Published on: 08 June 2021
Last Updated on: 21 December 2024
Every business’s lifeline is its customer base, which is why big companies allocate a large budget to create strategies to reel in more customers. For a small business like yours, you don’t have to go to such extensive lengths to grow your number of customers. You can start with simple methods and build from there.
4 Strategies To Attract More Customers To Your Business
Big giant companies are spending thousands to attract more customers but your budget is small. How you can organize your branding and promotions and going to attract more customers? Every time you do not have to spend thousands if you are going to follow some easy tips you can accomplish your work within a small budget.
Here are a few ways you can attract more customers to your small business without breaking the bank.
1. Treat Your Customers Well:
Customer satisfaction is vital in every business, which is why you should make sure to treat the few customers you already have with care. Word of mouth is always an excellent method to gain more customers.
Let’s say you’re a company like Capstone, and you provide a service that requires you to interact and communicate with your clients. The way you treat them, the tone of your voice, your body language, etc. affect how satisfied they will be by the end of your meeting.
If you treat them well, they will be satisfied with your service and are more likely to recommend you to their friends or relatives. If you treat them poorly, they might badmouth you which might cause you to lose potential clients.
2. Create Social Media Accounts:
People, when looking for something, usually search for it online first. If you have a social media account, there’s a high chance they will find you. The best thing about it is that the potential customers can quickly send you a message to ask for details about your products or services. They won’t even have to get up from their bed to ask a query, which makes things easier for them.
However, not every business with a social media account can always succeed. It takes more than just setting up your page to create a successful social media strategy. As a small business, you probably don’t have the human resources yet to manage all of your accounts.
Here are a few tips to make sure your social media accounts benefit you:
Start with one platform first. It’s better to have one platform which you regularly manage than to have multiple ones but don’t get to handle actively.
Create useful, informational, and quality content.
Be a little witty or funny sometimes, but make sure that what you say is appropriate for your business.
Respond to comments and messages as soon as possible and always be respectful.
3. Start A Contest:
Contests are always a fun way to create a buzz. People can get competitive especially if there’s a prize waiting for them. There’s something about emerging as the winner or being the lucky one that makes them feel special in probably some egotistical way.
Word of mouth and social media are both excellent ways to spread awareness of the contest. If you offer a prize that benefits the winner and a family or friend of their choosing, they will immediately talk about it and might even share the news with other people they know.
For a social media contest, you can require the contestants to like and share your page, tag a few friends, or even invite as many as they can to like and share their page too.
If you do plan to run a contest, make sure to set an appropriate budget. The prizes you will give out should not cost you too much. Stick to your budget so that the costs during the entire duration of the contest do not make you lose more money than the sales you gained.
4. Get Involved In The Community:
You don’t have to conquer the entire country to achieve success in your business. Everybody starts small. You can begin with your local community. Being involved in the place closest to your business’ location is an excellent way to attract more customers.
It’s a good strategy to attract first the persons nearest to you since it’s more convenient to have business transactions with them. Usually, the target market of a business involves most of the people within their community.
You can attend or sponsor some local events like charities or sports leagues. People are supportive of the people who also support their community. Your brand name can get associated with those activities, and you’ll build a good reputation, which will attract more customers.
Conclusion:
Try these simple steps, and you might grow your customer base. Small businesses don’t have to risk time, money, and effort for campaigns that will cost them more than what they gain. It’s all about good strategy and excellent customer service. Once you earn a substantial amount of customers, make sure to maintain good relations, so you don’t lose them.
Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.
How to become an entrepreneur?
What are the characteristics of entrepreneurs?
What do the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs include?
All these questions hover on the internet here and there. Read this blog till the end to put an end to all of your doubts……
What Is An Entrepreneur?
I am gonna kick start this blog with a quick answer to “what is an entrepreneur?” before jumping on to the characteristics of entrepreneurs.
So, according to Investopedia, the entrepreneurship definition is…
“A person who undertakes the risk of starting a new business venture is called an entrepreneur.”
An entrepreneur is a person who creates an entity to understand and imply their idea of aggregating capital and labor to produce services or goods for profit.
What Does An Entrepreneur Do?
