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Growth is necessary to remain competitive and stay relevant as a business. However, while expansion can be an exciting time, it can also be daunting, especially if you grow too quickly and don’t lay out a strategic plan. 

If you want your growth to be successful, you’ve got to know when it’s the right time and how to go about it by making informed decisions that ensure viability and the long-term health of your company. 

This article will provide a guide for expansion, offering insights into knowing when it’s time to expand as well as key considerations for your growth strategy to help propel your business forward.  

Signs it Might Be Time to Expand Your Business

Expanding too quickly when your business isn’t ready can backfire. When this happens, it puts a strain on resources, which can compromise the quality of products and services and weaken financial stability. As such, it’s crucial to carefully evaluate your situation to determine if you are ready to take on any growth. 

These are some of the most common signs that may indicate growth readiness:

• You have a loyal customer following; 
• Demand for your products or services is steadily rising;
• You’ve outgrown your space;
• You have more business than you can handle;
• You are getting too comfortable and might be passing up opportunities;
• You feel out of touch with the rest of your industry and competitors, because they are ahead.

You can also look at the future forecast for your industry. If data shows your market is expected to experience growth, then this might indicate that it’s a good time for you to consider expanding.

Growth Strategy Considerations

An effective and successful growth strategy takes time and careful planning. One wrong move could end up setting you back. As excited as you might be to take your business to the next level, it’s important to go slow and carefully evaluate every decision you make along the way to avoid any pitfalls. 

1. Set Appropriate Goals

It’s important to clearly outline your goals for growth, and this begins with a thorough evaluation of your business’s current situation. Even if the above-listed signs are true for you, it’s still important to carefully evaluate your performance and resources to ensure you are in a good position to start expanding. 

Identify your strengths and weaknesses as well as any potential threats or risks you might face by taking on an expansion. You can then create an action plan. 

Some examples of things you might want in your goals and action plan include:

• Adding new products or services;
• Growing your marketing team;
• Expanding to new locations;
• Growing your sales revenue;
• Growing your customer base to include new audiences or new target markets.

Creating this plan will enable you to manage and track your progress along the way to ensure the decisions you are making are in line with your end goals.

2. Conduct Market Research

Conducting market research will give you key insights into your target audience so you can better position your company for growth. For example, if one of your goals is to add new products or services, market research can help you identify what products or services would be the most well-received by your audience. 

Some questions to ask when you are conducting this research can include:

• What are the demographics of the consumers who buy my product?
• What are their preferences or interests?
• What are their pain points or what problems do they have that I can help them solve with my products or services? 
• How can I connect more with my target audience to create better customer experiences?

Market research also includes looking into general market trends for your industry, such as market size, demand, and growth trends. This can help you better understand how your market is currently functioning and if there is going to be continued or increased demand for the things you sell in the future. 

3. Grow Your Team With the Right People

Many people think the key to success is making more money when in truth, it’s about hiring the right people to help you achieve your goals. Having a solid team of employees with the right skills can make a huge difference in how your business operates and how successful you are at delivering quality products and services that bring in more revenue. 

When you start planning your expansion, hiring the right people should be high on your list of things to do. You not only want to hire people who have the skills you need, but you also want people who see your growth vision, are in alignment with your goals, and will be excited and dedicated to helping you achieve success. 

4. Find the Right Location

If your expansion goals include opening a second location, it’s important to take your time finding the right spot. A new brick-and-mortar location can quickly eat up a lot of your funds. So it’s a good idea to take time to shop around to make sure you are finding the ideal spot that will help you increase your revenue. 

If you want to test out a new location without breaking the bank, here are a few tips:

• Try opening a temporary pop-up to see what business would be like in the location you have your sights on. 
• Collaborate with another company and try co-retailing to spread out the costs.
• Consider a business-on-wheels, like a retail truck so you can easily try out multiple different locations. 

If you don’t think you have the funds for a permanent second location, you could always put your focus on expanding your business online. eCommerce businesses are booming and this is a great way to reach new audiences without having to open a second physical location.

5. Measure and Monitor Your Progress

Finally, as previously mentioned, tracking and measuring your progress is key to a successful growth strategy. Ideally, your business should already be using key performance metrics before you expand, but if you haven’t, now is the time to start. 

