Small-Business | Oui Blog

March 27, 2018
Top Business Solutions To Grow Your Home-Based Business

Top Business Solutions To Grow Your Home-Based Business

| Computers | No Comments

According to research, a large percentage of employed people are either unhappy at their jobs or looking to quit. Having a job provides safety and security, but it can be intolerable due to the long hours, being underpaid, horrible bosses, and lack of freedom. Luckily, you don’t have to suffer forever. Starting a business isn’t as hard as it was. A home business could just be what you need to get emotional, personal, and financial freedom. However, to succeed, you need to come up with business solutions to give your home business that extra push to grow it faster and to generate more revenue. The following are a few tips that should help you get organized for your home-based business.

Have a Distinct Working Area

For your business to be successful, you need an environment that is peaceful and quiet enough to work in. Since you are working from home, there could be a lot of noises and disturbance expected from a home setting for instance from kids, neighbors, or guests. You need to find a way to work around that. You can sacrifice a room and convert it into an office where you can lock yourself in and get your work done at any time.

Get a Good Business Mobile Plan

You need to be able to communicate with clients at any time. To achieve this, you need to choose between the many available business mobile plans being offered by various telecommunications companies. There are many options to choose from depending on price, features of the plan, provider, among others. Before selecting a plan, go through its terms and conditions thoroughly to make sure you get the most minutes and data for the least price possible.

Stable Broadband Connection

In the modern world, most of life happens on the internet. The same goes for businesses. Many businesses are shifting their focus to the online consumer with some even closing down their physical shops and going online. Depending on the nature of your business, you need to have a reliable business broadband connection at all times in your home. This will help you find more customers and stay connected with your clients using social network channels. Communication with clients is also made easier, as you can receive orders, send emails, or invoices from your home.

Get an All in one Printer

When you are working from home, one of the major challenges you expect to face is inadequate space. You may be unable to fit all the equipment you need for your office in the small space available forcing you to embrace the minimalist life or find gadgets that do not take up too much space. Luckily, brilliant scientists were able to come up with a fantastic machine that combines a printer, fax, and scanner into one small device. In addition to saving your space, this machine also saves you the cost of buying the three machines separately.

Make use of Free Tools

There are so many resources especially on the internet that are free but can have a considerable impact on the success of your small business. These include networking sites, social media, or google docs. If you make use of them correctly, you can grow your business effortlessly. For instance, you can use social media to advertise your products to thousands or even millions of potential consumers for free. You can also use communication apps like Skype to interact with your clients in real time wherever they are.

Starting a home-based business does not have to be a scary decision. Many tools can help you get started and grow your business by unimaginable proportions. All you have to do is do your research and choose the best home-based business solutions that suit your unique business.

January 23, 2017

Get Started Quickly With Proven Marketing Tips

| Investments | No Comments

Some startups launch quickly but run out of gas early while others get off to a slow but sustainable start. Is it possible to combine the best of both launches for fast and sustainable results? Recent startups like TripADeal, Australian Skin Clinics and TOBCO Constructions here in Australia prove its quite possible to achieve three-figure growth quickly and sustain it year over year. Let’s look at how these companies did it, so you can apply these marketing tips for startups to your business.

1. Find your Customers, and Market with Them in Mind

Have you found a niche you’re trying to fill? “Everybody” is not an easy niche to break into even if you’ve got massive financial backing for aggressive production, marketing and sales pushes. Instead, determine the demographics that are most likely to want what you offer, then tailor everything to them from the colors you use in packaging to the style of ads or corporate gifts you employ to attract positive attention. Stay focused on your primary market until you get traction with it…and then build a huge following within it before you even think about expanding the focus. Broadening the target too quickly is a classic mistake of fast starters that fizzle quickly.

2. Build Mutually Beneficial Partnerships

Part of the entrepreneurial spirit is the willingness to go it alone, to believe in the dream when nobody else does. However, as Web Smith, now Director of e-commerce for Gear Patrol says, “While that spirit of adventure has launched many entrepreneurs, the greatest — and most sustainable — startup success stories tend to be tales of partnerships.” Smith suggests choosing partners with the same values, mission, style and target audience, and then mutually supporting and promoting one another’s online and offline efforts.

