Today, we’re outlining all the right and wrong digital marketing strategies you might be using. Based on reliable data and proven results, knowing what to do and what not to do is about to get a whole lot easier. And you have plenty of time to make the necessary changes to your existing plans now, so you’re positioned for BIG marketing results in 2024.

Website Presence

Your online window to the world and storefront is your website and, within it, your subsequent landing pages. But they won’t generate leads for your business if you’re not routinely updating and improving your web game. Having a website and having an effective, lead-generating website are two entirely different concepts.

What You’re Doing Right

• If you’re copywriting and sharing original content, you’re doing your messaging right.
• If you’re mindful of SEO, with strong keywords and linking strategies throughout your site, Google searches will find you.
• If you’re leveraging great graphics with user-friendly designs, your site visitors will stay longer.
• If you’re continuously using site metrics to analyze your website’s efficacy, you’re doing it right.

What You’re Doing Wrong

• If your website feels too spammy for salesy, it will be a turnoff to new visitors.
• If you’re not keeping up with website design trends and user experience preferences, you’re losing visitors.
• If your website takes too long to load or doesn’t appear well on mobile, you’re losing engagement.
• If you’re trying to manage the upkeep and visibility of your website without outside help, you’re likely missing out on improvement opportunities.

Landing Pages

Dedicated landing pages are great funnel tools. Here, information lives that outlines precise offers or announcements. And these landing pages can live embedded in your website but are only visible to those who click the landing page link. That’s why they’re incredible for email campaigns and clickfunnels. See what you’re doing right and not-so-right with your landing pages.

What You’re Doing Right:

• If you’re using landing pages as part of your sales funnels, click funnels, and email campaigns, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re using amazing headings and graphics for your landing pages, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re keeping your landing page content simple and easy to follow, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re creating new landing pages for each specific offer, you’re doing it right.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• If you’re not optimizing your landing pages for mobile devices, you’re losing your audiences.
• If you’re using links on your dedicated landing pages that take visitors away from your page, you’re losing engagement.
• If your landing pages are too complicated or make the users feel like you’re asking too much of them, they’ll stop engaging.
• If your landing pages are missing CTAs, your audience won’t take the next steps.

Content Marketing

All of your online marketing strategies and efforts have one thing in common – content. What you say to your audience and the message you send them should enlighten, entertain, educate, empower, and engage. And because there is so much content bombarding your target audience, you’ll need a dedicated strategy behind your content to break through the noise and make an impact.

What You’re Doing Right:

• If you’re engaging your target audience with relevant and valuable content regularly, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re keeping up with a consistent blog or newsletter, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re sharing industry news, company fun, behind-the-scenes content, and purchasing advice, you’re doing it right.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• If you don’t have a content strategy or road map, posting and uploading random content, you’re not building momentum or engaging your audience.
• If your content sells too hard, asks too much, or manipulates, your audience is going to venture elsewhere.
• If you’re approaching your content marketing with a one-size-fits-all method, you’re doing it wrong.

Email Marketing

Another online marketing strategy you should be using is email. And today’s email campaigns are far more sophisticated than ever before. Before you go buying all the software solutions and platform applications to start sending mass email campaigns, there are a few things you should know.

What You’re Doing Right:

• If you’re using sign-up forms and opt-ins to grow your email list, you’re doing it right.
• You’re using poignant, brief subject lines that grab the attention of the recipient without overselling.
• You’re segmenting your email lists and sending sequences of emails that speak to each of those segments.
• You’re customizing your email campaigns to conversationally connect with each recipient.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• If you’re buying email lists, you’re risking poor bounce rates, spam folders, and non-target audiences.
• Don’t send the same cookie-cutter email message to all your recipients without personalization.
• Don’t send any emails without first polishing your content for broken links, grammar, and spelling.
• If you’re using the same graphics, content, and subject lines without A/B testing and customizing, you’re burning through your email lists without engaging.

Paid Ads and PPC

There’s a misconception that if you spend money on digital marketing advertising methods, like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and Pay Per Click, you’re going to see results. Unfortunately, with so many vying for visibility and positioning, there’s no guarantee your ads are going to turn into clicks, purchases, or leads. If you want to invest in online marketing ads, there’s a right and wrong way to develop your strategy, especially if you want conversions.

What You’re Doing Right:

• Do target your paid ads to a specific target audience.
• If you’re including brief and transparent calls to action, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re using quality graphics and mobile-friendly content with your paid ads, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re following a consistent approach and strategic messaging with your paid ads, you’re doing it right.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• Don’t blow your budget on paid ads with expectations of instantaneous results.
• Don’t blindly pay for digital marketing ads without monitoring the metrics and analytics.
• If you’re over-cramming content into your paid ads, they won’t have the same impact as brief, precise content.
• If you’re paying for online ads without testing concepts first, you’re likely overspending in the wrong direction.

Social Media Marketing

There’s social media for your personal circles, and then there’s social media for business. And that’s just half the battle. Then you have to decide if you need a presence on Facebook, X (Twitter,) Instagram, or TikTok. Stop chasing the hottest “do this” and “be here” advice. Instead, stick with the pillar do’s and don’ts of social media marketing.

What You’re Doing Right:

• If you’re routinely updating your social media business profiles, you’re doing it right and demonstrating an active presence.
• If you’re sticking to a social media strategy that includes a regular posting/sharing schedule, you’re building visibility, momentum, and trust with your audience.
• If you’re engaging, responding, and following your audience quickly and responsibly, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re using your social media platforms to provide value, fun, and informative content, you’re delivering precisely what your audience wants.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• If you’re trying to be on all the social media platforms without narrowing your focus on those channels that work best, you’re spreading yourself too thin.
• If you’re not setting social media goals and following engagement metrics, you’re flying blind.
• If you’re spamming your followers online or in their DMs, you’re turning buyers away.
• If you’re overusing hashtags, it’s working against you.

Search Engine Optimization

How visible your brand is online, especially when potential clients browse for things you offer, depends on your ability to master search engine optimization. If you’re struggling to know what you need to know about keyword strategies, local SEO, and Google’s latest algorithm changes, keep reading. Here’s what your business SEO strategy needs and doesn’t need.

What You’re Doing Right:

• You’re conducting keyword research for your specific niche business and including those keywords throughout your website.
• You’re crafting impactful meta descriptions that represent the page content well.
• You’re tying in local city/region information with your keywords to improve local SEO.
• You’re linking to other pages and blogs within your site as well as to reputable external sites, anchoring specific keywords.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• If you’re over-stuffing your content with keywords, fitting them in where they don’t naturally fit, it can backfire in SEO.
• If you’re constantly changing your SEO strategy to chase trends, the inconsistency could harm your site’s performance.
• If you’re ignoring the search intent or motivations of your target audience, you’re not boosting keywords and SEO properly.
• If you’re not prioritizing mobile formats and responsive design, you’re missing out on Google’s favor.

Video Marketing

Video marketing isn’t just reserved for social media. A brilliant video can cut through the content noise wherever you’re engaging your target audience. From YouTube followings and influencer marketing to boosted engagement with email campaigns and social, video marketing deserves its own strategy. And there are do’s and don’ts to consider to ensure your video campaigns and efforts are driving results.

What You’re Doing Right

• If you’re planning a video content calendar with a strategy, you’re doing it right and will be primed to engage your audience well.
• If you’re sampling various video marketing platforms and channels testing for the best-fit channels for the message, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re keeping your videos short and value-packed with educational, inspirational, and valuable information, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re creating attractive and appealing thumbnails for your videos, you’re doing it right.

What You’re Doing Wrong

• Don’t use your video content as an infomercial, overselling your brand or offerings all the time.
• Don’t make videos with the goal of going viral only since they will lose their efficacy among your target audience.
• If you’re making lengthy intro statements for your video, viewers will tune out quickly.
• If you’re rushing video content without spending time on editing, aesthetics, and branding, your audience will recognize the careless delivery and not follow.

Hashtag Marketing

What used to be a simplistic pound sign has since turned into a wildly popular digital marketing method. Clicking on a hashtag (on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others) will take you to a feed of posts and content related to that hashtag. And there are brilliant ways businesses can boost awareness and visibility with a well-planned hashtag strategy. Consider these do’s and don’ts to make sure your hashtag marketing strategy is working for your brand and not against it.

What You’re Doing Right

• If you’re being creative and strategic with choosing what hashtag phrases you’re using, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re aligning your content with relevant, existing hashtag communities, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re verifying that your social accounts are public, your hashtags will be available and visible to non-followers.
• If you’re including the same few key hashtags with each of your posts, you’ll be building a growing community of posts associated with your brand and business.

What You’re Doing Wrong

• If you’re using too many hashtags within your posts, it can count against you in the visibility algorithms.
• Don’t string too many words together because they won’t be easily remembered or found by those who encounter them.
• Don’t forget to include a brand-specific, event-specific, or sale-specific hashtag to showcase your core message.
• If you’re only using single-word, popular hashtags, your message will get lost in the noisy space and hashtag community.

Keep this online marketing roster of do’s and don’ts handy as you evaluate which channels, strategies, and tactics are best for your business model. And when you’re ready to make a BIG impact with your content marketing, from email campaigns to ongoing blog series, let the copywriting masters at Ghost Blog Writers be your go-to team!

The post What You’re Doing Right (And Wrong) with Your Online Marketing appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

Today’s inspirational leaders are operating with a new rulebook. And if you hope to achieve similar successes, you might need to make some adjustments to your way of managing. Check out these insights and start realizing your own valuable leadership potential. Chart a new course for yourself as well as those around you. Realize how to become an effective and revolutionary leader in today’s ever-changing business climate.

What Does Business Leadership Mean?

Back in the day, like a generation or two ago, leaders were essentially just bosses. Anyone with authority or power to make decisions and control the efforts of others was called a “leader.” Of course, there were some true gems in there, with a deeper understanding of impactful and thoughtful leadership, changing the lives of others for the better. But a lot of folks with a title held positions of business leadership that had no rightly business being there.

Today’s leaders are not those old-school bosses of yesteryear.

Today’s business leaders are defined as those who provide leadership to organizational employees and vendors with the purpose of collectively chaperoning the group to success that aligns with the company objectives. In short, great leaders are those who support and guide individuals and teams in a way that benefits the individuals and the company together.

The duties might look the same as the leaders of the past. Today’s empower-ers are still responsible for making critical company or departmental decisions. They’re in charge of developing and implementing goal-driven initiatives. And they’re still charged with managing employees. But it’s how today’s leaders execute on these tasks that differs and sets them apart as revolutionary leaders.

What Distinguishes a Good Leader from a Bad Leader Today?

