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Integrate These 7 Business Standards Into Your Company

John — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 09:21:22 +0000

Whether you work in a garage or a downtown office building, there are certain business standards that small companies simply must adopt in order to stay fresh and malleable in today’s ever-changing corporate environment. Here are some suggestions to achieve some of the most important business standards, courtesy of CEO Medium.

Updating Computer Networks Often

While there is no shortage of horror stories involving businesses targeted by hackers, discovering a breach early can save you substantially. Reducing the risk by updating network assets regularly saves companies millions and deserves to become a rigorous company standard. One of the best ways to do this is to require users to change passwords regularly, which is a sticking point for companies around the globe.

Unify Branding and Marketing

Disjointed marketing efforts undermine your company’s brand, which compromises its ability to communicate with its target customer. Make sure that the message across all channels, such as social media, PPC advertising, and on-site content, is the same.

Tracking Regulatory and Legal Changes

Keeping business out of the crosshairs of regulators and the law requires regular monitoring. This can be particularly important if you’ve formalized your business structure as you’ll need to track legal and regulatory changes.

Some states charge corporate taxes that must be paid, along with other regulatory obligations. The cost of noncompliance is at least twice as costly as staying compliant, so it’s a good idea to review your business’s local, state, and federal requirements several times throughout the year. Thankfully, some accounting software provides businesses with timely alerts and notifications.

Managing Your Finances With Accounting Software

Accounting software can help you track your income and expenses, so you always know where your business stands financially. It can also help you prepare financial statements and manage your inventory.

There are a lot of different accounting software programs out there, so it’s important to choose one that’s right for your business. Select the best accounting software by considering your business’s specific needs before making a purchase.

Recognizing and Rewarding Teams

Not only does employee turnover lower morale and productivity, but replacing employees costs at least $1,500, depending on the type of employee. One of the best ways to mitigate that loss is to regularly recognize and reward teams with valuable incentives, such as bonuses or extra PTO. Employees that are recognized are over 60% less likely to go job hunting within the next three to six months

Checking Your Insurance Policies

Yearly review of policies such as business insurance as well as cyberattack and data breach insurance needs to be a part of standard policies because:

Conditions for needing the policy can change, resulting in either upgrading, downgrading, or new adoption to cover those gaps.
Overpaying for insurance you no longer need adds to operations costs when you need to watch every penny.
There could be mistakes in the policy that could cost you in the long run.

Regularly Organizing Records

Professionalism and organization go hand-in-hand. Properly maintaining your documentation, monthly, quarterly, or semiannually, provides a useful audit trail that can benefit you if you have to deal with government entities. Modern times have made it easy to automate record-keeping processes to ensure that not only can you access your documents, but that they stay secure for years.

Staying on Top of Business

Paying attention to what’s going on internally and externally and adjusting accordingly is a great way to help your business stay out of trouble. From there, making company standards a part of the corporate culture ensures that those measures become fully integrated – allowing your business to reach its true potential.

The post Integrate These 7 Business Standards Into Your Company appeared first on CEO Medium.

Brand Therapy, what’s that about?

Sasha — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 23:33:32 +0000

What in the world is ‘Brand Therapy’?

Many definitions of branding exist, but in its simplest form, branding means giving meaning to your business. Your values, personality, voice, colors, and actions make up your brand. Let’s discuss the importance of branding, and what to do if branding goes wrong.

Brand vs. Business

Many new business owners fail to draw a distinction between a business and a brand. Your business is what you do – sell products, offer services, etc. Your brand, on the other hand, is how people perceive your business.

Key Components of Branding

A branding strategy consists of nine key elements:

Brand Purpose: The greater cause behind what you do
Brand Vision: What do you want to achieve?
Brand Values: The values you promote and adhere to
Target Audience: Who is it that your brand speaks to?
Brand Personality: How would you be if you were a person?
Brand Voice: How do you speak to your audience?
Brand Tagline: A memorable tagline that defines your brand and its purpose
Brand Visuals: Logo, design, and colors that make your brand unique and memorable

Benefits of Branding

Having a strong brand does wonder for your business and helps you achieve exponential growth. Here are some key benefits of branding.

Customer Recognition: When you invest in branding, customers start recognizing your brand by just seeing its logo, color, or tagline.

Customer Loyalty: More than 80% of customers continue to buy from businesses they trust. Branding plays a crucial role in building trust and cultivating customer loyalty.

Word of Mouth: When you have a strong brand voice, your customers become your brand advocates. Thus, you can enjoy word-of-mouth marketing and acquire new customers for free.

Low Price Sensitivity: Have you seen famous brands like Apple and Nike lowering their prices? Businesses with a strong brand have lower price sensitivity and can raise prices without risking losing customers.

Business Growth: In the end, it’s all about the bottom line. Businesses with strong branding have a competitive edge and drive more sales and revenue than their competitors.

Branding is great if done correctly. If you promote your brand in the wrong way, it can have an opposite and adverse impact. Does “Kendall Jenner” and “Pepsi” ring a bell? Pepsi came up with an ad in which a multicultural coalition protest was taking place, and Kendal Jean er emerged to give a cop a can of Pepsi. The ad received widespread outrage, forcing Jenner to give a tearful apology.

Here’s where the concept of brand therapy kicks in.

Brand Therapy

Brand therapy is all about getting to the bottom of your branding issues and taking tangible steps towards solving them. Making branding mistakes isn’t uncommon for businesses. Some of these mistakes go unnoticed, while others, like the Pepsi ad, register themselves as one of the worst ‘branding’ fails of all time.

If you feel you haven’t done your branding right, brand therapy helps you rebrand your business and start over while minimizing damage to your business.

Conclusion

Branding is one of the most critical components of a business. If done correctly, it can pave the way for the exponential growth of your business. If not, it can lead to disastrous outcomes. However, with brand therapy, businesses can rebrand themselves and start over.

So why not start this journey with someone who has gone overcome the struggle, and understands you almost inside and out? Why gamble with the numbers game purchasing ads that won’t get you very far, instead of focusing on RESULTS that Google, Bing, and other platforms built to drive traffic to YOUR site?

Yes, it might be close to rocket science, but that’s why you delegate agencies, and design studios to get your money working for you through content writing, SEO, and overall brand identity, that saves you time, improves your workflow and repels the worst nightmare of a client.

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