17 Mar
Uncategorized

How to Collect Late Payments Without Ruining Customer Relationships

Cash flow is the backbone of any business. Without cash, your daily operations will stall and, as CB Insights notes, you might be forced to suspend or close your business. The biggest threat to cash flow is late payments. Anyone can be a late payer, even the best customers. Reasons for late payment vary ranging from tax reasons to financial hardship.

eSEOspace understands the role of good marketing in boosting cash flow. In that same vein, retrieving late payments from customers without ruining the relationship is also crucial to cash flow. Continue reading to find out how.

 

The cost of late payments

In an ideal scenario where all your customers pay their invoices on time, you’d have a 100% accurate cash flow forecast all year round. Your bills would always be paid on time, and making important decisions such as whether to increase or scale back on expenses would be easy. Unfortunately, Ordermentum points out that we live in an imperfect world where late and non-payments are common business challenges.

It does not matter if the reason for a late payment is legitimate or not. When customers fail to make their payments on time, a cash flow gap, which places unnecessary stress on your business, is created. Keeping up with daily operating expenses and payroll becomes a challenge. To keep your business afloat, you may be forced to chase down late paying customers, and this may result in breaking down of relations.

To run a successful business, you have to find a balance between handling late payments and maintaining a good relationship with your customers.

 

Identify customers of concern

Identify who is paying late. Keep track of payments made and take note of any that are unpaid or paid late. These records will help you chase down late payments and decide if it’s time to cut ties with customers who are costing your business too much. Quarterly records should help you identify whether late payment is limited to a few customers or if it is a company-wide problem.

 

Understand the cause of late payment

Understanding the reason behind a customer’s late or no-payment can inform your strategy of collecting your dues and preventing late payments in the future. Common types of late-paying customers include:

  • Large corporations: These entities typically have payment schedules that differ from small and mid-sized B2B companies.
  • Unhappy customers: Dissatisfied customers are not quick or willing to make payments.
  • Customers with financial challenges: A customer may be willing but unable to pay on time due to cash flow issues.
  • Customers with no intentions of paying: It may be difficult to identify such customers until it is too late.

 

Effective follow-up strategy

Consider the following strategies when following up on payments that are past due.

  • Ask for payment: The first step is to simply ask. A late payment could be intentional but in some cases, it could be as the result of a genuine reason such as a clerical error, misplaced invoice, or forgetfulness. Send a friendly reminder shortly before and after payment is due.
  • Automate late payment reminders: Having an automated system send reminders eases your workload and saves you and your customer from losing face.
  • Use an intermediary: Before you consider legal action, use a neutral intermediary to find a solution when you’ve exhausted all other options.

 

Preventive measures

To avoid the lengthy and expensive proceedings associated with recovering late payments, you can employ the following preventive strategies:

  • Ask for payments upfront: This eliminates clients who are not serious and the need for invoicing.
  • Communicate your expectations clearly: For a mutual level of convenience, communicate all your payment details and expectations before you start working with a client. This entails writing a clear customer contract that cuts out excessive legalese and includes negotiated terms with the decision maker.
  • Suggest good tools: Some customers may be in need of digital tools to help them track their obligations. Offer to help them understand third-party apps that use a bank account balance API to provide them real-time financial information.
  • Send plenty of notices: Sending multiple copies of contracts to clients so you can be sure they have it helps keep everyone on the same page when it comes to payment schedules. You should give them a hard copy as well as send a digital copy.
  • Early payment discounts and late fees: These can be powerful motivators to encourage timely payments.

 

Bottom line   

Late payment is a challenge that can cripple your business if not addressed. Limited cash flow can hurt your business but losing customers due to aggressive payment collection methods is also not ideal. Use the strategies above to strike a balance.

eSEOspace can help your business grow using a combination of strong website design and top-notch digital marketing. Learn more by calling (805) 500-3736.

12 Mar
Uncategorized

Why It Helps to Return to School Sharpen Your Business Skills

The more experience you gain in life and business, the more you realize the importance of furthering your education. When you delve deeper into a particular career or start your own business, you can hone in on your niche. Although some aspects of business might come naturally to you, there are areas that may require a deeper level of understanding. If you’re a new business owner, you might want to elevate your position in the marketplace by upskilling.

 

How To Improve Your Business Acumen

Postgraduate studies, part-time degrees, and professional organization memberships are just a few ways to improve your business acumen.

Starting a new business is time-consuming, but many programs offer courses that you can comfortably fit into your busy schedule. A solid MBA program will teach you leadership, management, and marketing skills.