Trying to build, grow, or maintain a company in today’s economic environment is tedious. It’s far more complex now to manage employees, sell products and services, and expand into new markets. It’s fast-paced, too, with mission-critical decisions demanding your attention every minute of every day. And the stakes are higher since one delayed decision could cost thousands. Under these kinds of pressures, the greatest leaders emerge, and they all have the same roster of key characteristics…

• Integrity
• Courage
• Empathy
• Gratitude
• Self-Awareness
• Respect

Asking around, you’ll find that employees hold leaders in the highest regard when they…

• Demonstrate a variety of skill sets needed for the job
• Have strong and transparent communication skills
• Are emotionally intelligent to the needs and preferences of their subordinates
• Inspire people to be the best version of themselves
• Motivate individuals and the collective group effectively

Why Leadership Skills Are Important for Owners and Managers

Cultivating and improving your leadership skills, whether you’re a business owner or a departmental manager, is important for several reasons. In addition to making decisions and managing staff, you’re responsible for other pivotal responsibilities. Explore these distinctions to see how you’re doing right now with your current leadership methods.

• A marginal leader will give orders. A great leader will inspire action.
• A marginal leader will delegate tasks. A great leader will share the vision behind the tasks.
• A marginal leader will control staff. A great leader will motivate teams.
• A marginal leader will compete internally. A great leader will build relationships.
• A marginal leader will avoid risks. A great leader will assess and embrace risks.
• A marginal leader will be content with the status quo. A great leader will challenge thinking and learn new solutions.

Today’s businesses need great leaders to facilitate growth, adaptability, and scaling. It’s just that simple. And it’s why as a leader yourself, these new leadership skills, methods, styles, and strategies should matter to you.

Do You Possess Great Leadership Qualities?

Understanding what today’s revolutionary leaders do differently and why these types of leaders are important in business, you can now turn inward. Reflect on your own skills and leadership characteristics. Get honest about assessing your leadership qualities. And if any of these qualities are missing from your leadership style, you know precisely what needs improvement.

Authentic Leadership

The most respected leaders always lead from a position of authenticity. This management style trusts employees. These leaders are transparent and honest about their own motivations as they guide and support others with theirs.

Empathetic Leadership

The famed Tony Robbins often talks about empathetic leadership as the most impactful leadership style. These individuals are open and sensitive to the experiences, views, and opinions of others. They’re naturally curious and make decisions with a complete understanding of how those results impact others around them.

Adaptable Leadership

Innovative leaders are always reevaluating their positions and discovering better solutions. They’re not only comfortable with change, they crave it, always seeking a more efficient strategy. These leaders can often handle any challenge or workplace dynamic before them without missing a step.

Competent Leadership

Great leaders aren’t just all personality. They’re highly skilled for the role of leadership. Competent leaders tap into their knowledge, skills, and experiences and are typically self-disciplined to a tee. They’re also regularly embracing new ideas, education, and training to grow their competencies.

Commitment-Driven Leadership

Do as I do. Commitment-driven leaders are doers and often inspire others to make similar workplace commitments. The best leaders won’t ask anyone to do something they don’t believe in or wouldn’t do themselves.

Character-Inspired Leadership

Be honest and get comfortable with your own unique experiences and beliefs. Great leaders embrace these characteristics, good and bad, in a way that informs how they manage and support others.

Different Leadership Styles for Different Leaders

While the most effective and transformative leaders of today’s business environment have many of the aforementioned characteristics and skills, your leadership style can be unique. Every leader has a style. And it’s best to stick with the methods and strategies that best complement your style, personality, and uniqueness.

HubSpot lays out several of the various leadership styles of today’s most profound leaders. Explore these and decide which (or combination thereof) you identify with the most.

Democratic Leadership: Decisions are based on input from others.

Autocratic Leadership: Decisions are derived from a single source.

Laissez-Faire Leadership: Decisions come from employees individually

Strategic Leadership: Decisions are based on goals and strategies.

Transformational Leadership: Driven to work and think in new ways.

Transactional Leadership: Employees are rewarded for jobs well done.

Coaching Leadership: Encourages and nurtures individuals.

Bureaucratic Leadership: Decisions are rooted in company policies.

Visionary Leadership: Energetic enthusiasm and focus on the future.

Pacesetting Leadership: Setting aggressive and ambitious goals.

Situational Leadership: Leadership styles and decisions are addressed uniquely by the specific situation at hand.

Taking Action to Transform Into a Great Leader

When you’re ready to take action and transform your leadership initiatives, there are great first steps to explore. Recognizing how you can improve is only half the “revolutionary” leadership battle. Now it’s time to put some verbs on your to-do list and execute your leadership transformation.

Find an Inspirational Role Model or Mentor to Follow

It’s always best to find and follow another great leader you admire. Do your homework to discover a great leadership example with many of the same experiences, personality traits, or industry scenarios. Reach out and ask questions. And always be a sponge in learning new perspectives and strategies for successful leadership.

Conduct a Current Positioning Survey and Leadership Assessment

Leadership assessments are great tools for honing your managerial strengths. These efforts can boost your self-awareness, too. Get feedback from your teams anonymously about what they love or dislike about the current leadership styles. Uncover immediate needs they might have so you can prioritize resolutions. Don’t be too proud to take criticism, either, or you’ll never transform into a revolutionary leader.

Start with One Person, Today

Don’t just make a leadership improvements to-do list and let it collect dust on a corner of your desk. Take action right now by seeking out one team member who needs your help today. Find one person who could use additional support or reassurance and then BE what they need. Build action-driven leadership momentum that starts with intentional assistance, one employee at a time.

Be Proactive About Seeking Out Leadership Opportunities

If you want to be a truly transformative leader, you’re going to need to be proactive about seeking new opportunities to demonstrate great leadership. Be liberal about doling out credit where credit is due. Be encouraging to your teams during long work days or difficult projects. And always be available to roll up your sleeves and help when your teams need it.

Practice Leadership Outside of Work

Great leaders aren’t just pivotal at the office or on the job. They’re usually inspiring and motivating others in all aspects of their lives. Look for ways to practice great leadership elsewhere, with friends, at church, or within your community. Live a life where strong leadership values and skills transcend the workplace and positively impact every corner of your world.

Take Steps to Get Organized

You might look at your messy desk and think it’s organized chaos. But it’s not organized, and you’re not inspiring anyone else to get organized when your office space appears cluttered. Take steps now to bring organization to your life, including that messy desk. Great leaders are organized and inspire others to maintain schedules and order in their work. The more organized you are, the easier it’s going to be to multi-task projects and work. And data suggests that when a company is led by an organized leader, the entire team is more likely to perform efficiently and function like a well-oiled machine.

Trust and Delegate

Here’s another action step you can take right now, but it might be challenging at first. The greatest leaders today recognize that they can’t achieve success by themselves. You’re going to need to tag in other employees and managers who can grow with you and exceed collective goals. It can be tough to hand over the reins, especially if you’ve been in control of them for any length of time. But you’re going to have to trust and delegate others to join your efforts. Doing so will only bolster your results. And you’ll allow others to step forward and build their leadership skills.

Share Your Leadership Knowledge and Journey

The most innovative of today’s leaders don’t hoard their knowledge and skills. They instead share their expertise and experience for the benefit of others. As a business owner or manager, you have an opportunity to impact a broader audience. Thought leadership isn’t just about teaching new concepts or sharing new ideas. It’s also about sharing lessons learned, mistakes, and decisions that led to some of your biggest breakthroughs. Don’t hog your success and expertise. Share your leadership journey and inspire others. Here are just a few ways you can do just that:

• Volunteer to be a guest speaker at a local event.
• Share your stories within your networking groups.
• Create thought leadership content, including blogs and videos online.
• Write a book about your leadership journey.

Start Your Leadership Transformation

Today’s leaders are different from those of past generations. Being a leader in today’s business landscape, with its complex and ever-changing elements, requires a new playbook for success. Keep these insights in mind as you explore ways to improve your leadership skills and styles. And for all your thought leadership content efforts, let Ghost Blog Writers be your guide! Our team of talented wordsmiths can help you capture your leadership experiences and storytelling in a creative and resonating way. Connect with us and sample your free trial post to get started!

The post What It Means to Be a Revolutionary Leader in Today’s Business Landscape appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

For now, you know your success in business relies on your]]>

Understanding the Differences Between Growing and Scaling

Generally speaking, when you think of business growth, you think of linear growth. Business growth usually requires additional capital, technology, people, or resources. And with those investments, you expect the bottom-line revenue to grow. Scaling is a different form of growth, however.

Scaling is a rapid increase in profits at a faster rate than rising costs. Growth implies an increase in profits as they directly relate to an increase in resources or costs.

Scaling involves increasing your company revenue without linearly investing in additional resources. In fact, business scaling can allow you to increase revenue while minimizing costs. Where growth is more about the size of the business resources, scaling is about the value proposition and boosting results with little to no changes in core resources.

Here’s an apples-to-apples look at scaling versus growth:

• Growth – Focuses on the company
• Scaling – Focuses on the revenue and earning potential

• Growth – Revenue and resource increase together
• Scaling – Revenue grows faster than incurred costs or used resources

• Growth – Is a linear transformation
• Scaling – Is an exponential transformation

• Growth – Aspires to attain a goal or singular end result
• Scaling – Capability to exercise all goals and results together

Different Types of Business Scaling

To help you better understand the methods and strategies for business scaling, consider the different types of scaling efforts.

1. Bootstrapping – this type prioritizes organic growth through internal means.
2. Slow Scaling – this type uses external financing to supplement growth.
3. Fast Scaling – this type of scaling usually involves venture capital and viral growth.
4. Blitzscaling – this is Zuckerberg’s “move fast and break things” approach to leverage new techniques for lightning-fast growth.

In addition to the four types of business scaling, there are four directions to direct that company growth.

1. Scaling Up – upscale existing strategies
2. Scaling Deep – strategically upscale with internal mindset shifts.
3. Scaling Out – making your impact and offering transferable.
4. Scaling Down – grow your impact by cutting back on nonessentials.

The 5 R’s of Scaling

When you’re ready to put your business scaling ideas to task, create a checklist. And for many of today’s leaders, scaling success is achievable when you vet your ideas through the lens of the five Rs.

Readiness – Evaluate how ready your teams, customers, and arsenal of resources are to facilitate your ideas.

Resources – Determine if your scaling ideas require additional resources, like customer service channels, internal staff, or technology enhancements.

Receptivity – Make sure you have the market research data to support your scaling strategy and business-boosting ideas.

Risks – Assess every risk associated with your ideas for business scaling.

Returns – Outline the intended and projected returns, worst and best-case scenarios to set ROI goals.

Don’t attempt to initiate business scaling strategies until you’re comfortable with each of these points. Doing so prematurely will only result in additional challenges, increased risks, and more costs.

How to Scale in 2023

Once you and your leadership teams have a deeper understanding of the concepts needed to scale your business, you’re ready for the fun part. Now, you can start exploring the to-do lists and execution strategies to bring those business scaling ideas to life.

