Category: Financial Literacy and Money

What’s Stopping You From Seeing The Big Picture?

Some of the key focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy and Money, and both Business and Entrepreneurship. Depending on what kind of business you’re starting, a major key is eventually working on the business as opposed to working in it as described in “The E-Myth” by Michael E. Gerber. This contributed post is thus entitled; What’s Stopping You From Seeing The Big Picture?

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The devil is in the details when it comes to your work but getting stuck in those details while trying to run a business can make you oblivious to the big picture. Without a little distance and perspective, it can be much harder to notice the biggest obstacles, the best potential strategies, and the solutions your team needs. How do you get the perspective you need when you’re constantly in the trenches with the rest of the team?

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No time at all
You have to make the time to work on your business, not just in it. Everyone has multiple responsibilities and a need to be able to juggle them. Being able to prioritize both your workload and your time can be crucial. Learn how to structure your workday, breaking it down into blocks of time that you can assign to multiple tasks. This way, you can find the time every day to take on the most crucial and urgent managerial or admin tasks while still leaving time free to strategize.

All the admin
If you’re taking care of all that administrative work yourself, you might never be able to find that time in the first place, however. There are a few steps to cut back on how much you have to deal with yourself. You can automate, using accounting, payroll, and HR software to take out the man hours necessary to keep all your systems up to date. For elements that need a human touch, like answering the phone, you might want to consider a virtual assistant, too.

Tech troubles
More and more businesses are relying more heavily on tech. They can help us unlock magnitudes more productivity, but the more we rely on them, the more our success becomes tied to them. If you’re spending a significant part of your working day solving tech issues, then managed IT services might be what you need. Not only can you use them to identify and solve problems much more quickly, but they could improve or build a network that makes you tech even more versatile and valuable.

Unempowered employees
If your team isn’t empowered to make their own decisions or work proactively, then a lot of your time is going to be spent babysitting them. This isn’t always necessarily their fault, but a result of a company culture that doesn’t encourage employees to be more engaged. You can change that by getting them more informed and involved in the overall objectives.

Not enough insight
Taking a bird’s eye view of the business can help you identify workflow issues and potential improvements to communication and cooperation. If you want to implement any strategy, however, you need to know how it looks on the ground, as well as the challenges your team faces. For that reason, you need to put an effective employee feedback loop in place.

Getting that perspective is crucial for a business owner but you should never forget what it’s like to work with the rest of the team, too. Their perspective can be just as helpful as yours.

Financial Decisions That’ll Help You Down The Line

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy and Money. Our everyday behaviors and decisions impact our where we end up financially in the future. The following contributed post is thus entitled; Financial Decisions That’ll Help You Down The Line.

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When it comes to your personal finances, you need to think beyond your current situation. It’s essential to cover your basic costs, but you need to do so in a well-calculated manner so as to ensure that you’ve got savings for the future. In this article, we’ll discuss that point along with other helpful pieces of financial advice. If you want to protect your money then here are some financial decisions you could make right now to help you further down the line.

Investing some of your earnings.
The first financial decision you could make to help yourself down the line is to invest some of your earnings. This is something you should do on a continuous basis if you want to increase your wealth; it’ll bring you additional forms of income on top of your existing salary. And there are plenty of different investment routes you can take as a beginner. You might want to do some research on getting started in the property market. With the correct guidance and management advice, you could start buying properties to lease them out (that’d bring you a nice monthly income). You could even buy properties to fix them up and sell them at an increased value.

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to invest your earnings, too. Getting involved with trading can be very profitable if you do your research and learn how to monitor market trends carefully. You might want to consider spread betting over traditional trading methods. Earning tax-free profits is just one of many reasons to trade this way. Investing wisely is the type of financial decision that could really help you down the line. You’ll be able to start building up some savings for the future.

Creating an emergency fund.
Another financial decision that will help you down the line is creating an emergency fund. We all face unexpected costs at different points in life, so it’s important to have a backup plan in place for just such occasions. Your budget can only account for regular and predictable expenses, but you should also set aside a little bit of money on a regular basis for emergency costs. For instance, your house might need repairs after a natural disaster, or you might need emergency financial support if you leave one job and start searching for another. Creating a backup fund now could really help you further down the line. You don’t want to dip into your bank account for emergency costs and find yourself low on funds for necessities.

