As this year winds down, it's time to think about where your business is headed in the New Year. Specifically, where will you invest in your business?
Some intriguing business trends are emerging, where an investment in the right place might yield terrific dividends in the coming year. Here are three key areas to consider prioritizing in 2012:
- Ecommerce Apps. Amazon plans to eat small retailers' lunch this holiday season with its price-comparison app. With the app, iPhone users can wave their phone at your retail item's bar code and instantly find out what the same item costs on Amazon. Also, from last Friday night through Saturday, Amazon offered 5 percent off any item up to $5 off when shoppers ran a price-check on the app.
What are you doing to counter this trend? It's never been easier to create your own app -- the do-it-yourself tool platform appsbar now has 50,000 users, for instance. Next year, a whole new crop of shoppers will have mobile devices they got for Christmas. Will you be ready to connect them with your merchandise?
- Paid search. Are you hitting the top of search results for your chosen keywords? More retailers are taking out ads to help them rank well on key search terms, data from research frim Performics found.
This Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, paid search spending more than doubled from the same weekend in 2010, says Performics. And retailers aren't just spending on paid search -- they're getting results. Click-through rates and sales jumped, too.
- Brain power. Many companies have experienced serious brain-drain over the past few years, as staffers were laid off. Get a jump on your competition by hiring back some highly talented -- and trained -- workers.
The National Federation of Independent Business's Small Business Confidence Index is rising again, and small business owners are reporting better sales growth. Get positioned for the upswing now by adding key staff, before your competitors figure out an upswing is here and snap up the top talent.
What investment will you make in your business next year? Leave a comment and let us know.
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Comments:
2011 saw me making some costly business mistake, all because, l did not have a business plan!! having learnt the hard way, loosing most of my capital, l have braced up myself for a full recovery in 2012, arm with a business plan.
Great informative suggestions. Thanks for sharing.
Focusing on expanding into other regions -- Middle East Gulf States, Asia, Latin America. Also continuing to upgrade and integrate software applications, both desktop and cloud. Leveraging the newest technology to reach out to potential clients and new markets.
The Central Ministry of Power has set an ambitious plan of "power for all by 2012" that envisages the installed power generation capacity to rise from the current 147,402 MW (approx) to 200,000 MW by 2012. In order to attract foreign investments into the power industry of India, the government has announced several policies and has taken initiatives - the most important amongst being the enactment of the Electricity Act- 2003. The Act mainly consolidates the existing laws relating to the generation, distribution, transmission, and trading of electricity, promote healthy competition among companies in the power sector of India. Similarly, new forms of energy generation like Solar, Nuclear and Wind etc., are being given special emphasis with incentivization schemes. Opportunity Resource augmentation and growth in energy supply has not kept pace with increasing demand and, therefore, India continues to face serious energy shortages. This has led to increased reliance on imports to meet the energy demand. The government of India has taken several initiatives to attract foreign investments in India. Not only foreign establishments but also entrepreneurs from India can reap the benefits of the growing Indian Energy Market. Today, the government of India permits up to 100% foreign direct investment in the power sector. Government of India is encouraging emerging areas of renewable energy sectors including through Solar, Wind power etc., Thus, there is a great opportunity lying ahead for foreign investors to invest in the sector.
Carol, I'm marketing, not selling. A 'small' distinction, but a distinction. When I suggest 'start shopping', I honestly meant shop. I stand behind our product, and in my experience, it's best to let educated individuals come to their own conclusions. To my point, it is well publicized that even major enterprises are moving towards more 'VoIP' based solutions. VoIP will be 'mainstream' by this time next year (if it isn't already) simply because wholly 'WiFi' enabled solutions are emerging. As network capacities are broadened, WiFi will very quickly become the defacto communications choice (likely 5+yrs out). Google would not be going into its third year of offering free voice plans if they didn't see a value in VoIP. All this being said, I still completely agree with your suggestions as good investments and now I understand why you chose not to include business VoIP. Of course, feel free to contact me directly if you want to discuss your particular experience but I sincerely had no intention of distracting from your article.
Great suggestions....Thanks much for sharing it...
nice idea, thanks for the information..i learned a lot from this post..i am glad to be one of the several visitors in this site...
Voice over Internet protocol, such as Skype uses.
Good ideas about business investments. Particularly, I think number 2 is going to be the biggest because with more and more businesses moving online and setting up shop, they will need plenty of help in finding new customers through organic search results. And what exactly is VOIP that was mentioned in the other comments?
Carol, Sorry for your experience. With my current company it's never happened to any of my conferences. Before this company I hadn't used a VoIP solution. The technology is honestly there. If you're experiencing that much trouble, you should start shopping.
Good Thoughts!
Hmmm, could that be because you want to sell us VOIP solutions? As a VOIP consumer, I can say it'll be a long time to come before I'm counting on it to run my business. This technology is still working out loads of bugs. How many Webinars have you seen rescheduled because the VOIP wasn't working right?
Great suggestions. Apps are going to become extremely important to small businesses during the upcoming months and the availability of no-cost/low cost options helps small businesses stay in the game. And while getting incredible team (employees, co-workers, independent contractors and others) is critically important to leveraging brain power, the importance of business owners investing in their own self-growth can't be overstated. After all, the business owner is the business' first mentor. K. Olson, author of Cape or Cloak: How To Do Better In The Business Of Business
I'm really surprised you didn't mention Business VoIP solutions. Or were you assuming most businesses have already made that switch?