Times are tough for small businesses in the UK. The coming of a new year has not sparked much hope, either, as an impending recession continues to bear down on businesses already crippled by rising operational costs. In such a hostile environment, it can be hard to imagine ‘success’ for a business – but with the right approach, to achieve success is possible for even the smallest of new start-ups. 

First, though, it is key that you understand exactly what you, as an entrepreneur, mean by ‘achieve success’; what does success look like for your business in 2023? While there are some specific industry and economy pitfalls to look out for, there are also myriad ways in which you can define a successful year.

Clearly Defined Goals 

Further to understanding your own understanding of ‘success’ with regard to your business, you also need to clearly define the signifiers of that success. It is all well and good to aim for ‘growth’ in 2023, but if your efforts to stimulate business growth are ill-defined then your success will either be hard to track, or altogether limited. 

Let’s use ‘growth’ as an example. When talking about growth, what exactly do you mean? Are you referring to increasing your annual turnover, expanding the framework of your business or even increasing the size of your staff cohort? With regard to turnover, is there an ideal figure you would like to reach, or a set of milestones you’d like to pass? The more specific you are, the more effectively you can design a strategy and measure your success. 

Outsource Expertise 

A common mistake that entrepreneurs make early in their start-up career is to attempt to cover all bases within a skeleton staff. This can stretch your availability as a leader, and distract from the bigger picture (especially where smaller tasks or simple mistakes continually require attention). But just because you are unable to expand your workforce to equitably handle various necessary tasks does not mean your only option is to fold them in to your own work day. 

In cases such as these, outsourcing is a vital component to facilitating both short-term success and longevity. Just as you would approach legal experts for advice and counsel on legal matters, whether relating to expansion into new territories or legal action against other entities, you should not rely on your own non-expert abilities in handling basic business essentials such as payroll and HR. Third-party organizations can be an extremely useful crutch here, while you continue to invest in aggressive expansion elsewhere. 

Be Creative 

Lastly, it can be easy to lose sight of what makes running a new business so magical when grappling with logistical and administrative issues. There is an element of creativity to running a new business that should not be forgotten or lost; indeed, this creativity could show you a unique passage to achieve success that other businesses do not have access to. 

Qualitative research and gathering qualitative data  – the collection, interpretation, and organization of data from customers or consumers – can be complicated.

There’s no one defined way to gather qualitative data. If you ask the wrong questions, you end up collecting useless data. So you need to make sure that you’re not just organized but also that you categorize your questions and the data you collect.

Here are a few tips and tricks for gathering better qualitative data about your product:

Use session recordings effectively

A business can gather qualitative data by recording product usage in real-time. Recording customer browsing and then watching these recorded sessions later helps businesses understand the behavior of their customers and see what they can do to improve the customers’ experience.

Session recording helps businesses understand the behavior of their customers and see what they can do to improve their (the customers’) experience. However, you need to know how to use product usage data for you to use session recordings effectively.

You should also record your customers’ journey from start to finish. This does not mean recording a single or few customers. The more data you gather, the easier it becomes to interpret.

Set a clear goal for your qualitative data

You can’t gather qualitative data without setting a goal for data collection. This goal should guide you and help you to differentiate between qualitative and quantitative data.

It’s challenging to come up with the right questions without a specific goal in mind. Setting a goal also makes it easy to understand what methods to use to gather product data. 

Sample your audience

Define and sample your audience when you set your goal. The users you gather data from play a very important role in determining the success of your qualitative research. 

You might randomly interview customers or choose a representative to interview, creating a customer persona and choosing one person to ask about your products. 

Avoid Subjectivity

When gathering qualitative data about their products, most researchers subject values, assumptions, and histories to their research. This is a mistake that should be avoided at all costs.

If you want to gather better qualitative data, you should practice reflexivity. Reflexivity can be defined as the process by which researchers evaluate how they produce their findings, considering their role and prior knowledge about their products.

Consider Your Outcomes

You can get different outcomes when gathering qualitative data about your product. These outcomes are dictated by the type of research that you conduct. Some most common outcomes you might get include theories or conceptual models, taxonomies, measures of survey instruments, and recurrent hypotheses and themes, among others.

However, one of the best tricks when gathering qualitative data is understanding that the research is all about the meaning, not the numbers. It is supposed to provide you with a certain aspect of psychological and social life.

It is, therefore, important to understand that you will get different answers from your product data collection. You should not evaluate the data the same way you would any quantitative data. This is because even though you are telling your product story, the story might not be true but should be coherent and plausible.

Use the best data-gathering methods

There are different research methods you can use depending on your requirements and products. Choose a method that gets you the best results.

Some of the most common methods include direct observation, focus groups, and face-to-face interviews, among others. A method that works for another product might not work for yours.

However, no matter the method you choose to use, make sure that you will help your participants communicate their feelings and thoughts accurately. For instance, they should have interacted with the product you are asking them about for their answers to be accurate.

Do Not Use Your Best Customers

Every business has its best or favorite customers. These might be customers who are loyal to the business, who helped the business launch its products, or even those who have been paying for a product or service without problems.

These are the customers you need to avoid when gathering qualitative data about your product. This is because such customers will be biased. They will tell you exactly what you want to hear.

Instead, interview all your customers and ensure you have varied your sample. You should work towards collecting all data from all customers, not data from some of the best customers you have.

Eliminate bias

Everyone is biased, but you need to do your best to eliminate bias as you gather qualitative product data or you might ask the wrong questions.