Center Everything On Your Company Offerings

The first priority with any scaling effort is centralizing and building on your company’s core offerings. Now’s the time to really analyze your data and sales metrics to identify which product or service is the most lucrative. A scaling strategy requires leading with this “best foot” forward. And organizations that focus their efforts on a specific offering (instead of casting a wider net to try and scoop up every possible purchase) will scale substantially faster. Consider these steps to apply pinpoint precision to your core offerings:

• Recognize and fully understand your lead offering’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Find and own your niche – then scale.
• Know your competition inside and out.
• Target your core audience’s primary pain point.
• Learn your existing customers’ preferences and purchasing behaviors.
• Create messaging and solutions to those specific customer needs.

Start with Revamping Your Strategies

Start by reviewing your current methods and strategies for sales, customer service, product development, distribution, and marketing. All of these current strategies might need revamping to adjust to your scaling goals. For example, you might need to revise a sales strategy to include additional markets or promotion of additional products and services. Your customer service channels might need improvement to accommodate a growing customer base and need for support. And any current marketing strategies might need adjusting to reach new target markets.

Invest in All the Latest Technology

Companies that don’t continuously evolve and adopt emerging technologies will soon find themselves behind the competitors who do. Today’s technology, from data management to CRMs, can streamline time, money, and resources. And all of those assets are essential to facilitating your business scaling plan. Explore some of these more common automation solutions:

• Project Management Software
• Appointment Scheduling Software
• Employee Onboarding Software
• Accounting or Payroll Processing Software
• Sales Management or Funnel Management Software
• Chatbots or AI Customer Service Solutions

Anywhere that you have an opportunity to automate to save time and money is a must-take opportunity before initiating any business scaling.

Internal Teams

Be prepared to augment your staff and teams with any business scaling plan. This kind of amplified growth usually translates to a need for more sales professionals, customer service teams, and production workers. And with those staff increases comes a boosted need for human resources and internal training. Today’s companies are onboarding new staff with remote or hybrid capabilities, too, to eliminate expenses associated with office space.

Elevate Your Processes

Talk with each of your departments about their current processes and procedures. When scaling your business model, you’re likely going to need to make adjustments to various policies and procedures to accommodate the influx of new business. And your frontline managers and teams can help you itemize the most efficient and effective methods for moving forward.

Outsource and Get Help

Scaling often requires additional insights and services. Don’t be afraid to outsource certain aspects of your business or bring in experts who can help. Small businesses, for example, might outsource payroll and HR functions during a scaling phase, with plans to bring those services back in-house once revenue levels can support doing so. Many companies also lean on outsourced marketing partners for proven results in advertising, content marketing, and product launch efforts.

Diversification Is Key

One of the pivotal strategies for business scaling involves diversification. Look for ways you can boost revenues with one of three basic diversification strategies:

1. Concentric Diversification – This is growth by adding similar products or elements of services to an existing line.
2. Horizontal Diversification – This is growth by introducing new products or unrelated services to the existing line.
3. Conglomerate Diversification – This is growth by acquisition.

Be specific about your growth direction and strategy, identifying the necessary business support and components needed to facilitate growth. And always be open to more passive revenue streams, including subscriptions or monthly service contracts, that can significantly boost revenue without exhausting resources.

Invest in Leadership and Management Development

With all the strategy, process, and marketing changes you’ll be making to prepare your company for scaling, you’re going to need to develop your internal managers and leaders for new dynamics. Mid-level management is responsible for motivating your teams and engaging your customers. So, it’s imperative that they be on the same page about company and team goals. Make sure they have all the training, tools, and resources available so they can be effective in their new management capacity. Skills your managers and leaders should prepare to sharpen include:

• Change Management
• Time Management
• Critical Thinking Skills
• Problem-Solving Skills
• Strategic Planning

Scalable Business Examples

You might be able to scale various segments of your business in stages. Typically, the following examples of business offerings or resources have great scaling potential. Consider testing your scaling strategy with these easy-to-boost elements of your business first. If you can’t scale within these segments, you’re not ready to scale your enterprise just yet. And starting small can allow you to spot challenges to address before taking your scaling efforts companywide.

• eCommerce platforms
• Company blogs
• Affiliate marketing efforts
• App development
• Podcasts or video content strategies
• Email marketing campaigns
• Online courses or downloadable assets

Business Scaling Mistakes to Avoid

When you’re executing plans for business scaling, be sure to avoid these common pitfalls and mistakes. These tend to be the most prevalent mistakes business owners make that end up backfiring and often costing valuable revenue and leading to missed opportunities for growth.

• Avoid scaling too fast.
• Don’t prioritize short-term goals over long-term goals.
• Avoid losing focus on the scaling plan to chase other opportunities.
• Don’t hire teams based on quantity over quality.
• Avoid trying to scale without the systems and processes needed to facilitate your ideas.
• Don’t forget that agility in scaling is key to success, so be ready to adapt.

Don’t Think About Scaling Without a Strong Brand

All of these insights and business scaling best practices won’t move the needle unless and until your company has a strong and well-defined brand. If you’re the slightest bit inconsistent with your brand style, purpose, or voice, your marketing isn’t going to be as effective. And a weak marketing impact will shutter any potential scaling. So, be honest about your current brand positioning and reputation. You can tap into these steps for building a falter-proof brand and foundation for scaling your business.

Brand Positioning – This statement describes what your company does, your unique value proposition, and your perfect-fit audience. It’s a definition that should grow with you as you scale.

Brand Promise – This sentiment describes what people should expect every time they encounter your brand or do business with you. If you can’t deliver on your brand promise in scaling, you’ll need to redefine your brand.

Brand Personality – This sentiment is the personality you want others to associate with your brand, company, and offerings. Imagine your company with human characteristics and use those voices and styles consistently throughout your messaging and marketing.

Brand Story – This story describes your brand history and establishes credibility. It’s a brief statement that captures the essence of your “why” and inspires others to support your growth efforts.

Brand Association – This is a collection of physical attributes for your brand, like the logo, tagline, or imagery. Here’s where you’ll define guidelines for font, colors, and visuals you’ll continue to use as you scale.

Not sure how strong your brand is? Consider putting it through a few tests and measurements. Use your existing brand metrics to evaluate your brand’s strength and see how well it…

• Is specialized to a niche
• Leads in the industry
• Has personality
• Is distinctive
• Is visible
• Is positive
• Exudes persistence
• Extends goodwill

In Conclusion

Scaling your business means making all the necessary changes and setting the stage for all elements to support the growth of your company. Get planning, secure any needed funding, implement the best-fit systems, hire the right people, adopt the right processes, and work with the best partners.

If content is a challenge for you, either in strengthening your brand position or in a new business scaling plan, rely on Ghost Blog Writers! Our team of brand-boosting wordsmiths can help you with marketing collateral, email campaigns, social media content, blogs, newsletters, and so much more! Make GBW your first partnership in your quest to scale your business today! Our strategists and content contributors can bring incredible value to your messaging. And we’re uniquely qualified to assist companies large and small, meaning we can grow with you as you succeed in scaling your business.

The post Everything You Need to Know About Scaling Your Business in 2023 appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

Before you shy away, thinking this is another one of those listicles with tips and suggestions you already know you NEED to be doing, keep reading.

These suggestions are easy-to-implement changes that even the busiest professionals can make. If you’re looking for smart, effective ways to take care of yourself, this is the list of ideas worth considering. And it’s all about taking one subtle step at a time to start seeing real improvements in your life.

1. Remove the Toxic Ingredients from Your Diet

Instead of adding things to your daily routine and hectic professional life, give yourself a boost of energy by removing things. Make a list of not-so-great ingredients you can purge from your life, including overly sugary lattes in the morning, fast food lunches, or take-out dinners. Treat yourself, sure, once in a while. But try to remove those afternoon sugar crashes. Order the smoothie. Try packing a healthy lunch. And take it one snack or meal improvement at a time to start. You’ll soon be cutting back on unhealthy ingredients and feeling more energized as a result.

Here’s a shortlist of potentially unhealthy or toxic ingredients that might be wrecking your energy levels:

• Too much sugar intake
• Poorly or over-processed foods
• Excessive alcohol
• Donuts in the conference room
• Overdoing the cups of coffee

2. Replace One Bad Decision at a Time

It can be overwhelming to try and introduce new routines when you’re already a routine-driven professional with limited free time. So, instead of trying to do too much at once, be mindful to just make one smart routine replacement at a time. This will force you to recognize when you’re making poor health decisions. And picking one small change to implement at a time will help you build momentum and comfort in keeping those changes. Spot something about your current routine that you know is likely contributing to your reduced energy levels. Pick one and try to focus on making improvements there first.

Here’s a short list of some poor decisions you might consider addressing, one at a time, of course:

• Stress smoking
• Stress eating
• Not drinking enough water (we’ll get to this one next)
• Staying up late
• Working too late

3. Drink the Water (Seriously)

You’re not going to find ANY list out there, health and wellness related, that doesn’t insist you boost your intake of water. Drinking water is a natural energy booster. But let’s be honest; your body needs it. You don’t have to jump to eight glasses every day at first to make a difference in your energy level, either. Try bringing a bottle of water to work with you and making a conscious effort to consume it throughout the morning. Gradually work in more as you adjust your routine. You can also explore trying to drink a glass of H20 when you first wake up or right before you go to bed. Dehydration is an absolute tanker of energy. So, the more you can introduce into your day, the better you’ll start to feel.

Here are some refreshing ways to incorporate water into your everyday routine:

• Bring a refillable water bottle you can refill and reuse on the go.
• Try healthy water flavorings to perk up the taste.
• Add lemon or other fruit to your water for added antioxidant boosts.
• Keep bottled water at the office, at work, and at home.
• Have a water buddy who’s also trying to drink more with you.

4. Try Healthy Snacking Every Three Hours

If you’re a super-busy professional, running from appointment to appointment, running a business, putting out fires, meeting clients, and doing the work, you’re probably also a hard-core meal-skipper. When there just isn’t time to sit down for lunch, you’re also no stranger to the mid-afternoon burnout feeling. Instead of skipping meals and depriving your body of the nutrients you need to stay energized, try taking small snacks. Pack granola bars, bananas, or trail mix for your time in the car. Keep easy-to-eat snacks at your desk that you can grab and consume while responding to emails. Science suggests that healthy and protein-packed snacks every three hours can do amazing things for your energy level.

Here are some easy and healthy snacks to keep handy when you’re looking to keep a three-hour snacking habit:

• Dried, assorted fruits
• Almonds, cashews, or peanuts
• Protein bars
• Traditional granola bars
• Lean jerky

5. Commit to Sleep

If you’re always burning both ends of the candle, you’re eventually going to run out of wick. Busy professionals and business owners are notorious for late nights and long days. And the stresses of work can keep you from finding your much-needed REM sleep, too. However, not giving your mind and body the ample amount of rest it needs means you’re running short on energy. Try committing to better sleep one week at a time and force yourself to step away from the hustle and bustle of business. Allow yourself to rest by remembering that a refreshed you is better than a dead-tired you for your professional life.

