Category: Business Trends

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Business Trends

7 Ways for SMEs to Grow Sensibly

The number of small businesses and SMEs has grown exponentially in recent years, and many are eager to grow further and monetise their success. However, it’s important to remember that growth isn’t a race – it’s a journey.

Growth needs to be approached strategically and sensibly if it’s going to be sustainable and profitable. If you’re an SME looking to expand, here are seven ways to ensure you’re growing your business sensibly.

1. Make sure you’re ready

Before you start thinking about growth, make sure you’re in a position to take the next step. Ask yourself some questions:

• Is your business model working?
• Do you have a stable customer base?
• Are your finances in order?
• Have you identified your strengths and weaknesses?

Growth should be based on a solid foundation, so make sure you have all the pieces in place before expanding.

2. Set realistic goals

Once you’re in a position to grow, make sure you set realistic goals. It’s all too easy to get carried away and promise too much, but this can be damaging in the long term.

Be realistic about what you can achieve and set realistic milestones. This will give you something to aim for while ensuring you don’t over-extend yourself.

3. Take your time

It’s important to remember that growth doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to build a successful business, so be patient and focus on the long term.

If you’re in a rush to grow, you could end up making mistakes that could have been avoided. Take your time and make sure you get each step right before moving on to the next.

4. Invest wisely

You will inevitably need to invest in order to grow. But don’t just throw money at the problem – make sure you invest wisely.

Think about where your money will have the most impact and look for opportunities to give you a good return. The last thing you want is to waste money on something that won’t add value.

You should also think about the side effects of investing. For example, when you do grow, you’ll incur ‘indirect’ costs such as additional insurance premiums. Make sure you’re well on top of your numbers before progressing.

5. Monitor your progress

If you want to grow sensibly, it’s important to keep track of your progress. This will give you a good indication of whether or not you’re on the right track.

Create a system that allows you to track your performance and adjust your strategy accordingly. This will ensure that you’re always making the right decisions and heading in the right direction.

6. Stay agile

Growth is an iterative process, so it’s important to stay agile and be prepared to adjust your strategy when necessary.

If something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to change it. Don’t be scared to make mistakes either – this is how you learn and grow.

7. Seek advice

Finally, seek advice from those who have been there before. There are plenty of resources available to SMEs, so make sure you take advantage of them.

From mentors to industry experts, plenty of people can give you advice on the best way to grow your business. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for help.

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Business Trends Entrepreneurs

12 Apps Changing Shopping Culture Forever

These genius shopping apps makes shopping with a mobile phone easier than ever.

  • The latest mobile app technology is turning smartphone users into smart shoppers.
  • Mobile shopping apps can help you save money and time, and alert you to hot deals on the items you’ve had your eye on.
  • Digital wallet apps, such as Android Pay and Apple Pay, simplify the checkout process, and they are accepted at hundreds of retailers nationwide.
  • This article is for smart shoppers and business owners who want to generate new leads and attract new customers.

Mobile shopping doesn’t just mean visiting a retailer’s website and making purchases on a mobile phone. The latest mobile app technology is turning smartphone users into smart shoppers as well. Here are 12 apps at the forefront of technology and shopping.

1. Instacart

Instacart has become a favorite of consumers because of the same-day grocery and product delivery option. Consumers aren’t limited to grocery stores; they can choose from various other retailers, such as CVS and Walgreens. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many consumers turned to grocery delivery to avoid public spaces. What many found was that grocery delivery is an easier way to get the household food shopping done.

2. Savings.com

Savings.com offers access to coupons and deals across many of the most popular retailers in the U.S. From Shein to Home Depot to Macy’s department stores, Savings.com offers consumers wide range of deals all in one place. Whether you’re in the market for new home and garden goods, looking for travel products, or even wanting to purchase wireless internet, broadband, and cable, Savings.com avails shoppers to discounts on all sorts of products from major retailers in various verticals.