Key performance metrics offer you insight into crucial areas of your business that could affect your ability to sustain new growth, such as employee turnover rate, revenue growth, inventory turnover, and customer acquisition cost. 

You can also use metrics to track your progress once you start expanding, such as new sales, new customer acquisitions, ROI, and customer feedback. Looking at these numbers can help you identify if what you are doing is working or if you might need to adapt and make some changes to help you get back on track with your growth goals. 

In Summary

Expanding a business comes with its risks, but those risks are often worth it if you are well-positioned for growth. As long as you carefully evaluate the state of your business and have the resources and capital you need, as well as the right tools and the right team to help you achieve your goals, then there is no reason why your expansion won’t be a success.

Featured image by Alena Darmel

The post Navigating Expansion: How to Determine if it’s the Right Move for Your Business appeared first on noupe.

The role that TikTok plays in influencing trends is undeniable. As the most downloaded app across the globe, TikTok’s stats are topping the charts — and marketers are taking notice. As of 2023, the majority of marketers are incorporating the app heavily into their strategies. Audio marketing is no exception. 

In fact, audio is a large part of why TikTok has become so popular. With its beginnings as the now-defunct app, Musical.ly, TikTok has a stronghold on music-based, short-form video. From dance trends to educational videos with trending sounds, the app has capitalized on its ability to streamline video and audio editing for the casual creator. Learn how to tap into TikTok’s massive influence on the audio industry to promote your products, services, and entire brand.  

Unique Features of TikTok That Shape Audio Trends

The immediacy that TikTok evokes in its users makes the platform stand out. It has the unique ability to prompt users to share snippets of their voice or use songs or other audio to enhance their videos and storytelling capabilities. This evolution of sound has placed audio first and changed how people interact with and create content. 

Popularity

With 1.7 billion people on TikTok, the reach potential is unmatched. While the app has been dominated by primarily Gen Z users, millennials and older generations are increasingly adopting the platform. Targeting this market can help get your audio product or service in front of the right eyes and ears, and TikTok’s unique algorithm can boost your view count faster than other platforms. 

Search Function

TikTok users receive a curated For You page that shows them videos related to their preferences and past behavior. This can place your audio on the home feeds of users who are already interested in audio production. Further, users can search through TikTok sounds when creating videos and save sounds when watching others’ content. Users can also click on the sound and find more information, such as the original creator and all videos created using that sound. This places emphasis on good audio as a community-building tool.

Audio-Focused Trends

With such an audio-forward interface, many of the trends on TikTok are shaped by music or sounds. Some of these trends include:

• Dances to music; 
• ASMR; 
• Storytime videos;
• Comedic soundbites.

Often, users take a popular sound and create a video with a twist on the original. This gives sound creators the possibility to go viral.

User-Friendliness

TikTok gives every user the power to make viral content or, at the very least, audio-visual content that they may not have been able to create before. With the intuitive editing features, TikTokers can add sounds, prerecorded audio, or voiceovers right in the app. This effectively makes everyone an audio artist — and opens up more audio marketing possibilities to a wide audience.

How To Leverage TikTok’s Audio Influence

For audio marketers to use TikTok effectively, you must have a solid understanding of the app’s interface. Start by creating engaging, short-form videos that feature your audio products and services in action. 

Organically Promote Audio Products and Services

You can use TikTok to showcase the unique features and benefits of your audio products and services in a visually appealing way, making sure the content aligns with current trends and challenges. Use TikTok’s search function to find trending sounds that you can apply to relevant videos on your offerings. Engage with your audience through comments, duets, and responses to foster a community around your brand. 

You can even collaborate with TikTok influencers who have a strong presence in the music or audio niche to show your products to their established audience. There is even a TikTok shop feature where users can buy products directly on the platform. You can use any combination of these features to see what works. For instance, you could promote software that cleans up audio by doing a before and after video showing the difference in audio quality it can make. Then, you can run an ad and link directly to your software purchasing page.

Run TikTok Ads

If you want to spend some of your budget on ads, running TikTok ads is a popular way to reach a wider audience and drive targeted social media traffic to your videos that include product offerings. Use the same videos that you created using trending or original sounds when running these ads. 

