What New Year’s Resolutions Should Your Small Business Be Making?

With most products and services available from multiple vendors around the world, how can a small business compete? With pockets nowhere near as deep as the major players, small businesses need to be diligent in covering all their bases and coming up with creative ways to stay competitive. Here are a few key elements that can help.

Competitive Analysis

This is the number one thing that small businesses miss out on. We spend our time working on the business and refining our process, which is very important, but it tends to cause us to neglect looking into what’s making our competitors successful. Time and time again I have seen a competitive analysis bring answers to questions that have been tormenting a business for years. Luckily, there are a lot of tools out there that can help up your game:

• BrightEdge

BrightEdge has the most in-depth, comprehensive and competitive SEO analysis tools on the market. Armed with truckloads of data, you can make the most effective decisions possible.

• Moz

In addition to the robust SEO tools offered by Moz, the company’s blog is one of the most informative blogs on leveraging the web for your business success. Ranking for applicable keywords is vital to any business, as organic traffic from Google is the highest converting and most valuable traffic on the web.

• Little Bird

Capitalizing on influencer marketing and getting in touch with your consumer base on a social level is something you need to do in 2015. Little Bird’s social tool is second to none for this. Build better relationships with your customers and track actual ROI with your social media efforts.

Philanthropy

Large corporations have already learned that when they increase their philanthropic activities, their profits rise. Small businesses can learn from this. Consumers are attracted to authenticity

Small businesses can give to charitable organizations and support altruistic efforts. When a portion of their profits go to charity, they can tell customers about it. Not only is giving good for business, it also opens the door for many free mentions on social media posts and blogs. Try holding a few company events where employees participate in local events, like the Mutt Strutt 5K that EVG participated in.

Qualified and enthusiastic employees will also lean toward businesses that have a mission and values that they agree with. These kinds of businesses allow and encourage employees to participate in employee volunteer programs. As an added bonus, studies show that employees feel more positive about their company as a result.

Be careful when choosing a cause to support. The best causes are not political, but help the hungry, the homeless or the environment. If you’re looking for step-by-step advice on taking social responsibility, we have just the blog post to help you.

Video

In 2015, video marketing promises to be a big part of many companies’ content marketing strategies. According to Cisco, video will make up 79 percent of all consumer internet traffic by 2017.

Video will dominate marketing strategies in the near future, which means that all businesses need to start thinking about how to incorporate video into their strategy. Millions of people view videos online every week. Videos are sharable, especially if they’re funny, interesting or entertaining. If consumers are watching a video on your website, they spend more time interacting with your brand.

Even for a small business, making videos is affordable. The best videos are relevant to your audience, offer the audience something and are promoted across social media

If you make the right decisions for the future of the company, your small business will be able to compete on a higher scale and use these tips to your company’s advantage.

Robert Cordray – Motivator/Coach