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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 owner frequently and unexpectedly run into:
Getting & Increasing Sales
- Handling objections to a sale
- Pros and cons of cold calling for leads
- Mining LinkedIn for leads
- Whether or not boosting a Facebook ad is worth it
- Customer retention
- Dealing with customer complaints
- Maintaining customer loyalty
Running Your Business and Day to Day Operations
- Hiring your first contractor
- Hiring your first employee
- Being in two places at once
- Paying yourself (profit first)
- Staying productive and avoiding distractions
- Exercise and work balance
- Managing employees
- IT pain points (cyber security)
- Lack of a business culture
- Price wars with competitors
- Supply chain and sourcing materials
- Tedious payroll
- Can’t seem to find the right talent
- Constantly shifting health insurance laws
- Recovering from a bad reputation
- Not listed with the BBB
- Finding qualified leads
- Accounting and managing cash
- Dealing with changing regulations
- Differentiating a business from competitors
- Data management and backups
- Time management
- Scaling a business
- Managing overhead
- Increasing profits over revenues
Growing Your Business and Marketing
- Shortening the sales cycle
- Thin marketing budget
- Staying active on social media
- High bounce rate
- Designing a website
- Driving traffic to a website
- Building an email list
- Engaging with local community events
- Balancing managed growth
- Bad Yelp! Reviews
- Leasing a commercial building
- Building a team
- Competing with dominant big businesses
- Staying motivated
- Maintaining focus and a clear mind
- Forgetting to unwind and enjoy downtime
- Not sleeping enough/fatigue
- 80/20 rule – what is most effective
- Sticking to a budget
- Managing and collecting receivables
- Keeping track of payments
- Getting a loan
- Motivating employees
- Curating genuine testimonials
- Adapting to Google search updates
- Establishing authority and credibility
- 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 with which to deal, small business owners have one of two choices when it comes to managing their marketing campaign: build an in-house team or reach out for the help of a qualified professional marketing service. If you haven’t given much thought to the future of your marketing endeavors, I urge you to reach out for help today.