Spending your money sensibly.
This final suggestion is possibly the most important. If you want to improve your financial future then you should simply improve your financial present. By making a proper budget, you’ll be able to start tracking your expenditures accurately and making smarter decisions with your money. Calculate the cost of your essentials, and figure out how much income you need to devote to those necessary expenses. If you barely have any remaining funds then you could start reducing your basic costs in smart ways. For instance, you could save money on groceries by using coupons and start using price comparison sites to search for better deals from energy providers. You could reduce your monthly expenses if you did a little research. And it’ll benefit you in the future if you have more money to set aside for your savings.

Managing Money Matters

Some of the key focuses of my blog are: Financial Literacy, Money, Business and Entrepreneurship. A key aspect of any successful business is the effective money management. The following contributed post is thus entitled; Managing Money Matters.

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Money makes the world go round, does it not? We all rely on money so heavily, that the slightest change in our circumstances leads us to panic to say the least. But that’s just referring to our personal lives. When business comes into it, the need for money is greater. Without money, progression needed to survive in the business world can’t be achieved, and the chance of the business failing altogether becomes all too real. So, we want to show you the money matters that needed to be managed the most, and how they can ensure that your company will thrive for years to come. Have a read on to find out more!

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Your Employees Money

Start messing with your employees money, and it isn’t going to end well for you. To help you understand what we mean, let’s paint a picture. Your employees rely on the fact that you’re going to pay them exactly what they’re owed, when they’re owed it. So many companies fail on this, or pay the wrong amount. It’s not understood by management how much this can impact an employee’s life! So, before you start making error after error, think about how you can manage it more effectively. Paystub is just one of the websites that you can use to generate paychecks, allowing you to cross reference the amount that should be paid, as well as your employees. If you feel as though the burden of running payroll is too high, and that’s why you’re possibly making mistakes, then think about hiring an in house accountant. You’re so much more likely to be able to manage money effectively rather than letting it all weigh on your shoulders.

Your Investment Money

When you start getting to the point where you’re earning enough money, you need to think about having investment money. Managing investment money isn’t the easiest game to play, because you’ve got just as much chance of losing money as you do making money. So, in terms of your investment money, think about getting a broker to do the dirty work for you. You need someone who is going to be able to make expertly informed decisions for your company and the money that it is using. If you do do your investments the right way, the money that you could potentially earn from it will be more than you could image! Good investment ideas are ones such as stocks, virtual currency, and property, but it is all about finding which one works for your company.

Your Pension Money

When you have so much money coming in, the last thing that you might be thinking of is your pension. But like the people that you employ, you should seriously start investing into your pension. You can also hire companies to help get the job done for you so that you’re saving in the right pay, and securing your future for you and your family. Even if your retirement is years away, it’s best to put aside now, as you never truly know what is going to happen to your company!

Business Leaders – Are You Wasting Time?

Some of the key focuses of my blog are: Financial Literacy, Money, Business and Entrepreneurship. A key aspect of any successful business is the efficient use of time. The following contributed post is thus titled; Business Leaders – Are You Wasting Time?

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Wasting time is the number one ‘no-no’ when it comes to anything to do with business life. We hear that ‘time is money,’ and that’s no accident. Any business leader, at least those successful the world over, will have mastered the art of effectively using their time. Honing your own personal schedule is all very well and good, but when looking at the larger picture, your business may be telling you something else entirely. If your business is wasting time, even in small ways, its inefficiency can build and build in its aggregate form.

It might take time to inspect and fully make effective, but a business concerned with improving its growth and optimizing it’s process will need to cut out the fat sooner or later. Here are the places you might look first:

Payroll

Your payroll department is often the last thing you’ll establish when you’re starting to grow your firm. This is because a certain amount of employees may not warrant a dedicated specialist to come in and handle these hours, it might be that the manager or the owner takes care of this. This task is unlikely going to be the only one undertaken by the person responsible in this case. While you must always dedicated the correct amount of time to this task lest you make mistakes that can cost the satisfaction of the employee you have impeded, you can always implement time-saving options to help you deliver your duties well.