3. Honey

Honey is the smart shopping assistant you can use on your browser or smartphone. Track prices on specific items, get automatic coupons, and compare online retailers automatically. Honey can also be used as an extension with Google Chrome, automatically applying deals from around the internet to each transaction.

4. CamFind

Visual search, which uses recognition technology to make it easy to find products on a mobile phone, is one technology that’s changing how we shop. CamFind is one of those apps. It is free on both Android and iOS.

Using mobile visual search, CamFind makes it easy for shoppers to find more information about an item and where they can buy it. For instance, users can simply take a picture of an item, and the app identifies the product and tells users where they can find the best deal.

CamFind’s interface gives price comparisons as well as information on any item that’s photographed. This information is particularly helpful for big technology purchases, such as televisions. CamFind allows you to simply take a picture of a product to determine if you are getting the best deal.

5. ShopSavvy

ShopSavvy is a free app for iOS or Android. It lets you scan any barcode or search for any product and instantly find out which retailer offers the best price. The app scans millions of products from some 40,000 stores, including Amazon, Macy’s, Target, Best Buy, Walmart and Newegg.

Some of those stores let you buy through the ShopSavvy app and earn 20% cash back when you do. Other features include the ability to save and track your favorite products’ prices. You can send yourself an email with what you’ve searched for so you can purchase the product later, as well as create wish lists and shopping lists.

6. nate

Nate is marketed as an artificially intelligent app that makes it easy to centralize all purchasing from within a single platform. Consumers can make and share lists, buy products from any site, create payment plans, and even send gifts.

7. ThredUP

ThredUP is like a local consignment store that has the best options from all over the country. You can access all offerings from the website as well as Apple and Android devices

8. Digital wallets

Google Pay and Apple Pay are examples of digital wallets. Google’s version is available on Android for free, but Apple Pay and Apple Wallet are part of the iPhone’s preloaded ecosystem. Digital wallets store your various credit and bank cards, and encrypt your data. You can then just wave your phone in front of the contactless checkout counter.

Google Pay is accepted at millions of stores, including Best Buy, JetBlue, Macy’s, Petco, Subway and Walgreens. It can also connect to your loyalty cards for brands such as Walgreens and Coca-Cola, so you still earn rewards points. At some outlets, such as Jet.com, you can get special discounts for using Google Pay.

Apple Pay is also accepted at millions of stores, including Ace Hardware, Barneys, Crate and Barrel, Foot Locker, Office Depot, and Staples. You can also use Apple Pay to donate to a variety of charities, such as UNICEF and Feeding America.

9. Ibotta

The Ibotta app is free for both Android and iOS and is great for people who like to get money back when they shop. This app works with most retailers, and you can scan your receipts, save deals, and access app-specific deals to save money. The app features regular offers that you can apply to your account to get bonus money back when you scan your receipt. Ibotta offers cents back on certain items you buy; when you scan your receipt, the purchase is confirmed and the balance is added to your account, which you can cash out after you reach $20 in rewards.

10. LikeToKnowIt

LikeToKnowIt crowdsources the best items, curated from influencers on various platforms who can create shoppable videos and posts. The Shop the Pic section makes it easy to buy the exact item you’ve seen and fallen in love with.

11. Dosh

This app links to your debit card, and you can shop with it at the stores you already use. You can also use the Dosh app to access your frequently used websites, to get deals and money-back offers. You can do a quick payout to Venmo, PayPal or another payment platform after you have gotten $15 in your account. You can also get deals on hotels.

12. Etsy

Etsy makes it easy to find indie artists who are creating one-of-a-kind items. The handmade e-commerce site offers everything from jewelry and custom clothes to children’s toys and stationery.

12 Mobile Apps Changing Shopping Forever [Businessnewsdaily]

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Business Trends

Walmart Corners More Than 25% E-Commerce Market

The forecast: Walmart edged out Amazon in 2020 as the leading US grocery ecommerce retailer. We expect Walmart to continue outselling Amazon in grocery ecommerce sales through our 2023 projections.

