It is that time of the year individuals begin thinking of what is next in their careers. If you don’t know yet, marketing is among the first steps in starting a small business, and it can be a vital part of helping it grow and outdo competitors. Big companies like Forever 21, Starbucks, Walmart, and Target spend millions every year just to market their activities.

Basically, marketing encompasses getting details on customer demographics, how they are willing to pay for your services or products, and what they expect from you.Without marketing, it can be impossible to properly advertise your products and estimate the costs involved in containment and production. Moreover, many business consultants would advise you to have a business second phone number to deal with the business purposes and keep your private conversations aside from the work.

1. Identify Your USP

A USP (unique selling proposition) is the reason customers will purchase products from you and make your business stand out.

It is vital to define the things you do differently and convey that to potential clients. Usually, this will reflect your special skills or knowledge.

2. Carry Business Cards

Business cards will offer you a quick way to exchange details, and they might lend some professionalism and credibility. You might meet potential vendors, workers, or customers anywhere, so you may want to get prepared.

Business cards are also a cost-effective marketing tactic and might be a perfect way to get leads, with which you can have a personal rapport. With professional printers in Cambridge, you can have a business card that matches your branding and have your website, name, and phone number details.

3. Optimize Emails

Many individuals feel like they get many emails, yet around 90% of customers prefer emailing entrepreneurs. Email shows no sign of slowing down because of its effectiveness. Although email marketing is important, it can also be tricky for some businesses. Usually, good content doesn’t always guarantee that your recipients will open all your emails.

However, there are ways you may use to improve conversions, audience engagement, and open rates. This may include using CTA (call-to-action), subject line, sender address, and design.

4. Consider Collaboration

Come up with a group of non-competitive and synergistic businesses within your area and agree to collaborate. This may include using fliers, bundled promotions, coupons, and reciprocal website links.

By collaborating, it also means you will expand your customer base since you might reach new individuals.

5. Know Your Competitors

Regardless of how original your services or products might be, there is competition for customer’s dollars. Small enterprises seldom take time to study and analyze their competitors in depth.

Knowing who your competitors are will give a core competitive advantage and how they can respond to your offering.

6. Use Social Media

In the realm of digital marketing, social media is a dependable tool to promote your brand. This is because social media can help you connect with clients at an intimate level.

It is also vital to note that many prospective customers are on social media platforms. Therefore, using your social media accounts will help you generate quality content and links for your site.

In a Nutshell!

Marketing is a no-easy and costly task for small businesses, though you shouldn’t neglect the fact that advertising is an important building block for your enterprise.

With your excellent idea, reaching out to the right individuals through marketing might be vital. Word of mouth might help, but you may need to reach out to a wider audience to develop a sustainable business.

Searching for a new career? Consider management skills to be one of your strengths? If so, you should think about becoming a product manager.

What does a product manager do, you ask? Great question and one we can answer in detail. So, without further ado, here is everything you need to know about product management and how to become a product manager.

What Does a Product Manager Do?

Aptly named, a product manager manages a product and all that surrounds it. This includes its distribution, the advertising that helps sell it, its manufacture, and more. You can think of a product manager as a jack of all trades who keeps all of the different aspects of the product connected.

Product managers communicate with all of the different members of a team, from the developers to the marketers to legal experts and more. They even communicate with potential and actual customers.

There are product managers for literally every product in existence. As such, every product manager possesses a different set of skills. For instance, whereas a product manager for a phone app would have more knowledge of coding, a product manager for a lawnmower would have more knowledge of mechanics.

This isn’t to say that product managers need as much knowledge as professional programmers or engineers, but they do need to possess a good baseline of knowledge for the specialties in which they work.

How to Become a Product Manager

Are you interested in becoming a product manager? If so, this is how you can make it a reality.

Get a Job at a Business Where Products Are Made

It’s rare to jump straight into a product management job. You’re usually going to have to work your way up the ladder. Then, once you’ve established yourself, you could nab the promotion you’re looking for.