If you’d like to go back to school for a degree that can help you run a business, consider the following programs:

  • Business administration. This is an all-encompassing degree that covers a multitude of business topics. Expect to learn about everything from strategic management to supply chain management, marketing, and accounting.
  • Business analytics. A degree in business analytics teaches you how to analyze big data to make informed business decisions.
  • Market research and consumer behavior are key to understanding your target market. Learn the art of creating captivating campaigns and how to engage with your audience.
  • Specializing in finance will stand you in good stead if you’re interested in investment banking or financial management or planning.
  • Information technology. Software engineering, designing databases, and understanding how the online environment works are a few key elements that you’ll learn while studying information technology.

Whether you’re studying for an MBA or undergraduate degree, getting a degree will also allow you to network with industry professionals who might be able to assist with growing your business.

 

Planning Well

Going back to school might be costly, but you can always discuss a payment plan with your institution of choice. Alternatively, you can opt to do your degree over a longer period of time, which can spread out the cost. There are also loan options such as federal loans with a low-interest rate for those who are working and studying.

There’s a lot to consider when going back to school, especially when it comes to work-life balance. Running a business is time-consuming, so it’s important to commit to your studies and plan accordingly. Set aside time in the evenings to study, and reserve your days for business activities. Another option is to enroll in online courses, as many online programs provide flexibility for busy individuals.

 

Achieving Business Success

You can achieve even greater business success if you further your studies. Not only will you learn about different aspects of business, but you’ll also increase your skills in your field of interest. Returning to school can also help you increase your scope for meeting like-minded business owners.

25 Feb
Uncategorized

Grow Your Home Business With Marketing

As a home-based business, marketing is crucial to your operation. It doesn’t matter how talented you are or how high-quality your products are if no one knows about them.

Marketing is the key to building awareness and driving sales for your company. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been in business for years, here are some of the best ways to get more customers and grow your home-based business with marketing.

 

Effective Web Design

In the modern era, appealing web design is crucial for any home business owner. If you don’t already have a website, getting one can have a big impact on gaining additional clientele and expanding your business.

From there, you can incorporate ways to market your brand and website. To do this, you need to implement SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This will ensure that your website ranks high when people search for specific keywords used in your web design.

 

Find Your Target Audience

The first step to marketing your business is to find your target audience. Who are the people you want to sell to? What are their interests? What are they struggling with? For example, if you sell weight-loss products, your target audience might be overweight people who have a hard time sticking to diet plans.

Once you’ve identified your target audience and what they’re interested in, it’s time to get creative with your marketing strategy.

 

Build Your Brand

One of the best ways to grow your home-based business with marketing is to build your brand. It’s important to distinguish yourself from competitors and show potential customers why you’re different. You want people to associate your company with something specific.

Your goal should be to establish the same type of reputation among consumers in your industry so they’ll know what to come to you for when they need it. This will help you build loyalty among existing customers while attracting new ones who are looking for what you offer specifically.

 

Hire a Strong Team

As more companies hire remote workers to save on costs, stay competitive in the global labor market, and broaden their talent pool, the need for quality remote work management is growing.

Not only is it more difficult to communicate with remote employees when you can’t see them face-to-face, but it can also be hard to manage their progress. These are some of the struggles that you might come across if you’re a home business owner who wants to hire a strong team of remote workers.

The good news is that you can gain an edge in your management by incorporating a process map template. This helpful tool will allow you and your team to collaborate on projects so that everyone is on the same page and knows what needs to be done.

 

Communicate Effectively

It’s also imperative that you keep communication strong and ensure that your team stays productive. While your process map will certainly help in the area, you need direct, clear communication to ensure that your team knows what you expect from them.

Many businesses that should have been destined for success have failed because of a lack of communication. Make it a rule that your team must keep the channels of communication open at all times. In doing so, you stand a much greater chance of watching your home business grow and expand.

 

Looking for website, SEO, and marketing help? Check out eSEO Space’s affordable packages here!

25 Jan
Uncategorized

Effective Marketing Tips for Senior Entrepreneurs

Running a business provides senior entrepreneurs with income, purpose, and fulfillment. As with any business, marketing plays a crucial role. Here, you can find some valuable tips to help you market your business and boost sales.

Design an Appealing Website

Having a user-friendly website is crucial to boosting sales. Your website requires easily recognizable links, clear calls to action, and simple forms, and it must be accessible and adaptive. If your customers have to spend too much time looking for the product they want or they find the checkout process awkward in any way, they soon leave your site and shop elsewhere.

