Strategize

Recruiting is a challenge for small businesses, particularly those that compete with enterprise for talent.  

According to Inc., competing with bigger companies is one of the top four recruiting challenges a small business faces.

That challenge becomes even more daunting when seeking candidates for entry-level positions. 

Due to the nature of these lower-level positions, plus the stigma of working for a small company, it can be difficult to attract the top candidates.

There are three main strategies your small business can use to attract entry-level talent:

• Build your brand online
• Tout the benefits of working for a smaller company
• Align your company’s strengths with the candidates’ interests
• Seek outside resources

Using these strategies to earn an advantage against larger competition and increase interest for your company’s entry-level positions.

1. Polish Your Digital Reputation

Job seekers mainly turn to online sources to learn about a company and its culture. To adapt to this behavior, you small business’s digital presence needs to be both updated and appealing.

The first place to start is your website. Your website is your calling card – candidates will associate their impressions of your website with the overall impression of your brand. 

A website that is outdated, aesthetically flat, or nonresponsive produces a negative impression of your company and turns off job seekers. 

Invest in professional assistance, such as a web design firm, if you don’t have the in-house resources to build your website.

You also need to ensure that your company maintains a strong social media presence. While LinkedIn is typically the main business social recruitment platform, candidates will also review Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube profiles to learn more about your company’s culture. 

Post regularly about daily life company. Short, succinct videos are effective and provide insight about how a job seeker fits in with your team.

Finally, set up a company profile on job search sites such as Indeed and Glassdoor and encourage current and former employees to rate your company and share information about the employment experience. 

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The more content you have on these platforms, the more clarity you provide candidates about the employment experience at your company. Be sure to monitor the reviews to perform any reputation management if someone shares a negative experience.

2. Promote the Benefits of Working at a Small Business

There are a lot of misconceptions about working for a small business. 

The comparison they face against large businesses and enterprises are tough to compete with. For example, large businesses simply have more resources for salary, mobility, and benefits. 

Small businesses, though, generally measure higher for employee happiness.

Your small business should actively promote the benefits of working for a small company. While every workplace is different, some of the common small company benefits are:

• Collegial atmosphere: A tighter-knit team works in close proximity, which can foster a closer bond between employees. 
• Collaboration: Smaller companies provide the ability to call a huddle with the entire team at any given time, making brainstorming and feedback easier.
• Diverse experience: Employees may have multiple different responsibilities in a small company, as opposed to being siloed into one role.

3. Play to Candidates’ Interests

Every generation has different preferences and expectations for their ideal workplaces. Millennials, for example, value freedom and relationships with colleagues. These preferences don’t directly translate to their immediate successors may not resonate with their immediate successors, Gen Y, who value opportunity for advancement.

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There is, though, areas of common preference between the age groups that can help you mold your company culture to attract and retain new talent for entry-level positions.

A few areas of appeal in today’s workplace include:

• Flexibility/work-life balance
• Opportunity for advancement or recognition
• Mentoring/coaching (professional and personal)

Try to identify small perks and advantages of your company that make it unique for the particular group you are targeting for your entry-level roles. These can be small perks, but may make your company more attractive over larger firms.

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Consult an Expert

Small businesses may also struggle to hire entry-level employees simply because they don’t have as many HR or recruiting resources as larger firms.

Larger companies often have presences on college campuses, which helps them attract young candidates before they even hit the market. They also often have software and other resources at their disposal that help them streamline their hiring processes.

If your small business is struggling to keep up with hiring in general, it may benefit from an outside expert. Recruiting agencies are helpful resources that have expertise targeting your ideal candidates. 

Staffing firms, on the other hand, can help provide you with short-term or contractual employees for product pushes or to fill resources gaps. 

Small Steps Pay Big Dividends

Competing with large companies for entry-level employees can seem daunting, but many large companies are rigid when it comes to attracting talent. 

Your small business can take advantage of this by positioning yourself as an appealing alternative to enterprise culture. 

Take risks and be creative building your digital brand, tout the benefits of a smaller workplace, research and play to candidate preferences, and review expert resources if needed. 

Your efforts don’t have to be elaborate or expensive, but they can still have exemplary return on investment when it comes to recruiting and keeping entry-level talent.

Riley Panko is a Senior Content Writer at Clutch, a B2B research and reviews platform in Washington, D.C. She leads the team’s HR services research. 

