Author: Pamela Swift

Categories
Sales & Marketing

How businesses benefit from translation services

It is evident that websites with multiple language options reach larger audiences; the more languages there are available, the more likely it is that an individual can understand and navigate the website. In line with this, businesses can benefit from translation services in terms of international collaboration as well as customer-base growth: making key information easily accessible to other businesses globally can be a pathway to new partnerships. The partnerships themselves can introduce benefits such as access to foreign equipment, infrastructure and sharing of costs and risks on new projects. 

Topcontent is a prime example of a content agency that offers writing and translation services. They can produce content and translate texts in over 15 different languages for customers. With an efficient content order and delivery system, including automated publishing, their translators approach tasks in a quick, yet methodical manner.  

Human translators, as opposed to machine translation services, ensure unique, tailored translations that can appropriately present the original content in a way that suits the new target audience.  Sometimes certain aspects of websites or texts cannot be translated directly, as cultural factors may dictate that what is deemed appropriate to one audience is not appropriate to another. Both big and small businesses can benefit from this; whether there is a large or niche customer base, the text or website needs to read well in every language it is available in. A poorly translated website looks unreliable and can be difficult for both existing and potential customers to navigate. 

People appreciate commitments to inclusion: translations eliminate any discomfort or disagreement that may stem from being unfamiliar with the content due to misunderstanding the language used. This can be timesaving for business interactions and ensures that anyone can access any necessary information.

Businesses benefit from the greater engagement, guaranteed quality, and recognition of cultural differences that professional translation services can offer.

Categories
Entrepreneurs

Dr Thomson Mpinganjira: Business Growth and Sustainability

Company growth is a principal concern in establishing any business venture. Nevertheless, not all business leaders know how to foster this effectively.

Growth involves much more than just speed and momentum. It is about creating a firm footing upon which to support the business to come. Not everyone is successful in this. Even savvy entrepreneurs can struggle.

Mitra Mahdavian, a partner at McKinsey, recently spoke on the key differences between high-growth companies and their slow-growing peers. She outlined two strategies that are particularly important in driving growth: focussing on people and investing in sales engines.

Through a series of interviews and surveys, McKinsey discovered that almost 50% of fast-growing companies invest significantly in training sales teams, compared with 29% of slow-growing companies. Smart business leaders recognise that their company can only grow as fast as its sales department can sell its products. They recognise that the best way to increase sales is to invest in the people that drive them.

Increasing sales is about more than just hiring more personnel. It involves analysing an existing sales team and making it more effective. Simply throwing money the problem is inefficient; the key to faster, better growth is understanding what internal investments are necessary to help the company grow.

In this digital age, big data is a vital tool in helping companies get ahead of the competition. The most successful sales teams are three times more likely to rely on analytics than their under-performing counterparts.

Simply throwing data at a sales team is not the answer. The key is to develop a new, data-driven sales team from the ground up. Diving in at the deep end is unlikely to be effective, but organisations can reap huge gains by transitioning to data-driven sales via a series of incremental steps:

  • Promoting Cohesion: It is important to be specific about overall company goals. Sales teams need to know their role in achieving these objectives. Key performance indicators serve a critical role in letting them know they are on the right track.
  • Assessing the Sales Process: This is an important opportunity to correct any sales process flaws; streamlining processes in line with prioritised sales goals, implementing changes slowly and monitoring them closely to minimise disruption.
  • Utilise Existing Data: Before gathering new types of data, it is vital to analyse information already gathered. According to Forbes, one Harley Davidson dealership increased sales leads by 3,000% simply by acting on data they already had.
  • Consider Data Quality: Not all data is good, or even reliable. Data that is riddled with mistakes or lacks integrity actually sets sales teams back.
  • Automation: Automating certain tasks can be of vast benefit. Automating aspects such as data entry and other mundane tasks frees up sales teams to focus on what they should really be doing: selling the product or service.
  • Analytics: With all of the previous steps in place, it is much easier to track sales progress and analyse conversion rates. Effective analytics helps companies pinpoint where they are doing well, facilitating replication of successful sales cycles and flagging up any potential issues.

Where implemented and utilised properly, predictive analytics technology can have a transformative effect on sales. Nevertheless, the first step in upscaling sales efforts is investing in sales staff.

As the founder of FDH Bank, Dr Thomson Mpinganjira is one of the most prominent Malawian business leaders of his generation. With a keen eye on sustainable growth in all of his operations, Thomson Mpinganjira devotes much of his time to thought leadership, inspiring aspiring entrepreneurs across Malawi by providing the next generation of homegrown business leaders with practical advice, tips, and motivation.

Categories
Online Business

How to Improve Your Ad Campaigns CTR

If you are a marketer, you know that as your click-through rate (CTR) increases, your cost-per-click will probably start to drop gradually. So, to successfully pull off an effective ad campaign strategy and boost your online sales without spending way too much money, you need to understand how to improve your CTR, to make your ad campaign strategy get to a whole new level.