Here are some suggestions to help you start effecting change to your sleep habits:

• Take midday weekend naps.
• Commit to an earlier bedtime by one hour.
• Introduce nighttime relaxation apps with soothing sounds.
• Make your bedroom a quiet, sleep-conducive oasis
• Avoid sleeping with your television on in the background.

6. Try Virtual Therapy to Relieve Stress

It’s not uncommon for successful professionals to feel the stresses and anxieties that come with work-related projects and deadlines. And some stresses can be healthy as they drive us to pursue goals, meet deadlines, and overcome obstacles. But too much of the wrong kind of stress can be overwhelming and have a negative impact on your mental health and energy. Distress, or those situations that manifest out of your control, can send your mind racing down the “what if” rabbit hole, too. If you feel work and life stress is taking a toll on your ability to perform, function, or be happy, consider therapy. There are a host of virtual therapy services you can access from anywhere, putting you in touch with professionals who can help you navigate and find stress relief.

Here are just a few of the virtual therapy services to start exploring:

• BetterHelp
• Talkspace
• Grow Therapy
• Brightside
• Online-Therapy.com

7. Take the Stairs Every Time

Some of the best methods for boosting your energy level involve exercise. And while you can’t always find the time to commit to a gym or workout schedule, you can implement a few changes to your routine to introduce a little more physical activity. For example, start taking the stairs. Commit one or two days each week to climbing instead of riding the elevator. Work your way toward more days of taking the stairs until you’re comfortable with climbing every day. Getting your heart pumping, even just a little, can be rejuvenating. And taking in more oxygen can help you feel more refreshed.

Here are some other ways to get your heart rate up throughout your busy workday:

• Park far away and speed walk.
• Keep small weights at the office and work in some calisthenics.
• Break away from your car or your desk and take a walk.
• Close your office door and do a set of planks or push-ups.
• Take periodic breaks to do arm and leg stretches.

8. Get a Physical

If you’re struggling with keeping your energy levels high, it’s always good to check with your physician. Schedule yourself a physical so you can rule out any potential health problems that might be contributing to your stress and energy depletion. Even with exercise, proper sleep, and a healthy diet, you could be feeling rundown and overwhelmed. Your doctor can also help you pinpoint and identify any underlying risk factors and concerns and prescribe medications when necessary. Make sure you’re aware of your health conditions so any changes you do make can contribute appropriately.

Here are just a few of the health conditions that might be contributing to your reduced energy levels:

• Diabetes or sugar-related anomalies
• Heart disease or high blood pressure
• Thyroid malfunction
• Arthritis or joint pain
• Sleep apnea

9. Know Your Circadian Rhythms

Everyone’s body keeps its own body clock or circadian rhythm. Some professionals find they’re most productive in the early morning hours, for example, while others are more efficient at night. Your daily energy pattern is mostly determined by your unique genetics and brain chemistry, making it tough to change. Don’t fight against your patterns. Instead, recognize your productivity rhythms and work with them as you implement more energizing habits. Schedule your more demanding activities for those times of day that you feel most productive.

Here are some examples for breaking up your schedule in a way that matches your unique circadian rhythm:

• Use your most alert and energized times for important meetings.
• Schedule brief blocks of time for answering calls and emails.
• Allocate demanding project work for those high-energy times of the day.
• Sleep when your body clock dictates.
• Off-peak energy levels are great times for networking and less-intensive work.

10. Mindset Energy Matters, Too

A lot of what happens to your body during peak and valley energy levels is physical. But don’t discount the power of mental energy. Addressing your mindset matters, especially if you’re looking to find a renewed sense of energy and productivity. Try making a conscious effort to start thinking positively about people, work situations, and real-life scenarios. With a little practice, you can start finding the silver linings in almost anything. And you will be more energized when your mind’s not weighed down with negative thoughts, worst-case scenarios, and confidence-draining self-talk.

Here are a few mindset improvements you can consider to keep your mood energized and positive throughout the day:

• Force yourself to find two to three positives about every situation.
• Practice gratitude – both giving and receiving.
• Appreciate nature at least once per day.
• Allow yourself mental breaks from tough challenges.
• Surround yourself with positive people.

11. Recognize What’s Draining Your Energy

In addition to incorporating these more subtle yet impactful changes throughout your day, practice mindfulness about your habits and routines. The first step to relieving stress and regaining energy is recognizing what it is that’s impacting your life. When you spot negative habits, toxic contributors, or energy-draining situations, you can then take the necessary steps to eliminate or minimize them.

Here are some energy-draining examples and scenarios that might be affecting your daily routine:

• Toxic or overly-negative individuals you can avoid.
• Relentless traffic you can seek to avoid with an alternative route.
• Skipping breakfast in the morning.
• Lack of sleep that you can seek to remedy.
• An overpacked schedule that you can look to lighten up with more free time.

If you’re feeling drained of energy these days, try some of these easy-to-implement strategies. Start committing to self-care so you can continue to deliver your best every day – to your work and personal life. You don’t have to make drastic changes that are practically impossible to stick with long-term, either. Instead, tackle a few of these improvements one day, one effort at a time. And work your way toward a better routine with a healthier lifestyle and renewed energy gradually, with better results.

And, as always, if any of your work-related stress and energy-draining tasks involve content, you can always let Ghost Blog Writers take the reins for you! Don’t get bogged down in writing newsletters, drafting blog posts, creating social media content, or developing email campaigns when you can delegate those efforts to our team of top-notch writers and contributors. Let us help and take advantage of your first free trial post to see just how easy your content creation can be!

The post 11 Easy-to-Implement Changes to Your Routine to Improve Your Energy appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

But you don’t have to isolate yourself in a silo, all by yourself. As an entrepreneur, you are a rare breed of professional. However, you’re not alone in your day-to-day struggles. There are other business builders out there who, like you, faced incredible challenges. And in today’s marketplace, the rules have changed even more for those who strike out on their own ventures.

If you need peace of mind, keep reading. Today, we’ll share a few of those challenges that only today’s entrepreneurs are facing. Hopefully, you’ll resonate with these obstacles and recognize that you’re not on an island. And better yet, we’ll share methods and tips for overcoming those business obstacles so that you can enjoy the rewarding view from the very top of the entrepreneurial mountain.

Entrepreneur Challenges Broken Down into 4 Groups

Of course, everyone’s challenges will be unique, based on various personal and professional experiences. For example, your line of work and entrepreneurial niche might present specific obstacles from other business owners. But your personal experiences play a role in how you address issues and problem-solve, too.

When you’re trying to climb a mountain, standing at base camp looking up can be downright scary. But when you break your climb into manageable steps, with smaller goals that work your way up, it’s easier to tackle. Look to separate your entrepreneurial challenges into four categories. From there, you can divide and conquer based on manageable steps. Focus on one challenge at a time, allocating it into the appropriate category.

Mindset Challenges

Entrepreneurs can easily suffer from imposter syndrome. Second-guessing and constant unhealthy self-comparison can negatively impact your ability to lead your young business. Self-doubt can tank your motivation, too. Look to identify if your current challenges are rooted in mindset perspectives, and then seek to find mentorship to coach your mindset.

Business Challenges

Entrepreneurs feel those routine business challenges differently than employees. When your business is facing industry, operational, or sales-related obstacles, you will carry those stresses personally. Identify if your obstacles are business related and then find new partnerships, explore new software solutions, and augment your teams to help you overcome them from a business perspective.

Finance Challenges

If you’re struggling with finances and money, which is a common challenge entrepreneurs face, look to focus on finance-related solutions. Whether it’s company earnings or your personal household finances, explore the two ways to improve your money – cut unnecessary expenses or drive improved earnings.

Life Challenges

When you run your own business, your business is your life. So, when life throws you other lemons, like health concerns, family drama, or situational stress, it can be overwhelming to the entrepreneur. Recognize if your obstacles are life or business-related. And if you’re juggling life dynamics, focus on solutions to relieve those non-business-related stresses and keep them from seeping into your business world.

Obstacles An Entrepreneur Faces More Often

Remember those aforementioned categories as we dive into some of these obstacles. These challenges can represent all four but tend to be the most common for entrepreneurs.

1. Hiring Talent

You were inspired to start your business with a vision that it would grow and be wildly successful. But you can’t do it without bringing in more staff. And hiring, especially in today’s marketplace, can be downright maddening! When your success weighs heavily on your ability to find and attract phenomenal workers without breaking the bank, you can carry unbelievable stress.

Solution: Instead of trying to hire five salespeople, two admins, and an IT department, focus on hiring one phenomenal HR professional or powerhouse recruiter for your business. You find one and let that person use their expertise to build a hiring process and onboarding system that works.

2. Delegating Tasks

When you’re used to running the business by yourself, wearing all the hats required to make it happen, it can be challenging to learn how to loosen the reins and delegate. However, not delegating will only stifle your business growth, so it’s definitely an obstacle to overcome.

Solution: Start small by delegating time-consuming tasks and administrative duties to others on your team. Evaluate your strongest team members and prepare them for more responsibilities and build training materials so they know how to approach more managerial tasks the same way you would. Learn to trust key employees so that when you do relegate duties, you don’t micromanage. Once you give authority, step back and let them have it, evaluating only the results.

3. Entrepreneur Analysis Paralysis

When you’re an employee working for someone else, your decision-making boils down to doing what you’re told or trained to do. But when you’re running your own business, every decision can present entrepreneurial risks with heavy consequences. And you often take way longer to weigh options before officially pulling the trigger. This can be a smart approach, carefully thinking everything through before acting. But – if you stall too long, you can fall victim to analysis paralysis.

Solution: Save your big thinking for big decisions. Don’t sweat the small stuff, and make smaller decisions quickly. Don’t dwell too long on the “what ifs” and embrace risks and rewards as a natural characteristic of being in business for yourself. Embrace mistakes as learning curves. Spend time on contingency plans and be willing to take the leap.

4. Entrepreneur Work-Life Imbalance

Entrepreneurs who love their businesses will do whatever it takes, like anything, to bring their vision to life. And that usually calls for 60 or 80-hour workweeks, late nights, weekend calls, and pavement-pounding sales efforts. And in comes the work-life imbalance. If you’re losing sleep, not eating right, or stressing for extended weeks at a time, it’s not healthy. And how well you treat the “leader” of your company will determine the success of the company.

Solution: Give yourself permission to take breaks and step away from the business. Take the vacation. Make rules about making it home for dinner. Pack healthy snacks and bottles of water. And when your body says it’s tired, give yourself permission to sleep in once in a while. Keep the leader of your company healthy, and your company will, in turn, be healthy.