High-converting landing pages are essential to fuel your inbound marketing strategy. They are not only a significant lead generation tool, but also help in strengthening your brand image. Designing captivating landing pages is also vital to beat the cut-throat competition that your business faces today. 

You can’t afford to ignore the challenges of the continually growing digital landscape as doing that will kill your conversions. You have to go an extra mile to stand out from the crowd. In other words, when every firm is accessible to customers online, you have to put additional efforts to convert your organic traffic into leads. You have to design incredibly attractive landing pages to grab the attention of the visitors. 

You get only a couple of seconds to persuade a visitor to take action or to convert them when they enter your landing page. And if you fail to make the best use of those few seconds, you will lose a lead. 

An inbound marketer does a lot of hard work to divert traffic to their website, but they don’t always succeed in generating enough leads from that traffic. One of the most important reasons behind that is poor landing pages. 

If you are also unable to generate leads due to awful landing pages, you must work towards improving them. 

Here are some common landing page mistakes that you must avoid to increase the conversion rate. 

Poor Headlines 

When a visitor arrives on your landing page, you have only 4-to-5 seconds to convince them to take action. Poor headlines can reduce that time further by failing to capture the attention of the visitors. The first thing that a visitor observes in your landing page is the headline, and if it doesn’t impress them, you most probably end up losing a lead. 

So it’s essential to spend sufficient time in creating meaningful yet captivating headlines that can encourage visitors to go through the rest of the information on the landing page and then take the required action. 

Your headline should give the most valuable information to visitors in a clear and concise manner. 

Poor Design And Visual Clutter 

The design and visual appeal of your landing page are highly crucial to draw the attention of the visitors. Awful design and unattractive visuals can irritate the users, thereby encouraging them to leave your landing page. 

Create a design that talks volumes about your brand and reflects its personality. You should also avoid visual clutter because it distracts the visitors from focusing on the main point. So choose the right colours, fonts, and graphics while designing landing pages. 

Unattractive Images & Videos 

Images and videos play a crucial role in encouraging your visitors to stay on your landing page. But if they are unattractive and fail to convey the information to visitors, they will lose their relevance. So, pick attention drawing images and videos for your landing pages to make them more functional. 

Complicated Forms 

Whether you are looking forward to gathering readers for your eBook or you want to increase subscribers to your blog, you should always try to simplify the process of accessing your product for the users. If you ask them to fill an extremely complicated form, not everyone will indulge in that process, which will affect your conversion rate. 

In short, if you want your landing page visitors to fill a form to access your product, make sure you keep it simple. 

Bad Call-to-Action 

A good call-to-action helps in generating great expectations in visitors. The kind of words you use can raise their interest in your products, so pick your call-to-action phrases carefully. 

For example, if you are offering an eBook, using a CTA like “grab your eBook” or “read your eBook,” can increase your conversion rate multiple times when compared to a generic CTA like “download the eBook.” In this particular example, you are trying to connect your visitors with your product by using the word “your.” It makes them feel that it’s a product meant for them. 

So, if you want to experience increased conversion, improve credibility, enhance brand awareness, and generate information from your landing pages, make sure that you avoid above mistakes. 

Starting a small business is difficult–so difficult that 66% to over 90% depending on your sources–don’t make it past the first 10 years of business. How can you prevent this from happening to your business?

The first step to anything is to be informed. Here are some of the pitfalls that small businesses run into and what you can do to avoid them. This way, you can ensure the success of your own small business:

You Don’t Offer Your Customers a Unique Product or Service

First, making your business survive starts before you even open your doors. In fact, you need to make sure your business is unique before anything else. You won’t draw in customers otherwise.

For example, there are plenty of places out there that sell coffee so you would need something to set your cafe apart from the rest. Even better, be innovative and start a business that isn’t a flooding the market–something new and exciting.

If you can’t come up with an amazing idea and want to stick to what you know–that’s fine too. Just make sure your work is being done as efficiently as possible, and you’re keeping your customers happy.

You Don’t Know Who You Are or What You’re Up Against

This is a crucial question; who are you as a business? Are you here to provide a good, a service, or both? Who is your target demographic? What’s your business’s story?

All of these questions need to be answered before you can run like a company should. These questions will give your company character and help you to strategize. Having a story, especially, will give your company character that customers can add to what they are buying, personifying your company.