3. Brand to Be Remembered Positively

Mundane branding doesn’t spark anything in people’s brains, so don’t be dull. Choose branding logos, overall design, color schemes and visuals, motto’s and jingles with the creativity and uniqueness to stand out from the crowd. John Guidos of Chicago’s experiential marketing agency ICE Factor recommends branding that is memorable, creative, appealing to the five senses, cost-effective, quirky without seeming forced and enthusiastic yet professional. Summing up the approach, Guidos says, “The ultimate goal of experiential marketing is for the consumer to remember the experience and discuss it with others after the campaign. More importantly, the consumer should recognize the brand and how it applies to their world.”

Get Started Quickly With Proven Marketing Tips

4. Use Corporate and Promotional Gifts Effectively and Effusively

One way to brand to be remembered is to have a large supply of gifts on hand that appeal to your demographics and fit the style you’re creating and then to give them out enthusiastically. Entrepreneurs know they should always be marketing, and giving away useful promotional products like these is a fabulous way to get noticed and convert recipients into customers.

5. Give Back

People support businesses that make a difference. Find both local and online ways to give back that fit your company and will resonate with your target audience.

6. Get Noticed Locally

Let your local news outlets know about your company and how you are giving back to make a difference. They’re always looking for feel-good stories to counteract the daily dose of bad news to be reported. Toss in a few of your best promo gifts, and you’ll probably receive free and positive attention.

7. Market and Sell Online and Offline

We know offline businesses must have a relevant online presence, but If you’re primarily an online business, is there anything offline you can do to boost sales? When you go huge, you can open stores like Amazon is doing, but short of that, what are your options? Send customers samples to try. Australian companies like GoHaus (timber flooring) and Sephora (makeup) do this as a side promotion. Warby Parker, the $1.2billion eyewear store, sends samples to customers to try on as its main way to do business.

Slow Down for a Faster Start

When talking about startups getting a fast and sustainable start, we’re addressing the period after launch. The preparation phase must be slow and deliberate, a period in which you tailor these proven marketing strategies to your business. If that takes you six to twelve months longer than you’d like, keep your spirits up with the realization your company will get a healthier start with them and be far more likely to succeed as you hope it will. Be patient, get your ducks in a row with painstaking detail, and your launch trajectory will be higher and stronger for your efforts.

May 29, 2015

Top Tips For Small-Business Online Marketing

| Finance | No Comments

Small-business owners are often short of two things – time and money. So when it comes to maintaining an effective marketing strategy for their online presence, this can often slip down their list of priorities. These tips will help focus on the key aspects of the task and will help it seem more manageable. They will lead to better online presence and performance for any site.

Plenty of Content

Search engines are now geared up to scan the content of a site rather than just meta tags. Users also enjoy interesting and relevant content relating to the product or service on the site, which helps ensure they come back again and again. It needn’t be long or complex – just a few facts or tips about your product category or industry sector can be sufficient.

Stay Fresh

Search engines also track how old the content is on your site and how frequently it changes – so keeping it up to date is vital. Just setting aside an hour a week will keep it looking well maintained.

No Shortcuts

Some companies will promise to be able to get your site to the top of search results overnight. Unfortunately, the search engines know when shortcuts are being employed and are constantly fighting to stamp them out – so you may well find that you have paid for a high rank which only lasts a few weeks.

Relevant Links

Yet another element of your site that the search engines will examine is the number of links per page, as well as who your site is linking to. They do not like pages with lists of links, or links that are irrelevant to the content on a page.

Be Organized

This is important not just for search ranking but also for your users – a well structured, logical, easy-to-read site with plenty of clear headings and sections will keep everyone happy.

Make It Accessible

Everyone should be able to access your site, including the visually impaired or colour-blind. The Web Accessibility Initiative provides guidelines on this for site managers.

Good Coding

Although many small-business owners won’t be directly involved in the coding of their site, it is something to be aware of. It needs to be compliant and error-free for search engines to correctly assimilate it. It is possible to run a check on your website using online tools provided by a standards body, the World Wide Web Consortium.

Get Help

Even if you don’t have a lot of spare cash, you can get professional help with your online presence. It’s a good idea to use a fairly local firm so you can discuss your requirements face to face – for instance, if you were looking for website design in Swansea, then a quick search should bring up relevant results such as Swansea web design by Accent-ADC.