This way, they can be placed in front of an even more relevant audience since you can tailor the ads to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. TikTok’s ad platform provides valuable analytics and performance insights, allowing you to fine-tune your campaigns for maximum impact.

Tap Into User-Generated Content

Reviews have always been important for sales, but TikTok has increased the amount of trust consumers place in other consumers when looking to make a purchase. They look for authenticity in product and service reviews, and they are more adept at spotting fake reviews. For this reason, it’s important to collaborate with influencers by allowing them to post their genuine thoughts about your offerings. Even better, simply inspire user-generated content by creating and showcasing a genuinely good product that creates TikTok buzz all on its own.

Go With the Flow

Regardless of the method you choose to promote your audio products and services on TikTok, it is extra effective to create and inspire authentic content. That is what the platform is built upon. Use your audio products to create the sounds in your posts. You may even create a trending sound by doing so. Keep up with fast-moving TikTok trends to get ahead of the curve. By leveraging TikTok’s audio industry influence strategically, you can effectively promote your products to a highly engaged and creative user base. 

Featured image by Ron Lach

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Audience and brand loyalty are invaluable in today’s competitive business landscape. Your business’s reputation and profitability are at the mercy of your customer relationships. So, you’re smart to constantly seek ways to deepen customer connections. 

Employee-generated content (EGC) can be a game-changer in this regard. EGC is any content crafted by employees and shared on their social media pages and other digital platforms about their work experiences and expertise. 

Quality EGC gives you something else to share with customers that incites an emotional connection with your brand. In addition, it can have a profound effect on your internal processes and employees. 

Let’s explore why prioritizing EGC is a must and how businesses can get their employees to create and share EGC consistently. 

Why EGC Should Be a Priority for Businesses 

According to Sociabble, “98%?of employees use at least one social media site for personal use, of which 50 percent are already posting about their company.” 

Most of your employees are already on social media talking about their work days, what they do for a living, and the company. In addition, there are millions of websites and podcasts out right now. Many of your employees could have their own blogs or podcasts disclosing their work experiences as well. 

So, whether you’re leveraging it or not, what they’re sharing on their social media platforms, blogs, podcasts, and other digital platforms about work is impacting how others view your company and what actions they take with it. 

In addition, by not collecting and using EGC, you’re missing out on opportunities to elevate your business internally. 

EGC should be a priority for businesses for these three main reasons:  

Give customers more reasons to love your business

Some people only need to know you have great products at affordable prices to move forward with purchases. However, many others need more to convince them that your business is worth their money and loyalty. 

For example, how you treat your employees could be the deciding factor for a lot of consumers. Many won’t support a business that treats its employees poorly. 

Conversely, if a company can prove how well it treats its employees, it’ll help customers form a positive perception of the business that ultimately inspires purchases and brand interactions. 

For instance, a lack of work-life balance can cause employees a lot of harm. They can’t show their personal responsibilities and passions the attention they deserve because they’re burnt out. 

Long hours can also negatively impact their physical health, including their oral health. Stress can cause employees to grind their teeth, wearing down enamel. They won’t be able to fight off gum disease as efficiently. And they may be so worn out they can’t make dentist appointments. 

Many companies may fail to provide their employees with the work-life balance they need to avoid poor health and life outcomes. You, on the other hand, can show your commitment to helping your employees maintain a healthy work-life balance thanks to EGC.

Whether through vlogs of work-from-home days or posts praising the flexible scheduling options, your employees can show customers they’re well taken care of, giving consumers more reasons to love your business.

Get valuable insights into your company’s processes 

As great as EGC is for bettering customer relationships, it can also be a valuable tool for gathering insights about your internal processes. 

It’s never fun to hear employees express issues with their work experience, especially when you’re hearing about them for the first time on a podcast episode or blog post. Even if they’re just saying, ‘I wish this was better at work,’ you can restructure your processes so that they better support employees when you have this information. 

