Includes: marketing communications, sales support, technical assistance, customer service, customer satisfaction
A big part of moving your business forward is knowledge of emerging trends and an ability to continually learn new skills as the trends evolve. This week, we’ve highlighted a few trends that are pertinent to various aspects of starting and growing your business, and have complimented them with some open educational resources (OER) to deepen your understanding of these fields of business.
When startups invest in marketing, they usually devote most of their energy to finding new customers. This makes sense: after all, fresh sources of revenue allow a business to grow, so why not try to court as many customers as possible? However, true as this may be, it’s important to remember that acquisition is simply one side of the marketing coin—and the other is retention. It’s significantly more expensive to sign a new customer than it is to keep an old one, so it’s crucial to find ways to keep your rate of churn (i.e. the frequency of customers jumping ship) as low as possible.
Have you ever had to show confidence when you felt fear or express enthusiasm when you felt anxious? Maybe you’ve used a smile or a calm tone of voice to put someone else at ease. If so, you have performed emotional labour, and you’re not alone.
Customer relations will either make or break your startup. According to Steve Blank, author of The Startup Owner’s Manual, new ventures rarely go belly-up due to a lack of technology. Instead, they fail because they haven’t found enough buyers willing to take the plunge. Customers are more than a source of profit—they also provide firsthand insight into your value proposition, allowing you to continually tweak and change your prototype until it suits your market. These four tips will change the way you think about customer relations and propel your startup toward success.
Everyone can remember a time when they had a wonderful customer service experience.
Unless you’ve been living in a bomb shelter, you would’ve seen the explosive growth of infographics over the last few years on the internet. Infographics are popular because they summarize complex information into simple to understand visualizations.
Customers expect rewards, cash back or air miles with every purchase they make - merchants, on the other hand, have fought for years to reduce 'payment processing' fees. If your business offers point of sale (POS) payment by Visa, Mastercard, Interac or other credit cards, getting informed on the pros and cons of these payment methods, and how best to handle payments received, makes good business sense.
You’ve defined the problem. You’ve created some hypotheses. You’ve looked over more industry research and market data than any sane person should ever read in a lifetime. Now that you’ve finished the necessary groundwork, all you need to do at this point is throw your thoughts on paper and you’ll have a viable business plan that will take the world by storm, right? Not quite.
Tory Braun from Okanagan Young Professionals Collective Discusses #LocalLoveBingo We are living in unprecedented times. As we all do our best to plank the curve, small businesses are forced to adapt to the new normal of physical distancing. Restaurants can no longer serve in their establishments, local bookstores are doing curb-side pickup, and small fashion retailers are quickly shifting to online-only.
A digital tattoo can be viewed in many ways (literally). Used well, it can demonstrate the best aspects of your business to a large online audience. If poorly managed, however, a damaging digital tattoo can become a serious liability. So: what is the digital tattoo of your business, and how can you control it?