To grow and succeed as a business, you need to know what you’re up against–this means knowing the technology that your competitor is working with. For example, if your competitors have automated its invoicing process, or invested in data recovery software–look into it, and see if it meets your needs for your business. Most likely, it does.

Whether this means an in-depth look for a tech company or just keeping up with the social media marketing, you need to pay attention to your competitors and keep your edge against them so they keep coming back for business.

You Don’t Have Name Recognition

It is important to have name recognition for your business. After all, if your customers can’t name your business, they can’t spread their love for you by word of mouth and they may not even remember you themselves.

A good way to get name recognition is to work with your community. This tip is especially important if you are cultivating a business in a small town.

You can also work with other small businesses in the community. Think about it, you don’t have to just compete with these other businesses, you can build each other up as well. You can also pair up with other organizations in the community to build up your name recognition.

You Don’t Stay Up-To-Date On Marketing

You might not be a full on corporation but you still need to market your services. One of the best ways to stay on top of marketing is to use social media–especially for smaller companies.

Using a platform like Facebook is a good way to keep your audience informed of sales and updates. In addition, many companies use platforms such as Instagram to post pictures of new products they are selling.

Your Expenses are Rising

This is one of the most common problems with small businesses. There are a lot of expenses that go into starting a business and even more fees and costs in maintaining one.

This can be overwhelming, especially if you aren’t properly prepared. Of course, if you can be proactive you should. Balance your budget carefully and have money saved up when you open up your business.

However, sometimes we do get ahead of ourselves and get into debt. Getting yourself out of this as quickly as you can is important–especially so you can avoid filing for bankruptcy. There are ways to survive this, though.

There are agencies that can help you with debt but make sure you’re staying on top of everything. If you have late-paying clients, this is when you want to call them up and cash in. You might even want to try rebalance your budget yourself, or turn to automation for additional help.

You Aren’t Consistent

If there is anything you have to be when you are establishing your business, it’s consistent. You need to establish exactly what your business is and what it offers. This means that you need to keep your marketing on an identical or at least similar track no matter what outlet you are advertising through.

Being consistent means that you aren’t going to confuse your potential customers about why they would come to you. This also means that you should carefully consider your advertisements and make sure they capture exactly what your business is about.

It Takes Some Time

If you’re opening a business with no background or experience in the industry –you’re going to need a lot of help. Don’t be discouraged if it seems like it’s not as good as it should be, it’ll get there if you keep making improvements.

When you open up your business–it’s likely it won’t have as much volume as you originally anticipated. Keep persisting and you will get to a place where your business is succeeding and less likely to fail after a few years.

For a company to be successful, they need to market their business, products, services, and their brand. We all know this, right? But did you know that there’s a major marketing shift right now?

I had the opportunity to talk with Mathew Sweezey, one of the new breed of marketing thought leaders. During our conversation, Mathew explained how and why the marketing environment is changing.

Understanding this will help businesses determine which marketing strategy is best for their customer base and business goals.  

Why Is Marketing Changing So Much Right Now?

Marketing is changing because our environment has changed. 

In the past, businesses with a lot of capitol controlled the media. They relied on advertisements and messages about their service/product. 

Then, we entered the digital age. Still, the approach was the same – telling people why they need to purchase our product or service. 

Nowadays, we’re not only digital, we’re social. This means we can’t approach marketing the way we used to. People don’t simply take a company’s word for it that they need a particular product or that theirs is the best on the market. 

Instead, when people are considering making a purchase, they take to Google or social media to find out more about it. In fact, people are generally ready to make a purchase when they finally contact a company because they’ve already done their research. In the past, they relied on sales people to give them information and help them make a decision. 

How You Can Keep In Step with the Latest Marketing Trends

In this changing environment, how are business owners and marketers supposed to attract customers? 

“The best way to do this is to get onto social media. But once there, you don’t simply want to talk about your company. This is the old way of doing things.” – Matt DiMenno, Laser Focus SEO

Follow the example of companies like Kronos, a software company. They post two types of content on their Facebook page: Corporate blog posts and a series of comics. Guess which posts receive more customer engagement? 

That’s right – it’s the comics. People don’t go onto social media because they want someone to sell them something. Nor do they go there with the specific purpose to read content. 

People go onto social media to escape. When you post things online that are a mix of business, humor, and inspirational, this makes consumers feel like you’re not just trying to sell them something. It makes them feel like you get them. That, in turn, makes them more curious about your brand.