Pictures Are Key

Our final tip: whatever you are hoping to sell through your site, high-quality photographs are vital. They’ve got to compensate for the fact that your customers can’t see or touch your product in real life.

October 15, 2014

How To Develop Business In Australia

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Small businesses in Australia (and worldwide) are usually very focused on cash-flow and have limited budgets to spend on marketing and promotion. It is a vicious circle because although marketing and promotion is essential to grow the business it is difficult to find the money to spend on this until the business is already growing.

Until recently small business has generally taken out an annual advertisement in the Yellow Pages (with a cost of up to $20,000 per year), spent money advertising in local newspapers, or had brochures and pamphlets printed. Although television and radio advertising are other options the cost is generally far too prohibitive for small business.

A major problem for small business is that the traditional forms of marketing and promotion no-longer work. The Yellow Pages are rarely used any more by families or in offices, newspapers are often read on-line and people only read the bits that interest them which are not advertisements and brochures and pamphlets get thrown in the bin without being looked at.

Most people (at least those under 65) now search for all goods and services that they want on-line. They would not even think of looking in a phone book.

To have any chance of success your small business marketing must be conducted on-line, or by another means that attracts a lot of attention.

How To Develop Business In Australia

Solution

A reasonably new and very effective solution includes marketing your small business by way of the mobile phone.

This makes extraordinary sense when you consider that:

(a) there are over 6.8 billion people in the world;
(b) over 5 billion people in the world have mobile phones;
(c) there almost 22 million mobile phones in Australia;
(d) there is a 97% OPENING RATE for text messages received on
mobile phones;
(e) almost 6 BILLION text messages were sent in and from
Australia last year; and
(f) only a small percentage (less than 2%) of businesses are
using mobile marketing to increase their sales.

These statistics are mind-boggling in terms of the marketing opportunities that they present to small business. The reality is that any product or service you promote by way of a text message has a very high chance of reaching the recipient and there is no reason for them not to take action if the deal is good.

For example a real estate agent may be running short on sales stock. They get their marketing agency (Office Help Genie) to contact their list of customers by way of their mobile phone numbers with a Text that tells them that anyone who refers a client who signs up to sell their home will receive a free trip, or a dinner for two – anything at all provided that the person who signs up tells the Agent that they were referred by the person who received the text message.

This type of offer has proven to be very effective and has increased businesses enormously at little cost to the business owner as compared to other marketing strategies.
Mobile marketing works for almost all industries provided that you have a mobile phone number for your customer.

In order to make the broadest possible use of mobile marketing you should be constantly devising ways to get potential customer’s mobile numbers and email addresses.
Office Help Genie can help you develop targeted and effective mobile marketing campaigns. It will prepare Tables setting out your customer’s mobile phone and email details based on information you provide, devise marketing strategies and manage the sending of the mobile text messages. To start off, you will need to first apply for an Australian visa.

December 12, 2013

Unique Business Tips From Ancient Sages

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This is not mentioned in any textbook on marketing, but 90% of the world’s business elite are trying to stick to the rules presented below. These business tips, originated by ancient sages and transmitted genetically from generation to generation, are relevant more than ever in our 21st century. And perhaps these very tips will help you knock up a fortune.

Unique Business Tips From Ancient Sages

19 Tips To Start Following Today

  1. It is not better to come to the assigned business meeting on time, demonstrating your punctuality, but earlier, in order not to make people worry about you.

  1. Never deny yourself the desired actions.

  1. Love yourself and your new business.

  1. Your excessive generosity will not result in anything good. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be engaged in charity – just give people up to 20% of profits from your business without indemnity.

  1. Do not put yourself above others, and do not consider yourself the chosen one.

  1. Having power over others, do not forget about generosity.

  1. Do not do any good deeds at the expense of others.

  1. Do not hesitate to ask for help when you really need it, but do not abuse it.

  1. Before you stand up for your interests to the prejudice of other people and at their expense – think whether you are better than they are.

  1. Never insult anyone.

  1. Make the oath neither in life nor in business. Just answer succinctly: “yes” or “no”.

  1. If you steal, then steal from many people, not from one person. But before you decide on this, read carefully what is written above.