5. Entrepreneur Time Management

Along the same line of work-life balance is the challenge of improving time management. Every minute of your available time needs to be productive and business-advancing. And it’s challenging, especially when you get rabbit-holed into chasing problems, putting out fires, or exploring new ideas. Stop and critically think about how much of your workday is wasted on non-productive activities. (Reminder, those wellness efforts aren’t wasted – take the nap. It’s needed.)

Solution: Explore the menial tasks that suck the hours out of your day and look to delegate them to others. Outsource social media management, for example, so that you can focus on core competencies. Also, look for software solutions and automation to make light work of tedious tasks, including accounting, marketing, and project management.

6. Raising Capital and Finding Investors

Entrepreneurs will often seek startup capital and recurring investors to keep the big idea in motion. And even if you’ve managed to secure initial financing, raising capital, cash flow management, and finding investors continues to be a challenge. Finding resources and selling your genius business plan can be stressful, especially if your business model folds without them.

Solution: Develop and keep working on a strategic marketing plan that is dedicated to building support and awareness of your business. This is an investor-facing strategy, promoting ROI potential, niche market differentiators, and your credentials as a worthy leader. Build momentum with your efforts to stay top-of-mind with key investors, stakeholders, and financing options.

7. Sales Struggles

Depending on what business you started, you’re likely an expert in anything OTHER than sales. And it can be an overwhelming and constant struggle to force yourself into selling and driving sales. Equally challenging is knowing what sales skills and techniques work versus those that don’t work within your business model. You could be leaving business-boosting money on the table, failing to recognize a conversion opportunity, or selling yourself out of a sale and not even knowing it.

Solution: You don’t have to be a sales pro to be effective in sales. No one anywhere in the universe has the same passion and vision for your business like you do. So, start with your own elevator pitch and build that passion into sales training materials and collateral. Then hire or outsource your sales initiatives, from cold calling to online orders and beyond to those who are experts in selling similar products or services. You can’t be a racehorse if you’re a donkey. Don’t try to be a sales master when you can hire one and train them.

8. Impatience and Self-Doubt

As an entrepreneur, you’re your own worst critic. You’ll place overwhelming demands on yourself, unlike anyone else, and hold yourself to impossible standards. This impatient nature and recurring self-doubt can be detrimental to your business’s success. And not resolving these mindset obstacles will have you headed for certain burnout and failure.

Solution: Consider finding a business mentor or building a support system around you. Learn and understand that building any business is just going to take time. Be mindful that patience needs to be a natural aspect of leadership. Stop wasting energy on negative insights or demanding self-imposed standards. That energy will be better served elsewhere.

9. Marketing and Networking

Sales is one thing. But then, developing a robust marketing strategy that finds, attracts, and builds customers requires a completely different set of skills. Branding, marketing, and networking need step-by-step roadmaps, analytics, and ongoing changes. And as an entrepreneur, all those responsibilities fall squarely on your shoulders.

Solution: Just like you would with any other aspect of running a business that requires skills you don’t have – outsource it! Hire marketing or branding professionals, who are different from sales, to help create your roadmap and strategy. Seek the assistance of third-party pros to augment every execution step that you can’t facilitate yourself. Convey your business mission and vision to these key professionals and let them use their expertise to execute marketing, branding, and networking efforts brilliantly.

10. Limited Learning

Over the course of your traditional career, you’ve been able to educate yourself, learning the ins and outs of running a business from others. You’ve absorbed knowledge and expertise from other leaders. You’ve watched co-workers and managers make mistakes, recognizing what not to do within your own business model. And before you launched your business, you conducted all your own industry research into the market, preparing for success. But another challenge that entrepreneurs face is a limited ability to learn AFTER they’ve started their businesses. There just aren’t enough learning hours in the day when you’re wearing all the hats, handling all the things. And when you’re the leader, who’s left to teach you new insights?

Solution: As part of your business success plan, incorporate time and effort into improving your skills. Sign up for the course online about eCommerce. Go to the industry conferences and meet new people. Be mindful to always be in a capacity to learn from someone, and commit to continued learning as another strength in your leadership cap.

Entrepreneurship is a journey with loads of challenges and obstacles along the way. And much of what you’ll face is very different from what traditional employees face. Know you’re not alone, and keep this guide as a reference and motivation to keep going! And when your business needs help with content, you can always rely on the brilliantly dedicated team of wordsmiths at Ghost Blog Writers to take the reins. We can take your entrepreneurial vision and transform it into engaging and effective content. Let us handle your blogs, white papers, web content, newsletters, and social media content. You can focus on climbing that entrepreneurial mountain and on what you do best – being a successful entrepreneur of a successful business!

The post 10 Challenges Today’s Entrepreneurs Face (And What You Can Do to Overcome Them) appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

So, you can wait around and hope you get the longevity you originally planned. You can cross your fingers and hope layoffs and buyouts don’t derail your path. Or you can just job hop laterally to another company, hoping to avoid a sinking ship.

But are any of those options realistically any good?

More importantly, is it plausible that you could change career directions altogether at this point in the game? What if you could? Would you?

The truth is – it’s never too late to change your career goals. And here’s how you go about unraveling your options, setting goals that make sense, and convincing yourself it’s absolutely ok to bail and plant your flag elsewhere.

Reasons to Consider a Career Change

The great aspect about making the decision to change careers is you don’t owe anyone a reason or explanation. Don’t feel obligated to justify your “why.” And for many professionals, a career change is necessary for a number of reasons that might also resonate with your situation.

You’re Looking for Burnout Relief

Employee burnout can happen at any career level and over any period of time. You might have loved your path at one point and felt connected to the company and the job in a meaningful way. But a lot (like a LOT) has changed over the last few years in workloads, company culture, and corporate decision-making. Mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion is a real phenomenon. And if you’re struggling to maintain your work pace, burnout, and frustration are eminent. More importantly, you have every right to consider a change if your physical or mental health is at risk.

You Crave Flexibility in Your Life

The pandemic shutdowns, shutters, and work-from-home dynamics changed peoples’ perspectives about flexibility. And you might be considering a profession change because you now want to prioritize that flexibility in a work-life balance experience. Maybe you want to be around more for little league games or just dinnertime. Others want the flexibility to travel more or spend time with hobbies and loved ones. The rigid restrictions of a traditional workweek, requesting time off, waiting for approvals, etc., are no longer the norm. More employees are embracing hybrid work, remote work, and more flexible schedules. There are thousands of companies adopting these more flexible work requirements, too, meaning if you decide to change careers – you’re likely to find a new role with the flexibility you need.

Work-Life Balance Matters

Burning both ends of the “career” candle might have been doable or expected at one point in your career. But overdoing and over-committing to the job is not always a sustainable path. Work-life balance and company culture carry more weight among workers today than ever before. And if you value your free time just as much as you value your career success, there are other employers out there ready to deliver.

You Need Something More Fulfilling

For many of today’s career professionals, job fulfillment is an emerging priority. You may want to feel more connected to your job, with purpose and resolution. And if you’re losing that fire or passion that you once had, no longer recognizing a valuable contribution in your work, it can be deflating. No one really wants to shuffle papers for 20 years. They’ll want to know that paper shuffling has a purpose, directly connects with a value proposition, or contributes to the big-picture, greater good in some way. You should seriously consider a career change if you feel your current role and responsibilities don’t represent the meaning they once did.

Later-in-Life Career Changes Can Ignite for a Number of Reasons

If you’re like me, career changes become imminent because of circumstances or company situations that are out of your control. You might still love your job and appreciate the company, but other factors come into play that almost force your hand in considering a career change.

Job Satisfaction Is in the Tank

The company you work for may face structural changes, the need for rebranding, or new management. And the job you once loved now becomes a source of stress and anxiety. Job satisfaction can go from fab to drab in a hurry, changing everything you know about your role, responsibilities, or place in the company.

Layoffs or Terminations Are Eminent

If you recognize that your company ship is about to go down, you absolutely have the right and responsibility to make personal career changes. Layoffs and mass terminations are more common as major employers look to cut costs and streamline structures. Company buyouts bring mass changes, as well, which is what I faced when my department was eliminated suddenly. If you suspect similar changes are coming for you, start looking for a better path with a growing company or emerging industry that promises growth.

Dissolution of Opportunities

After investing years with a company and climbing your way to the top, you might eventually arrive at a plateau. The job is no longer challenging. There are no additional opportunities that appeal to you. And you see a dead end instead of growth and learning. It’s time for a career change so you can chart a new path with a brand or company that offers a host of new opportunities. Or you can take and apply what you’ve learned and start your own company as an entrepreneur.

Start Taking Steps to Change Career Gears

If any of the aforementioned reasons are inspiring you to consider a career shift, these are the steps and insights to start taking action. It can be scary, especially if you’re venturing into something entirely new. But methodical and deliberate decisions now can make it easier for you to spot the best-fit new opportunities.

Self-Assessment to Prepare for a Career Change

Start by getting honest with yourself in a self-assessment process. Sit down and think critically about your skills, knowledge, and potential. Create deal-breaker lists of must-have elements in your new career trajectory, along with dreamy, nice-to-haves. Don’t discount soft skills, transferable skills, and experience that might make you a perfect hire in a new position. And be mindful of any weaknesses or areas of improvement that might be a roadblock to overcome before starting a new career.

Choosing a New Path

With your self-assessment lists in mind, start doing some research online in various industries and niches. Check the job boards and see what different positions are offering and requiring. Visit company websites and read through industry blogs to familiarize yourself with emerging topics. Be keen to search for those areas that interest you specifically. Remember, you’re looking for a NEW path and not trading one terrible experience for another. See what’s out there and look to match up opportunities with your self-assessment list of skills and must-have career opportunities.

Sharpening New Skills for a Career Change

During your research online, you might start to notice requirements for jobs that sound appealing that you don’t necessarily have. The next contemplation step is to explore what you need to do to sharpen those skills and fill some of those requirement gaps. Maybe you need to renew a lapsed insurance license or explore online certifications, for example. Other skills you’ll want to sharpen include interviewing. Chances are, you haven’t interviewed in a while. And many of today’s recruiters and hiring managers follow a series of onboarding application and interview processes, including video interviews. Start practicing those potential conversations now, describing your experiences, asking great questions, and creating a vetting process for you to decide if the roles are good fits for your new career.

Creating a Full-Proof Safety Net

Part of what makes changing career gears so scary is the unknown and financial aspects. No one wants to jump ship and start something new without knowing for sure that the career change still allows you to pay your bills and meet your financial needs. So, at this stage in the process, create a safety net for yourself. Explore your financial situation now and identify what you need to make to maintain and keep your current lifestyle. Then create another list of benefits and job perks that you need to justify making the change. Assess your nest egg of savings and know how long you can wait to experience a boost in income, too. For some people changing gears, it may be necessary to explore side hustles or part-time work to sustain during unemployed stints. Be mindful of making ends meet in any timeline.

