Entrepreneurship is changing very fast and only by closely following new business trends companies and entrepreneurs will be able to stay competitive. In this article we will present you some of the ways to modernize your business and make your company more popular and solvent in the harsh business world of today.
Start Outsourcing
Global outsourcing market in 2014 amounted more than $104 billion and this became one of the hottest new trends in business. Companies don’t have the means to maintain all of their business sectors and that’s why they are choosing to cut their workforce and outsource the work to specialized agencies or even freelancers they hire from websites like: Upwork.com or Freelancer.com.
Outsourcing is especially useful for small businesses that are not able to employ too many experts and have a limited budget. These are some of the major benefits this practice comes with:
- Outsourcing comes with fixed costs;
- Company’s efficiency is increased;
- It helps small businesses to “act big”;
- It cuts labor costs;
- Outsourcing agency experts don’t require training;
- It enables small companies to focus on their core business.
There are many different company sectors that can be outsourced. Depending on the core business these can include:
- Administration (accountants, HR, law sector etc);
- Marketing;
- Customer service (call centers, customer support etc);
- Security;
- Logistics, etc.
Agencies and freelancers that are hired for this purposes need to be evaluated at the same level companies evaluate their full-time employees. When choosing the right vendor it is not advisable to make a decision depending solely on the price, but to ask for agencies and freelancers with experience in the company’s niche, good portfolio, recommendations and long list of successful clients.
Follow Digital Marketing Trends
Although fundamentals of marketing are always the same this is the sector which is changing at the fastest pace, mainly due to technology advance. Entrepreneurs need to follow all the new marketing trends in order to popularize their offer in the best possible way.
Digital marketing is especially important, due to great value for money that it brings and its effectiveness in the world with 3 billion internet users. The way that companies are presenting themselves to customers through digital channels is constantly changing. These are some of the hottest digital marketing trends for 2015 for example:
- Video Ads– With people getting fast internet all around the world, video ads popularity is increasing. Facebook and Bing are already offering video ads, Youtube is continuing to display paid ads to users, and there is also a hot new app called Periscope that enables people to explore the world with video streaming.
- Billions of Apps– Google offered app indexing, which means we will have billions of different apps in the future, which will become a valuable marketing tool.
- Mobile Will Dominate the Desktop- Number of mobile internet users is constantly growing, mainly due to its functionality and availability. Google’s “Mobilegeddon” made companies who invest in their website’s responsiveness more appealing than those who don’t. Trends will popularize mobile internet even further and soon the number of mobile internet users will exceed the number of people who browse from their desktops.
Start Selling Online
Companies embraced digital world faster than everybody though they would, and now it is hard to find a successful company without a website. In the beginning, company websites were used for nothing more than sharing contact info and showing of company history. Today importance of well maintained company website grew to unbelievable proportions and there are many businesses that work solely online, without even owning a regular office space.
One of the main benefits of digital age that has huge importance for product based and retail businesses is their ability to sell their products and goods online. Statistics say that B2C e-commerce amounted more than $1,2 trillion in 2013 worldwide, and this business sector is growing for around 15% each year. Online shopping provides many benefits for both customers and businesses and these are some of them:
- It overcomes geographic limitations
- It is more cost-effective
- Shopping around is much easier with e-commerce
- E-commerce shops are open 24/7
- Customers don’t need to spend time and money to go the shop, etc.
After viewing e-commerce statistics, it is easy to notice that this business model was established long time ago, and that there are many though players in almost every niche. That’s why entrepreneurs need to launch only top quality e-commerce websites that cater the most refined wants and needs of their target audience. Payment is one of the most critical and the most important segments of this business model, which is why new e-commerce websites need to offer many different payment options that include: safe payment, easy currency exchange, live support etc. This can be done by implementing systems like ecommerce payment gateway that come with all these features plus in most cases provide deep data analysis of shopping patterns and payment data, that enable entrepreneurs to tailor their future offers for their targeted audience.
