The Professional Touch for Small Businesses

Being proactive is essential if you want to grow your business. Life coach, Tony Robbins calls it ‘massive action’. That is to say, doing a lot of stuff every day for a long time in the direction of your dreams. Not once, not twice, not a hundred times, but until it happens. This should strike a chord with any entrepreneurs or owners of small businesses. Striving every day to build your enterprise into an ambitious model that rivals corporate giants. But all of this takes time and energy, so here are some steps you can take to add the kind of professional touch that will not only help you visualise your dream but expose your business to more lucrative clients and investors.

Professional Branding

Having a clean and professional logo, company colours and branding throughout any literature or online presence is a very important first step in creating a first impression that leads to more business. This doesn’t have to be expensive. At university designers are taken through corporate branding as standard practice for their design degree, so you could hire a design intern that can help. The opportunity will be a valued addition to their portfolio and there could be potential work for them once they graduate. Alternatively, you could contact a freelance designer who is likely to have standard and affordable rates for corporate branding. The branding should run across everything that is used in your business including any presentations that you give internally or externally.

Consistent Online Presence

Once you have the branding in place, make sure that all of your social media platforms are streamlined with the same design, colours and branding. Language is also important. Set the tone of any updates and put together guidelines on the type of posts you would like on your social media. If you don’t yet have a Marketing Assistant to take on this role then utilise free scheduling tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer and manage the updates every Monday morning for the week.

Your social media channels also need to be available and linked to from your main website and include updates that direct traffic back to your website in return. Your website should be the main portal for your online presence, any other online activity should drive traffic back to your website and lead to a ‘call of action’. This can be buying a product or filling out a contact form. Make sure that your website is professional in design, content and functionality. There are plenty of good free Wordpress templates available that allow you to include your company logo and customise the colours. Alternatively, there are lots of Wordpress freelancers that will be able to help you or, again, you could bring in a website design intern.

Become an Expert Speaker

If you run a company blog that offers good value and contributions as an expert in your field you could begin to build a reputation as an expert. The blog will also help you drive more visitors to your website and raise your authority with Google so that your company ranks hirer in search results. Look out for any industry relevant events coming up and simply ask to speak at them. Compile a good pitch giving the reasons why you would be a good speaker with links to any good blog posts and any events you have spoken at previously. Most importantly make sure you are good at speaking! If you are not confident then there are plenty of training opportunities or websites offering guides on giving a good presentation. Alternatively, ask a colleague or partner to take on the role as the ‘expert speaker’ for your company.

Boost Efficiency by Investing in Technology Now

As a SME it is a good idea to refine your processes and implement technology early so that any new employees or growth does not negatively impact on your business down the line. There are so many competitors developing software, working hard to make your lives easier. Call centre software refines the telephony systems for businesses that expect a high volume of calls, Customer relationship management (CRM) systems manage a large pool of contacts and forecasting software helps protect your businesses financial future.

I hope you find this article helpful. Please feel free to comment if you have any additional to add or thoughts on the matter. Please don't forget to check out the rest of my work on The Spoon Drawer and follow me on twitter for all the latest - @EdwardPhelan1