How to Improve Your Small Business: Budget-Friendly Tips and Advice

Every small business owner is on a mission to improve their business. However, in these economic times, this is proving to be quite difficult for most of them. 

Highly competitive industries – from telecoms to marketing – are very difficult to gain a foothold in. One of the main reasons for this is because existing companies (who have greater resources) are able to stay in control and prevent small businesses from successfully growing.

However, the good news is that some small businesses are experiencing success – and you can be one of them. Luckily, this guide is here to help you: and it has some budget-friendly tips and advice specifically for small businesses.

So, if you want to improve and grow your influence within your marketplace, make sure to keep reading!

Boost Employee Morale

Before implementing strategies, you need to start with your in-house and remote employees.

Happier employees are more productive – it’s a fact. If your employees are excited to get to work every day, then you’re giving yourself a much greater shot at being a force in your industry.

Of course, this raises a question: how do you boost employee morale?

Firstly, it’s important to promote a healthy work-life balance for them. You must listen to your employees and afford them flexible schedules – as this will benefit them and you in the long term.

Next, you should be looking to improve the relationships that colleagues have with each other. One of the main ways you can do this is by making the office sociable and hosting team-building exercises.

For example, many businesses right now are hosting weekly quizzes and games nights for their employees. This is a great way to take the edge off their day-to-day working lives and ultimately allows you to humanize your brand! As a suggestion, next week, you could host an online casino night for your team to join via Zoom or in the office. To get started, use this pokies app.

Use Online Advertising to Your Advantage

Start-ups and small businesses benefit immensely from online advertising. Here’s what to focus on:

• Impression-based. This includes social media ads, such as Facebook and TikTok.
• Query-based. Search ads are a very useful tool. For example, you can buy ads that will pop up when customers search for specific queries on Google.
• Direct response. Email marketing, text marketing, chatbots.

Although you may need to invest funds into your online advertising, the long-term pay-off will be more than worth it. Plus, you won’t need to break the bank when you focus on channels such as email and SMS marketing, which are relatively low-cost.

Prioritize Social Media for Marketing – Especially Instagram

As mentioned above, social media marketing is important.

Social media is one of the greatest digital marketing tools in the world. The fact that it’s still free-to-use for businesses is staggering when you put it into context. So, if you aren’t already, it’s incredibly important that your business becomes active on social media and uses it for marketing purposes. Specifically, Instagram should be at the core of your efforts.

When it comes to posting content, a lot of businesses undervalue captions.

Yes, it’s fair to say that captions aren’t deal breakers – but they certainly drive engagement and capture attention. The captions you use should be industry-specific. For example, if your business is in the web design industry, use popular hashtags like #WebDesign, #WebDevelopment, and #AffordableWebsites. Remember, a good caption can easily capture the attention of the right customers!

Also, if you use other social media platforms (which your business should), don’t be afraid to promote your Instagram on there – as it will drive more people to your feed. You can actually link your Instagram directly to your Facebook and Twitter accounts – meaning you can instantly share posts from there.

You could even promote your Instagram on LinkedIn and include it in your email signatures if you want to drive your follower numbers even higher.

Use Collaboration Apps

Right now, there are tons of affordable collaboration tools that your business can use for free (or by paying a low monthly subscription fee).

Examples include Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype, Office 365, and Salesforce.

Without these types of apps, you’ll struggle to grow.

Hire Talented Salespeople

Despite the business world going digital, salespeople are still key to getting customers and clients to sign contracts.

Therefore, it’s essential that you hire the right salespeople who have a proven track record of success. The best way to attract them is by offering enticing salaries and employee benefits.

Also, if you have salespeople that are out on the road meeting clients all the time, it’s important that you equip them with the correct tools. For example, many businesses are currently investing in affordable sales apps for their sales teams to use. Sales apps remove the need for them to use the traditional pad and paper method when speaking to clients.