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
You may think the answer to this question to be very simple, but it varies from one entrepreneurial mindset to the other. This makes the entrepreneurship definition as well as the characteristics of entrepreneurs much more complicated.
Well, it won’t be anymore because here is a perfect answer to “ what does an entrepreneur do? ”
In simple words, an entrepreneur creates a new business, bearing the majority of the risks and cherishing most of the rewards. He/she is the source of goods, services, ideas, and business or procedures.
Read More: 7 Startup Ideas for Young Entrepreneurs
Q1. Which Entrepreneur Made Tractors Before Entering The Sports Car Business? Ans: It was Ferrucio Lamborghini who made tractors before entering the sports car business.
Types Of Entrepreneurs
“Inhale Confidence, Exhale Doubt”
Entrepreneurs turn all the bold ideas into reality, and when it comes to the types of entrepreneurs, the divisions are 5. These categories go hand in hand with the characteristics of entrepreneurs.
Take a look👇
1. Innovators
They come up with completely innovative and out-of-the-box ideas and turn them into viable businesses. While innovators create the rules in business, they often face resistance from the shareholders.
Hustlers
Hustlers basically start with small goals and make them bigger achievements in the future. On the one hand, they outwork the most and tend to burn out on the other.
2. Imitators
Imitators are those entrepreneurs who copy existing business ideas and build them by putting in their own efforts and strategies. They make a business idea less stressful although keep comparing to the original idea.
3. Researchers
Researchers take time to gather all the relevant information that might help in the business and to boost its brand awareness. They are the ones who are responsible for figuring out the right strategies that would work for the company.
4. Buyers
Needless to say; these 5 types can also be regarded as 5 different types of mindsets entrepreneurs have.
What type of mindset do you have?
Let us know in the comment box.
What Should Be The Most Dominating Characteristics Of Entrepreneurs?
“If you don’t have big dreams and goals, you’ll end up working for someone that does.”
Have you ever thought about why the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs are somewhat similar? It’s because their final objectives are more or less the same - magnifying their ideas.
And that’s why there are 7 common characteristics of entrepreneurs which are seen as 7 Thumb Rules to be an entrepreneur.
1. Versatile
Versatility comes first to describe the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs. You have to think a lot and do a lot to make your career successful as an entrepreneur.
2. Flexible
How to become an entrepreneur?
Be as flexible as possible when required.
Stay in touch with the industry trends, current business requirements, ongoing consumer behaviors, and devise flexible plans to cover these areas.
Click Here To Read: What Is Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship: Definition & Examples
3. Money Savvy
As an entrepreneur you have to raise your business, and manage everything; from top to toe. You have to monitor every corner of your business at least in the initial days.
4. Resilient
This is one of the most crucial characteristics of entrepreneurs. A successful entrepreneur has to show resilience to all the obstacles on the road.
5. Focused
Entrepreneurship is all about staying determined and focused on your end goal. Eliminate the doubts and always hold on to why you have started.
6. Business Smart
To shine in the field of entrepreneurship, your business idea and management procedure have to be smart enough. Coordinating the revenues/costs and knowing your strengths and weaknesses will keep your business alive.
7. Communications
Communication is the most crucial key to succeed as an entrepreneur. Be it conveying the ideas or sharing B-plans with employees, communication moves your business forward.
Some Remarkable Characteristics Of Successful Entrepreneurs Around The World
“You Have To Believe It Before You See It.”
Well, enough of the speeches on characteristics of entrepreneurs. It’s time to talk about the real entrepreneurial characteristics of some successful personalities across the world.
We have considered the CEOs of Tesla, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft to highlight the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.
Take a quick look and see if you can adapt some of them.