Dive deeper:

  • Walmart overtook Amazon in grocery ecommerce sales in 2020, when sales grew by more than 84% to total $27.13 billion for the big-box store. In comparison, Amazon’s sales grew 63.1% in 2020, hitting $25.79 billion.
  • Walmart’s click-and-collect and Express Delivery services have contributed to its massive ecommerce growth.
  • Amazon is limited in its ability to offer click-and-collect groceries. However, it has expanded its offerings via brick-and-mortar Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, and Amazon Go stores.
  • We didn’t include Instacart in our rankings of US ecommerce retailers because it’s a service that facilitates sales for grocery retailers. That said, if Instacart were to be ranked, grocery sales through the platform would’ve placed Instacart just below Amazon in the No. 3 spot.

Looking ahead: Although many consumers have returned to in-store shopping, grocery ecommerce will continue to grow as a retail category. Sales will hit $122.39 billion this year and will cross $200 billion in 2024.

Walmart has cornered more than 25% of the US grocery ecommerce market [emarketer]

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Business Trends

Is Blogging Effective?

With the rise of social media, live video, podcasting, and other digital marketing trends, it’s easy to feel as if blogging has lagged behind. But even in a world where there are “sexier” options, blogging still has a placeat the table.

The Benefits of Blogging

Blogging has been around since the dawn of the internet. And though it has experienced some evolution over the years, it’s largely remained the same. Other trends have come and gone, yet the blog has continued to serve as the backbone of any legitimate digital content strategy. Even in 2021, when there are plenty of other ways to create content, blogging continues to yield numerous benefits. This includes:

  • SEO. Most business websites have no shot at ranking on the first page of Google for key search terms. And in 9 out of 10 situations, it’s because they have no content. They have a home page, about us page, contact page, and possibly a couple of product pages – that’s it! By creating a blog where you regularly publish rich content that’s full of natural keywords and language that your customers use, your website instantly becomes stickier for the search algorithms and increases your chances for ranking.
  • Customer education. A blog gives you an opportunity to educate your customers about complex topics, technical components, or big issues that are occurring in their lives and/or your industry. It’s a simple and organic way to educate without pretense.
  • Lead generation. A blog is an excellent lead generation tool. You can use it as an entry point into the website and then get people to opt-in via a subscription form connected to a lead magnet.
  • Monetization. While it won’t happen immediately, you can actually reach a point where you’re able to monetize your blog through ads. You probably won’t get rich, but you might eventually make enough off your blog to offset the content creation costs.
  • Authority. A blog is an excellent authority builder. Despite how easy it is to launch a blog, people perceive it as a status symbol. Much like authoring a book or podcast, writing for a blog gives you this level of authority that people respect.
  • Skill development. Starting, managing, and growing your blog will require you to wear a bunch of different hats (at least initially). And through this process, you’ll acquire and refine a number of valuable skills that can be leveraged in other areas of marketing and business. This includes things like keyword research, basic SEO, WordPress, conversion copywriting, and lead funnels.
  • Discipline. Blogging doesn’t generate overnight results. It’s something you have to stick with for several months and years. And in a world that’s defined and directed by instant gratification, there’s something to be said for cultivating discipline.

When you add all of these benefits together, the power of blogging becomes clear. It doesn’t matter what year is on the calendar, blogging will continue to yield significant benefits for those who commit to doing it the right way.

Is Blogging Still Worth It? [Smallbusinesstrends]

 

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Business Trends

Making Machine Learning Work For Your Business

Demand for machine learning is skyrocketing. This growth is driven not only by “middle adopters” recognizing the vast potential of machine learning after watching early adopters benefit from its use, but by steady improvements in machine-learning technology itself. It may be too early to say with certainty that machine learning develops according to a predictable framework like Moore’s Law, the famous precept about computing power that has borne out for nearly 50 years and only recently began to show signs of strain. But the industry is clearly on a fast track.