Below are some of the best ways you can immediately use it to increase the clicks and overall CTR of your ad campaigns.

  1. Write high-converting ad copy

Of course, to be able to improve your ad campaign’s CTR, you will need to create a compelling ad copy. To begin, you have to use relevant, powerful keywords that will make your ad stand out. You can also include unique offers, special promotions, discounts, free trials, or basically anything that will set your ad apart from your competitors.

Bottom line, your ad copy alone should already contain selling points that will urge your potential users to click on your ad instead of your competitor’s.

  1. Use ad extensions

One of the most common ways to improve your ad campaigns CTR is by using relevant ad extensions. Currently, there are ten types of ad extensions. Naturally, not all of them may be applicable to every campaign; nonetheless, these are all proven to be effective tools in making your ads appear more relevant, thus an excellent strategy to improve your ad campaigns CTR.

According to a recent study, review extensions, for example, increase clicks by up to 66%, and almost 90% of users rely on online reviews to make their buying decisions. Additionally, promotion extensions allow you to highlight discounts, exclusive promos, and deals that will be displayed beneath your ad and are likely to help increase the number of people clicking on your ads.

  1. Conduct split test 

Testing different ad types can help you determine which one actually generates more clicks, thus has the ability to improve your CTR and at the same time also improve the quality of your ad. Split-test is done by creating at least two different types of ad campaigns with varying elements, which you will then analyze to know which one gets more clicks and better results.

After finally getting satisfying results and deciding which ad campaign is more effective, don’t forget to switch off the least performing one; otherwise, you might end up with too many ad campaigns that can adversely affect your CTR.

  1. Redirect your ad to a relevant landing page

Many online marketers tend to make a mistake by linking some of their ads to a generic homepage that does not specifically match with the search content. To be able to pull off a high-converting ad campaign successfully (whether you’re using traditional PPC platforms such as Google Ads or focused on lead generation ones such as CPL One), you need to make sure that your ad matches the landing page that the users will be redirected to. Remember, in improving your ad campaign’s CTR, relevance is always the key.

Categories
Entrepreneurship

Defining Your Ideal Career Using an Effective Step by Step Model

Defining your ideal career path is a pretty daunting prospect. We spend large chunks of our lives at work, so we want to make sure we pick something rewarding and enjoyable.

Whatever you decide upon, it’s not set in stone, and there are lots of people who end up doing something completely different to what they expected – and love it. When it comes to making this huge decision, though, fortunately, you don’t have to struggle alone. There are many effective step by step models that exist, which you can follow systematically. In this guide, we will take you through one such example. By following this, by the end, you should start to be forming ideas on exactly what it is you are destined to do in your career and how you can achieve it.

Step One: Get to Know Yourself

We live with ourselves 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, and yet, we don’t often take time to look at ourselves in detail.

What are the things we enjoy, how do we work, what makes us tick, how do we communicate? These are all valuable things to know about ourselves, and when we understand them better, we can better understand what kind of careers we would be suited to, and most importantly, enjoy.

Understanding yourself isn’t easy, and it’s something that takes time, which is perhaps why it can take people much of their careers to find the job they truly love. However, by actively thinking about these things, you can give yourself a head start.

Step Two: Think Career, Not Jobs

No matter how well you plan, the journey never looks exactly how you expected it. If you asked many people, they would probably tell you they would never have expected to end up in the job they’re in, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

If you focus in too narrowly on a certain job, then you might cut yourself off from other opportunities that present themselves. Instead, if you take a more macro view of things and focus on careers more generally, then you’ll be more open to the different opportunities that present themselves throughout your journey.

As you progress further through your career, then you can start to focus in on certain jobs and positions, but make sure you’re never limiting your ambitions.

Step Three: Prepare for the Future

Imagine you wanted to build cars in the 1900s, and you got yourself your ideal job in a car manufacturing factory. You get to work with your hands, put things together, and work as part of a team to build an amazing piece of machinery. Not many years later, though, machinery starts to take over many of the processes, and suddenly you’re left with a job that looks very different to what you expected.

The world changes very quickly, and just because things are done a certain way today doesn’t mean they will continue to be the same in the future. Another great example of this is in nursing. The role of the nurse has changed greatly over the years and continues to do so. The healthcare industry is going through changes, and nursing is adapting to meet new challenges.

This is why you need to always be on the lookout for the trends of the future. It’s impossible to predict exactly what’s going to happen, but if you take an interest in your industry, then you can prepare yourself for the changes that might occur.

Step Four: Money Isn’t Everything

Money is important; it’s something we all need. However, when you’re choosing your career it shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all. You’re going to spend huge portions of your life working, and if you don’t enjoy what you do, those hours are going to feel much longer.

People who love what they do often tend to do it better as well. Just think about it; it’s much easier to learn something if you enjoy reading about it.

