Running a business is a rewarding pursuit, but it’s also a complicated process filled with pitfalls and hidden costs. While many of these are unavoidable, there are also instances where leveraging sometimes overlooked technology can offer significant potential returns. Taking a look at a few increasingly popular paths we’ve seen adopted by modern businesses can help not just your wallet, but also customer enjoyment and loyalty. Here’s what you should keep in mind.
Take Social Media Seriously
We all know that social media is a key component of modern life, but too often we underestimate just how effectively it can operate as a business tool. In America alone, over 70% of the population use at least one social media website. This translates to more than 230 million people, many of whom will happily engage with businesses over social media accounts.
If you’ve opened or restructured your business at all within the last few years, then chances are you’ve already attained some level of social media visibility. Too often we settle for basic integration, however, and in the modern age, this isn’t enough.
Instead, businesses need to create a net of different linked social media websites, where at least one goes above and beyond listing just contact information. As a start, Facebook needs to serve as a base. This is the most popular service, so your effort here needs to reflect the type of expertise and professionalism that sets your business apart.
From this point, businesses should also extend major efforts to the platform which best illustrates their products or services. If your business is best illustrated through visual components, then something like Instagram could be worth a look. Works in progress and completed jobs make perfect fits for systems like this, or you could go to something like Twitter to relay notes on successful jobs and customer satisfaction.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
When building a website or integrating software systems, businesses can often feel pressured to implement specialized and personally developed digital tools. While this can prove itself the only option in rare cases, it will almost always be cheaper to turn to existing solutions.
A potent example of this could be found in the now enormous online betting industry. Building software here from the ground up includes necessary contributions from programmers, security experts, artists, and much more. A far more cost-effective option would be to rely on frameworks like those from sportsbooks software providers. This proven system alone already handles millions of bets every day, integrating with over 65 sports and 1,200 markets. Getting to this point from the ground up, in other words, is not something that a newly designed system could easily manage.
Whatever avenue you choose to take on your journey to saving money, know that there’s always going to be a period of learning and adjustment. At first, it’s common to experience inefficiency and confusion, but the long-term ends more than justify the means. These simple methods alone have saved many businesses and raised many others to new heights. Stick with it, learn from your mistakes, and you’ll be surprised to see just how much can be earned.