As such, if you’re pursuing a career in product management, you should try to find employment at a company that makes products. It’s best to put yourself in a position where you can impress, whether that be in the marketing department, the customer service department, the development department, or otherwise.

Then, once you’ve performed well in your given role, and once you’ve established a positive reputation for yourself, you can put yourself in the running for obtaining the job you desire.

Keep Learning

Product managers can’t just sit back and allocate tasks to different members of a team. They have to understand what’s going on during each step of the process. As such, if you want to be a product manager, you must learn.

Study up on the projects that are in development in your company, spending time outside of work to become as big of an expert as possible. Then, try to think of ways to improve your company’s operational processes.

You have to take initiative and show that you can make a difference. Your knowledge should tie the team together and should help to create a seamless developmental process.

Take a Course

If you really want to become a product manager, you should consider taking a product management course. This will help to show your employer that you’re serious about the endeavor and that you have advanced knowledge that can help within the company.

There are all sorts of product manager courses you can take. Search Google for some in your area and read up on which are the most reputable.

Network

You might not be able to obtain the position of a product manager in your company. But there are other companies out there that need product managers.

If you have prior experience as a product manager, you have a decent chance of snagging these jobs. The trouble at this point is that you don’t have that experience.

This is where networking can make a major difference. If you can form connections with other business owners in your area, and if you make those business owners aware of your product management skills, you stand a chance of getting the job you desire.

The key here is to build trust and to demonstrate an affinity for product management-related tasks. Reputation plays a large part in nabbing product management jobs.

Product Manager Salary

Product managers typically make a good amount of money. In the United States in 2020, they averaged a salary of $116,000. Note, however, that salaries can range from $80,000 to $150,000.

If you want to maximize your income as a product manager, you should participate in advanced education. For instance, obtaining a Master’s Degree or becoming a SAFe product manager will make you much more attractive to employers. They’ll be willing to pay you much more than they would someone without such education.

Other factors that can affect your income as a product manager include on-the-job experience, specialization, and team size. Industry affects income as well, with information technology product managers making the least amount of money and agricultural product managers making the most.

Job Outlook for Product Managers

Though growth statistics for product managers are not formally tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they are typically lumped in with marketing specialists. The number of marking specialist jobs is expected to grow 6% from 2019 to 2029. This is an additional 19,000 jobs over the course of 10 years.

So, there’s definitely room for those who are hoping to become product managers themselves. And if you can’t find work as a product manager immediately, you shouldn’t have trouble finding work in a closely related field.

Searching for Info on Other Professions?

Now that you have an answer to “what does a product manager do?” you might be searching for info on other professions. If so, we have you covered. Our website contains guides on all types of careers.

Check out some more of our career guides now!

Unemployment in the United States is slowly starting to creep down which means businesses are feeling more emboldened to open up shop. That’s great news for you as a commercial property owner/manager because the more businesses that exist in the economy, the lower vacancy you’re going to have.

If you’ve been managing one of your first commercial properties recently and struggled through 2020, you’re not alone. Several property owners/managers saw higher than normal vacancy and delinquency during the year.

To turn your fortunes around in 2021, our team has compiled a list of commercial property management tips that’ll help you navigate the market more successfully and ultimately, drive more revenue from your property.

Keep reading to learn more.

1. Understand Your Renter’s Needs

If you don’t understand your customers, you’re going to have a hard time engaging with them successfully. For example, if you’re advertising one of your commercial units as being perfect for a dance company, you’ll likely find it sitting empty for a long time as indoor physical activities have been restricted in many parts of the country.

By knowing that about your customer, that they’re shut down, you can reposition your unit to an industry that is considered more essential by regulators in your area.

The better you can put yourself in your buyer’s shows, the better you’ll be able to figure out who’s worth marketing your spaces too.

2. Find Ways to Drive Up Value

Many people don’t know this but commercial property and residential property are one in the same if you have over 5 units in a building. So, let’s say you have a 5-unit apartment complex that’s cash-flowing $1200 per month.

How could you increase that number by 10% this year?

You could rehab a basement with the help of factory painting specialists and rent it as a business space, you could raise rents, you could split a 2 bed/2 bath unit into two 1 bed/1 baths, etc.

