When it comes to business, there is no recipe for quick success. Running a business, especially in these unprecedented times comes with a lot of hard work and many hours put into making the business a success.
Companies all over the world have had to pivot their operations and businesses to cope with the challenges thrown at them in 2020. Millions either took a large financial blow during the course of the year or crippled under the strain that the COVID-19 pandemic put on them.
If you are either running a company, or have started a new company, and are looking for ways to ensure profitability and success in 2021, we thought we would help you out. We took a look at ways that you can turn your business around in 2021 and start making a profit.
Get In Some Professional Expertise
Running a business is a full-time job, and you will need to wear various hats to fulfill various roles at the same time. This being said, you cannot do everything yourself. In order to run the business successfully, we highly recommend that you bring in some experts in various fields to assist you with the more intricate parts of the business.
One of the first fields to look into is professional business coaching. Even with vast educational backgrounds, many entrepreneurs find themselves overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of running a successful business. We highly recommend seeking out business advice from an accomplished coach. Not only do these coaches streamline your business strategy, but they help you focus your energy on vital processes to increase leads and drive sales to your business.
We can also highly recommend hiring professionals to deal with the more process-heavy parts of your business. As an entrepreneur, you should be spending your time on the bigger picture of your business.
Things like content generation, design, web development, and accounting can be outsourced to professionals in the field. There are millions of freelancers worldwide providing their skills at affordable rates and remotely. You can easily get in contact with the right freelancers on various sites like Upwork or Freelancer, work out a budget and ensure the work is being done.
This will allow you the time to focus on the actual running of the business.
Spend More Time on Your Social Media Strategy
Social media is certainly one of the biggest digital marketing tools your can use. Take some time to understand your audience before you launch into your strategy. Go through a customer profiling exercise. Here, you can map out the general demographics and characteristics of your audience, but also their behaviors and interests.
By having this knowledge, ie. general age group, location, and what their general interests are, you can mold a social media strategy around this information.
Plan content in advance. Set out a strategy that will span over the course of the year, keeping key days in mind (like the festive season, holidays, celebrations, etc.) and flesh it out monthly. Plan posts around new launches, special discounts, or trending topics and products.
Social media can be highly resource-intensive. You need to carefully map the right content, as well as have the appropriate media to go with it. Social posts also need to be scheduled to go out at a certain time. For example, the best time to post on Instagram might not be the same as what is optimal for Facebook, so make sure you do some research into that, and also test it from your side to see what time works best.
Lastly, keep an eye on what your competitors are doing on social media, as well as what other industries are doing. Do not duplicate, as this can be picked up really easily, but keep up with what is trending. Stories on both Instagram and Facebook can be highly effective, for example, but will need to take a less formal format than the actual posts.
Pivot As Much As You Can Online
2020 showed the world that brick-and-mortar stores are highly at risk for economic fluctuations and that the world of digital is growing at a more rapid rate than previously thought. In fact, most eCommerce retailers reported significant growth during the COVID-19 pandemic that swept the globe. The unprecedented times created an influx of need for online shopping which will likely only increase over time.
If you don’t already have an optimized website with a blog, now is the time to get started on that. It is key to optimize each page and spend time on streamlining the customer journey. From the minute your customer enters your site, your goal is to convert them.
SEO is key for your site to rank on the search engines. If you cannot handle the full SEO exercise yourself, we highly recommend that you bring in an agency or expert who can help you. But the first step is to do keyword research and start ensuring that your keywords appear on your site.
Google regularly scrapes sites to ascertain where to place them and how authoritative they are in the field. Pacing your keyword use will help Google place your site on the search result page so that you can be found by potential customers.
The next stage is to optimize your product pages and ensure that your sales funnel pushes the customer through to payment and reduces cart abandonment. Everything from your page layout, content, images, and CTAs need to be optimized for heightened conversion rates.
Educate, Entertain and Empower Your Customer
Content, whether on your site, on your blog, or being shared through emails and social media should be valuable for your customers. You can use the content as a key tool to not only reach new audiences but to convert them into loyal, paying customers.
Let’s take an example. Say you are an organic food store. Writing blog articles to post on your site on ‘5 Ways to Lose Extra Weight During Lockdown’ or, ‘Maintaining a Healthy Diet When Becoming Vegan’ will be articles that your customer will want to read. Not only will they learn something from it, but you can include links to products that you are selling to increase your conversion rate.
This highly educational content works in several ways. Firstly, it increases your SEO rankings. The keywords in the article will be scraped by Google and search engines and you will be ranked accordingly, making it easier for people to find you.
Secondly, interested potential customers who are searching for the answers will stumble across your site, find the solutions they need and hopefully become paying customers. Lastly, these customers can become loyal, returning fans. With the educational content that you are posting, you will be seen as a leading expert in the field, and customers will learn to associate your brand with the knowledge that they are gaining.
Last Thoughts
There are a number of ways to increase the profitability of your business in 2021. Whether putting more money in your marketing efforts, expanding your service or product offerings, or pivoting your business operations online. The key is to keep up with your customer’s expectations and know what they want and when they want it.
