The world is changing with the passage of time, but the rate of change increased significantly since the invention of the internet. Things had never changed as fast as they did in the last thirty years. Along with millions of other things, the way businesses operate and communicate with their audiences has changed as well. If you want to start a business and make it successful today, you have to adapt to the changing requirements of the customers. In fact, constant change of requirements is the biggest challenge that businesses face today. If you own a startup or are considering starting one, here are the five golden rules to make your business successful in today’s era.
The Five Golden Rules for a Successful Business in 2019
Show Them, Don’t Tell Them
The first rule of a successful business in the digital era is to show your target audience what you are offering them. Even on social media, people do not pay much attention to text-only information. Rather than explaining to people what uniqueness you offer, it is best that you let the images speak to the target audience. Waterton National Park hotels can be the perfect example how you get the attention of your audience through images. When you talk about accommodation in a natural spot and want to explain the beauty of the region, your words will never be enough.
The best thing to do is to create a website for your business, and let the images do the talking. The above-mentioned business did just that. Why explain to the people how beautiful the sight of a lake is from the hotel when you can simply take a picture from one of the hotel rooms? Turn your ideas into images whenever you can because human brain captures and comprehends visual information format faster than any other format.
Be Informative and Useful
Today’s businesses are not all about what they offer. Instead, they go the extra mile and offer whatever help and information their target audience needs in relation to their business. Once again, you can take the example of Waterton accommodations here. When you are on this website, you get to know about a lot about Waterton in addition to accommodation. Of course, accommodation is only a small part of your stay at this place. The real joy comes from the places you get to visit and the activities you are able to do. On this website, you will find all the information that you need about the area before you pay a visit.
Similarly, every business needs to be informative to its customers in some way. The best way to provide useful information to your customers is through blogs. You can offer useful and informative posts to your customers so they have other reasons to visit your website as well.
Personalize Your Communication
Social media marketing has given a completely new dimension to how businesses used to market themselves in the past. Today, you have to personalize your interactions with your customers like never before. Whether you are sending emails to your customers or talking to your followers on social media, you have to address them with their names. You have to act as though you are one of them. You can’t be the business and treat them like customers. On social media, everyone is equal. Keep in mind that the people you are talking to on social media have the same power as you do.
Data Is Your Best Friend
As soon as you start a business, you have to find ways to collect data of your customers. The more data you have the more you will know your customers. The more you know about your customers, the more you can personalize your marketing campaigns according to them. If you don’t know, marketing and sales are the two departments that benefit from data the most. Of course, you will need some high-tech software technologies and experts to take care of the data of your business. The experts will decide the infrastructure in which the data will flow and get stored. On the other hand, the software technology helps you process the collected data so you can base your marketing strategies on the discovered patterns.
Ask before You Implement
Several big enterprises have learned this lesson the hard way. They made changes to their branding and products that their customers did not like. Their mistake was that they made these changes without consulting with their customers. It is unfortunate that some businesses do not get a feedback from their customers when doing so is so easy due to the existence of social media. Today, you can ask your customers just about anything in the form of polls or opinions. You can offer them limited options to pick one from or let them have their say.
A large apparel company made a small change to its logo and the customers did not like it. The backlash was so severe that the company has to revert back to its old logo within a couple of days. It is surprising how the company thought it was not worth taking a feedback from the customers before making a change. In the minds of the marketers, they had not thought of the changes as big changes. On the other hand, those so-called small changes were big enough for customers to cause an uproar within a few hours.
Bottom Line
The biggest sign of a successful business in the digital era is that it adapts to the changes very quickly. You have several examples of businesses that resisted a change and ended up losing their status. Take the example of Nokia, the biggest mobile company in the world at one point. The company did not accept and adapt to the smartphone technology quickly and was in fact very late to do that. Today, you don’t even hear about the company when you talk about smartphones anymore. Therefore, apply the golden rules mentioned above and do not put your business on the path of failure only because you like conventions.
writer and seo expert