As machine-learning algorithms grow smarter and more organizations come around to the idea of integrating this powerful technology into their processes, it’s high time your enterprise thought about putting machine learning to work, too.

First, consider the benefits and costs. It’s quite likely that your business could leverage at least one of these five reasons to employ machine learning, whether it’s taming apparently infinite amounts of unstructured data or finally personalizing your marketing campaigns.

1. Taming vast unstructured data with limited resources

One of the best-known use cases for machine learning is processing data sets too large for traditional data crunching methods to handle. This is increasingly important as data becomes easier to generate, collect and access, especially for smaller B2C enterprises that often deal with more transaction and customer data than they can manage with limited resources.

How you use machine learning to process and “tame” your data will depend on what you hope to get from that data. Do you want help making more informed product development decisions? To better market to your customers? To acquire new customers? To analyze internal processes that could be improved? Machine learning can help with all these problems and more.

2. Automating routine tasks

The original promise of machine learning was efficiency. Even as its uses have expanded beyond mere automation, this remains a core function and one of the most commercially viable use cases. Using machine learning to automate routine tasks, save time and manage resources more effectively has a very attractive paid of side effects for enterprises that do it effectively: reducing expenses and boosting net income.

The list of tasks that machine learning can automate is long. As with data processing, how you use machine learning for process automation will depend on which functions exert the greatest drag on your time and resources.

Need ideas? Machine learning has shown encouraging real-world outcomes when used to automate data classification, report generation, IT threat monitoring, loss and fraud prevention and internal auditing. But the possibilities are truly endless.

3. Improving marketing personalization and efficiency

Machine learning is a powerful force multiplier in marketing campaigns, enabling virtually endless messaging and buyer-profile permutations, unlocking the gate to fully personalized marketing without demanding an army of copywriters or publicity agents.

What’s especially encouraging for smaller businesses without much marketing expertise is that machine learning’s potential is baked into the top everyday digital-advertising platforms, namely Facebook and Google. You don’t have to train your own algorithms to use this technology in your next microtargeting campaign.

4. Addressing business trends

Machine learning has also proven its worth in detecting trends in large data sets. These trends are often too subtle for humans to tease out, or perhaps the data sets are simply too large for “dumb” programs to process effectively.

Whatever the reason for machine learning’s success in this space, the potential benefits are clear as day. For example, many small and midsize enterprises use machine learning technology to predict and reduce customer churn, looking for signs that customers are considering competitors and trigger retention processes with higher probabilities of success.

Elsewhere, companies of all sizes are getting more comfortable integrating machine learning into their hiring processes. By reinforcing existing biases in human-led hiring and promotion, earlier-generation algorithms did more harm than good, but newer models are able to counteract implicit bias and increase the chances of equitable outcomes.

5. Accelerating research cycles

A machine-learning algorithm unleashed in an R&D department is like an army of super-smart lab assistants. As more and more enterprises discover just what machine learning is capable of in and out of the lab, they’re feeling more confident about using it to eliminate some of the frustrating trial-and-error that lengthens research cycles and increases development costs. Machine learning won’t replace R&D experts anytime soon, but it does appear to empower them to use their time more effectively. More and better innovations could result.

If the experience of competitor businesses that have already deployed machine learning to great effect is any guide for your own experience, the answer to this question is a resounding yes.

The more interesting question is how you choose to make machine learning work for your businesses. This prompts another question, around what operational and structural changes your machine learning processes will bring. These changes, up to and including reducing headcounts in redundant roles or winding up entire lines of business, could be painful in the short run even as they strengthen your enterprise for the long haul.

Like all great innovations that increase operational efficiency and eliminate low-value work, machine learning does not benefit everyone equally. It’s up to the humans in charge of these algorithms to make the transition as orderly and painless as possible. It seems there are some things machine learning can’t yet do … yet.

5 Reasons to Make Machine Learning Work for Your Business [Entrepreneur]