The more ways you can find to make your property worth more, the more money you’ll make in addition to your building’s appreciation.

3. Build Your Maintenance Team

Things will inevitably go wrong with your property. Plan for this financially and also plan by having a great team ready to go the moment you need them.

Great maintenance contacts include a plumber, an electrician, and a general contractor.

Between the three of those people, you should be able to have a person available to fix an issue within 48 hours of a complaint so you can avoid legal ramifications.

4. Make Paying Rent Easy

Don’t be one of those landlords that make people jump through hundreds of hoops to get their rent paid. Having a tenant put a check in an envelope, walk down to the post office, and mail it is insecure and headache-prone.

The sooner you can set up direct deposit or some other simple means of fast payment, the happier your tenants will be and the higher odds you’ll have of getting paid at the end of each month.

5. Be Good to Your Tenants

Being great to your tenants is the right thing to do. After all, their willingness to do business with you is why your commercial property management aspirations are working out.

Believe it or not, being friendly and responsive to tenant requests can mean the difference between a 10% vacancy rate and a 5% vacancy rate, and that matters.

If you can do something within reason to reduce the turnover of your units, make an effort to do so and enjoy the financial rewards that accompany that.

6. Have an Excellent Legal Contact

The last thing you want to deal with as a property manager/owner is legal issues. Unfortunately though, they have a tendency of cropping up.

Is your space zoned for the kind of commercial client you have sitting in it? Can you evict that tenant that hasn’t paid you in two months?

All of these questions carry intricacies that are best answered by a real estate attorney, not Google. Most lawyers will consult with you for free which gives you some agency to interview a few prospects to discover who you’ll call when things get tough.

7. Screen Tenants Well

Depending on where you live, getting a bad tenant off of your property can be a multi-month nightmare that will set you back thousands of dollars. Rather than fighting that fight, do some diligence on the front end and work hard to find great tenants.

Finding excellent tenants that are not likely to cause trouble and very likely to pay their rent usually requires a credit check, background check, and in some cases, references.

While gathering that information takes time and in the case of the credit/background checks, costs money, believe us when we say that those costs pale in comparison to what you’ll pay if you end up working with a troubled tenant.

Commercial Property Management Can Be Easy With the Right Values

A lot of investors stray away from commercial property management because they know the residential game much better. Truth be told though, most of the big money to be made with rentals exists in the commercial space.

So, take the tips we’ve shared with you to heart, build your commercial rental strategy, and start renting successfully. With a little bit of diligence and the right guidance, you’ll master the commercial game and start enjoying returns that dwarf what you’ll find with single-family houses and the like.

For more property management tips, check out additional commercial property posts on our blog.

Want to make the most out of your marketing data?

The digitalization of life allowed businesses to utilize automation. Many industries now leverage digital platforms to deliver their products and services. As eCommerce becomes the norm, businesses begin to collect more data.

This becomes an important asset in managing customer information and achieving goals. You need a good strategy to manage your data and findings. If this is your goal, consider using centralized data.

Here are some of the benefits of centralized marketing data.

1. Enhance Customer Experience

Centralized marketing data can help enhance the customer experience. Many consumers nowadays have big expectations from brands. Small inconsistencies don’t go unnoticed and can affect your brand’s image.

A great way to ensure consistency is through centralized data management. It allows your company to deliver the same messages. This makes the customer experience more consistent.

This allows each department to have the same data and insights. This can help with customer issues and complaints because they’re easier to track.

2. Save Time

You can’t improve your business if you’re only working with raw data. To use insights and analyses to the fullest, use a centralized system.

You will access your data in a legible and simple format. Spreading data across different platforms can make it a hassle to go back and forth between them. You can focus more time on strategies and decisions instead of compiling reports.

3. Simpler Way to Maintain Data

Data management is crucial for data-driven systems, especially if you’re using automated tools. Centralization makes it easier to maintain data changes. Data management can be complex when it involves various customer records and criteria.

Centralizing allows you to eliminate duplicate data on one platform. With regular and consistent updates, you can unlock your brand’s full marketing potential.