Marketing Will Always Evolve – Make Sure You Keep Up

The latest trends in marketing have taken some people by surprise. Keeping up-to-date on the latest trends is vital, though. 

In doing so, you’ll be able to improve your online visibility when it comes to your target market. And when you give your customers an authentic, personal experience, they’ll be more likely to check out your product/service. 

So, make sure your marketing team approaches their strategies thoughtfully, thinking about what the consumer wants or needs. 

Continually doing this will ensure that your business continues to grow. Do you want to stay on the cusp of the latest marketing trends? Follow Mathew on Twitter and make sure to check out his book Marketing Automation for Dummies.

Have you ever had difficulties in your small business regarding organizing management systems? The answer is probably yes. Lots of small businesses go through management issues because they are not yet established. Mostly, people running small businesses are usually beginners; hence they encounter different kinds of questions.

 

The problems may range from ‘what kind of equipment to purchase’ to ‘what tasks to outsource.’ Outsourcing is not always a good idea for a small business. To solve such matters, it is crucial to consider some of the tools outlined in this article.

 

Management Manual

First, a management manual is the first tool you need. As a newbie in business, a handbook for management systems can be of great help. Such a manual contains all the necessary tools and templates to aid you in organizing your small business enterprise. With this, you can arrange your business policies, procedures, and mechanisms to form the best framework, which can, in turn, facilitate the fulfillment of all the tasks for objectives-achievement. Management manuals can also help you identify the rules and regulations governing the business field you have ventured in, helping you to set appropriate policies.

 

No business thrives without the aid of a management manual and therefore systems must be put in place for every business. No one entered the business field with all the management skills, hence, this is a tool widely used. There are quality management manuals that you can purchase from the market. For example, the ISO 9001 quality management manual is an all-inclusive template with customization instructions that are detailed and integrated.  The entire ISO 9001:2015 is included in this document.

 

With the quality management manual, you can set up a management system for your small business without seeking expert advice. It contains all the ISO standards that will guide you in formulating policies and guidelines for your business. It is also business friendly and specially made for small business enterprises.

 

Beginners are best suited for it because of its clear language with detailed explanations and images. It majorly focuses on efficiency and all its requirements add operational value. You should think of acquiring one for your business.

 

Software Packages

Apart from a quality management manual, your small business needs software packages to help you in performing some tasks. Being a small business, paying for premium packages is another expense altogether. You may consider having free versions for a start before you upgrade to the premium after establishing your business well.

 

Some of the packages you may consider are; antiviruses, project management software, the applicant tracking tool, the Human Resource Management tool, business planning software among others. The Human Resource Management tool is vital in the running of your business. It can help you in activities like making announcements to your employees and managing tasks.

 

Accounting Software Package

Furthermore, an accounting software package is a fundamental necessity. You cannot rely on manual calculations, however small your business is. The software will help you performing calculations, keeping track of what clients owe you, the total number of invoices sent, the number of clients that have paid, among other benefits.

 

Managing your finances should be an integral part of the management system you need to set up for your business. Having a system that performs all tasks well apart from generating profit is good for your business fruition. This is because, apart from customer satisfaction, the primary objective of every business to making a profit. You can find such packages online for a small fee, suitable for your business.

 

Web-Based Tools

Your business also needs Web-based tools that can offer customer care services. Such tools can help in collecting, assigning and tracking communication pertaining to a product or a customer. It is quite frustrating and time-consuming for a customer to buy a product, go home and send you an email asking about how it works.

 

Sometimes you need feedback from the client concerning the working of the product. You may also need to have a live chat or send direct messages that can be indexed and searched, tagged and sorted. Customer care tools can provide all these services to ensure satisfaction and well-being of your customers. You need to consider integrating the tools into the management system of your business.

 

Time Tracking Software

Finally, time is an essential factor in all fields and situations. It is an asset that a business, especially a small one, should manage well. All the activities, projects and processes included in your systems cannot be accomplished without time.

 

For this reason, a time tracking software can help you manage your time well to ensure full utilization. You can track the time spent on a project, calculate project estimates, allocate resources, and calculate fair billing using this software. Search for time tracking apps available in the market and choose the one that suits your business needs.

 

Having gone through this article, your worries as a newbie in the business field should have subsided. You can choose the tools you feel are suitable for the type of your business.

 

Make sure you develop a solid management system with a combination of all these tools. With this, your business will leave the ‘small’ category within an amazingly short span of time.