Be Forgiving and Flexible with Yourself

It’s important, as you explore your options for new jobs online, to keep an open mind. Be flexible where you can, especially when deciding whether to even apply to a company. And be forgiving with yourself to step into unknown territory and find out what isn’t a good fit opportunity. It can be challenging and overwhelming if you feel you can’t find the “perfect” role. It doesn’t mean a career change isn’t in order. It just means you might have to consider other options or negotiate on some of your preferences to get a foot in the door. And don’t be too proud to seek professional advice from a career coach, mentor, or recruiter. You can learn so much about the current workforce landscape from pros who have experience navigating it.

The Most Popular Fields for Those Looking for a Career Change

With the official to-do lists, self-assessments, and hard decisions behind you, you can get inspired and have some fun seeing all the different career paths out there. If you’re still not all that sure what kind of career change makes sense, consider some of these more popular fields. Those coming from a corporate, management, or sales position can often make easy transitions into entrepreneurial roles or with established brands that have openings for these roles.

Actuary – If you like numbers and people, becoming an actuary is a great option since so many various backgrounds and experiences can succeed in these roles. On average, these professionals earn $120k annually.

Consultancy – Take your extensive experience to a new consultancy role, either for another company or as an entrepreneur. Share your expertise with other individuals or businesses and earn upwards of $111k a year in the right field.

Event Planning – Explore the fun and flexibility that comes with being an event planner! Niche yourself into corporate events, weddings, bar mitzvahs, or whatever party plans you enjoy the most. Working with an established party planning company can still net an average of $50k to $70k per year, depending on your niche and market.

Sales – If you love people and have extensive knowledge in a particular field, you can almost always find a great sales role available. Look for strong company values, training, and compensation structures. And most sales roles present opportunities for unlimited earnings.

Real Estate – Consider getting your real estate license and breaking into the real estate market as an agent or broker. Enjoy a flexible schedule and get out of an office setting as an agent, earning an average of $51k to $75k annually.

Teacher – Take your career experience and certifications to the education sector and explore your options as a teacher or college professor. Depending on your chosen level of education and the district or institution you align with, you can earn $50k to $100k educating others.

Other popular professions that make great options for those transitioning their careers include recruiter roles, administrative or executive assistant positions, software development, creative services, and arts and crafts. If you’re stressed about your current job and think it’s time for a change, start exploring your options and get out there! Keep this tutorial handy and follow your passion to find something new. And whatever new venture you find yourself in, let Ghost Blog Writers be your ultimate guide and resource for creating content, thought leadership news, social media, newsletters, and more!

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It often does not occur to the entrepreneur that they could, or even should, have their business revolve around them.

But there are good reasons to do business on your terms, and there could be some significant drawbacks to following in the footsteps of your competition.

Here’s why you should build your business around your preferences.

Differentiate Yourself

Most businesses are in danger of being made redundant by competition. With the rapid rise of disruptive business models, you never know when a new player in your niche might come along to turn your business inside out.

If you’ve been doing things exactly as other players in your market have been doing them, your business has been at risk for quite a while. It may be time to give your business a thorough once-over before it becomes irrelevant.

The good news is if you already know what your competitors are doing, then bucking convention should prove easy. If you see everyone headed one way, turn, and run the other way as hard and as fast as you can.

Most entrepreneurs end up creating businesses that blend in with the rest. If you put your preferences first, you will rarely make this error.

Charge More

The idea that you can’t charge more for your products and services is mostly rooted in the notion that your business offers the same thing as your competition does. If you’ve adequately differentiated (see the previous header), you’ll be amazed by how elastic price points become.

Differentiating your business includes charging more for what you offer. It’s not logical or rational. But there exists a category of customer who wants the best, and their assumption is the best always costs the most.

The adage that if you charge double and lose half your customers, you’ll be in the same position financially as when you started holds true – with the added benefit that you’ll free up time and resources you can reallocate, preferably to marketing investments.

Be a category breaker, not a category setter.

Enjoy Your Business More

Remember what it was like to start a new business? Weren’t you excited beyond belief? Wasn’t there some part of you that felt like your business could change the world?

What often happens is entrepreneurs get a few years into their business and simply can’t believe how much work there is to do. They exhaust themselves, and they feel like they can’t get away from their business long enough to recharge their batteries.

If you build your business around your preferences, you will still need to work hard, but since you will have chosen your hours, location, price point, and all relevant factors to match your inclinations, you’ll enjoy your business more.

For instance, just because everyone else is open 9 – 5 doesn’t mean you need to follow suit. You will be able to serve customers others aren’t by opening between 2 PM and 9 PM. It’s about what works for you.

Final Thoughts

It seems unimaginable to most entrepreneurs that they could set up their businesses to serve them. But most give up before they even try.

Is it time for you to reassess your business and course adjust before it’s too late?

The post Why You Should Build Your Business Around Your Preferences appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

Coming out of the gate too sluggish and you risk stalling momentum and losing the produ]]>

So, what are the best practices and proven methods for developing a plan for and executing a successful product launch? Based on what the leading influencers and top business entrepreneurs say, it’s one part art, one part science, and ten parts planning.

Here are the strategy nuggets you need to see, especially if you want to launch your new service or product with overwhelming success.

Product Launch Stats in Today’s Economy

Company leaders can get understandably nervous about launching new products and services. While there’s excitement for the possibilities, there are still unknown factors that could result in less-than-stellar launch results. And trying to do something new in today’s economic environment can be especially challenging. Here are some economic statistics about product launch results to help shed light on what you can expect. These will also help you prioritize your efforts and anticipate potential challenges.

• Roughly 63% of consumers said they enjoyed being offered new products and services. – Nielsen
• Of all the products companies develop in a given year, only about 40% actually make it to market. – Marketing Research Association
• During their last trip to a store, 57% of consumers surveyed admitted to buying a new product. – Nielsen
• The trending failure rate for new products launched in today’s market is as high as 70%-80%. – University of Toronto
• “Lack of preparation” is the most common problem for companies attempting to launch a product. – Harvard Business School
• After 28 weeks, a new product will reach 75% of its maximum distribution potential. – Catalina
• Companies spend an average of $15 million on launching a new product or service. – Forbes

Use these stats to your advantage. Focus on your research, planning, and marketing. Make every decision through a lens of analytics, so you can set your product launch up for success at every stage of the process.

Create Product Launch Checklists

Before tackling any multi-layered strategy, it’s best to start by building a series of checklists to ensure you address every critical component of a successful product launch. Every company’s dynamics will be different, meaning your checklists will likely be unique to your brand, market, and offering. However, your to-do list might include the following action steps:

• Identify and build personas to represent your ideal customer.
• Determine strategic positioning in the market (offensive, defensive, guerrilla, or flanker.)
• Develop a go-to-market plan of action.
• Set goals across various timelines.
• Establish a series of marketing, advertising, and promotional plans.
• Prepare your teams internally.
• Inform stakeholders and investors.
• Launch initiatives.
• Post-launch analytics review.

Questions to Ask About Your Product or Service

Along with checklists of verbs and to-dos, consider checklists regarding your product or service, too. To verify viability in the market and the potential buying power your new offering can bring, ask yourself these questions. Before moving forward with any launch efforts, you’ll want clear and definitive answers to these questions that your teams can support, and your customers will buy into upon launch.

1. What is your company’s measure of success for this product launch?
2. Does this product or service actually solve a consumer problem?
3. Who in your audience will benefit the most from your new product?
4. How is your innovation better and different from those already in the market?
5. Why are you launching this product or service?

Strategic Positioning Is the Most Important IMO

Back in the day, when I worked in television creating ad campaigns and 30-second commercials, we spent a LOT of time talking with clients about strategic positioning. This refers to understanding your market and finding the best gap to fill with your offering. Niche is king, so drill down on the most specific entry points, customers, market segments, and pain points. Then decide if you’re going to take the position of:

Offense: Your offering is a leader or innovator solution, meaning your number one competitor currently holds the top position in the market.

Defense: Your offering is the best or only solution in the segment. Taking this position means your primary focus is defending your position as the best solution of all.

Guerilla: Your position is a surprise or unconventional solution designed to attract a lot of attention to your brand and business.

Flanker: This strategic position is for established brands looking to offer a new product or service that breaks into a new segment or addresses an entirely new pain point.

Demo Your Product and Train Your Teams

Obviously, before you take any new product or service to market, you’ll want to demo it and document early analysis experiences. Your internal teams can be great candidates to demo your products. And it’s a great way to help train your internal teams for operations, sales, and customer service efforts after you’ve launched. Remember, ideas always look appealing on paper and in planning. But it’s the demos and sampling of those products and services that will determine whether or not it has the selling power you think it does.

Define Your Best Foot Forward

If you have a brand-new or innovative product or service to offer, we’ll presume you’ve done all your homework already about marketability, industry relevance, competitive advantage, and viability. But when it’s time to officially announce your big offering, you can’t share all of those tidbits at once and overwhelm your audience or dilute your message. Instead, you have to come up with a way that piques interest, inspires FOMO, and drives engagement. And you have to do so in a brief, captured message. Think of it as an exercise where you separate the nice-to-have features from the revolutionary, must-have benefits of your offering.

Define first, before doing anything else, what your best-foot-forward aspect or feature is. That’s what you’re leading with in your messaging. When you have an opportunity to give an hour-long presentation about your product or service to sell it, you can dive into all the other details. But you’ll have to narrow it down to a core, converting message first. And you’ll want to drill down on the key aspect of your offering that has wow factor and solves the big problem.

Garner Support

You can go shout from the rooftops by yourself to announce your product. Or you can assemble a team of supporters, ambassadors, and investors to shout the big news with you. The more champions you have in your corner, the louder your messaging can be. And when you tap a series of delegates who can speak highly about your offering, you’ll be able to reach a broader audience in a more impactful way.

• Internal Team Support
• External Support from Colleagues, Vendors, Friends & Family
• Investor Support
• Existing Customer Support
• Community Support from Chambers of Commerce or Networking Groups

Assemble your teams of support wherever you can and put a megaphone to your product launch message, event, and efforts.

Marketing Before, During & After

The most important step involves doing your homework to verify your new product or service is a viable solution. But the second most important step involves developing a series of marketing strategies to build anticipation for the launch, engage customers during the launch, and follow up for conversion after the launch. Check out these product launch marketing best practices for this leg of the race.

Pre-Launch Teasers: Enthusiasm Is Contagious

Create a marketing strategy to initiate before you officially launch your new product or service. Using your strategic positioning and best foot forward selling point, get creative about messages that build anticipation without tipping your hand. Build excitement about an upcoming announcement. Inspire hashtag and social media conversations about a specific problem your new product will solve. Here are some teaser ideas to consider:

• Mark your calendars! BIG NEWS coming soon!
• Psst… did you hear? ABC Company is getting ready to introduce something huge.
• Stay Tuned – MASSIVE savings coming!
• Get on our waitlist and be the first to demo our latest product!

