We have come to that time of the year where every business owner starts evaluating their business performances. This is the perfect window of the year to take stock, count your profits, and evaluate your losses. By doing so, you will be able to identify the aspects of your business that need improvement in the coming year.
Whether you run a large-scale enterprise or an SME in Africa, there will always be a few aspects of your business that require improvement. Hence, emphasising the need to invest in your business. What can I invest in to enhance productivity, sales, and ultimately profits in my business? You may ask.
Here are the top 5 things to invest in for your business in the New Year:
1. Invest In Competitive Analysis
As we witness this year come to an end and the curtain of the New Year unfolds, you need to ensure that your business is not operating in a vacuum. This implies that you have to find an effective way to monitor your competitors. Think about it as stalking, only that it implies to your competitors’ business operations and delivery.
You have to identify their weaknesses and strengths as this will help you figure out what to tweak in your business to remain competitive and relevant. How can you measure the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors? By investing in thorough competitive analysis.
Conducting in-depth competitive analyses requires that you invest lots of time and money. One way to avoid spending too much time on your competition is by hiring a marketing or investment firm. They will conduct all the research and mine the necessary data for you.
However, you can conduct competitive analysis yourself. Using polls and surveys, you can understand your competition’s branding, messaging, and advertising methods.
2. Making Your Brand More Visible Through Publicity And Social Media
Enhancing business visibility is a crucial aspect of building and maintaining a successful business. It doesn’t matter if you run a large-scale enterprise of an SME in Africa; finding effective ways to enhance your business’s visibility is crucial. No customer will approach you if they do not know that your business exists.
One of the most effective ways to enhance your business’s visibility by building a strong social media presence. You can also do so by interacting with your customer base.
The first step to doing this is a business account on several social media platforms, including, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. You have to identify the social media platforms where your potential customers are most active. This way, you would be investing your time and resources on social media platforms that are best suited for your brand, product, and services.
Invest in publicising your brand, product, and services on social media. You can use a variety of social media marketing tools to enhance your business visibility on social media and build brand loyalty among your customers.
3. Intelligent Workforce
One of the areas to invest in your business this New Year is building a smart and intelligent workforce. This is crucial to the development of any SME in Africa. Having the best people on your team enhances productivity and ensures that you meet your business targets and goals.
A smart and intelligent workforce will help maintain premium standards in every aspect of your business ranging from operations to delivery. Having these types of people take the wheel in your business will enhance your team’s quality of ideas. You can invest in both online and offline training courses to help enhance the capacity of your employees.
If you want your business to be more successful than it was the previous year, you must invest in making your employees better. Make their professional development your priority.
4. Invest In Useful Technologies
One of the best ways to stay competitive in today’s market is by taking advantage of innovative technologies. Time-tracking and bookkeeping software is part of the innovative technologies to invest in your business. As you approach the New Year, make plans to ensure that your business computers’ software and hardware are up-to-date.
Taking advantage of IoT (Internet of Things) is one of the best ways to reach a wider audience, hence, enhancing your chances of closing sales. Every SME in Africa needs to invest heavily in technologies that improve productivity and ultimately increase profit. You will have to conduct some research to find the ones that will suit your business.
5. Promotional Items
As stated earlier, the importance of brand visibility in any business’s success cannot be underestimated. Hence, every SME in Africa must develop effective ways to get their names out there. Reaching a wider audience does more than increase your chances of getting more sales. It helps to create an awareness of your brand.
One of the best and most affordable ways to do this is by investing in promotional items such as tote bags, pens, backpacks, etc. Most SMEs in Africa cannot keep up with digital marketing’s financial demands as they often require subscriptions to keep running. However, using promotional items, they can reach as many audiences as their customers can reach.
Think of using promotional items as a way of turning your customers to mobile billboards. As long as they are with your promotional product, they are indirectly publicising your brand. As long as your promotional items are beautifully designed, carry your logo and creative message about your business, it will promote your brand.
Furthermore, promotional items help in building customer loyalty. You can write a creative message that will make your customers feel loved and attracted to your business.
Conclusion
If you are looking for things to invest in your business in the New Year, you can check out the suggestions above. We have carefully highlighted the top 5 things every SME in Africa should invest in in the coming year. Investing in the right areas in your business will enhance productivity, sales, and ultimately profits.