5 Keys to Running a Successful Business

There are a handful of principles that work in virtually every situation when you’re trying to establish and grow a business, reported FoxBusiness. They work if you’re trying to build an email list or close a sale. If you ignore them, you are almost certain to fail. If you do them halfway, you will soon be standing there watching your business as it is eclipsed by someone who is following all the principles, all the time.

So let’s not waste any more of our time. Here they are:

1. Use Few Words

From an elevator pitch to a killer headline, the overriding principle is to use as few words as possible. If you can’t tell someone what you’re doing in a few sentences, your only hope is to eventually work for the government. If you can’t explain the benefit of your product or service in an extremely short sentence or phrase, give up. Look at these examples:

• 1,000 songs in your pocket.
• Lose 5 pounds in 1 week.
• How to avoid lawyers.
• Increase conversions 132%.

You can probably think of several short phrases that got you to go to a web page, or push “add to cart” or fill out a contact form. Putting a well-crafted, short, descriptive phrase in front of your ideal customer is very powerful.

2. Make Things Easy and Obvious

Humans are by their very nature:

1. Lazy
2. Busy
3. Both A and B

I don’t care how you answer that, because the implications for what you do are the same: You have to make things as easy—and obvious—as possible. This is true whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or a website, but it’s doubly true if you’re trying to accomplish something on the Internet, where patience is as scarce as hens’ teeth.

I am still constantly amazed how small Internet conventions that cause me no navigational problems are major stumbling blocks for others. Because you’re reading this on a sophisticated website frequented almost exclusively by people who live on the bleeding edge of new technologies, you are light years ahead of most Internet users.

Dumb down everything. Make your webpage logic simple and obvious.

3. Sell the Benefit

Look at those sales phrases under the first point I made about keeping things short and sweet. Each one expresses a tangible benefit in six words or less. For many in business, it becomes difficult to separate the features from the benefits. Further, we tend to become so deeply in love with the features we have developed, we think that everyone should love them just as much.

Janet Jackson had a hit with the song What have you done for me lately? That’s what you should always be asking yourself in regards to your customers, and the important word is “done.” How will the action you want your prospects to perform benefit them?

4. Repeat Everything

If you’ve watched a Little League game, you’ve heard the guys on the field yell, “Hey, batter batter! Hey, batter batter! Hey, batter batter!” They repeat everything! Things that work and are important should be repeated.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to share or credit something in the social media, but the page I was on didn’t have sharing icons or links to the social media accounts. They were on the front page, but not on inside pages. And because I might just be a little bit lazy sometimes (see #2 above) it’s possible I’ll just drop the idea of sharing or crediting the source.

Landing pages also fall in this category. You should have a great landing page for all the different attributes or “hooks” that will pull someone into your website. They are almost free and it’s impossible to have too many.

5. Always Distill

You need to have good analytics that show you what is working and what isn’t. With that information you are able to do more of the good stuff and stop doing the bad stuff. Pretty soon you have a business or website whose performance has significantly improved.

A business is never “finished.” If you aren’t always involved in an improvement project, the competition will eventually pass you.