Taken as a whole small and medium sized entities that are underperforming face difficulties as a result of not having reached a sustainable critical mass. Typically they were start-ups that are owner run and worked but as they grew they were forced to add overheads and as a result they no longer are attaining break-even turnover volumes. The solution often lies in generating turnover.
Given inspired and motivated people that back products with awesome service to meet expectations and a vision by way of an unstoppable strategy the business will endure.
There are many ways to grow turnover and to increase profitability including:
- Selling more and more often to existing clients.
- Upselling existing clients to take complimentry goods and services.
- Expanding the market reach of the existing business.
- Outsourcing non-core functions to reduce overheads.
The world marketplace is moving to the Internet and small to medium sized enterprises are increasingly suffering from the effects of the dominance of big business on the Internet. To have a reasonable chance of being found on the Internet within the top page rankings in search results an online enterprise needs a SEO budget that often is beyond the reach of local businesses. Big business ranks highly as a result of having many thousands of quality backlinks, social media support, offline attraction marketing, video marketing, syndicated article distribution, blogs and more. The SEO budget is used to build and drive traffic to sites optimised to dominate search keywords.
Up to 2011 some 177 million websites were on the Internet. In the next 3 years another 340 million were added. Whilst there is no consensus on what constitutes a website it is the trend rather than the quantum that is important to understanding that the current and future trends will show exponential growth. Keyword utilisation is thus becoming saturated and local business will increasingly have no chance of being found in search engine results.
There are many ways in which local business can attract traffic including being listed on local directories with advanced website builders, e-Commerce stores, coupon and deal marketing plus more. An example of a new era directory is www.eGauteng.info where local business collectively market there local suppliers by neighbourhood. It is akin to a shoal of small sardines swimming together and which together are very much bigger than the biggest shark. Local business can effectively compete but they must localise the Internet and collectively market each other.
When you shop for goods at your local shopping mall you browse products and not the profiles of the store ownership. You are attracted by deals, specials and by bargains. I am sure that you will agree with this so why then do we find local business offering stale About Us information on their websites that do not showcase products and testimonials of completed services plus which do not offer coupons for specials and bargain deals.
The following eBook will give you insight to creating an unstoppable turnaround strategy. Please do read it and join me on the blog to share ideas and questions.
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