As a business owner or manager you want to elevate your sales and become recognized as an established authority in your sector and you have put in the time, effort and money in order to set up your company, compounding your commitment to becoming one of the best in your business. But aside from the day-to-day operations of your enterprise and the struggle you endured getting there, there are some essential aspects that are required in order to accelerate a company from a fledgling outfit to a nationally or internationally recognized brand.
Whether you run a small or large business in anything from fashion, retail, catering, or anything in between, there are three vital things that you need to invest in as early as possible so as to capitalize on market trends, boost productivity and engage your audience.
3 of the best investments you can make are:
- Quality Equipment
- Your Employees
- Modern Strategies
Having the right equipment for the job can mean the difference between success or failure while dedicated and loyal employees that share your vision and are able to execute it will boost your chances of success and embracing new technologies such as SEO, digital marketing and social media engagement are a must-have for any 21st-century business.
Quality Equipment
The physical and internal infrastructure of any production area has a direct influence on business accessibility in the forms of input for production, labor and eventually shipping to market. You cannot run a meaningful business with faulty, defective, or simply inadequate equipment, so identifying the necessary implementation for your company’s production is key to getting up and running at maximum productivity and efficiency.
It is therefore essential that you identify all key and necessary equipment, then purchase the best that you can afford. For example, your commercial, cold-pressed juice company will require machines such as the X-1 cold press (try it out) from Goodnature that are capable of handling large amounts of raw input (fruit) that is processed by trained laborers and produces over 1,000 bottles of juice per hour. An entire shop floor of these fast and reliable machines would take your juice business from a small enterprise into a fully-fledged mass production facility.
Your Employees
Investing in your staff and treating them well might initially be expensive but the long-term gains are priceless. The average cost of replacing a salaried employee is around $40,000 which makes employee retention one of the worst financial burdens that a company can face and in the United States alone, over 40 million employees voluntarily left their jobs in 2019 as a result of being unsatisfied with their employers.
As the famous motivational speaker and marketing consultant, Simon Sinek once stated: “The responsibility of a company is to serve the customer. The responsibility of leadership is to serve their people so that their people may better serve the customer. If leaders fail to serve their people first, both customer and company will suffer.”
Modern Strategies
Even if you have been around for quite some time and you feel that your business is being run at maximum efficiency thanks to investments in infrastructure and employees, you might be wrong. The online and connected nature of the 21st century has given rise to various methods of staying active and engaging in healthy competition such as digital marketing, search engine optimization, and social media engagement.
At the very least, you should consider an SEO strategy for staying ahead of the competition when it comes to online searches as 40% of small businesses don’t use SEO as part of their promotional strategy. In addition, digital marketing using email and social media can increase sales by driving traffic to your website using various advertising methods such as PPC, automation, and lead generation. Social media is an excellent method of engaging with customers and specific metrics from analytics can be measured in order to identify and respond to factors that can influence your business.
