If you are running a business whether it be small or large, you’d always want your business to do great and not just get by and be okay, not spectacular not great, just mediocre. People who start businesses are usually people who are driven with commitment and motivation, passion and so one of their greatest fears is to be lukewarm, especially in an increasingly competitive market.
To be on the cutting edge, the secret of many successful businesses in any industry is they stick to tried and tested ways of making the customers happy, while making variations every now and then and to keep their products and services delivered in the best way possible by making sure they make their products in the same way that they have always been made, the way that made their customers fall in love with their product to begin with. While that’s common knowledge, we’re still always surprised as to how many business people fail to realize that they must do something besides keeping their products great – that is to always adapt to new technology.
It is the marriage of this keeping with tradition and adjusting to progress that makes any venture or endeavor successful. Technology in the 21st century is always evolving at a rate faster than most can anticipate, that’s a daunting and intimidating thought, that’s true, but whomever gets to these first and masters them at the earliest time almost always gains the upper hand against his or her competitors. History is replete with examples of this. The armies of the ancient world, who used steel weapons instead of iron, easily conquered the nations who failed to adapt to the then revolutionary carbon-based metal. The invasion of the Mongol horde that, experts argue, would have had overrun the entire European continent was put to a halt because the Europeans adapted to the use of the rifle and the Mongols didn’t. These are only a couple of examples, but we digress.
Back in the world of business, rapid changes are happening on almost a daily if not an hourly basis. People are glued to their phones almost every minute of the day, they use them to find places to go to when they are in a city, they use them to organize their schedules, for their next ride-sharing service and they use them, to find well-reviewed and top-rated businesses. We know we’re all creatures of habit. But if you are somebody who owns a small businesses and has gotten by from using the traditional way of spreading the word out there (yellow pages, flyers, magazine ads) then, we hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your business is going the way of the dinosaurs faster than you can say “but this is the way we always did things”.
While you may be sitting there, resistant to a little change, the owner of that little shop that just opened in the next block of your neighborhood, has been using apps to track how many times his business has been searched on Google, has been maintaining a strong online presence by engaging with his customers in the comments and reviews section and has built a presentable website that he has been sharing all over social media. You will wake up one day and realize this new comer already has more patrons than you and has more popular and better products because of listening to customer feedback.
But the good news is you don’t have to divide your time between keeping the quality of your business and maintaining an online presence – there are experts out there who can do it for you, who can make sure your business gets found very easily when people search for your business in Google. It’s only a matter of teaming up with a company that you can trust and then simply move on from there.
