Tag: Business Centre

The biggest challenge for any business owner is bringing in new customers. If you are an electrician, plumber, roofer, or in another service industry, digital marketing might not be your strength. Even if it is not your forte, it’s good to know a few of the basics. Let’s explore 5 things you can do to generate more leads for your business.

1. Stay active on social media

Social media is one of the fastest ways to communicate with your audience. It can be used to showcase your work, share testimonials or customer stories, and express your business’s personality. Use social media polls and stories to interact with your audience and get to know their wants, needs, and how you can serve them better. See how The Gerain Group, an Aussie construction company, uses social media to connect with their audience on @Geraingroup.

2. Giveaways 

A giveaway is an exciting way to encourage your audience to connect. Make the offering align with the services you offer. Giveaways can be something small like a home cleaning service or something big, like a kitchen renovation. This can help build buzz around your business and let your audience know that you are ready to serve their needs. Here’s a guide on how to run engaging Instagram giveaways.

3. Free educational resources

Having a giveaway can be expensive to do regularly, but there are ways to create cost-efficient freebies. Your knowledge and expertise can be used to create valuable content such as ebooks, how-to guides, step-by-step guides, or 15-minute consultations. Once you finalise the content you’d like to use, you can ask your audience for their contact information in exchange for your educational freebies.

One idea could be to create a checklist that gives your customer a to-do list for holding an event or planning their wedding. When customers use your checklist, they will think of you. Make sure to include your business’s branding, how your services can help and your contact details.

4. Lead generation platforms

One of the most effective ways to generate high-quality leads is by listing your business on a lead generation platform like Oneflare. The best place to find customers is to meet them where they’re actively looking for services like yours.

When you list your business on Oneflare you browse through all the open jobs in your category and service areas. You’re in control when it comes to filling your schedule with jobs that are right for you. Watch how Eric from E-team Removals used Oneflare to connect with leads to grow his business.

5. Build up customer reviews

Customer reviews are as good as a personal recommendation when it comes to deciding who to hire. People often read reviews before choosing a business. Whenever you have a customer who expresses their satisfaction with your services, you should encourage them to leave a review in places like Google, Oneflare, Word of Mouth, Facebook etc. It is also important to respond to any negative reviews promptly and positively.

Now you have 5 tips for generating more leads for your business. Finding high-quality leads on a regular basis requires time, energy, money and an understanding of digital marketing.

These are things you can do yourself, but if you’d prefer to spend more time on the tools and your customers, then, register your business on Oneflare to regularly receive genuine leads.

Every person your business comes into contact with is a potential lead, but not all leads are the same. There is a big difference between a casual browser and someone who initiates a phone call to request a quote. The latter is the most valuable customer, but that does not mean you should ignore the casual browser. Leads are like seedlings, and with proper care, even the casual browser can develop into a lifelong customer.

Here are 4 effective techniques that convert leads to sales.

• Respond quickly

The conversion rate is the number of people who find your products and services compared to those who actually become a customer. The number one rule is don’t wait to respond to an inquiry. When someone needs your products and services, they usually need them quickly. If you hesitate to return their call, it gives them the idea that this is what they can expect from your service, and they will move on to your competition.

• Listen to their needs

People only make purchases if they perceive that the product or service fills a need. The best way to convert leads to sales is to listen to their needs and then demonstrate how your product or service fills that need. Many times, if you listen to your customer, they will tell you exactly how your service can best help them.

• Prepare a well-written proposal

Every point of contact represents who you are and the type of service that can be expected from you. If your proposal is professional and well-written, it will speak volumes about your quality. A proposal that is sloppy and contains errors also says something about what they can expect.

• Nurture the relationship through automation

Automation means not missing an email sent at just the right time in response to website visitor behaviour. Automation software is a cost-effective way to respond to your leads to nurture the relationship and lead them down the sales funnel. It can give them a gentle nudge in the right direction without the need to dedicate time to personal follow-ups that might lead nowhere.

Now you know four ways that you can turn your leads into customers. Small business owners are a special breed, and they know the importance of using their resources efficiently. Many of these suggestions take little effort, but they can mean big results for your sales growth.

One of the best yet challenging aspects of running a small business is when it starts to grow. When it gets to the point where you feel you can no longer manage on your own. Hiring employees is expensive, and often, small businesses do not have it in their budget. Small business outsourcing can be an excellent choice for those who want to take it to the next level without overstretching their budget as they grow.

What is outsourcing?

Hiring external professionals is an excellent way to get the help you need without having the expense and legal obligations of a permanent employee. When you outsource, it means that instead of hiring internal employees, you can hire an individual or team of experts to take care of the everyday functions of running your business. This allows you to focus on what you do best and have a team of experts, too.

Types of services to outsource

When starting your business, you wear many different hats. As the business grows, it becomes difficult to do everything yourself, and you’re more than likely to handle tasks that are outside your area of expertise. Here are some of the daily functions that you could outsource an expert for in the future.

• Admin

The idea of hiring an external admin has been around for decades with the advent of temporary agencies. Now, you can hire an admin who can do many of the day-to-day tasks, like recordkeeping and data entry online. Hiring a virtual assistant is the new way to have the help you need only a mouse click away.

• Finance /Accounting

Finance and accounting are other areas that are often one of the first to be outsourced. It is a time-consuming activity, and even if you can do it yourself, there are many reasons why you might want to outsource it instead like tax thresholds, allowances and deduction regulations.

• Payroll

Payroll is another one that falls into a similar category as finance and accounting. During the initial growth period, you might not have a a lot of staff, so it doesn’t make sense to have a full-time regular payroll employee until you grow and have sufficient staff to make it worthwhile. You can outsource the task and only have to pay for a few hours a week.

• Marketing

Even in the early stages, hiring a marketing professional is worthwhile because unless you are a marketer yourself, it is a specialised field. You want to make the most of your advertising budget, and this is where the experience of a marketer can be a wise decision. They know how to reach your target audience with the right message to increase revenue.

Benefits of outsourcing 

If you are finding yourself constantly working long days or you think that it might be time to focus your own efforts on the core business, here are the benefits you could have from outsourcing. 

1. Efficiency

Time is a valuable resource. Firms that provide specialised services can often get the job done more quickly and efficiently. When you consider that every hour you send on a task outside the core area of your business is money not spent focusing on growing the business, the costs of hiring a contractor can be much cheaper.

2. Focus on your business

One of the main components of growing your business is that you need to spend as much time as possible focusing on your core products and services. Outsourcing certain tasks gives you the ability to do that without the expense of full-time employees.

3. Skilled professionals

The best part about hiring an external specialist is that you can benefit from industry skills in an area, while still managing to keep costs low. This is the perfect balance for the small business that needs to grow proportionally to its revenues. You can start small and scale up as needed.

4. Business growth

On average, hiring an external contractor saves small businesses 30-50% over hiring a full-time staff. This is money that you can use to put back into growing your business.

Hiring a contractor offers excellent opportunities for small business growth. It allows you to use your resources efficiently and have expert knowledge at your beck and call. If you are thinking about taking your small business to the next level, outsourcing is something you should consider.

When to outsource

One of the biggest questions that small business owners have is when they should begin outsourcing. There comes a time in every business owner’s journey when they simply do not have enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done. At the same time, many are reluctant to give up control, handing over certain daily operations to someone else.

Every business is different. You need to weigh the benefits and costs when you are thinking about outsourcing.