Biggest Challenges Facing Small Business Owners Today

Yeah, we’re a marketing firm, but we also have 22 years of experience running a business, and we’ve learned a LOT of things along the way. Enough things that we’ve put together a (hopefully) helpful guide to solve a myriad of obstacles you may come across as you run and grow your own window treatment or awning business.

Running a business is anything but easy, and every small business owner runs into unexpected challenges and hurdles. Even with prudent planning, it isn’t possible to know what to expect.

You don’t know what you don’t know, and unexpected problems can ruin your day’s productivity.

Furthermore, some challenges are ancillary to your business. For instance, dealing with information technology security, while perhaps not the main focus of your business, cannot be ignored. It can feel like there are a lot of tedious hoops to jump through, like creating digital marketing campaigns, driving traffic to your website, and adapting to the latest Google updates.

To help you prepare for the challenging road ahead, the following are problems small business owners frequently and unexpectedly run into:

A confused new customer

Getting & Increasing Sales

  1. Handling objections to a sale
  2. Pros and cons of cold calling for leads
  3. Mining LinkedIn for leads
  4. Boosting a Facebook post is worth it
  5. Customer retention
  6. Dealing with customer complaints
  7. Maintaining customer loyalty

Running Your Business and Day-to-Day Operations

  1. Hiring your first contractor
  2. Hiring your first employee
  3. Being in two places at once
  4. Paying yourself (profit first)
  5. Staying productive and avoiding distractions
  6. Exercise and work balance
  7. Managing employees
  8. IT pain points (cyber security)
  9. Lack of a business culture
  10. Price wars with competitors
  11. Supply chain and sourcing materials
  12. Tedious payroll
  13. Can’t seem to find the right talent
  14. Constantly shifting health insurance laws
  15. Recovering from a bad reputation
  16. Not listed with the BBB
  17. Finding qualified leads
  18. Accounting and managing cash
  19. Dealing with changing regulations
  20. Differentiating a business from competitors
  21. Data management and backups
  22. Time management
  23. Scaling a business
  24. Managing overhead
  25. Increasing profits over revenues

Growing Your Business and Marketing

  1. Shortening the sales cycle
  2. Thin marketing budget
  3. Staying active on social media
  4. High bounce rate
  5. Designing a website
  6. Driving traffic to a website
  7. Building an email list
  8. Engaging with local community events
  9. Balancing managed growth
  10. Bad Yelp Reviews
  11. Leasing a commercial building
  12. Building a team
  13. Competing with dominant big businesses
  14. Staying motivated
  15. Maintaining focus and a clear mind
  16. Forgetting to unwind and enjoy downtime
  17. Not sleeping enough/fatigue
  18. 80/20 rule – what is most effective
  19. Sticking to a budget
  20. Managing and collecting receivables
  21. Keeping track of payments
  22. Getting a loan
  23. Motivating employees
  24. Curating genuine testimonials
  25. Adapting to Google search updates
  26. Establishing authority and credibility
  27. Identifying groups, audiences, and market segments

Running a business and launching successful marketing campaigns are extremely challenging endeavors. The aforementioned problematic factors need to be considered and handled with care. Failing to address them could be detrimental to your business. With all of the problems faced by modern small business owners, there really isn’t any time left to commit to crucial aspects of the business, like digital marketing.

Because of a lack of time and a myriad of problems, small business owners have one of two choices when it comes to managing their marketing campaign: build an in-house team or hire a qualified professional marketing service. If you haven’t given much thought to the future of your marketing endeavors, I urge you to seek help today.

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