Continuous process improvement is essential because:

• Better processes equal happier, more productive employees
• It streamlines technology implementation
• It helps you identify and solve hidden bottlenecks
• You can take advantage of opportunities in your market faster
• You can determine whether or not what you’re currently doing accommodates growth
• Customer satisfaction improves because you can fulfill orders more efficiently, respond faster, and serve consistently 

Actively seek out the content employees are creating that expresses concerns and shares the suggestions they have for making things better in your company. You can use it to make more informed decisions about how to improve. 

Deepen employee relationships 

You can empower your employees and make them feel valued by encouraging them to share content that reflects their experiences, insights, and expertise, so long as your efforts are genuine and about more than profit. 

We say that last part because your employees know when you’re asking them to do something as a means to an end, like asking them to share positive work experiences just to enhance recruitment efforts. 

Yes, that’s an important goal for EGC. However, you want to collect EGC for meaningful purposes, such as trying to amplify employee voices and create a better work environment for them.

Your employees will be more likely to create EGC when they know it’s for something significant. Not only that, your relationships with them will get stronger as you implement their suggestions and they see you’re actually listening. 

How to Encourage Employees to Create and Share EGC

EGC can be influential in a business once you get ahold of it. The key phrase there is once you get ahold of it. Getting employees to create and share EGC can be difficult for a few reasons: 

1. Employees may be concerned about the consequences that come with being honest
2. They may not know what good EGC looks like or how to create it 
3. It may not seem worthwhile to spend time crafting EGC 

Addressing these three things is a good start if you want to encourage your employees to create and share EGC regularly. 

You don’t want your employees bashing your business online. However, you do want them to be honest about their work experiences and authentic in their content. 

Reassure your employees that you want truthfulness. Let them know there won’t be consequences for sharing their story respectfully. But set the expectation that they come to you with serious complaints or concerns first and not their online platforms. 

EGC guidelines would help with point number two. You can share good examples of EGC that your employees can reference when creating their own content. Explain what isn’t appropriate to share online. Detail how to make the best content. 

You can also make a repository for visuals, messaging, and templates your employees can use to simplify the creation process. 

Finally, you can give your employees the push they need to create and share EGC by offering incentives. For example, you could have employees rack up points for every piece of EGC they publish. Whoever gets the most points at the end of the quarter gets a gift card to their favorite place.

It will take some time to get the ball rolling with EGC. However, it’s worth the effort for what EGC can bring to your business.

Featured image by fauxels

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Social media isn’t a passing fad if its popularity is any indicator. Today, 61% of the world’s population uses social sites, and the average person bounces between seven platforms per month. 

This popularity presents plenty of opportunities for marketers. You can use platforms like Instagram and TikTok to connect with customers in creative and unique ways, too. 

You can also use your social presence to build a stronger brand and improve your customer experience. This is particularly important today, as businesses from all industries are scrapping to garner the attention of digital consumers. 

Data-Driven Marketing

Successful marketing strategies leverage a blend of data-driven analytics and creative thinking. As mentioned, you can boost the veracity of your data by gathering insights on social sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. You can begin a data-driven social media marketing campaign by utilizing techniques like: 

• Social Listening: These programs are designed to highlight any mentions of your brand online. This can help with brand reputation management and give you a better idea of your business’s presence online. 
• Social Search: Keyword analysis and hashtag tracking are great ways to quantify the interest in your particular niche. Keep tabs on key metrics like search volume and try to rise through the ranks over time. 
• Real-Time Data: Social media is an ever-changing landscape for businesses. Leverage social data effectively by investing in a social media management tool like Hootsuite Analytics, Google Analytics, or Sprout Social. 

These approaches to social media data collection will give you a great overview of the industry and your business’s place within it. Even simple methods of data collection — like tracking clicks and impressions — can help you better understand the impact of your campaigns. 

However, quantitative data analysis is only a piece of the puzzle. If you want to optimize your social accounts, you’ll need to gather qualitative feedback on social media, too. 

Qualitative Feedback and the Customer Experience

Businesses spend thousands of dollars every year on focus groups and consumer surveys. That’s because qualitative marketing research is extremely valuable and can help firms better understand the needs of their consumers. 