Successful Entrepreneurs Characteristics of successful entrepreneurs includeElon Musk Strong risk tolerance Believes in an “Always Keep Learning” attitude Has a tendency for vertical integration. Puts most of the faith on the team.Mark ZuckerbergHe is an aggressive and encouraging leader. Moves fast and breaks things Follows the feedback approach Has a drive to turn ideas into reality.Jeff BezosHighly competitive Extreme frugal Highly experimental Calculated risk-taker Highly generous.Bill GatesHe considers “Time” as the most valuable in the world Loves to take calculated risks Never gives up Learns from the past mistakes Thinks ahead of the time.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
1. Who Is An Example Of An Entrepreneur? Examples of some best entrepreneurs are: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk. Pierre Omidyar, And Caterina Fake. 2. How To Become An Entrepreneur? The steps of how to become an entrepreneur are as follows:1. Network.2. Sell your idea.3. Plan the business.4. Market.5. Find the target audience.6. Determine whether you should earn a special degree.7. Find out the perfect business for yourself. 3. What Are The 4 Types Of Entrepreneurs? The 4 types of entrepreneurs are as follows: small business, large company, social entrepreneurship, and scalable startup. 4. Do You Need Money To Be An Entrepreneur? While starting as an entrepreneur, you need to make at least a small monetary investment. Be it from your friends or family, a minor investment is required.
“Remember Why You Started”
Now that you know the foremost characteristics of entrepreneurs, it’s just the beginning. Discover yourself more and keep finding that zeal within you. You do not have to be another Elon Musk Or Jeff Bezos, but you can also rule the world by being yourself.
What’s your thought on the characteristics of entrepreneurs? Do not hesitate to tell us in the comment section below.
Read Also:
7 Startup Essentials Entrepreneurs Should Know AboutLarge Company Entrepreneurship: Definition, Pros, Cons, And MoreWhat Is Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship: Definition, Examples, And More
The product launch is a proud day for your company and a vital one as well. If you want that product to succeed, you need to find a meaningful way to connect with the customers. That can be more challenging than you might realize at first.
We’ll run down the three things you should do to make sure your product launch works. Doing these three things won’t guarantee the product’s success, but it gives you the best chance to get the market penetration for which you’re undoubtedly hoping.
Product Launch Tips that Dramatically Increase Your Success Chances
There are various product launch tips that can increase your success chances significantly and some of the major ones we have described below. Have a look!
1. Announce the Product Via the Right Venue or Channel
As you’re getting ready for your product launch, your company’s employees might be a little bit nervous. Your R and D department might have worked on that product for weeks, months, or even years. You might need this product to succeed if your company is going to remain afloat or gain ground over your competitors.
If you want to give that product the best successful chance, you should announce it at the right venue or using the proper channel. That venue might be your website, but it could also be a podcast. You might also set up a press conference and announce the new product that way.
If your company is just a startup, though, a press conference is probably not a possibility. You haven’t established yourself yet, so there’s no reason why the press would care enough to show up.
You might choose social media as a way to announce your new product is out now. If you do, you’ll need to figure out the right platform to use.
You should utilize what social media platform you know your customers use the most. Using an online video editor, you can create a video introducing your product. It could be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or something else.
You might also announce the new product via your website. Again, that’s only going to work if you’ve already established your company and a good amount of people know about it.
2. Build the Anticipation to a Fever Pitch
You also need to run a marketing campaign before dropping the product to attract as much attention as possible. Think about the marketing leading up to a new movie or album release. Consider the various ways the marketing team drums up as much anticipation as possible.
Exactly how you can promote the product before the launch depends on several factors, such as what the product is, how much money you have to work with, and what channels you have available. You might release featurettes on your YouTube channel about the product for months in advance. You can offer related merchandise if that’s practical.
You might offer a limited edition of the product for those who preorder it. Try to fill up the waitlist on your website. You could include a special giveaway that comes with the product, but only for the first 500 customers.
3. Make Sure Your Product Fills a Need
The last thing you need to think about is whether your product addresses a customer pain point. The pain point is something the customer wants or a need they have.
If you do a lot of market research using advanced analytics and customer surveys, you should develop a very clear idea of what your customers want. If you don’t bother to do that, you’re leaving the product’s success up to chance.
That can’t happen, especially if you’ve sunk a lot of time and energy into this particular product. If you miss the mark when you feel like you’ve determined what your customers want, that can be an error from which your company might not recover.
Remember that if you’re deviating too much from what your customer base has bought in the past, you’re taking a significant risk. If you launch a product that’s a major departure from your prior offerings, offer it in a much more limited capacity. If it catches on, you can mass-produce it.