So, making sure you enjoy your chosen career is something that’s well worth putting time and effort into. Money will always be a consideration because we need it to live, but it shouldn’t be the only thing to think about.

Looking deeper into your career path

It is at this point that you should have a better idea of what career path you want to go down, but how do you know if it is the right one, and how can you then achieve it?

Step Five: There’s No Substitute for Experience

How often do you meet someone who had a dream, only to realize when they achieved it that it wasn’t what they expected?

The nice thing about choosing your career is that is always a good idea to get some experience before you make any commitments. Of course, if you want to be a surgeon, they’re not going to hand you the scalpel just so you can find out if it’s your perfect career, but you can get practical experience in the healthcare industry that can give you a feel for things.

If you think a certain career is the route you want to go down, then try and get some experience and see how it feels. It might confirm the fact that this is the ideal occupation for you, or you may find you hate it. Either way, you’ve learned something useful.

Step Six: Invest in Your Education

Sticking with the previous example, once you have had experience working in a hospital and you know that this is the right career path for you, the next step will be to make sure that you are investing in the right education. As we mentioned previously, nursing is one of those industries that constantly changes, and requires expanding responsibilities and new skills. However, by following the model systematically, you will already know this and, therefore, be on the lookout for the right course you need. In this instance, to kickstart your nursing career, before you take a relevant nursing degree, you will know that it would benefit you to first take an online MBA in healthcare administration. In a course such as this, you will gain more skills and be able to undertake more responsibilities, such as understanding the US healthcare system fully, opening up the opportunities to you in the future. Investing in the right degrees can make such a difference to your career.

The same is true for many careers.

Step Seven: Accept Guidance

There are lots of people out there who can help you with your journey, so make the most of it. Navigating yourself through life is difficult enough, but it’s even more difficult to do it on your own, so seek advice from the people you trust.

Not everyone’s advice is going to be right for you, but if you take it on board and analyze it, then you can do with it what you want. You are your own person, and ultimately the decision is up to you, but that shouldn’t stop you from taking on board other people’s opinions.

It’s not always easy to find help in life, so if people offer it to you, then accept it.

Categories
Business Ideas

Good Business Ideas You Should Know

Entrepreneurship is one of the best things you can do in life. There is a tremendous wealth of ideas out there that you can use to build a better future for yourself and your family. Entrepreneurship allows that freedom for you and everyone else. Entrepreneurship is when you create a company that provides goods or services to other people.

Many great business ideas will be helpful to you whether you are selling sports equipment or you are creating a medical supply company. Either way, certain entrepreneur principles will hold true no matter what. It is critical to understanding the principles so that you can come out ahead in the entrepreneurial game. These principles mean the difference between finding a lot of success for yourself and ultimately failing. Depending on where you want to go, you have to make the right choice for yourself and those around you.

Understanding Your Sales System

One of the first things that every business needs to do is to make sales. Without this simple fact, you will never have a successful business. You need to have a lot of customers to buy your goods or services. That means, to be a good business owner or entrepreneur, you need to have a system for getting sales. It is the most important part of your business. It is even more important than the people you hire and other factors that decide whether your business will be successful or not.

One thing you cannot do in business is to not get sales. Your business will never survive like that. You need to continuously make a lot of sales to pay for all your costs. This fact is one of the things that most people don’t understand about business. They get started with the business and do things that look like work but mean nothing. Things like buying business cards, for example, don’t do anything for your business. They are meaningless work since they achieve nothing.

Finding Customers

Once you have a sales system, you have to have a marketing system as well. You need a way to find the customers wherever they are. You also need a method for identifying those customers so you can get them to you. Finding and then being able to sell customers will help you grow your business. Nothing else offers the same power as these two skills. Being able to reach people and then getting them to give you money for a good or service is what it means to be a good entrepreneur. The best entrepreneurs in the world have this power. They can get you to buy what they are selling by offering a persuasive argument as to why this thing will help you. You need to be able to do that for yourself to achieve the same goal.

Using the Power of the Internet

Another significant development that is essential to entrepreneurs is the internet. The internet allows you to communicate at the speed of light with millions of people from around the world. It also enables you to sell goods and services from the comfort of your home. The internet has made commerce one of the fastest-growing areas of the world. It has also enabled the transmission of knowledge at the speed of light. With all of this information, you can do many things you would otherwise not have been able to do in the past. It takes entrepreneurship to another level and enables you to build businesses in a new way. Taking the power of the internet into consideration, you can do a lot more today than previously.

Why Entrepreneurship is the Best Decision for You

Ultimately, all these technologies and techniques mean that entrepreneurship is the way to go. You can harness the best sales system and the internet to produce great results as an entrepreneur. These ideas are profound in their simplicity. They allow you to build your business to greater heights than ever before. For the people looking for a different perspective, entrepreneurship is something that will get you the results you want in all areas of life. Entrepreneurship is also something that is easy to get started with because of modern technology. The world of entrepreneurship will continue to grow and improve as technology changes.