Social media cannot replace interviews and focus groups, but it can give marketers a better understanding of consumer trends and the overall customer experience. Start gathering useful qualitative feedback on social media by publishing posts that drive higher rates of engagement, like: 

• Run surveys 
• Offer prizes to folks who offer feedback on certain posts
• Publish polls
• Host an “ask me anything” (AMA) on social sites like Reddit and Facebook

Capturing customer feedback is a vital step in improving the customer experience. Over time, this kind of qualitative research can help you build a more holistic consumer journey and help you connect with customers. It can also help you understand where customers are discovering your brand so you can refine certain marketing channels to better align with consumer behavior. 

Building a Persona Online

Social platforms operate a little differently from traditional marketing venues. Folks who follow you online won’t appreciate a “hard sell” and will likely hit the unfollow button if you publish a series of formal advertisements. 

Instead, try to build a social media persona when publishing posts to sites like TikTok and Twitter. This method will help build engagement on your page and reduce the risk of consumers hitting the “unfollow” button when you do announce a new product or service. 

Start your search for the perfect social persona by embracing creativity online. Followers don’t want to see mundane posts about the products you offer or the deals you’re running. Instead, connect with consumers by meeting the genre expectations of each platform. For example, if you’ve just started a TikTok page, head over to the Creative Center to discover today’s trending sounds and influencers. 

Meeting the genre expectations of the social platform you’re on will help direct your creative energy, too. This is particularly useful if you are new to social media and are trying to get up to speed. Start your journey towards building an online persona by becoming a user yourself. Conduct some preliminary research by noting down the posts that resonate with you, and try to replicate the tone and style that you find most appealing. 

Publishing High-Quality Content

Building a social persona is a great way to engage your followers and grow your digital presence. However, if you want folks to stick around, you need to start publishing high-quality content to your accounts. 

Start with simple video content that resonates with your customers. For example, if you run social media pages for a gym, consider posting a series of informative videos that show folks how to use the equipment in your space. These kinds of posts add meaningful value to the lives of your followers and are almost certain to build engagement with your posts. 

Stay relevant by keeping up to date with emerging social media trends. You can tap into this style of content by working with influencers who are sponsored by your business and foreground real-life stories from your customers. 

If you sell a product online, consider linking your social posts to a social shop. Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok all have digital shops built into their apps. Consider creating a few posts that highlight the products you sell on your shop, and try out a few live streams to build hype around an upcoming launch. 

If you’re struggling to invent new ideas for your social pages, consider a range of posts themed around topics like: 

• Behind-the-scenes videos that show how the product/service is made;
• Value-based short-form videos that carry an ethical message;
• Event-based posts that encourage folks to come to your point of sale;
• Prizes and giveaways that intentionally build engagement.

These types of posts can easily fill your social media calendar and help you build your presence online. Just remember to respond to comments, too, as folks want to know that they are being heard when they come to your site. 

Conclusion 

Social media can help you better understand your customers and provide a better consumer experience. However, if you’re new to social media, you may struggle to build engagement about your product or service. Make the process easier by gathering consumer data through your social site. This will guide your creative decision-making and help you better understand your consumers. 

Featured image by Hans Vivek on Unsplash

The post The Power of Social Media Marketing in Driving Positive Customer Experiences appeared first on noupe.

According to Statista’s research on big data, 181 zettabytes of data are expected to be created by 2025. One zettabyte equals 1 trillion gigabytes. That’s 1,953,125,000 iPhone 14 pros. Multiply that by 181 and you get a clear visual of just how much data this is. 

As huge as this amount is, it’s good news for marketers. Data is central to successful marketing strategies. It provides insight into customers, marketing practices, and team productivity that you can use to make decisions that drive consistent marketing results. 

However, processing and analyzing huge datasets can be challenging without individuals who specialize in data analytics on your team. In addition, before you get to the analysis part, you must collect the right kind of data. And that starts with understanding the different types available. 

There are various types of data that marketers should leverage to make better marketing decisions and fuel consistent results. We’ll cover five of them below. But first, more on the importance of data in marketing. 

The Importance of Data in Marketing 

Data-driven marketing uses data to help create marketing strategies. You use the insights you pull from the data about customers, content, trends, patterns, and results to inform the decisions you make about your marketing direction. 