To avoid bias, prepare a checklist or questionnaire before you start to collect data. This can help you practice reflexibility – the ability to evaluate yourself – so that you don’t influence the answers you get from users.

In addition, you must be careful about factors that might influence how you interpret the data you collect from participants. As a researcher, you have assumptions about your customers, so don’t let them affect your data interpretation.

Ensure Quality Responses

When gathering qualitative data, the response you get should be evaluated by quality, not quantity. Depending on your qualitative data collection methods, you might get responses from many participants. However, you should not focus on the participants but on the quality of their responses.

That notwithstanding, you might have to consider quantity with some surveys or polls. This is because factors such as response rate, sample size, confidence level, error margin, and population size can determine how valid your survey (data collection) is.

Collecting qualitative data is a complicated process, and these tips are just the start of it.

Video content is a powerful marketing solution these days. People actively use social media, and businesses promote their products and services on popular platforms. The most effective medium for communicating their brand message is a video. According to the statistics, 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. There’s no wonder as the audience better perceives the message visually. Videos boost engagement, leads, sales, and brand awareness. In this article, you will find more about video content marketing, its types, importance, and process.

What is Video Marketing in Simple Words

You know that content marketing is the creation and distribution of different pieces of content, including textual, audio, and visual materials. Consequently, video content marketing is a marketing approach based on video content. 

Businesses create various videos as a part of their marketing strategy, like brand films, FAQ videos, documentaries, educational videos, case study videos, explainer videos, culture videos, instructional videos, etc. Read on and find out why businesses now rely much on video content in their marketing campaigns. 

Benefits of Video Marketing 

Video content marketing is a powerful solution for your business, and here we’ll tell you why. 

Better Engagement

A short video is worth thousands of words. Sounds strange, but it’s true. It’s reported that our brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Videos work cognitively, increasing comprehension and attention, as well as emotionally stimulating creative thinking. Here are more advantages of using marketing.

High ROI

87% of marketers report video has helped them generate good ROI. These numbers are impressive, proving that video marketing is not just a trend but a powerful marketing solution. A high return on investment means that by investing in a marketing campaign, you will not lose your money but generate a considerable profit. 

Increased Sales

Advertising products and services with video businesses have their sales and conversion boosted. It’s reported that 81% of marketers say video has helped them directly increase sales. Videos attract a larger audience who make purchase decisions after watching your engaging content. 

Better Ranking

If you want to rank higher in search engine results, video content can assist you with that. Search engines like videos, especially with titles, descriptions, and captions containing relevant keywords. People spend more time on your site when watching a video that has a positive impact on your search ranking. 

Brand Awareness

We should also mention that high-quality video builds trust and makes your brand more recognizable. 93% of marketers say video has helped them increase brand awareness. Incorporate your brand elements, like logo, fonts, colors, etc in a video, tell about your company, and people will trust you more. 

The Process of Video Marketing 

Creating an effective marketing video is a time-consuming process. Here we prepared a simple guide to show you how it works. 

Set Your Objectives

The first step in developing a marketing strategy is defining the reason why you need a video. You should not blindly follow trends but understand the value of this content type for your business. Answering the question of why you create a video will help you target the right audience. For example, your video may influence the community and encourage important changes, you may show behind the scenes of your company to connect with your customers, you may teach customers how to use your product, or give them useful information related to your brand. 

Know Your Target Audience

It’s crucial to know your target audience to establish close connections and evoke the right emotions. Research who is your potential audience and what can spark their interest. These may be surveys, interviews, and demographical data that will help you tailor your video marketing strategy. Then, do your research to find one of the best video production companies to advise you on what content you should include in your videos and create some strategies that your business can use to target your audience. 

Film and Edit Footage 

Businesses may generate marketing videos themselves or hire a team to create video content. Both options have their pros and cons. Websites offering free stock videos can help to create video content. Companies decide if their budget and resources allow them to benefit from agency services or make a video with their phone camera. If you want to fully control the process and show off all ins and outs of your brand that are worth the audience’s attention, make a video on your own. In order to do that, find appropriate hardware and software equipment. Programs that add sound to video, edit the footage, balance color, and light, and improve sound quality will be very useful. 

Distribute Your Content 

Now you should share your videos through the right marketing funnels. These may be websites and social media channels. You can advertise your content, use influencers’ services, and most importantly, optimize your content. Short, engaging videos with catchy thumbnails and proper keywords in titles, descriptions, and hashtags will easily find their viewers. 

Measure the Video Success

You won’t know if your marketing strategy is effective and how to improve any mistakes until you analyze the video performance. Social media analytics tools will assist you a lot if you post your content on one of the platforms. Consider key performance indicators (KPIs), like views, watch time, impressions, view-through rate, and clicks. And also measure the return-on-investment rate. If you invest in video marketing more and don’t see a significant increase in sales, your campaign is not effective. 

Video Marketing on Social Media 

When choosing a platform to post your video, you should learn the optimal length and formats of videos on popular platforms. 

• Facebook has an analytics tool and Creator Studio for generating video content. Consider the video you share is up to 15 minutes and includes captions. 
• Instagram users can post IGTVs from one minute to one hour or Reels for up to fifteen seconds. Generate fun and casual content for Instagram. 
• YouTube videos can have different lengths, but for a marketing video, it’s better to stick to a ten-minute length. You can create an informative video for your YouTube channel. 

Final Thoughts on Video Marketing

Now you see that video marketing can help your business succeed. You can create and post on your site or social media channels various types of marketing videos. The benefits of that content marketing strategy are numerous. We hope you understand the concept of video content marketing better and can bring it to life when needed.