Common Mistakes Which Could Be Harming Your Business

If you run your own business, then it’s safe to say your company is your life. You’re thinking about it every day; worrying about things going wrong or daydreaming about success. Although every business owner has passion, many are doing things unwittingly which can harm their business. It’s a scary thought, but you might be guilty of some of these yourself! Don’t panic; help is at hand. Here, we’ll go through some of the common mistakes business owners make which can harm their business. Avoid these, and there’ll be no limits to where your business can go!

One thing you may be failing to do is incorporate modern marketing strategies. If there’s one area of business that changes quickly, it’s marketing. Email campaigns and telemarketing are on their way out. If you want to appeal to today’s consumer, then you need to start using methods which are much more subtle. Social media marketing, SEO, PPC and so on are all things you should be looking into. You might be bringing in enough business simply through traditional methods. Stick with this though, and over time you’ll notice a pretty severe dip. If you have the resources, then by all means use a mix of traditional and modern techniques. However, you should really be centering at least some of your marketing around the digital arena.

So what if you skipped past that tip, and you know your business is more than visible online? There still may be certain things hindering your progress. For example, you might be using a poor web hosting service, and have no idea that there’s better options out there. This is more common than you’d expect! Hosting is a pretty compact niche. Sometimes it can feel easy to jump right on the first company you come across. Moving your website to a new web host can be a hassle, I know. However, choosing the best possible option will make your entire online presence more reliable and smooth. If you’re having to deal with downtime, poor customer service, and long loading times, then it may be time to consider your other options.

Another thing a lot of young businesses are lacking is proper employee management. If you’re in your start-up period, then your whole workforce may be two or three other people! However, as your operation grows, you’ll need to employ more people to fill various roles. Get into good habits for managing your employees now, and the adjustment won’t be anywhere near as difficult. If you’ve ever had a job, you’ll know that there are good employees and bad employees. Identifying them is the easy part. Knowing how to deal with them is the tougher side of it. Do everything you can to keep up employee morale. Obviously you don’t need to let them run the joint. However, if an employee comes to you with a genuine concern, make sure you listen to them. As soon as you identify an employee who’s harming the business, do your best to correct them. If the issue persists, take them out of the equation. Neglect your good employees, or give your bad employees too much leeway, and the whole thing will end in disaster!

Finally, make sure you’re not over-planning, or failing to carry out your plans. Failing to plan is planning to fail, as I’m sure you’ve heard before. However, you don’t need to fill your business plan with tiny, minute details, striving towards perfection. Although a good strategy can be very beneficial, remember that business is often unpredictable. What if you had a plan which hinged on a particular deal being made, or a certain revenue quota being met, and things went wrong? This would throw everything up in the air, and you’d have a tough time getting your business back on track. When you’re setting out your long-term goals, use a general framework, rather than detailed, step-by-step strategy. As you execute the different phases, remember to leave some room for customer feedback, too. Remember that if you don’t have a customer base, you don’t have a business! The feedback you get from your customers may reveal big, gaping holes in your plans. You’ll need to act on it quickly if you don’t want your strategy to end up being obsolete.

Go down this list, and think carefully about the way you’re running your business. Once you eradicate these common issues, you’ll have a lot less to worry about. As you move into the future, remember to keep up with industry changes and always respect the customer.

Photo by Deborah Kolb | Shutterstock