It’s one of the most popular approaches to marketing for good reason. Instead of relying on a hunch or what you and your team think is best for the marketing strategy, you can count on accurate data that tells you for certain what’s happening with your customers and marketing tactics. 

For example, let’s say you want to start a presence on social media. You think your target audience frequents Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. After looking at the customer data you’ve collected thus far, you see that your target audience is actually on TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest the most. 

If you would’ve gone with what you thought, you would’ve wasted valuable time and marketing resources on channels that your target audience isn’t on. But with the help of customer data, you were able to pinpoint the channels your audience is actually on and can spend your time and resources where results are likely to happen. 

Marketing that leans on insights from data is the smartest approach. That said, you must know which types of data are worth collecting and analyzing first. 

Five Different Data Types Marketers Should Prioritize 

Before we share five different data types that are most significant to marketers, there are a few things to consider to ensure proper use of data. 

First, there’s a risk of bias in data collection and analysis. The individuals who program your data collection tools and analyze the information gathered may exhibit biases like: 

• Confirmation bias: you use customer responses to confirm a belief you already have 
• Expectancy bias: you subconsciously impact participants’ perspectives and responses in your market research 
• Implicit bias: an attitude you possess about a specific group that you aren’t all the way aware of
• Recall bias: how you recall information is different than others 

You can overcome these biases through competitor and SWOT analyses. Gather information from diverse sources and study market trends research to ensure accurate and fair data collection and analysis. 

Second, data security is essential. The last thing you want is to collect all of this private, important data and it fall into the hands of a cybercriminal. Keeping your data safe in a highly secure cloud storage system is a must. 

Lastly, you need a system for collecting data. There are many data collection methods available, including automated data collection software, interviews, focus groups, and surveys. Choose the methods most appropriate for your team and goals, and create a workflow that allows you to constantly collect data and filter it into a central system. 

Now, on to five different data types marketers should collect and take advantage of for insightful decision-making. 

Internal and external data

Most of the data you collect will fall into one of these two categories: internal or external data. Internal data is specific to your company and comes directly from your business’s systems. Sales data, financial data, and human resources data are good examples of internal data. 

External data is available to the public and comes from sources outside of your company. Examples of external data include government data, social media data, and information gathered from search engines. 

Collecting both kinds of data is important because it gives you a well-rounded view of your marketing. You can see it from your team’s perspective as well as the public’s perspective.  

Qualitative data

Qualitative data is data on the qualities or characteristics people possess. If you think about it in terms of customers, it’s essentially the “why” behind what they’re doing. You can gain insight into how your customers think and behave. 

With this data, you can create marketing content and calls-to-action (CTAs) that align with customers emotionally and psychologically, improving the chances of them engaging with your marketing the way you want them to. 

Quantitative data

Quantitative datasets are comprised of hard facts, statistics, and numbers. Quantitative data can show you what your customers are doing, the content they’re viewing the most, how often they’re opening your emails, or which links are getting the most clicks. 

Pair quantitative data with qualitative data, and you can get a 360 view of who your customers are, what they’re doing, and why. 

Demographic data 

Demographic data is one of the most common types of data marketers collect and analyze. It’s the personal and geographic information of your customers. You learn data like your customer’s age, marital status, where they live, employment status, and skill sets. 

Although you won’t get a ton of in-depth information, you get a base for who your customers are. You can use this data to make ideal customer profiles that you reference whenever you create marketing materials to ensure they’ll appeal to the customer base you’re targeting. 

Psychographic data 

Psychographic data gives you insight into things about your customers that are beyond basic demographic information. You can learn the following with psychographic data: 

• Opinions
• Pain points
• Core values 
• Life experiences
• Spending habits 
• Hobbies and interests 
• Lifestyle behaviors 

Psychographic data will help you create an emotional connection with your customers that inspires them to make purchases and further interact with your marketing. 

Conclusion

Data is one of the most important tools to have in your marketing toolkit. Without it, you rely solely on your and your team’s perspectives to create marketing materials that generate consistent results. And doing this almost guarantees you miss the mark with your audience. 

Instead, you should rely on information that tells you exactly what your customers are doing and why and what marketing tactics are working. Collecting the data types we mentioned above through various data collection methods gets you on this path. 

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