For example, using a service to create a paystub can help you organize dedicated formatting efforts for your payroll, both calculating and providing proof of income and charges to your employees routinely and with predictable formatting. This can be very helpful if dealing with a team of variant roles and variant hours worked, as templates can be saved and you can adjust via hours, salary or any other payment criteria your business has setup. Payroll can often be the most intense and important consideration to get right, so taking out any human error and providing a uniform formatting option of proof can help the person responsible take care of this task appropriately each time.

Dead Weight

None of us enjoy having dead weight on our time. This is perhaps one of the easiest ways to reduce total staff motivation, waste money on salaries and have to conduct time and money into the cleanup that a faulty staff member will need to cover them. This means that inspecting your staff routinely to ensure they’re working hard as per reasonable standards, that they are paying attention to your policies and security/safety protocols, as well as ensuring they care about the end result of their work can help you identify anyone who isn’t pulling their weight, or who is willfully neglecting it. In certain industries such as hospitality and retail, this can be quite a common occurrence. With a skilled, reasonable and rational eye, you can decide to conduct training efforts, motivate that person further, or let that person go.

With these two simple tips, you can cut plenty of wasted time from your schedule, and the larger flow of your business.

Wonderful Changes That are Going to Improve Your Business Today

Some of the key focuses of my blog are: Financial Literacy, Money, Business and Entrepreneurship. Starting a business can be very challenging. Business owners constantly need to think about how grow and evolve their businesses in order to survive in constantly changing market conditions. The following contributed post is thus entitled; Wonderful Changes That are Going to Improve Your Business Today.

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It is really important to make sure you understand what is involved in the process of improving your business long-term. There are a lot of things that can play a role in taking the business to the next level, and you need to look at what you can do to improve. These days the business world is so competitive, and there are a lot of issues that can play a role in holding your business back, and you must think carefully about this.

Running a modern brand requires a lot of work and nurture these days, so you need to be careful and think hard about things. What can you do as a business owner to try to elevate your company above the competition and achieve success? Entrepreneurs so often focus on what they ARE doing and not what they SHOULD be doing. These are some of the excellent ways of improving your brand today.

Reinvent Yourself

Reinventing your business is absolutely essential in this day and age. It is something that needs to happen in order to help keep the company fresh, exciting, and ahead of the times. This is absolutely essential if you are looking at ways of bringing yourself more success. The company should be fresh, fun, and exciting, and this is an excellent way of achieving that. It’s also clear that business extension starts with reinvention, and this is something you have to make sure you put into practice.

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Get Closer to Your Customers

It is also so important in 2018 to try to get closer to your customers as much as you possibly can. They are the lifeblood of any company, and you can’t afford to be losing them to your rivals by not prioritizing them. So, the best thing to do here is to make sure you improve the way you approach your customers. As a business, you need to use things like UserIQ in order to try to get closer to your customers as well as getting a better handle on your management too.

Always be Financially Stable

A business can only achieve success if it has financial stability, and this is something that you need to focus on achieving as a company. That means you need to be sensible with what you are spending and how you are spending, and it also means you need to look at how you can become more financially stable as a business. This sometimes means recruiting investors or getting crowdfunding to help you take the business forward as well. Always having financial security will go a long way toward helping you remain a successful and stable business.

If you can follow some of the ideas in this post, you will be armed with some of the tools needed to make sure you are improving your business where you can. This is something you need to make sure you look at moving forward. Make changes that are going to improve and enhance your brand long-term, and understand what makes this so important.

Business Extension Starts With Reinvention

Some of the key focuses of my blog are: Financial Literacy, Money, Business and Entrepreneurship. A key to effectively doing business in today’s world is continuing to evolve in changing environments and readily addressing emerging challenges – in some instances re-branding. The following contributed post is entitled; Business Extension Starts With Reinvention.

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If you want your business to grow and expand then you need to be brave enough to reinvent it. Obviously, this doesn’t mean you should start from scratch. It just means that you shouldn’t cling to an old business plan if it isn’t relevant in today’s market. Too many companies fall into a steady decline because they’re unable to adapt to a changing industry and changing consumers. Your business needs to return to the drawing board and take some risks if it wants to push itself forwards. Business extension starts with reinvention, so this advice might help you with that.

