Running your own business is rewarding and challenging. When you start, there’s so much to do, you’re full of enthusiasm and every day seems like a new adventure. Sadly, for many, if they don’t get the (financial) results they’re hoping for, their dream business can turn into a nightmare.
Fortunately, there are a number of ways to make your business better and make the most of the opportunities it offers. Refining and mastering your craft is one of the best.
Embrace the Power of Competitive Intelligence
5 Ways To Make Your Business Better By Mastering Your Craft
1. Know Yourself
Hopefully your business is in a niche or industry you know a good deal about, and are also on that you’re genuinely interested in. Some people will just try to go for the money and pick a niche because they have heard it was profitable. But unless you’re really interested in learning more about it, you’ll get bored – especially if it doesn’t turn into the money-spinner you were hoping it would be. Follow your passions, not just your purse.
2. Be Willing to Learn
Being willing to learn is another cornerstone to success. No niche stays exactly the same. And there is always something new to learn about marketing your business, especially when new techniques and trends come down the pipeline.
There are many ways to gain knowledge, from regularly reading top websites and blogs, to taking courses online, to getting coaching from an expert in your niche or in marketing techniques that really work. Invest time each day to learn more about new techniques and new web development. Make it a point of attending online webinars on hot topics related to your business. Being a lifelong learner is one of the best ways to get an edge on your competition and grow a thriving business.
3. Practice Makes Perfect
Practicing your craft every day is bound to help you improve it. Learning a new marketing method will not be much use if you don’t use the skills you’ve learned to get better at them and to grow your business in a whole new direction. You might also find yourself dusting off some old skills you haven’t used in a while, but which are just what you need to expand your business.
4. Challenge Yourself to Do Better
Running your own business can be a profitable path to personal growth as well as business growth. Why settle for average results when you can push yourself a little bit harder and do better.
5. Track and Test Regularly
Many business owners are not fond of tracking or testing. But planning for future success is all about data. You can work most efficiently and spend your time and money most effectively if you know exactly where you’re starting from. By testing and tracking, you can see what’s working, what isn’t, and what trends are starting to play out. And it all starts with recording where you’re at right now. Make the most of free tools like Google Analytics and Google Experiments. For example:
- Website Traffic: To grow you need to expand your reach. That means getting more traffic to your website, but also engaging the people that come to your site by encouraging them to click around and read more. Make your business website look professional and keep track of total visitors, unique visitors, bounce rate, and of course where the traffic is coming from.
- Subscribers:  Is your email list of prospects and customers constantly growing? You want to track total number of subscribers, conversion rates for each of your opt-in forms and pages, open rates for your emails, and also unsubscribes. As you start to collect and review this data regularly, you’ll get a much better picture of your subscribers.
- Customers: Subscribers are great, customers are better. Start by keeping track of how many total customers you have and how many purchases per day, week, and month. Other good numbers to look at are total lifetime value of your average customer, repeat purchases, and refund rates.
- Income & Expenses: Last but not least, look at your bottom line. This is your typical accounting data. You want to keep track of your income as well as your expenses. With those two sets of numbers, you can easily calculate your overall profit.
Embrace the Power of Competitive Intelligence
It’s the outlook, attitude and actual every day behaviors of a business owner that can make or break his or her success. A lot of people struggle because they are so overwhelmed with their workload that they literally have no idea where to start. There are always going to be tasks you love doing and there are the tasks that are dull, boring and you hate them. You might even be so bad at them that you dread them and procrastinate until things come to a standstill in your business and you start to lose ground to your competitors.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. From market trends to dissecting competitors’ marketing strategies, Embrace the Power of Competitive Intelligence to become the marketer you’ve always strived to be.