4. Improve Data Integrity

Poor data quality and management can cost you. Studies show that this problem costs businesses $3.1 trillion of their collective annual revenue. Using a centralized system ensures that your data is always moving.

This establishes a strong foundation for your data. You can identify issues fast and resolve them before it causes any problems. This also helps you produce an accurate trend analysis, which helps keep up with the market.

Organized data helps businesses make better decisions. It becomes a critical asset instead of a consistent problem.

5. Receive a High ROI

Investing in a good centralization system offers a high return on investment. Many businesses suffer from costly mistakes due to bad data. A higher ROI stems from improved productivity in the workplace.

Not only do you spend time collecting data, but it also provides more meaningful reports. This allows you to identify the efforts that have made the most progress. With this, you can continue to enhance your strategies and make more sales.

Looking for a platform to centralize your data? Check out this link: https://improvado.io/integrations/google-data-studio.

Benefits of Centralized Marketing Data

Here are some of the benefits of centralized marketing data. Centralized data makes data management easier and can boost your progress and productivity.

However, if you want to see success, you need to do more. Check out our other blog posts for more business guides. We have more tips for you on how to get a better advantage in the business landscape.

Every year, millions of people fall prey to cybercrime. According to the report of Internet Crime Complain Center, consumers lose over $3 billion from scams initiated via the web. However, there are ways that can help you avoid online frauds.

The internet has become a popular tool to commit scams and frauds and criminals are making its full use and adopting more sophisticated and innovative hacking techniques. Hackers are getting pro with their new hacking styles and thus it is extremely essential for customers to use only reliable and trusted secured wireless networks when making financial transactions. Also know that all your personal details shared online can be used by hackers to do online frauds.

1. Make sure your computer and other devices are up to date. Always keep the latest security software, operating system and web browser. They work as a great defense against viruses, Trojans, malware and other cyber threats. Switch on the automatic updates so that you can get the latest fixes as and when they get available.
2. Keep strong passwords. By saying strong passwords, we mean that it should be at least 8 characters and should have a mix of upper and lowercase letters, special characters and numerical values
3. Keep an eye on phishing scams. Phishing scams make use of fraud mails and sites to trick people into stating their private account or login details. Do not tap on links and attachments or pop-up screens if you are not familiar with the sender. You can forward the phishing males to the FTC and to the company or bank impersonated in the mail.
4. Always keep your personal details personal. Hackers make use social media profiles to know your passwords and answer the security questions mentioned in the password reset tools. Make sure you lock your privacy settings and don’t post things like birthday, maiden name of your mother or address. Also ensure to stay away from people you don’t know. Never share your personal details, even if you have made friends online.
5. Keep your internet connection secure. Always secure the wireless network of your home with a passcode. When connecting to public Wi-Fi network, make sure you know what information you are sharing over it.
6. Shop carefully. When you are shopping online, make sure you choose the website which use secure technology. Find out if the payment gateway is encrypted or not. When at the checkout screen, see if the web address starts with https. And also see if a small locked padlock symbol is present on the page.  
7. Go through the privacy policy of the website. Though it could be complicated and long, privacy policies tell you the manner the site protects your personal information. If you don’t see the privacy policy of the site, consider checking out another site.

Even after following these safety rules, if you have been a victim of online trading scams, then Exploit Code is your one-stop solution. All you need to do is tell your scam to them and the best experts will be assigned for it.

Many entrepreneurs and small business owners dislike common financial tasks like accounting and bookkeeping. It’s not shocking, since most entrepreneurs lack the necessary training for deep insight into their finances.

In fact, many lack any formal business training at all. Instead, they struggle through with a combination of self-education and trial-and-error to learn how to run their businesses. While this can-do approach makes sense when you can’t afford experts, it can actually damage your business when your finances would support hiring a certified public accountant.

You might wonder why, if you’re already doing your own taxes, you should bother. Keep reading and learn about the advantages of hiring a CPA.