Take a better approach to online marketing.
You might already have an online marketing strategy, but the internet is always evolving. And, as mentioned in the introduction, your business needs to adapt if it wants to keep up with the changing world. But you shouldn’t be a sheep. Following in the footsteps of your rivals isn’t going to help you increase your client base. Why would your target market choose you if you’re just offering the same thing as every other business? You need an online marketing strategy that helps you to stand out.

SEO is important, but climbing to the top of search engines will only help you to increase traffic (potentially). The real secret to expanding your business’ client base is to turn website visitors into paying customers. If you struggle to turn traffic into sales then you might want to seek help from a conversion rate optimisation agency. If you can understand what customers like to see on business websites then you’ll stand a better chance of reeling them in. It might involve completely overhauling your existing website, but (as is the theme of this article) business extension starts with reinvention.

Make some new investments.
If you’re often hesitant to make any new investments in your business then you’re going to quickly fall behind the competition. You need to take some risks that could push your business in the right direction because the risk of doing nothing is that the market will quickly lose interest in you (and that’s the wrong direction). Invest in new employees to give your business fresh ideas; invest in a new branch to help target markets in new locations; invest in better resources so that you can speed up the work process. You need to spend money to make money, as stereotypical as that is to say. Even if you fail, you learn from every mistake you make. You can only create a successful business by learning which routes to take and which routes not to take.

Be more creative with your customer service.
This isn’t to say that your customer service is bad, but forming a unique relationship with your clients might help you to stand out from the crowd. The better your customer service, the better your reviews will be, and this will help you to build a reputation that increases your client base. More importantly, you’ll be able to secure long-term clients if you treat each customer well. You could make an impact by giving away vouchers and freebies to customers as a way of showing them that they matter to your company. You could even start a referral scheme to try to encourage word-of-mouth marketing; that would definitely help to expand your business quickly.

5 Ways You Didn’t Know Your Credit Rating Would Affect Your Life

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy and Money. Building and maintaining a strong credit rating can significantly affect one’s financial health and open certain doors and opportunities. The opposite is also true. The following contributed post is entitled; 5 Ways You Didn’t Know Your Credit Rating Would Affect Your Life.

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Ah, credit rating. You have probably heard the term in financial circles when dealing with mortgage applications and cars, but your credit rating can have a huge impact on your life – even when you didn’t realise it. Most people don’t tend to concern themselves with their credit rating – particularly young adults, who believe that a credit rating is something for homeowners and richy rich people to worry about.

Credit can have an effect on the way that you do everything. If you choose to go back to school, for example, you may need a finance loan to help you to pay for your living expenses. If your credit isn’t great, you could find yourself instead turned down for mainstream finance and turning towards loans for bad credit instead. This is a good way to start building your credit from the poor to the good, but it’s not always that simple for everyone. So, with all of that in mind, how DOES your credit rating affect your life?

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Buying Property
It’s an obvious one, but you will find it very difficult to be approved for a mortgage if you have debt on your credit file. You need to clear the debt on the file to start improving your credit rating, otherwise you could find yourself with a very high interest mortgage instead of one you can actually afford.

Owning A Business
If you are aiming to own a small business, credit can really affect your ability to ensure that your business can stay afloat. You may not be the sort of business that needs external funding to start with, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t need it later. Personal bad credit can affect your business credit.

Getting A Phone
No one can live without a smartphone these days, well, you could but it’s not the norm anymore. The thing is, electrical items like this are never usually bought outright; they’re bought on finance. If you don’t have the right credit rating, you can be turned away from getting that contract.

Utility Bills
You need to access water, electricity and gas. If your credit rating is poor, there is a chance that you could be put onto special metres for your payments because the companies would see you as not being trusted enough to pay those bills on time. These metres are often higher in cost to run. Good credit can save you cash every month.

Property Interest Rates
The amount of interest that you can secure on your mortgage is directly linked to your credit rating. So, we mentioned earlier about having trouble buying a property, but if you manage to secure finance, your credit rating can push that interest rate right up.

