Ever since the economic crisis hit us, most of the businesses have reduced marketing budgets. However, by maintaining a few marketing strategies, you can pull your business ahead of the competition. Most often, when the company is on a crisis mode, the marketing budget is the first to be affected. This is true especially in the case of small businesses and start-ups.

Communicating with your customers is important and this is exactly what is intended out of marketing. You have to research find out the needs of your customers to maintain and develop your customer base and also to identify new business opportunities that you can pursue.

The finest opening point for any market strategy is research. There are so many simple and effective marketing strategies that you can adopt to gain an edge over the competition in your business field.
Researching for marketing strategies is a very important task. You have to be fully aware of the goal of your research, which is to identify your prospective customer base. The three main items that you have to focus on when you research for marketing strategies are as follows.

The Internet is your Holy Grail:

Use the internet to find out cheap online survey applications. These will help you to get opinions from your customers. Be specific when you prepare your survey questions. No one wants to go through a long survey. Most of the customers are going to have a short attention span and so you have to make sure that you stick to engaging questions.

Google is the most important market research tool. The special functions like Google Analytics can help small businesses understand their customer base. By using keyword researches, you can also investigate competitor businesses.

Collecting information is important:

You have to interview find out the prospect your business by interviewing prospective customers and identifying their needs and requirements. You can start within your family and friends and then move on to the outside customers through email or phone. Social Media is another great tool to get to your customers. With the help of social media, you can also find out what your customers are saying about your products and services. To improve your business you need to know what your customers are saying about you.

Research the competition too!

You also have to find out how your competitors are doing in the business. By becoming a customer of your competitor, you can identify every part of their business. This will help you to find ways to surpass their product and also to pick up ideas to integrate in your business. You have to be a customer to identify your customer needs. So try to test as many aspects of your competitor’s business. This will definitely help you move up the graph.

When your customers have decided to tighten the strings of their purse, it would be foolish to ignore them. Several big businesses have actually gained success by strengthening marketing strategies during times of economic crisis. So buckle up and start researching to find out your customer needs. This can help you elevate your business to the next level very easily.

It is important for small businesses to look for ways to reduce overhead costs so as to increase their profits. It is also important to reduce costs without compromising on the quality of goods and services that are offered. The only option that you have is to redistribute company resources after understanding what you don’t need and need for your business brand building.

Here are a few ways you can follow to reduce overhead costs.

Keep track of where your money goes:
Easy as it sounds, it is not such an easy task to understand how and where the money is spent, especially in the growing stage. However, there are a few things can be tracked. For example, you have to make sure you are well-stocked, but not over-stocked. Purchasing items in bulk is good for getting a good discount, but the storage costs and unexpected changes in the market can leave you looted.

Outsource to save money:
Outsourcing your requirements for services like IT, accounting and marketing can help you save some money. However, you have to choose the best services at the most competitive rates. Outsourcing your tasks in the initial stages is a cost effective task.

Hire employees intelligently:
Paying your employees is going to be one of the major entries in your budget calculations. So, you have to make sure that you hire the right people to build your business. Training your employees will also ensure you that you have the best people working for you. Remember that you are running a business and don’t be afraid to terminate anyone who is not performing well.

Go environment-friendly:
You can also make some savings by going environment friendly. There are several ways like going paperless to installing energy saving lights for reducing running costs.

Reducing overhead costs should be an ongoing process. Regularly check all your business expenses and you will be happy to see the considerable amount of money that you are saving each time.

Today’s volatile economy makes it important for small start-up businesses and entrepreneurs to find out ways to reduce business overhead costs. Cutting expenses is the easiest way to increase your profits from a business.

However, it is very difficult to cut costs without compromising on the efficiency your goods and services. It has also been noted that most of the new businesses that are being started today do not survive over a period of more than two years.

To avoid the most common mistakes that are being made by new businesses, you have to first understand the reasons why such ventures usually fail. Here is a briefing of the most common pitfalls of new businesses and about how to avoid them.

No adequate research

When you have an idea for a business, the first thing you have to do is study the market for your product or service. You have to find out if you and your product has a place in the market, both in terms of customers and competitors. Venturing into an area with lots of strong competitors could be very risky. Also, bringing out a service or product that is not very acceptable to customers will also not work well.

No start-up capital

You have to have enough money in hand to run the business for the first few months expecting no profit at all. Invest your capital in the most important resources and be careful not to be wasteful. For example, in most cases, you might not need a fully-fledged office space and lots of employees when you are starting your business. Begin with virtual office solutions and then expand when you start getting profits from the venture.

No Planning

Devise a proper business plan. No matter the size of your business, you must make a good business plan which will be your guide to running the business. Detail out all your business goals and lay out a reasonable financial budget. Consider and note down all the marketing strategies that you can think of as well.

With these precautions in mind, you can most of the time save your business from drowning. However, you see that your business has started sinking, then you have to take the steps to stop the rot.

• Review your business plan again: When you start feeling that things are not moving as per planned, don’t ignore it. Make sure you review your plans and look into how you can overcome the crisis right from the earliest stages.