You have a much better product success chance if you derive your product from what you already make. If you’re a clothing manufacturer, for instance, and you decide to expand your brand to something wildly different, like office supplies, the odds are against it succeeding.
The Final Thoughts
You’ll need to plan the launch meticulously, with painstaking research and customer focus groups beforehand. If you do all that, you can probably count on a strong reception. With any luck, your product might go viral. It could be what propels your company to new recognition and previously unseen success. Hence, this is all about product launch tips that will help you to dramatically increase your success chances.
Read Also:
How Customer Success Can Help Grow Your Business
Five things to consider before starting a Business
7 Growth Hacking Ideas that will Boost your Startup
As an entrepreneur, your customers are the biggest pillar of your business. No matter your industry of domain, area of specialization, or even your business focus, they are the single most valuable asset to your organization and you should treat them as so.
Through their valuable feedback, your business can gain a new sense of direction, develop new concepts, as well as bring in more revenue. With that said, as a business owner, simply appreciating your customers isn’t enough. You need to truly understand them to tailor your products and services to meet them at their point of need. And that’s where Salesforce application development comes in.
It entails creating integrated customer relationship management solutions that interface businesses with their customers. These CRM platforms also give all the departments in a particular organization a unified view of all the customers and how they interact with various aspects of the business.
In this article, we are going to look at what Salesforce is and its uses. While at it, we are also going to delve deeper to see the entire Salesforce application development lifecycle.
What Is Salesforce?
Simply put, it’s a cloud computing SaaS company that provides customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. Thanks to the company’s cloud technology, businesses are able to better connect with their existing clientele, partners, and potential customers.
Over the years, Salesforce software has grown to become the leading marketing and customer behavior tracking solution for both small startups and Fortune 500 companies. As it turns out, customer relationship management is one of the key driving factors for the increasing demand for application development in Salesforce.
Recent research from Vonage offered a compelling view of the effects and consequences of poor customer service. In the US alone, the research revealed that an estimated $62 billion is lost annually as a result of bad customer experience.
To underwrite this figure, a different report from Huffpost has indicated that 91% of customers won’t hesitate to switch brands once they experience bad customer service. These are mind-blowing figures, especially if a business has no solution to counter the consequences of poor customer experience.
However, with Salesforce in place, businesses are able to overcome the problems caused by poor customer service and other business process variables. According to statistics published on Salesforce’s website, companies that are currently using their software have continued to see average increases in multiple areas. For instance, 34% of users have seen an increase in customer satisfaction, with 27% and 32% users seeing an increase in sales revenues and lead conversion respectively.
In 2018, Salesforce emerged as the biggest CRM software commanding a total of 19.8% market share of the CRM software market. During the same period, the company was voted as the #1 CRM provider by the International Data Corporation. It shouldn't come as a surprise that companies are willing to pay the highest Salesforce consultant salary just to get wind of this technology.
The Benefits of Using Salesforce
Given the commendable portfolio of Salesforce, here are areas it can help your business find success. Below I am going to discuss the benefits of using Salesforce.
Helps Collect Customer Intel
In the prevailing competitive business environment, overlooking data collection can be a fatal and unforgiving mistake. As a business, collecting and collating customer intelligence should be an obsession or the very least treated as a full-time affair, because it can lead to loss of revenue. As such, if you are to improve customer satisfaction and continue remaining competitive, hiring qualified Salesforce developers to build a high-quality CRM tool is inevitable.
And with Salesforce, you get an upper hand over your competitors by enjoying tools that help you identify, understand, and solve customer problems.
Flexible And Scalable
As companies and business needs continue to evolve, the tools of trade must also adapt. For instance, if the structures of your business start to grow, the management software should be able to seamlessly accommodate the changes. Cognizant of this fact, Salesforce CRM comes with multiple functions that allow for scalability right from the initial stages to any future interactions.
Helps in Account Planning
Having a unified view of customer information allows your teams to independently make plans for various accounts. It also facilitates a more hands-on customer connection approach as well as allows various reps and departments in your organization to modify their plans for optimized results. Salesforce also comes with a to-do items feature, which helps your entire workforce stay organized throughout the day.