The key to your credit rating is to work out how to pay off the debts that you owe and gently start improving the rating that you have. Once you start to do this, you can rebuild your credit with a bad credit loan and make efficient payments to prove you can do it.

Old School And New Approaches: Essentials For Running A Store In The Modern World

Some of the key focuses of my blog are: Financial Literacy, Wealth Building, Business and Entrepreneurship. Doing business has changed significantly in today’s digital/information age. Many ‘brick and mortar’ retail stores have folded altogether, while others have had to rethink their business models in order to survive. What are the keys to running store in the modern world? The following contributed post is entitled; Old School And New Approaches: Essentials For Running A Store In The Modern World.

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There are two schools of thought when it comes to setting up a retail store in the modern world. Firstly, you may find that your target audience doesn’t physically go shopping, but prefer to go online. But, conversely, the demand for a physical store in recent years has seen a rise. And if you are selling products of various types, the temptation could be to go via an online marketplace, but you could find that you are neglecting certain parts of your target market. But, are there things we can do to harness the online capabilities with the offline capabilities in a physical setting?

Implementing The Quick Checkout Service
The best way to marry the fast checkout service of an online store with the personal approach to the modern retail store is to have online payment services inside the store. The vast majority of stores have self-service methods to pay now, as well as various ways in which to provide payment, such as through your cell phone. But in addition to this, you need to still implement a personal approach to your customers, and this can be quite tricky to get right because it depends on each individual customer. At the end of the day, the customers come into a physical store because they want ease of access to a product, and they want to see it themselves. So, as soon as they find that the product suits their needs, they want to be able to pay for it without lengthy queues. On the other hand, others still prefer that old school approach. Implementing both covers all bases.

Taking Responsibility For Your Customers
And as the physical setting requires a lot more consideration in relation to health and safety, this means that you have a few more things to consider in comparison to an online store. Whether this is employers liability insurance just in case of accidents in your store, or ensuring there’s enough space for your customers to walk around, this is a deft combination of legal compliance with common sense. Taking responsibility for your customers isn’t just relating to the safety side of things, but also ensuring they have a good experience in your store, and this boils down to how your employees interact with the customers.

Looking After Your Workers
A very easy thing to overlook nowadays is the impact that your workers can have on the customers. Because personal interaction is at an all-time low, with the reliance of the internet to do the vast majority of our work for us, the personal touch is a very difficult thing to achieve. This is why you have to work with your employees to ensure that they are not just representing your store properly, but they have the common courtesy that we demand as customers. But in addition to this, the retail industry is notoriously underpaid and overworked, which this is something else you have to think about when it comes to making your employees work effectively for you, but that they’re also happy in the position.

The best retail store is a component of the old school personal methods, with the modern technological approaches. It’s a tricky balance, but they are both essential in the modern retail store.

Could You Be Making It Easier For Your Employees? Here’s What To Think About

Some of the key focuses of my blog are: Financial Literacy, Wealth Building, Business and Entrepreneurship. A key to effectively doing business in today’s world is creating the best possible work environment for your employees. The following contributed post is thus entitled; Could You Be Making It Easier For Your Employees? Here’s What To Think About.

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When it comes to running your business often as you start to expand, you get to the point where you may end up having employees working for you. However, if you do end up having employees working for you, then you may want to ensure that you do what you can keep them happy. After all, happy employees means a happy and productive business workforce. So what can you do to make things easy? I thought I would help you by sharing some of the things your and your business could do.

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Making the working environment comfortable

One of the first things you may want to think about is the working environment that you have for your staff and whether or not you feel that it is comfortable. There are things that you can do to ensure this. First off, thank about their workstation and seating, their desk and where they are positioned. You may want to think about room temperature, not too hot out too cold especially on hot and cold days outside. You may also want to think about the facilities you have in place, such as drinking water, places to store food and drink for lunch breaks and lastly whether there is outside space for fresh air. These things can make life easier on your employee in terms of how they feel in work.

Making the work levels simpler for your employees

There are things that you may want to think about internally to help simplify the workload that you have for your employees. Such as document management. After all, there is a likelihood that there will be a lot of documents passing through your business. Things like invoices and receipts, contracts and signed papers, and a software system to manage them may help matters. This is when looking into websites like https://www.templafy.com/document-management-software/ could really help you out.