• Get help with secure funding: If lack of money is the only thing that is killing your business, then speak to reputed banks and avail a loan for your business. Finding a business partner who can share the costs is also a good idea.

• Reduce your expenses and avoid debt: You have to check every possibility to reduce running costs without compromising on your service or product quality. Using virtual office solutions instead of real office space could be one of the easiest ways to reduce business costs. Reducing staff is also an option.

• Call it quits when you feel things are not working: When you feel your business is on the slow track and facing continual failures, call it quits. Don’t try to run a business on debts only. This could affect your life on the whole.

• Ask for help: There are so many successful entrepreneurs and businessmen around. Ask for advice and listen to what they have to say. Most of them would be happy to help.

Running a business could be really difficult especially in its initial years. Learn to identify the common mistakes and follow tips to avoid them to achieve success in your business.

How would you like to expand your business horizon to Cochin without spending money for rent and staff? A virtual office is your best bet!

A virtual office offers you the benefits of an office environment and a virtual address in Cochin without actually renting the physical space. Having a virtual address in Cochin/Kochi gives your business a professional touch and this is why virtual office concept is becoming very common in the city.

One major attraction of a virtual office is that employees can work from home. This helps them save commutation time and money. Also, by having a virtual office, you can hire workers completely based on their expertise, without considering the location.

The market of your product is too small when you are restricting yourself to a particular location. If you can set up virtual offices in all major cities like Cochin, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai, your customer base becomes much larger. Renting out physical office spaces in so many locations is not feasible for small companies. By simply having a virtual address and phone number in all major cities, you can increase the market reach for your product.

Along with virtual address and phone, most of the virtual office providers offer personalized reception services, virtual fax and mail handling in Cochin.

With virtual offices, even the small businesses can now compete with companies that are much larger than them at reduced costs.

With a virtual office in Cochin, you get all the advantages of an office in the city without the actual office space.

As the virtual office concept is getting very popular in all major cities of India, Cochin is also not an exception as there are several virtual office providers coming up in the city. Now you can easily impress your clients with office addresses in several parts of the country by using the concept of virtual addresses.

A virtual phone number is a number that forwards your incoming calls to a pre-set telephone number. This facility permits you to have a telephone number in all major cities without an actual office there. This way, a company located in New York, Mumbai or any other city can have a land line number in Cochin.

It is not easy for all business owners to start with an expensive office and an overflowing bank account. Most of the businesspersons are looking for ways to reduce their initial costs while they build up their company. This is why young entrepreneurs today look for virtual office solutions in major cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Cochin.

A virtual phone number is one of the most admired features of virtual office solutions. Subscribing for a virtual phone in Cochin/Kochi will get you a local number in the city, even when you are sitting in some other part of the country.

Spacelance is offering virtual phone numbers in Cochin at the most affordable rates. Along with call forward, virtual phone numbers offer you with so many amazing features like call screening, voice mail, greetings and so on. As you know, office space in Cochin is getting costlier by the day and virtual office is the best answer to all startup companies, home based businesses, freelancers, NRI’s and student entrepreneurs.

One advantage of virtual phone is that you can work from anywhere. You don’t have to be at your office desk to answer phone calls and fax from clients when you have a virtual office in Cochin. Start-up businesses also get a professional image when they have an address and local phone number. The best feature of a virtual phone system is that it saves you time and money.

With the vast number of benefits that if offers at such a low cost, a virtual phone system is what you need to put your new business on the success path.

Enjoy all the benefits of an office in Kochi without the actual office space.

Kochi is economically flourishing at an exponential rate and this is the best time to set up your office in Kochi. Finding a workspace in Kochi is becoming quite difficult.

But Relax!

Spacelance is now offering you virtual office solutions at the most affordable prices. This is the best opportunity for IT startups, freelancers, NRI businesses and student entrepreneurs.

Starting a new business is always a risk. With a virtual office space you can test the unstable waters of your new business idea before you rent a new office space or employee new staff. For this you can use virtual office space in Cochin/Kochi. Virtual office addresses help young entrepreneurs to save money before they start making profits from their new business.

Getting a virtual office in Kochi means a virtual address, virtual phone number, virtual fax, live reception and much more without the problem of conventional office costs. Remember, having a physical business address is important for maintaining the professionalism of your business.

Virtual offices are now really popular in all other major Indian cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi.

Virtual office facilities must include premium office address for your business cards, receptionist services to take care of your business calls, handling of your physical mails virtual fax services, and cheque deposit services.

The most obvious advantage of a virtual office set-up is that it helps companies to cuts costs for office space and maintenance. Employees also can save money for travel and spend more quality time on their work. The best advantage of virtual offices is that it gives everyone the opportunity to work. Working mothers and housewives can work from home and make their earnings with the help of such virtual offices.

Virtual offices in India have also expanded the horizon of business. Now, the common man can also turn their ideas to business without getting worried about the cost of infrastructure and technology. The choice for hiring employees can also be widened when physical location is not a limitation.

You can search, compare and buy the best virtual office plan that suits you through our site, www.SpaceLance.Com. Use the free trial offer to test our services, before you spend any money.

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