Along with that, Salesforce also works as an organizational tool. Your team can create calendar reminders specifying the future customer follow-ups or important duties reminders to the upper management, which helps prevent anything from falling through the cracks.
If you are in the service-based businesses, Salesforce also gives you insights into the amount of time a particular customer/s has stayed in a particular subscription package. Once this info is established, your team is able to customize marketing materials to match a particular customer niche.
Cloud Connectivity
Many companies are now gravitating towards software as a service (SaaS), which means software that is available online. Luckily, Salesforce doesn’t need to be installed on a computer as it is cloud-based. This means that you can easily access it everywhere, interface it with other digitized services, and enjoy unlimited storage capacity. And since no maintenance is required, you get to save on a Salesforce developer salary that would have otherwise been paid for this purpose.
Facilitates Team Collaboration
Poor team communication and collaboration can lead to reduced productivity. On top of a unified view of customer data, Salesforce’s “Chatter” feature allows your team members to easily and regularly communicate work-related information. Additionally, the feature also lets you highlight and prioritize urgent issues that require special attention by inviting different team members to look at them.
Salesforce Application Development Lifecycle
Software developers spend a lot of time designing, developing, securing, and delivering products that perform better than initially envisioned. As a result, different software development approaches like agile development, waterfall model, and many others have merged.
When it comes to cloud-based solutions, the incorporation and implementation of various software development methodologies make it even more complex. Moreover, the Salesforce Development Lifecycle also means that the software is developed, tested, and deployed in a cloud environment.
Below, we have laid down 6 steps that clearly illustrate the entire Salesforce Development Lifecycle:
Business Requirements Analysis
The first step towards a successful custom Salesforce application is to conduct an internal business needs analysis. It entails the development team eliciting the potential customer needs, elaborating them, validating all the assumptions, and devising efficient methodologies to meet these requirements.
Business requirements analysis is important as it helps avert potential mistakes as well as make the final product both efficient and compatible with the existing system and security standards.
UI/UX Design
Another important aspect of Salesforce application development is optimizing the app for user experience. A report by iMPACT indicates that 52% of customers are less likely to conduct business with a brand offering a poor mobile experience. On the other hand, Forbes conservative estimates indicate that intentional and strategic user experience can yield a conversion rate as high as 400%.
If these numbers are anything to go by, designing a user-friendly and highly responsive Salesforce application development is absolutely paramount. In order to optimize an app for effective and enjoyable use, developers need to map out the user journey and creatively choreograph user/platform interactions to benefit the end-user.
Development Phase
The next step in Salesforce application development entails creating developers creating isolated sandboxes. Generally, these distinct sandboxes hold the main production app copy and other supplementary Salesforce configuration information. They are also independent, implying that changes in a single sandbox don’t affect the main Salesforce production enterprise. Individual developers have to clone their branches.
To retrieve the metadata from the sandboxes to the IDE, the developers need to use Force.com IDE. Once they have the metadata, they continue coding their assigned app features, performing initial unit testing, and then submit the finished code to the Git repository.
If a subsequent developer wants to build on top of this freshly updated branch, they need to clone it to their sandbox and continue developing new features. Once done, they also have to submit their latest development to the repository.
With that said, the possibility of multiple developers working on the same branch cant be overlooked. To avoid conflicts, it is important for everyone in the development team to check for possible branch updates before committing.
Testing
The next step after building a Salesforce application is to ensure that it has an excellent and stable performance. This mainly entails developers carrying out QA activities including unit tests and code reviews. It is also at this stage that functional, performance, and integration testing is conducted within the development process.
Lastly, automation tests and debugging are conducted to augment the app’s speedy delivery.
Integration
During the integration phase, the custom CRM application is interfaced with third-party software like CMS. To facilitate a smooth transition, the development team also conduct hands-on training sessions as well as provides training materials to the client.
Launch
Once the app is launched for internal use, it is transferred to the client and subjected to their User Acceptance Testing environment (UAT). Once satisfied, the finished product is moved to the production environment and deployed to the end-users.
