Archives for December 2018
Learning About Your Market
If there’s one thing you need to understand as a business owner, it’s your market. If you don’t understand who you’re selling to and why they’re buying then you’re decision making is arbitrary: not guided by anything, it’s simply shot in the dark after shot in the dark and eventually that ends in closed businesses – sooner rather than later.
If, for example, you make fresh homemade food and so you’re looking to get your product in grocery stores, you’re going to need to do your market research thoroughly. You will have to listen to your customers and learn from them just how you can target them most effectively, in your stores, with your products, and with your marketing. Working with a market research company will help you out here: they can provide not just the work of surveying customers but expert interpretation that turns that raw data into insights that will drive your business forward! Click through to find out more about working with market research firms.
Demographics
The first thing you need to look into are your demographics. Who are these people who are shopping with you? Who makes up your market? Learning about the demographics of your market will tell you about the age of your customers, where they’re from, where they get they news, where else they shop and perhaps most importantly, how much money they have to spend!
A handy way to get hold of a demographic breakdown of your market is to pay for a question or two in what’s known as an omnibus survey. This collects questions from dozens of different brands for a relatively low price. It’s not a good way to get deep answers from your customers but it’s a great way to find out who they are! Even if you’ve only got one question in there – to help you pick out relevant customers from the great mass of respondents – you also receive the full demographic dataset! If you can interpret that, you can learn a great deal about your market.
Brand Strength
Your brand is one of the most important assets you have, but it’s a complex issue. A brand is your customers’ understand of your business, built from all the different ways they can interact with it. You can’t affect that directly. You can try to influence it with adverts, with sales, with designs, but to make sure all your efforts are having the desired effect you need to check in with your customers.
Brand tracker surveys are a good health check for your brand, and if you keep up the research effort throughout the year, you’ll find you’ll find you can start to predict which choices have good outcomes and which ones bad, so you can optimise your marketing for your market and meet with success just when you need it!
What Happens If You Struggle to Pay Your IVA
Once you’ve entered into an IVA you’ll be aware that it’s legally binding between you and your creditors for a period of 4-5 years.
Whilst your chosen Insolvency Practitioner will have discussed your long-term intentions and plans things sadly can (and do) go wrong – including not being able to pay.
Your commitment to pay the set monthly amount to your Insolvency Practitioner can occur for a number of reasons, with one of the most popular one being unemployment. Of course, you might not have planned on losing your job (for whatever reason) when you first entered into the IVA but redundancies and job losses are often a sad fact of life.
What should I do if I can’t pay?
The first thing to do is to contact your Insolvency Practitioner and explain the reason why you’ll be unable to meet your monthly payment. By now you should understand what an IVA is and how it works.
If you miss a payment then you’ll probably be sent a ‘notice of breach’. This will ask you why payment hasn’t been made and will ask how you intend to rectify the situation. It’s important to engage with your Insolvency Practitioner as quickly as possible so that you can work together to find a solution.
What if I just don’t pay?
If you fail to pay within a reasonable period of time (usually 2 or 3 months) then your IVA can do one of three things:
- They can change the terms of the IVA. For example they might look to lower the repayments if you’ve explained your current circumstances and reasons for non-payment.
- They can end your IVA and issue a certificate of termination.
- They can apply to the Court to make you bankrupt. This course of action can lead to serious consequences and it’s important you take timely advice if this is looking likely to happen.
Can my Insolvency Practitioner help in any way?
Yes – but only if you get in touch with them straightaway. He or she may be able to give you a payment break for a few months by relying on the IVA Protocol. This is a voluntary code of practice which all practitioners and most creditors have now signed up to. The key aim of the protocol is to ensure that all IVA company’s processes are clear and fair.
If you’re eligible for a payment break then the length of your IVA will simply be extended to cover any payments you might have missed. The length of any payment break will depend on when your IVA was set up. If, for example, it was set up after 1st January 2016 then you’ll be entitled to a maximum period of 9 months.
The most important thing – whatever the reason for non-payment – is to seek advice from your Insolvency Practitioner as soon as possible. Remember, if for any reason your IVA fails (i.e. due to non-payment) then you’ll have to find other means of repaying your creditors and also find the means of repaying your Insolvency Practitioner under the terms of your agreement.
Keep Them Busy This Year With Cheap Holiday Activities for Kids
Soon your kids will have a lengthy holiday break and it will be up to you to keep them occupied. You don’t have to spend a lot of money taking them to see the latest light show or event. Here are some creative and cheap holiday activities for kids to help you keep your kids happy (and keep your sanity) over the holidays.