  1. Competition is always good, but it should not be merciless.

  1. Contrive a reward for the productive work you accomplish.

  1. Make plans not only for tomorrow. Plan all your actions and work at least for the next year.

  1. Do not think that anyone else is able to handle your work.

  1. Do not be afraid to entrust part of your affairs to other people or business partners.

  1. All your goals should be specific. The same is true for dreams; otherwise it makes no sense to put it into life.

  1. Allow a half an hour before going to bed in order to analyze your actions and deeds. And then you will find answer to the question: What could have been done better?

Strive for balance in all areas of your life: work, family, friends, business, leisure. If you heed all the tips listed above, you will undoubtedly succeed in your business. All these tips are derived from the ancient sages, who were also successful people. They wouldn’t have advised these tips without experiencing and checking them thoroughly.

September 3, 2013

Social media agency proclaimed “Rookie of the Year”

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Fishbat, a social media agency, has been proclaimed by Hauppauge Industrial Association (HIA-LI) as the “Rookie of the Year” during the yearly Business Achievement Awards.  Owing to its success in the world of digital marketing and after only two years of being in operation, the social media agency was named the winner of one of the most esteemed business achievement awards from Hauppauge Industrial Association. Every year, the organization distinguishes the most flourishing businesses on the Long Island. The Business Achievement Awards are divided into four distinct categories namely: Small Business Achievement, Large Business Achievement, Rookie of the Year and Not-for-Profit Business Achievement.

Fishbat

The chief executive officer at Fishbat, Clary Darrohn, said that they were so privileged to receive the award from Hauppauge Industrial Association. He thanked the organization for considering them in the category awarded. He added that they started the social media agency two years ago and it has been such a long way for them. He also said that they work hard each single day single day so as to continuously deliver services that are of high quality to the clients and that the award was a testimonial of how working hard pays off. Darrohn also said that the social media agency was very proud to be named Rookie of the Year for 2013.

From just a startup that only had 4 partners to one of the top social media agencies with more than 40 employees, Fishbat has risen tremendously over the last two years. The agency is one of the only unique online marketing firms offering a full-service on Long Island. Since its inception in 2011, it has improved the online existence of all their clients using effective social media, search engine optimization, video production services, web development and public relations. With the use of their avant-garde strategies for online marketing, the social media agency has enabled Spartan Race, a prominent series of obstacle course racing, to earn popularity worldwide, and gaining almost 3 million fans. After putting into practice a sampling campaign in the social media, Fishbat helped NewVo Beauty, an online supply store for beauty products, achieve more than 65,000 likes on Facebook in just two months.

Speaking after being named the Rookie of the Year, Darrohn said that the award meant so much to the agency. He however added that the agency would not have been able to achieve so much were it not for the helpful team of employees they had. He thanked the employees for enabling them win the award and at the same time applauded the rest of the nominees and winners. He added that they could all make the business community of Long Island to be successful.

Fishbat, together with the rest of the winners, will receive the award at the 19th Annual Business Achievement Award Gala Luncheon of Hauppauge Industrial Association that will be help on the Thursday 12th September from 11.30 am to 2 pm. The luncheon will be hosted in Woodbury, New York at the Crest Hollow Country Club.

July 16, 2013

Hiring For Website Design: Defining Your Purpose First

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Hiring For Website Design: Defining Your Purpose First

photo credit: liforte.com

With the help of the Internet, a lot of businesses have been able to start up and make a lot of money in a relatively short amount of time. However, those businesses couldn’t do that without successful websites. There is a lot of information available about what makes a website successful – including what color scheme you should use. What having a successful website really entails is designing the site with a purpose and making sure that what you do on your site reflects that purpose. Deciding on your website’s purpose is often the most difficult part.

In the past, websites were created to provide information. With Google searches and forum sites everywhere, customers no longer need to visit your website to figure out what your business does. They often find that out elsewhere. Your website should exist with the purpose of converting your customer and showing what makes your business different from your competition. And your web design should reflect what your specific conversion goals are.

