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How to raise prices without losing customers

Raising prices is never an easy thing to do. Despite most people understanding that prices have to be increased on a lot of items, from fuel and food to insurance and utilities, it remains a delicate task.

Here are a few tips on how to do it in a way that puts your company in a better financial position and not a worse one caused by an exodus of irritated customers.

Identify where your prices need to go

Once you’ve established the exact percentage of your price rises, there are two trains of thought: phase them in with smaller increments over a period of time or institute one larger price increase in one fell swoop. There are pros and cons to both methods.

Success comes in many forms in Business

Success means different things to different people whether we are talking about business or private life. In Business, the obvious assumption is that a successful entrepreneur is someone who is financially secure. What they earn, what they own, what they spend can give the impression of success. More, more, more is what we all ultimately strive for in terms of success – or is it?

Stop and reflect on your own life. Think about what success means to you. Don’t limit yourself by focusing on the big things. They are important but they also seem to demand way too much of our attention.

Take a moment to focus on all the little successes you have had – either in the past or today. These are the everyday things that make life worth living. To be able to make choices. To be able to motivate and inspire others. To share life (both the joys and the sorrows) with others. To feel and to show feeling. To love and to be loved. To make the most of every situation no matter the circumstances.

When should you start planning for a secure financial future?

For those who haven’t charted a course for a secure financial future, there’s good news and bad news.

The bad news? Without at least some solid financial planning, retirement may come with more sacrifices than security. The good news? It’s never too late to start and you have a lot of company.

Some 40 percent of people polled described themselves as “Informal,” having a general sense of their goals and how to meet them, but no specific plan in place.

When it comes to financial planning most people say life gets in the way. Some 69 percent feel the pace of society makes it harder for them to stick with long-term goals. Twenty-six percent say they either often or always feel too busy to think about long-term goals. Ironically, many people who plan their meals, plan their travel, or plan their wardrobe, won’t spend as much time planning for their future.

Business Partnership can at times feel like a Marriage

Joining up with partners can result in offspring where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In today’s era of globalisation, the ability to form successful partnerships plays a vital role in your company’s success. It’s not enough to get engaged, you want to get married and you want that marriage to last a long, long time.

Here are a few important steps in forming a long lasting and fruitful relationship with the right partner company:

Customer perception is everything

Culture is crucial when it comes to understanding the needs and behaviours of an individual. Throughout his existence, an individual will be influenced by his family, his friends, his cultural environment or society that will “teach” him values, preferences as well as common behaviours to their own culture.

For a brand, it is important to understand and take into account the cultural factors inherent to each market or to each situation in order to adapt its product and its marketing strategy. As these will play a role in the perception, habits, behaviour or expectations of consumers.

Avoid delivery nightmares

A recent study revealed that 26% of respondents would stop buying from a company if they were not happy with the delivery firm used. Losing business over a problem which is not caused by you is certainly the worst way for it to happen.

We found that most online shops use more than one delivery firm – but none of them offer customers a choice over which is used.

With a third of online shopping problems relating to delivery, this seems to be the weak link in the web retail boom. It means customers who have had a bad experience with a particular delivery firm are left pretty powerless if they want to avoid using them again.

How to write great subject lines to get people’s attention

How many unread emails do you have in your inbox? 300? 800? Or maybe, if you are like me and are on countless mailing lists, 2,644?

We get a TON of emails every day, and a lot of them are never opened. People are inundated with boatloads of information – more than ever before in history! But we don’t have more time to soak it all in. The chances of your email being ignored are pretty high – unless of course, you have a rockin’ sockin’ subject line.

Your subject line is your first (and maybe your last) impression on users. In many ways, your email subject line is more important than your email body. After all, a great newsletter is worthless if it never sees the light of day.

There are a few different schools of thought when it comes to creating slam dunk subject lines. We’ll be covering 9 different types of effective email subject lines and sprinkling examples throughout.

How to respond to angry customers on Social Media

Social media has paved the way for companies to get closer to their customers. And while this has proven to be advantageous, it can also be disastrous if you do not know how to properly deal with angry customers who vent their ire, frustration and disappointment in social media.

Word of mouth still is the best marketing method, and whereas before any bad feedback or complaint from your customers may have gone no further than a conversation between friends or through snail mail, nowadays every complaint, valid or not, is available for the world to see.

How to successfully launch your app

Pre Launch App Marketing is an area of expertise in itself. With more than 1000 apps launched each day both on the App Store and Google Play Store, the clutter and the noise is increasingly challenging to beat. Very often, even innovative apps with clear value add and tremendous utility gets ignored posing the need to market apps well.

This doesn’t end at the Product Development desk or with App Store Optimisation. App marketers will need to be incredibly creative with their marketing efforts. App marketers are competing against 2.5 million apps already on the stores, a million others in alternative app stores, 1000+ new apps being released each day and unfortunately inspiring clones waiting to be released the moment success comes calling.

Your employees are your biggest marketing asset

There is a holy grail in the workplace, but like the one in the popular book and movie “The Di Vinci Code,” it’s not exactly what you’d expect. In any company, the products and the location are important.

So, too, are the branding strategies, packaging and pricing — but in the end, it’s the employees who make the difference. That’s why it’s so important that you motivate them to move mountains.

There are lots of examples of great companies and their highly motivated employees: Apple, Disney, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Coca Cola, Zappos and Wynn Resorts are a few that come to mind.

Why are outside resources the best way to go?

Realising that you can’t do everything internally, and that it’s better to hire outside resources, is a hard truth to take in.

If you need to feel better about your decision to outsource your efforts, here are some things that will reaffirm your choice to let some internal control go:

1.     Consider the opportunity costs.

There’s an opportunity cost to everything. Too often, we forget to value our time and attention.

How to make more sales on your eCommerce website

According to a recent study, retailers are losing more than 45% of potential buyers due to inefficiencies in their website and operations.

Here are 10 points to consider when evaluating your current or future eCommerce website:

1. Pricing

The Internet allows shoppers to quickly compare prices. If you are in a competitive market, you need to make sure there is a good reason for your customer to visit and then stay on your website.