Experiential Event Planning

Don’t just tell people about your new product or service. Put it in their hands and let them try it with an experiential event! Today’s biggest brands tap into the power of launch events to jumpstart results within their target audience base. Check out these examples and get inspired to create an experience with a product launch event:

• Create a festival celebrating your offering or big announcement.
• Use kiosks or booths with samples and hands-on experiences wherever your target audience is.
• Host a business event, inviting colleagues, brand supporters, and your target audience to attend.
• Set up shop in a populated public area with a game, activity, or participatory event.

Think about some of the experiential marketing you’ve encountered. Maybe you participated in a Coca-Cola versus Pepsi taste testing. Surely you remember all the credit card vendors with kiosks on campus at college. Or you might recall that one time you stopped to lay on a new mattress because there was an experiential event at the mall. Each of these experiences sought to engage audiences directly with their products and services. And you can leverage the same engagement by creating an experiential event for your product launch.

Post-Launch Marketing

Whatever engagements you drive before and during your product launch can then be used to develop a post-launch marketing effort. Showcase what others may have missed at your official launch party. Then use CTAs and incentives to inspire opt-ins from those who missed the big event or launch engagement. You can build libraries of digital assets for marketing online, with social media, and through email campaigns. There’s a 30-day window after your launch announcement to squeeze every last drop of mileage out of the big launch event.

Launching Product Lifecycle Marketing Ongoing

After the excitement of the product launch initiative has fizzled, you’ll need to quickly adopt a new marketing strategy that will serve as your primary plan for promoting this not-so-new-anymore product. The shiny aspect of your offering has worn off, so now, pivot your marketing to a plan that will serve as a foundation of messaging for building and scaling beyond the event.

Collect, Analyze, and Improve with Data

The third most critical element of any product launch is the data. There are distinctive metrics you’ll want to collect and analyze at various planning and execution stages of your launch. The data will tell you if your assumptions about your product’s viability are correct. It will also showcase new and relevant details about your customers, the market, and the problem-solving power of your product. Here are some of the most important product-launch metrics you should plan to collect and analyze.

Pre-launch waitlist sign-ups

As you create buzz with your pre-launch marketing efforts, track those who respond and opt-in with likes, shares, and waitlist subscriptions. These can be great follow-up targets after your launch.

K-factor

This is what Viral-Loops calls Viral Coefficient. It’s a marketing metric that gauges referrals and exponential exposure.

Website traffic

See how much of your pre-launch, launch, and post-launch marketing is driving new traffic to your website.

Purchase rates

These metrics include leads generated, conversion rates, and click-through rates.

Demographics of those buying first, second, and last

Your product analysis might point to a core target audience. But upon launch, you might see a new or emerging demographic responding to your product.

Earnings by week, beginning on launch day

You’ll track earnings as they come in and compare them to your week-by-week costs to determine weekly ROI.

When you’re excited about launching a new product or service, be diligent about taking all the right steps through each phase of the launch to achieve big results. Keep these suggestions and strategies handy as a reference and guide for developing your launch roadmaps. And remember, if you need help with any of those content-related projects for the launch, let Ghost Blog Writers help! Our teams of writing pros can craft social media messaging, product launch announcements, web content, product descriptions, email campaigns, and more!

The post Ready to Launch a New Product or Service? Explore Strategies for Entrepreneurial Success appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

It’]]>your life and relationships.

The good news is that positive mindsets work the same way. And all you really need to do is recognize the negative when you experience it and take steps to shift your mindset back to a more positive framing. And after practicing the more positive approach, you’ll begin to see shifts to a more successful perspective in business and life. 

The point is – mindset matters. Additionally, your mindset will impact every corner and aspect of your life, no matter who you are, where you live, what you like and dislike, or what you do for a living. And these are the tips and suggestions to help you effect change in how you think, thus manifesting a more positive and successful outcome.

1. Get Honest About What You Need to Improve

Like Dr. Phil says, you can’t change what you first don’t acknowledge. So, if you really hope to make changes in your mindset, you’re going to need to get honest with yourself about just how much work needs to be done. Be intentional and mindful of how you interact with others at work and at home. But also, be mindful of your internal dialogue and the mental statements you make to yourself.

Don’t be afraid to talk about your intentions to change with those around you, either. Having a support system for accountability can be a great foundation to help you shift your thinking. Let your spouse or work colleague call you out when they notice you’re engaging in over-negative perspectives. You can also keep a log or a journal to document when you feel you have a negative mindset. Seeing the frequency with which you carry a negative attitude or response on paper might surprise you. The better you get at identifying where your mind goes astray, the better you’ll get at correcting it.

2. Harnessing the Power of Suggestion

There is an environmental component to mindset, too. You are what you eat, right? You’re also impacted by those around you, your settings, your home life, and your work life. Take stock in each of those environments and evaluate whether they’re contributing to a more negative outlook or a more positive one. 

Need an example? Consider the workplace water cooler or wherever it is you gather with coworkers for brief stints throughout the day. What is your water cooler talk like? Is it fun, lighthearted, and full of “guess what I did this weekend” kind of talk? Or is it negative and toxic gossip, full of “I can’t believe the boss said that” and “did you see what so-and-so wore to work today?” The former is a healthier environment. The latter is only going to perpetuate a negative mindset. 

You can leverage the power of suggestion in your favor by being selective about what types of environments you allow yourself to be in and operate. Sure, there are some scenarios that aren’t favorable that you just can’t avoid. But when you control those situations that you DO have a say in controlling, you can CHOOSE more positive surroundings and reinforcements. Let the power of suggestion, through the positivity, and healthy dialogue of others, inspire change in your own mindset.

3. The Baader-Meinhof Phenom

Have you heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? When you bought your first new car, do you remember how all of a sudden you started noticing all of the other people driving that same car? That phenomenon, noticing something you didn’t know before until it was important to you, is the Baader-Meinhof example. Your mindset is subject to this concept, too.

It’s sometimes called Frequency Illusion or Frequency Bias. But your brain is wired in such a way that it recognizes what you tell it is important. So, if you’re driving your first Jeep, you’re going to pay closer attention to all the other Jeeps on the road. And if you’re focused on a positive mindset and experiences, you’ll start spotting all the others around you with the same focus. 

This phenomenon works both ways, though. And you probably know a few people in your circles of friends or acquaintances who are routinely negative and tend to flock to others who are equally negative. If you’re not mindful, you might not even realize that you’re participating in those negative talk circles, too. But when you focus on mindset improvement, much like buying your first car, you’ll start recognizing the mindsets around you, allowing you to make conscious decisions about improving your surroundings.

Keep this Frequency Illusion concept in mind as you look to make more positive shifts in your mindset. Prioritize your positivity in a way that allows you to spot others who share positive influence. You can then align yourself with those with whom you can find support in maintaining positive experiences. And you’ll be able to avoid spending too much time with those who linger in the negative mindset circles.

4. Demystifying Procrastination, According to Mel Robbins

One of the primary contributors to a negative mindset, and the one thing that can derail a positive mindset in a hurry, is procrastination. But procrastination can be remedied easily if you recognize what it actually is – it’s a response to stress and risk-taking.

World-renowned motivational speaker and New York Times Best-Selling Author Mel Robbins talks a lot about what procrastination really is. And she suggests that people put things off because they want or need “proof” that the act or task will be successful before doing it. It’s that need for reassurance that causes an internal stress, forcing people to sometimes “freeze” instead of taking action. 

If you’re constantly putting things off, it’s going to negatively impact your mindset since you’ll constantly feel like you’re not getting things done. Recognize what it is that’s causing your inability to follow through. Address the risk-taking and need for reassurance in the moment. Start deliberately executing each task, and you’ll soon build momentum as you feel more accomplished. And the more accomplished you feel, the more positive you’ll be.

5. Discovering and Focusing on Priorities

If you want to make immediate changes to your mindset, like right now, start by sitting down with a list of priorities. A lot of what makes us unhappy in life and business involves expectations and focusing on things that don’t provide value. We get mad at long trains in the morning, and for some, it can be day-ruining. But focusing on the train isn’t going to provide any value to your life. You can choose to recognize the delay as a hiccup. 

Get intentional by writing down the most important things in your life. These could be family members and friends. They could be goals you hope to achieve relating to career success. Or they could be experiences like traveling to destination dream spots or parenting success with seeing your kid get into college. The point of the exercise, however, is to visualize those things in your life that matter most. Whenever you do encounter setbacks in life, like those train delays on your way to work, you can recognize that a late train isn’t going to help or hurt any of the priorities on your list. And it’s out of your control. So, why let it ruin your mindset in the moment or for the day? 

When people say, “don’t sweat the small stuff,” they mean don’t derail your mindset over things that don’t really have value in your life. And those who dwell on the negative for too long have lost sight of their life, career, and experience priorities.

6. Understanding the Categories of Mindset Shifts in Leadership and Life

There are categories of mindset to help you identify and separate various traits. In leadership initiatives, you can decide which of the four traits applies to you. These concepts are great for identifying not only your own mindset pulse but also helping you to demonstrate positive mindsets to those who report to you or rely on you as a leader.

• People-Centrism: Encourages appreciation, inclusiveness, empathy, and positive interactions with people.
• Purpose-Centrism: Encourages focus on purpose and intention, driven by big-picture missions and visions.
• Learning-Centrism: Encourages growth in continued learning and trying new things to experiment for improved results.
• Versatility: Encourages the adoption of new approaches to challenges, leadership, demands, and innovation.

Each leadership type requires a unique approach to mindset preservation. Once you know which category best fits your personality and character, you can begin to apply specific shifts in mindset that produce a result in how you think and feel about situations, business, and life.

Psychology Today says there are other ways to compartmentalize your mindset, to help you address “smaller parts” of your mindset in manageable bites. Everyone experiences and learns differently. These types of mindsets can make it easier for you to recognize how to make improvements.

• Growth Mindset: The belief that abilities and experiences can be improved with hard work, trying harder, learning more, and applying yourself.
• Positive Mindset: The belief that intentional gratitude, reappraisal, and savoring of moments improves optimism.
• Entrepreneurial Mindset: The belief that innovation, changing, and adapting eases coping and improves mindset.
• Challenge Mindset: The belief that positivity thrives when there’s an opportunity to overcome and tackle demands. 

7. Other Intentional Mindset Shifts You Can Make

There are other best practices you can be following to effect positive changes in your mindset and attitude. Again, the key is recognizing where you need improvement. And being aware of where you fall short will help you focus with pinpoint precision. These three mindset shifts tend to be the most popular first steps to making a change.

Trusting Yourself

Stop second-guessing. A positive mindset is only achieved when you’re able to trust your own ideas, your own experiences, and your own strengths. Even in the face of adversity or the unknown, you have to trust in your own abilities to allow yourself to succeed. And yes, failures come. But not trusting yourself will only hold you back and prevent you from taking action. (Remember, procrastination will tank your mindset.)