Salesforce Application Development Team Actors
During the app development process, different players are involved and handle different aspects of the app. In the Salesforce app development life cycle, the most common actors include:
Product Manager: Help finalize business requirements.
Release Manager: Help coordinate the app’s release schedule.
Software Developer: Handles the main coding and produces the requisite deliverables.
Quality Analyst: Tests and confirms the functionality of various app features.
Potential money from the Salesforce AppExchange development:
After researching the fact this has been seen that Potential money from the salesforce AppExchange development can depend on several other factors.
How To Build an App for Salesforce AppExchange?
To build your AppExchange app, you must go through the multi-step procedure, which includes compliance, release, ongoing support, and demand app development. Below, I will discuss how to create an App for Salesforce AppExchange.
1st Step: Become the Part of Salesforce Business Partner Community
The first and foremost step in becoming a Salesforce AppExchange trade Partner is to join the Salesforce Partner Community. In this case, you must submit the form using AppExchange. After all, the Salesforce Partner Community is the hub of existing AppExchange Partners.
2nd Step: Examine AppExchange Market
The next step in building the app is to examine the AppExchange market. AppExchange offers many products and solutions for several products and cloud services in Salesforce. In this case, for optimal outcomes, you must use the curated collections of AppExchange.
3rd Step: Make the First Sketches of Your Product
Once you are done researching the existing solutions on AppExchange, you must start defining the unique value proposition of your product. For the outline, you must follow the below-mentioned procedure such as:
Firstly, you must understand your target audience.
Secondly, ensure you have an idea of business targets.
Thirdly, you must follow the types of Salesforce editions you will support.
After that, ensure you have an idea of the package type.
Next, ensure you have the Salesforce Licenses that you want to use.
Lastly, it would help if you ensured the requirements for your AppExchange App security.
4th Step: Define the Type of ISV Partnership and the Type Of Your AppExchange Solution
Once you have joined the Salesforce Partner Community, then, you must analyze the existing products, and you can create a rough roadmap. In this case, ensure you have defined the type of ISV partnership, and consequently, you also have built the AppExchange solution.
There are seven types of ISV partners in AppExchange. It includes OEM, CDP Cloud Partner, Commerce Cloud Partner, All Other Clouds (paid), All Other Clouds (free), and Technology Partner/Tableau.
5th Step: Choose the Programming Type and Tools to Build Your Salesforce App
Recently, Salesforce provided two types of programming languages and two types of tools that you can use. Let’s know what programming tools are used in Salesforce App development. This includes Apex Cloud-based programming language. Next are Lightning components and Visualforce.
6th Step: Build Your Salesforce App
Once you can identify the exact type of solution, it must have the programming language, licensing, and packaging, and of course, you must continue with the building procedure.
Two ways to do this are using internal sources or outsourcing the dedicated team. If you want to build the SalesForce App using an in-house team, it could be one the most viable and remarkable options. If you don’t have enough resources, ensure you can control the entire product cycle of AppExchange.
7th Step: Test Your Salesforce App
If you want to ensure optimal performance, then it must conduct comprehensive end-to-end testing in technological domains. In this case, you must adhere to the development of best business practices, especially for testing.
8th Step: Prepare Your App for the Launch on AppExchange
Once you are done testing and finalizing the app, the next step is to prepare by submitting it to the SalesForce AppExchange. In this procedure, it includes creating the managed packages and providing screenshots.
9th Step: Submit Your App for Security Review and Market This
Ensure you have submitted your final app by undergoing the security review and then have met the necessary security requirements.
Final Thoughts
Salesforce CRM is a critical business tool. It helps streamline data analysis and reporting, provides invaluable customer feedback, and aid in formulating better customer service strategies. As a result, businesses are able to align their resources towards creating timely, customer-oriented solutions.
With that said, Salesforce application development isn’t a linear process. It entails working with different tools and multiple software development methodologies. And with cloud solutions continuing to capture the imaginations of business owners, the world is yet to see the full potential of CRM Salesforce and the cloud ecosystem as a whole.
Read also:
Top User Tips For Getting Started With Salesforce
CRM And ERP Combination For Business Solutions
5 Things To Take Into Account To Hire Custom Software Development Services