Financial Planning

If your business makes enough that you can realistically afford a CPA, there is a very good chance that you’re making enough that financial planning would save you a lot of money. While no CPA can fix things you already did this last year, they can advise you on what you can do next year, such as:

• Donations
• Portfolio management
• Asset strategies

Hiring a certified public accountant firm, such as Robinson Deloache, LLC, lets you access that financial expertise.

Confidence in Your Taxes

The tax code is a remarkably unstable thing. Old tax programs come to an end and new programs go into effect. Exemptions expire.

Even the things that the government lets businesses deduct can change in any given year. That makes assembling your taxes on your own something of a fraught experience. Unless you spend a lot of time following changes in the tax code, you always run the risk of making a mistake that will draw unwanted IRS attention.

One of the benefits of a certified public accountant is that they do mind those tax code changes very closely. That means you can feel confident that those kinds of mistakes won’t trigger an IRS review.

Consultation

Entrepreneurs and small business owners must make a multitude of financial decisions. Some may prove easy, such as giving a solid employee a raise.

Others can leave you in a cold sweat, such as thinking about opening a new location or making any large investment. A good CPA can help you evaluate the overall financial risk of the decision. They can also help you develop strategies that will help reduce that risk or at least spread it out over time.

Is a Certified Public Accountant Right for Your Business?

The question of when to hire a certified public accountant differs for every business. Yet, if your business makes enough that you’re not sweating the finances all the time, it’s likely time for you to hire a CPA.

At that point, you’re likely losing money through several channels by not getting the right kind of professional financial advice. A CPA can provide you that expert financial wisdom. Plus, you go into each tax season knowing that your tax paperwork is sound.

Looking for more financial tips or tricks for your entrepreneurial venture or small business? Check out the Finance posts in our Business section.

Do you want to keep your business clean?

Because of the pandemic, it’s more important now than ever to keep your business and its premises clean. This ensures that the health of your employees is always at its peak no matter what. Doing so also helps with the productivity of the workspace.

When thinking about cleaning up the place, it’s often best to hire a cleaning company to do it for you. Why hire a cleaning company, you ask? Read what’s below to see the benefits you can gain by outsourcing your cleaning operations to professional cleaners.

1. Cleaner and More Organized Workspaces

What’s great about these cleaning companies is that they have higher cleaning standards than most. They clean places that most people won’t consider cleaning. Things like vent grids, secluded corners, and the areas under furniture are sure to get a thorough cleaning.

Their work ethic is also better when it comes to cleaning. They won’t consider the job finished until they’re satisfied with the state of the building.

Some even have packages for different businesses. Rosa’s Cleaning Service LLC, for example, offers specific cleaning packages for banks and such. This ensures your specific business model gets a good cleaning no matter what it is.

2. Helps You Save Your Time and Resources

Another benefit to having professionals clean your business is that you don’t have to do it yourself. This makes it so you have more time on your hands to focus on more important matters.

What’s great is that you don’t have to hire anyone to do the cleaning for you. This means you can allocate more manpower to aspects of your business that need your attention. It’s a great way for you to expand your business.

3. They Have Better Equipment

What’s great about cleaning services is that they have much better equipment and supplies. They use the best and most up-to-date items to ensure the safety of your business.

This is important because outdated equipment and supplies can be detrimental to your health and your business. Old chemicals may trigger violent reactions to the health of everyone in the building. Old tools, on the other hand, can damage the surfaces of your business’s base of operations.

4. It’s a Cost-Effective Choice

As mentioned above, you need not worry about hiring anyone to become your janitors. This is an example of it being a cost-effective choice for you. You also don’t have to invest in cleaning supplies anymore, since they’ll bring their own with them.

You only have to worry about paying them their rates. With how high their cleaning standards are, you’re sure to get the most out of your investment.

5. Promotes Workplace Hygiene

The best part about hiring cleaning companies is that they ensure a deep, thorough clean. This means that even microscopic threats like viruses also get taken care of. It’s a great way to prevent the spread of the infection of the current health crisis.

It also takes care of allergens like dust and pollen. This is important because around 50 million Americans suffer from having allergies. Doing this reduces reactions, which reduces sneezing, promoting a more hygienic workplace.

