, because you are entering the new year with a business, that should mean your business is of age). Go mobile. The mobile market isn't something that you should question its viability anymore with figures flying showing statistics that mobile is probably the new future, as consumers and customers are looking for a more convenient portable way to access basic information. Why lose out on the mobile market when an investment into it wouldn't hurt you, but just grow and expand from your current market penetration. 

8. Refresh Your Website

Your website is awesome, but when was the last time you updated it? Have new projects that you recently completed, your company has a new direction, the trend for websites have changed, and many more. These are some of the reasons to why you should heavily consider reforming your website, as your website is the face of your company in the digital atmosphere and first impressions as we all know it is a lasting impression!

photo by Harold Neal

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