Social Media

Establishing a social media presence is an excellent way of boosting brand awareness. It allows you to reach a wider audience and serves to communicate, meet consumer needs, generate sales, and build trust. Try to stick to just one or two social media platforms initially. Not only is that more manageable, but it also ensures customers don’t stumble upon some of your old and neglected social media accounts.

Coupons

A popular way of boosting sales is to offer a discount in the form of coupons. They’re an easier option than a standard sales promotion as you don’t have to alter prices on several different products on your website. Instead, the discount is applied during the checkout process. Furthermore, you can create several coupons with varying codes for separate ad campaigns. By checking to see which particular code was used the most, you can establish which marketing efforts were most effective.

Sharpen Your Business Skills

If you’re looking to develop your business acumen, consider enrolling in an online program to earn an MBA. The coursework can teach you more about economics, human capital management, strategic planning, and corporate finance, and the program’s flexibility allows you to study while still working full-time or concentrating on schooling or family commitments.

Signs Your Marketing Strategy Needs Adapting

A time may come when you need to adapt your marketing strategies before your income declines. Indications include rapidly declining website traffic, lack of social media engagement, and many people unsubscribing from your emails. It’s essential that you keep an eye on the market and use various marketing methods to protect your business against change. This ensures your strategies remain relative and targeted. Find out how eSEOspace can help your marketing initiatives.

Merging Your Documents

Many free or low-cost tools are available to help you market your business. One of these is a PDF merging tool, handy if your business is working on a marketing project that involves multiple people or teams, which can result in you having to deal with an overflow of documents. A PDF merging tool allows you to keep track of various documents in multiple formats by storing them in one file. Once combined, you can also move PDF pages to get your content in the correct order.

You Can Be Successful

As a senior entrepreneur, you have just as much chance of being successful in business like anyone else, as long as you use the proper marketing strategies, such as those discussed above, to establish an audience, build trust, and make sales. Schedule a consultation with eSEOspace to hit the ground running!

21 Jan
Uncategorized

Ways to Boost Your Local SEO Marketing

While global SEO is everything for some companies, most of us can’t afford to ignore local SEO either. In essence, if you want people to come and visit your physical store, you need to have an excellent local SEO score. According to Google, more than half of their users who conduct a local search on their phones visit the store on that day. So, your business must pop up among the top results in your area if you don’t want to lose to your competitors. To help you out on your way to the top of the local SERPs, we’ll teach you about the ways to boost your local SEO marketing.

Now, keep in mind that improving SEO takes time. Nothing here happens overnight, and you’ll have to be patient. However, you can do quite a bit to make the process quicker. Hence, if you see working on your local SEO as the best marketing strategy for your business, here’s what you need to do.

Use Keywords In Your Listings

Being featured on local listings and citations is vital for local SEO. There’s no surprise here, but what if we tell you that you can take it even further?

Determine the local keywords related to your business and use them when writing your listings. It’s a simple trick, but people interested in what you do will often see your business name when searching the web. They’ll think of you as an authority, and when they need some help, you’ll be the one they call.

On top of that, make sure the photos you use for these listings are current and encourage your customers to leave reviews. It’ll give you more credibility in both Google’s and locals’ eyes.

Get On Local News

To this day, the news is still the number one way to promote a business. And the best part about it is that it works in any form. If you can get on the radio or TV — great, but if you can’t, there’s nothing to worry about. Major local online publications will be indexed high on Google, and if some of them mention you, some of their authority will rub off on you.

Get in touch with local journalists who want to report on your business. If you can get just one report each month, you’ll see more and more people coming through your doors. And don’t think that getting local coverage is that hard. Sometimes you just need to ask.

Work On Your Links

Local SEO is complex, and you’ll need all the help you can get to get it to work. Luckily, it’s not too tricky to get there if you use the appropriate tools. Still, SEO software like GrowthBar and Yext can only get you so far. To go over the big step and get the edge over your competitors, you’ll need to get backlinks.

It’s best if you can get them organically. Find a way to provide the community and lead people onto writing about you. The more your company is mentioned on the web, the more relevance it’ll have, and the more you’ll boost your local SEO marketing. Of course, buying backlinks is also a valid option if you get them from a reputable source.

Finally, be sure to work on your internal links as well. By connecting the pages on your site with each other, you’ll create a map for Google’s bots to crawl. As a result, they’ll make more sense of your business and website, and they’ll show your shop on Google Maps more.

Claim and Optimize Your Google My Business Profile

We can’t talk about improving your local SEO and not mention Google My Business. It’s Google’s business listing service, and the chances are that it’ll be the first thing people see when they come across your company on the local searches.