Hire a Cleaning Company Today

Keep your business spick and span with the help of a professional cleaning company. With their help, you can reap all the benefits above and make your business appealing to everyone. Hire the right cleaning service today!

Do you want to learn more ways to take care of your business? Check out more of our guides to learn all you can today!

Virtual teams are commonplace in a WFH culture. We examined some tools to take the burden off the upper levels of management.

Virtual teams are the new normal. There is no getting around the fact that the days of office culture are behind us – at least for now. Up until the last two years or so, the remote team has depended on a handful of small sites, each offering varying degrees of quality video linking and meeting software. Now, a global boom has seen companies vying to be first place.

What does this mean for the modern remote team? It means that there is a plethora of opportunities out there to help you manage in a WFH environment.

The Problems of Working from Home

The WFH culture is serving us well now, but we are still in an in-between space. In this corporate grey area, employees more used to the office are being kept at home and asked to work remotely.

Meetings are conducted via vide and microphone, deals are done via telephone call, emails, memos, and projects are all collaborated on via Cloud, Google Docs and One Drive. The fact that we have technology enough to do this is a marvellous thing – but it’s not without its drawbacks.

Some of the main problem’s employers cite about working from home include:

• Loneliness – your employees have had limited social interaction. This leads to loneliness and isolation, which causes low morale.
• Technology – internet usage was blamed on stretched network capacity as everyone switched to WFH at once (Forbes, April 2020).
• Time Management swiftly becomes a problem among remote employees.
• Disorganisation, collaborative differences, and difficulty maintaining a health work/life balance, were all given as other issues with working remotely.

As managers and employers of these remote/virtual teams, the onus is on us to do something about it.

The 5 Best Virtual Team Management Tools of 2021

Here are our top tips on management tools that are going to be a big help in the coming months.

1 – Education

Before we go into specific apps and software systems, we want to take a minute to appreciate that this is the perfect moment to study up on our management skills. Remote Team Management courses can be done online and will arm you with the information you need to help increase production in a way that won’t tax your team.

2 – Zoom

Top of every firm’s list of video communication suites should be the Zoom package. They offer competitive rates for unlimited use of software that can handle higher capacities than the servers can. Zoom meetings can be used for free if meetings are kept to a 40-minute maximum.

Out of all the tech firms on the market right now, they have grown the most in the last year. If you need video provision solutions and you don’t want to fork out for Skype Business, this is the next best thing.

3 – Slack

Messaging platform Slack has become a successful addition to the business messaging market. Slack is an essential tool for managing your remote team because it allows ease of collaboration. This service has calling, file share, ease of flow in conversations, and comes with a whole array of compatible apps that can be run almost like mods within the program.

Slack is favoured by nearly three quarters of a million firms because it lets all departments communicate with one another directly. It makes the flow of business smoother, while simultaneously allowing management to keep a close eye on each area of the corporation they turn their attention to.

4 – Google Drive

Cloud storage has never been easier to access from multiple points so that teams can work together in real time. Share spreadsheets, copy documents into Google Docs and share the links, and use all of Google’s features, integrated into one place.

Google files can be accessed from any devices, anywhere in the world. You can create presentations, you can build templates, you can manage any aspects of online business that you would manage from an office. It’s a nifty piece of software with the bonus of being Google technology… so you know it has staying power.

5 – Kickidler

This employee monitoring software is one of many new technological innovations which are emerging in this area. Understandably, employers want to make sure that employees are working their designated hours. Software like this, monitors how much screen activity, productivity, and time spent idle, that each person uses.

It seems callous, but this is just a new way of gaining analytical data. If you’re not intruding into their personal lives, monitoring how much time your employees spend working while you are paying them is nothing new.

The Softer Approach to Remote Team Management

No matter which of these tools you find invaluable, keep in mind that everyone deserves a softer approach right now. Times are hard and people are under pressure they have never had to endure for long. A positive, healthy working environment is all that is keeping some of them sane right now. Be gentle and use your newfound team management skills wisely in the days and weeks to come.