Know Your Worth

Assign value where value is due. Be realistic about giving yourself credit and assigning worth. If you’re constantly selling yourself short or throwing yourself under the bus, you’ll never achieve a positive mindset. Recognize your strengths just as much, if not more, than you do your weaknesses. Place value on what matters, like with the aforementioned priorities list.

Stop Being a Loner

Another mindset tanking action is trying to do it all on your own. You can begin to see immediate changes in your mindset when you realize you can’t do everything alone. You need the assistance of others. You need collaboration and shared responsibility. The alternative is burnout, increased procrastination, and constant struggle. So, liberate yourself and your mindset by getting comfortable asking for help when you need it.

Conclusion

Preserving your mindset matters, especially if you want to live a positive and healthy life. In your career and personal life, negativity will always creep in, and it’s ok to feel and respond. But don’t linger in those negative mindset instances for too long. Tap into these insights and tips to help you break free and start shifting how you think, feel, and react to work, life, and situations. Preserving your mindset will allow you to live your best life, no matter what the universe throws at you!

For more life, work, and leadership insights, keep up with the Ghost Blog Writers blog! And if you need help with content for business, blogs, or thought leadership on LinkedIn, let our team of wordsmiths bring your ideas to life.

The post Mindset Matters: 7 Tips for Shifting to a More Successful Life Perspective appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

It’s no secret that today’s most successful sales teams rely heavily on their abilities to build relationships with their prospects and clients. Naturally, it makes sense for today’s business leaders to focus on improving their relationship-building techniques to then improve sales results. But there’s more to it, especially if you want to experience sales like that Hoover Dam bursting analogy.

Here’s why you should be focusing on the relationship-nurturing aspect of your sales process. And your teams need to embrace these relationship-based sales strategies to be successful.

What Is Relationship-Based Selling?

There’s sales; then there’s relationship selling. It’s a relatively newer concept, opposing traditional transactional selling, where the focus isn’t on the conversion or sale. Instead, relationship selling is about authentic connection and building trust. Once the trust is established between the buyer and seller, the transactional sales come naturally.

This technique exists to combat the emotional component of a consumer making a purchasing decision. So, even if your product or service satisfies all the needs and preferences but still seems unknown or inspires prospects to hesitate, you won’t convert them. However, when you build the trust component, you eliminate any “red flags” a customer might sense about your brand, offer, or company. And then, your product or service becomes a no-brainer decision.

Needs Selling

You’ve likely heard of needs selling, which is similar to consultative sales. With this relationship-building technique, your sales teams focus on the customers’ pain points. These engagements involve needs assessment conversations where you can learn what challenges your prospect is facing and what goals they have. Using their “needs,” your teams then present a solutions-driven option unique to the client and rooted in that trusted partnership experience.

Trust Selling

There are trust selling techniques to know, too. These sales strategies are more sensible for large ticket purchases. Smaller purchases with self-checkout methods aren’t going to require the same level of trust that a larger investment purchase, with potential risks to address. Trust-based sales focuses on demonstrating, not “selling” the solution. This is where you’ll share the results of others, demonstrate product effectiveness, and highlight the positive outcomes of your solution.

Why Relationship-Building in Business Matters

Today’s customers make purchasing decisions based on personalized problem-solving and customized experiences. Regardless of what you’re selling, you have to find a way to package your sales efforts into those two categories. When 86% of all consumers say their experiences are just as important as the service or product they intend to purchase, it signifies just how important the relationship really is.

Therein lies the big question most leaders face. With all the sales automations and technology in place, how can you be sure you’re cutting through the “template responses” and creating authentic connections with your prospects? How can you be creating relationship-based engagements and end-to-end solutions if your technology feels cookie-cutter?

Customer Relationships and Technology

You can actually have and master the best of both worlds – the firm relationship-driven connection and the seamless automations that streamline the sales process. And since most of today’s consumers are researching and making purchasing decisions online, that’s where you can begin your relationship-building connection.

Start with a Great-Fit CRM

Any great plan or well-executed sales strategy needs a nerve center. And the customer relations manager or CRM you choose can be just the hub or central command for all things client engagement related. Identify the best CRM platform for your business model and start developing methods for:

• Using the CRM data to create customized client offers
• Improve engagement with next-step and nurturing communications
• Collect customer feedback to identify areas of improvement

If you’re not yet using a robust CRM solution, don’t wait another minute to invest in one. Like, now. Here’s why:

• More than 65% of sales teams that use CRMs hit their quotas.
• Roughly 74% of businesses are currently improving their customer relationships with CRMs.
• The average ROI of a great-fit CRM will yield $8.71 for every dollar invested.

Customer Retention Strategies

Relationship selling isn’t just for new prospects and leads. It’s an ideal strategy for developing incredible retention strategies. Keep your best clients coming back. Those companies that can provide a “consistent” experience will be able to retain as many as 80% of their customers. Alternatively, those companies unable to create those lasting experiences will only retain roughly 33% of their customers.

A CRM can integrate everything, including SMS, social media, and email marketing platforms, into one convenient hub. So you can better manage customer experiences and communications more effectively. It’s this “omnichannel” experience that allows you to keep your best clients over time.

Brand Loyalty Strategies

Your CRM is also your primary tool for building relationships that support brand loyalty. When your audience learns to prefer or favor your brand over other available options, you’ve established brand loyalty. And once they’re loyal, they not only keep buying, but they’ll also refer your brand to others within their circles. The stronger the relationship you have, the more purchases you can expect. And recent consumer-facing studies suggest that 37% of people consider themselves “loyal customers” after they’ve purchased five times.

What Are the Real Benefits of Relationship Sales?

If you’re still not convinced that you might need to realign your sales strategies to be more relationship-focused, consider these key advantages. In today’s marketplace, regardless of your sales offering, relationships with your customers are the ONLY way to increase conversions.

Relationships Allow You to Anticipate Client Needs

When you build relationships with your prospects and clients, they’ll be more likely to reach out to you about new needs and preferences. It’s how you keep an eye on emerging buying trends and spot anticipated challenges.

Relationships Are Cushions When You Drop the Ball

Despite your best efforts, it’s a given that someone will drop the ball at some point. But if you have a strong relationship with your prospects and customers, minor hiccups in your process will easily be forgiven.

Relationships Lead to Great Referrals

When you build great experiences with your audience, they’ll be more likely to refer others to your services or products. And when your prospects have a relationship with your brand, they’ll be eager to convey their trust to others.

Relationships Provide Insights into the Competition

As your prospects and clients build trust with you, they’ll also be willing to share insights about other offers or competitive deals they encounter. And the more you know about what your competitors are doing, the more agile you can be about staying ahead.

Relationships Drive Long-Lasting Revenue

As previously mentioned, there are better results with customer retention when you develop a strong relationship with your clients. Forming authentic connections ensures every sale you make translates to a longer lifespan of additional sales.

Relationships Change Tough Clients to Brand Champions

Tough clients with demanding requirements are out there. Manage service delivery and expectations flawlessly when you build the relationships you need with them. It’s the trusted partnership that will transform even the most challenging clients into brand champions.

Executing the Relationship-Based Sale

So, what can you and your sales managers do right now to affect change with your sales strategies? How can you infuse your efforts with all the best relationship-building techniques?

The best sales strategies focus on them, not you.

Read that again. Because traditional sales methods focus on company quotas, goals, and revenue, they’re not going to be effective in the relationship method. To develop an authentic relationship with anyone, you’ll need to make it all about them. Here’s how you can do that effectively, one step at a time.

Keep track of personal details you uncover in your process, like client birthdays or special occasions that come up in conversation. Those details demonstrate your willingness to listen and your genuine care for them.

Learn about business and professional goals and use those as you further the relationship and in providing sales solutions.

Create customer contact points that do nothing more than touch base. If you only connect when you want something from them, they’ll recognize you prioritize the sale more than the partnership.

Share industry-relevant news with them and ask questions. This shows your interest in learning more about what they do, what they offer, and what they think.

Provide added-value insights, free resources, and tutorials. They’ll recognize your genuine interest in helping them, and you’ll effectively build more trust.

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Relationship-Building efforts

You can measure a traditional sale pretty easily, right? So, how can your company effectively track and measure a “relationship?” When changing your sales strategy, you’ll need to also change your analytics. How you define success with a relationship-based sales method is going to be vastly different from the old-school sales quotas you’re used to tracking.

There’s ROI for those traditional methods, where you measure costs associated with sales tools and staff and revenue generated with direct sales. But there’s also ROR or return on relationship. This is a measurement technique that dives deeper into the insights and data and provides you with metrics that gauge how effective you are at developing relationships.

Bottom-line – ROI is about dollars and cents. ROR is about audience connection.

And yes, there is a way to measure relationships.

• Calculate the number of clients who’ve purchased from in any given timeframe.
• Calculate, of those clients, which have you helped again over the last 12 months.
• Calculate from those you’ve helped how many came as referrals or repeat buyers.
• Calculate by dividing the total number of clients you’ve helped over the last 12 months by the total number of repeat or referral clients.

If the ROR percentage is high, you’re doing well at building relationships. If it’s low, you’re missing big opportunities to increase sales and grow your business.

Tips for Infusing Your Sales Strategy with Relationship Selling

When you base your sales strategies on how many customers you help, not just how many sales you make, you can transform the focus to relationship-building. And then, you can look at every aspect of your marketing and sales to realign the goals there. For example:

• Are your email campaigns helping customers or addressing their needs?
• Are your company’s social media profiles offering valuable and engaging insights?
• Is your content welcoming and insightful in a way that inspires interaction?
• Do you actively listen to your customers and have quick response times?
• Does your company offer free or value-added assets just because?

Imagine your sales teams and customer service staff all executing one common goal – to help the prospect or client. When everyone’s seeking new ways to be helpful, not just close deals, trust and loyalty become the pillars of your brand. And THAT is when the revenue pours in like a river.

Remember to:

• Encourage personalization and customized engagements.
• Establish the strong relationships before asking for the sale.
• Be the solution and problem-solving partner.
• Collaborate instead of sell.
• Be an active listener and adapt accordingly.
• Demonstrate your expertise and authority through helpful offerings.
• Always be a giver, not a taker.
• Center every engagement on them, not you.
• Be transparent and honest about expectations and deliverables.

Whatever you’re selling or offering, today’s customers will only be buying if there’s trust, respect, and a relationship. Consider these insights to evaluate your current sales strategies and develop new roadmaps to increased sales success. Relationship selling is the key to landing more clients, boosting revenue, and scaling your business.

Don’t forget. Ghost Blog Writers is always here to help you implement any content-related relationship sales strategies! Our team of writers can execute engaging blogs, thought-leadership articles, white pages, social media campaigns, email marketing sequences, and more! Let us help you, so you can help your clients and start landing more!

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