It’s becoming harder nowadays to run a profitable business after its structure has already been setup. Costs go up constantly, customers and other relationships demand more, and new tools are required to keep the feel and look of a modern, trustworthy, and lucrative business.
However, you can find simple ways to increase the business bottom line. How to run a profitable business often starts with the name.
Naming your business
Take the time to choose your name. You already have one as you currently run it. Ask yourself if this is the right one if this appeals to you, and to your current business relationships. Does it attract new customers, new lucrative relationships? If you’re in doubt, it’s time to find a better name for your business.
The reasons are fairly easy to spell out:
- helps to present a more attractive “face” to the world
- assists promoting your company by choosing an appealing domain name for the website; if you already have a domain name that does not match your business name, rework it to synchronize with your advantage
- ensure that it protects you by having a different name than all other entity names registered in the province
Once your name and the domain name is clear, this is the perfect time to look at your online presence.
Your Web site to run a profitable business
Your website might be up and running for a while and even bring in customers. Have you asked how do you actually measure how much business it brings you? When you run a profitable business you’d ask a few questions to help increase your business from the website:
- “Do I have something in place to find out where my new customers come from?” (it could be a simple question to ask prospects where they know about you)
- “Do I have a form on my website that asks for a name (it could be the first name only) and email in exchange for a goodie?” The goodie could be access to something that you have, it’s valuable, and you’d throw it in with a promotion, or it’s simply some tips or convenience that your audience would appreciate.
Different tools that could be on your website are attractors of how to run a profitable business and so are your emails to your audience.
Email marketing best practices
At some point, decide to send regular messages to your customers and prospects. This is how you keep them informed. Here are a few ideas on how to do it efficiently:
- preview your email before sending, check for spelling mistakes, grammar, and wording. Is your message powerful enough? Give it to others to read, if time permits or only to another co-worker for his /her opinion
- track links and open rates. It’s important to know if 5% or 25% open them. Usually, it’s not a high rate of opening, however, if it’s below 5% you might reconsider your emails’ content.
- avoid spam and build a clean list. In this case spam means that your content may not be relevant, consistent to your brand. You’d send the emails from your business email and spam filters check for certain types of content, including emoticons, hearts, lots of exclamations points. Your clean list includes people who have confirmed to receive your emails. At the bottom of each message it’s mandatory to include an “unsubscribe” link.
Just applying these few tips, you’d be well on your way to increase the number of prospects, raise your revenues, and run a profitable business.
Need help recreating your website? Connect with iQweb Solutions specialists to help revamping your online presence and answer any questions you might have.