You need an account if you want to show up on Google Maps, so it’s pretty essential. If you don’t have a profile, it’s time to make one or claim the listing if it was created automatically (which sometimes happens). To do it, you’ll need to have a physical location and an actual address. Just a P.O. box won’t cut it, so don’t even try to fool Google.

Once you have your profile, go over it, fill out all the forms, and optimize it as well as you can. Add the correct contact info, business hours, and up-to-date pictures. The more time you spend on your profile, the more users will see you in local searches.

Connect Your Business With an Area You Work In

When working on your local SEO, you want to cover all the places where people may see your business. So you have to pay attention to:

  • Google Maps
  • Your website
  • Citations
  • Local listings.

Make it clear for search engines in which area you want to work and what kind of customers you’re after. It’s a lot of work, but it’ll pay off in the end.

Remember that you want to add a few citations each month so that you stay relevant. If it all seems a bit much, you can outsource it. Pick one of the SEO packages and let the experts do it for you.

Don’t Ignore the Details

It’s vital that you update the content on your site and show that you’re up and running. However, you mustn’t overlook the seemingly small details like meta descriptions, alternative tags, and titles. Google cares a lot about these HTML elements, and if your website doesn’t have them, it won’t favor it, no matter how good your content is.

Of course, keep in mind that you’re doing this for the local audience. Include some local keywords, mention the local places, and reference the local news in your articles and updates, even in meta tags. This way, you’ll show Google where you want to work, and it’ll reward you by offering your business to local users.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of things you can do to improve your SEO, both local and global. Unfortunately, this also means that you’ll have to put in a lot of resources to make it work. If you don’t want to outsource it, at least get some help from the apps that save small business owners time, money, and energy.

Use the tips we gave you to boost your local SEO marketing and find your way to the top of the local SERPs. Don’t skip any steps, and you’ll get there for sure.

Meta description: Are you looking for ways to boost your local SEO marketing? Here are all the latest tips and tricks you’ll need to reach the top of SERPs.

 

Author’s bio:

 

 

Kelvin Crawford is a freelance writer and an SEO expert with ten years of experience. He loves reading and learning new things almost as much as he hates rain

13 Jan
Uncategorized

Recruiting Freelancers for Your Business

Finding skilled and reliable freelancers to contribute to your business operations can seem like a tall task. You’ll have to know where to find them, how to pay them, and how to set up your business to facilitate this, especially if you’re hiring international freelancers. Building a strong team of freelancers and retaining them can be crucial to the success of your business. eSEOspace presents tips to help you start building your team.

 

Figure Out What Kind of Freelancers You’ll Need

Depending on the type of business you’re running, the kinds of freelancers you’ll need to recruit will vary immensely. For instance, if you run an online store, you probably want to recruit some copywriters, graphic designers, coders, and photographers. However, if you run a travel blog, you’ll need freelance writers from different countries. However, not all jobs are suitable for remote work. Some, you’ll oversee in person, and others may need to be done on-site due to security or privacy concerns.

 

Finding Freelancers

Recruiting freelancers online creates opportunities for your business to engage with a wider variety of potential candidates. There are online job boards, both international and country-specific, that cater to generalized and niche skilled labor needs — FreelanceINDIA.com provides freelancers in India, for example.

 

Communicating With Your Freelancers

Steady and efficient communication is a must if you’re going to be hiring people from all over the world. You’ll need to select a communication platform where you can text as well as talk and video conference and another platform where you can create folders and exchange documents securely.

 

Compensating Your Freelancers

Paying your freelancers is obviously crucial if you want to retain your team, but you’ll need to keep in mind the overhead this creates for your business. Many money transfer services include extensive fees, which add up quickly across multiple workers and countries. For instance, you can use Remitly to transfer money to freelancers in India without fees when over a certain amount (usually $1,001).

 

Preparing Your Business for Freelancers

To avoid legal or financial issues down the line, you should ensure that your business is properly structured. It’s a good idea to create an LLC (or another appropriate entity type) if you haven’t already. The LLC structure can protect your personal assets from a certain level of liability and benefit you concerning taxes. However, you’ll have to follow the guidelines imposed by the state where you form your LLC. If you find the process difficult, a business formation service can help and potentially save money compared to the costs of using a business lawyer.

 

Manage Paperwork

There are convenient tools you can use to manage the large volume of paperwork exchanged between yourself and your freelancers. Soda PDF’s conversion tool enables you to convert .docx files to PDFs for an easy, convenient way to store and combine files.

 

Build a Reliable Team

If you take advantage of resources such as online job boards, money exchange programs like Remitly, and business formation tools, you can more easily and efficiently build and maintain your team. Consider the circumstances of your freelancers, and maintain constant communication for the best results.

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