Conversion

It’s a word that business owners use a lot, but narrowing down what it means can be a challenge. That’s because a conversion means different things to different businesses. For example, if I own a restaurant, a conversion from my website  is reflected by someone who visited my site and then chose to come to my restaurant and purchase a meal. If I’m an online retail business selling soap, a conversion for me is someone ordering a bar of soap directly from my site.

Conversions also don’t have to have a strong end goal like a purchase or visit. Maybe you’re a new business and you just want to get the word out about your brand. A conversion in that case might just be having someone visit your site or share it.

What you want from your site will influence how it’s designed. It’s essential that you’re able to communicate your goals for your site to your designer. This information will get you a much better site than just deciding you’d like a specific sort of logo design or font style.

Mobile Design

No matter what your goals are, though, you should look towards responsive design. This means making your website mobile-friendly. You can see mobile design in action by visiting some of your favorite sites and making your browser bigger or smaller. If the site doesn’t change based on the size of your browser, that site isn’t using responsive design.

Your site needs to be mobile friendly because more and more people are researching businesses from their smart phones. An eMarketer study showed that a rapidly increasing amount of American’s media consumption time is spent on their cell phones. If your new design isn’t designed with mobile users in mind, you could be losing out on a lot of business.

Coding for responsive design itself can be tricky, but there are some basic design principles you can keep in mind to make the transition to responsive design as easy as possible. Remember that your design needs to be simple. A simple design is easier to adjust to different sizes. Also, keep your content (text and graphic) to a minimum. If you don’t need it, delete it.

When you visit your designer, know exactly what you want your website to accomplish–whether that’s purchases or visitors. Have a simple design concept in mind to give your designer an idea of what it is you’re looking for. If you’re really not sure, your designer can help you come up with a design that will be easy to convert for mobile.

March 5, 2013

Rackspace’s Evolving Cloud

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CRakcspace logoloud storage has made the process of storing data more accessible, cheaper and easier to maintain for many businesses. Accessible and reasonably priced storage provides little benefit, though, if the tools and services that come with the storage can’t keep up with ever-changing technology and trends. When it comes to evolving to meet consumer needs, San Antonio cloud hosting company Rackspace is at the top of its game.

Small Enterprise

Rackspace is dedicated to “Fanatical Support.” It’s one of the company’s core values. When it comes to cloud storage, Rackspace’s tech support services are part of the package, but those services can be upgraded through the company’s Managed Application Service. With Managed Application Service, Rackspace monitors and maintains all aspects of a company’s cloud storage, allowing business owners to focus on other essential business tasks. Services are customized to specifically meet each customer’s needs, and include monitoring of:

  • Databases and servers
  • Files and storage
  • Backups
  • Networks and DNS

With Critical Application Service, Rackspace monitors only those vital cloud processes, with the basic goal of ensuring a business stays up and running. In many cases, Rackspace Managed Application Services make it possible for a business to forego an in-house IT team and virtually host any necessary IT support.

Developers

The more that Rackspace evolves, the more developer-oriented the company’s services become. Recent features that have evolved within the Rackspace platform have been geared specifically toward developers.

Open Source Code

Rackspace develops many upcoming tools and gives developers open access to their code, which allows them to offer input and impact their own services. In a sense, developers can tell Rackspace exactly how they want the program to operate, so that, when it comes time to release a product, implementation will be easy on both sides.

Sneak Peeks of Products

The open coding of upcoming Rackspace product releases provides developers with ample time to prepare for the changes in service. Often, test products are made available, which helps ensure the utility of a product before its release and gives developers an idea of how the product will work once the tool becomes available.

Free Use for Developers

With the open code of Rackspace services, developers have the opportunity to create additional tools that will work alongside Rackspace’s products, making it easy to integrate products into application design. Developers can collaborate with other Rackspace customers, and share tools created, building a strong community and many extra tools to make developing tasks more efficient.

Though the open source operations of Rackspace make the company’s cloud services attractive to developers, it’s actually beneficial to all customers of the web hosting company. All hosting customers have access to tools and services developed with input from other Rackspace customers, ensuring the company can offer some of the most user-friendly, efficient tools on the market. With Rackspace developers and customer developers throwing their ideas into the mix, it’s no wonder Rackspace is advancing its hosting services at a rate envied by others in the marketplace.