Starting a business is something that nearly everyone dreams about at some point in their lives. It is easy to understand why. You can be your own boss, choose your own hours and get to do what you want in life.
However, if everyone dreams about it, why doesn't everyone try it? Well, running a business takes a lot of time, energy and money, with no guarantee it will ever actually work out. In fact, stats show that more than half of new small businesses fail within the first few years of operation. However, knowing why your business is struggling isn't always easy.
With that in mind, this article is going to look at some reasons why your business could be struggling or failing.
1: Your Customer Service is Lackluster
Even if you offer a great product and a decent price, if your customer service is rude, unhelpful or just uneducated on good practices, your company could struggle. Gone are the days where a simple email response after a few days or making someone wait on hold for hours is considered acceptable.
Instead, customers want an accurate and helpful answer or response quickly. If you cannot provide them with that, they will go and find a company that can. Thankfully, there are many tools that can take your customer service skills to new heights like live chat functions, AI-powered responses, remote administration software and more.
2: Your Pricing Isn't Right
While pricing isn't the only thing a potential customer will look at in regards to your product or service, it is among the most important. You cannot just put a price on your product that you think it's worth. A considerable amount of research needs to go into deciding your pricing. The first thing to do is research the price of your competitors and base your decision on what you find.
It doesn't need to be the same price, especially if you have a superior product, but should at least be competitive. If it's too high, people will not be able to afford it and will look elsewhere. However, if it's too low, they might think you do not have confidence in your company.
Next, you need to try and test your price with your target market to ensure it is something that they are receptive to. If your pricing is equal to others but you are still not gaining traction or market share, it could potentially be worthwhile to lower your price in hopes of gaining share that way. But, that can be risky. Experimentation is key when it comes to pricing. So, do a lot of tinkering before officially coming out at a certain price.
3: You Are Not Using Social Media
Social media has seemingly taken over the world over the past half-decade or so. There are now well over two billions people using social media. This growth isn't supposed to slow down anytime soon. While social media is a great way to keep up with news, pop culture and see what your friends are up to, it is also an extremely valuable tool for businesses.
Social media allows you to connect with your customers on a personal level, and interact with them in a manner not seen before. Social media can also help you market your product or service, help you research your target market and so much more. If your company (no matter how small or local) isn't on social media, that could be a surefire way why you are struggling.
Hopefully this blog post has helped you potentially identify the reason(s) why your small business might be struggling. Of course, these aren't the only ways.
4: Not Using SEO for Lead and Sales
Many businesses around are struggling around to generate potential leads for their business because they are just limited to traditional way of business promotion. Many organizations have drastically increase their sales by just using Search Engine Optimization, which helps generating more leads for your business.
I have two sweet shops near my home. One of them started taking orders online. To promote his business in search engine, took the services of a SEO company. After some time, his business site started ranking on few local keywords which increased sales of his sweet shops. Now people find his site ranking for a particular term and go to his website and order delicious sweets.
On other side, the shopkeeper who still relies on traditional way to business promotion, just see his competitor raising his sales.
It's the time to take advantage of each relevant mode that can increase sales for your business. Being a business owner, you should invest in SEO, because it can improve the sales graph.
Still many shopkeepers are not having their websites which can list be listed over search engines. You can take advantage of it. Build your business website first. If you already did then use the SEO to increase sales.
Whether you are running an online or offline business, you need to learn managing business efficiently. I have seen many businesses that wiped out from the market just because of miss-management.
You need to manage everything that comes under your business like money, employees, order delivery, inventory, account books, etc. Create a system that will connect each department internally. This system should work perfectly when you are out of city.
When you manage everything then business starts making profit. You can cut the unwanted expenditure which are not adding any value back to the business.