Keeping your staff and employees safe

When you have staff and employees working for you, you have a responsibility to ensure that you keep them safe. So you may want to think about how you can do that as an employer. Things like having a decent health and safety p-solicit in place is probably a good place to start. Regular rose assessments and ensuring things are checked over is a great way to do this. It can often be the simple things such as this, that can have employees feeling valued and respected while they are in the working environment. Having a policy booklet on hand can also help ensure that everyone is aware of the policies your business has in place.

Being approachable as a boss

Finally, being approachable as a boss is a crucial to ensuring that you can keep things going. Your employees will need to feel comfortable talking to you about things such as their career development, but also feel comfortable and confident enough to talk to you about personal issues that may involve them having time off etc. Being approachable is something you may need to work on, but it could help ensure that you do right by your employees and your business. Articles such as https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141008154953-152548954-6-steps could help you do this better.

I hope that these tips help you make things easier for your employees.

Finding Your Target Audience

Some of the key focuses of my blog are: Financial Literacy, Wealth Building, Business and Entrepreneurship. A major key to succeeding in the business world is understanding your target audience and clientele base. The following contributed post is thus entitled, Finding Your Target Audience.

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When it comes to creating a marketing strategy for your company, one of the things you will want to think about is finding the right people to market your business towards. There is no point for example trying to market a teen fashion brand to people in their 50s and visa versa. In order to get your name out into the world and be as successful as you can in your business you need to make sure to find the right audience and target all of your marketing to them.

Business or Consumer?

The first and easiest question you can ask yourself to narrow down your market is whether you are aiming to sell to businesses or consumers. Both b2c and b2b sales have their own style of marketing and you will notice that B2B companies will often be more formal with their work than B2C because it is seen as more appropriate. Make sure you know which one you are going to choose for your business and this will have a big impact on the type of content and the tone of voice you use later on.

Age and Gender?

One of the biggest things you will need to consider when looking for your ideal target audience is their age and their gender. Let’s say for example that you plan to sell birth control products or sanitary products. You can’t focus your marketing towards men because this wouldn’t make any sense, and similarly you wouldn’t target it to women who are under the age of 13 or over the age of 60. Make sure you understand how your product or service is going to fit into people’s lives and how you can put across your point in a clear and interesting way.

Hobbies and Interests

One of the other things you can bring into your decision as far as your target audience goes is their hobbies and interests. With sites like google analytics you can monitor what your audience is interested in and this allows you to use their hobbies as part of your marketing campaign. For example let’s say you are a food company and you often share recipes on social media to demonstrate your cookware. You might notice that a lot of the people who follow you and engage with your brand also enjoy Game Of Thrones. Here is the ideal opportunity for you to create some Game Of Thrones style video content such as a recipe for Arya Stark’s Pie, Daenerys’ dragon eggs or the beer which the nightwatch drink at the wall. Think of being relevant and make sure that you can interact with your audience on a meaningful level.

Who will value the product?

When you are trying to gain an insight into who will use your products, think about what everyday problem your product solves. If you are selling a bathroom cleaning product which can make the job much easier, to won’t be targeting this towards teenagers. You would instead be targeting it for new homeowners and anyone who stays at home for work or runs their home full time. Really sit down and think about what your product does, what value it will add to your customers lives, and who would appreciate it the most. This will allow you to narrow down your audience easily to find the ideal one for you.

Choosing Social Media Platforms

When it comes to finalising your target audience and narrowing down the field of who you will market towards going forward, the main way you can do this is to choose a social media platform which fits in with the customers you are looking to target. For example, if you are a fashion brand looking to target women between the ages of 18-30, the best social media site for you would be Instagram, because most of Instagram users fall into this demographic. Think about what social media accounts will suit the type of content you share and who exactly you need to reach out to.

Creating great content

Now that you have chosen your target audience and you are set up on social media, you need to start making content to draw them in. People are visual beings and video content is becoming more and more popular on platforms outside YouTube. If you are struggling to know what kind of content you should create, you can always take a look at your competitors and see what kind of things that they are doing. This can be a huge help and it will give you the inspiration and ability to get out there and reel in your customers.