29 Ways To Grow Your Singapore Business

singapore-grow-business-payrollhero

2016 is a ‘leap year’, meaning you get ONE extra day, February 29th, to grow your business in Singapore.

We’ve done the hard part and listed down 29 ways on how to grow your business in Singapore. You can grab your kopi and take down some notes because this is going to be a bit lengthy!

Let’s get started, shall we?

29 Growth Tips for Your Business in Singapore

#1 Take Social Media Seriously

Having a dormant Facebook account for your business, and an egg account on Twitter won’t cut it.

2016 is the year where Social Media is evolving at such a rapid state that if you still aren’t taking it seriously, you will be very much left behind.

We’ve written about how you can leverage social media to grow your business this 2016 to help you get started.

If you’re running a restaurant or retail store, now’s the best time to establish a presence on Social Media. The best platforms to use for restaurants and retail businesses is Facebook and Instagram.

Set up your accounts if you haven’t already, and check out our blog post to help you establish strong social media presence in Singapore.

#2 Embrace Technology

technology-payrollhero

Tech can be intimidating, especially for non-millennials. But it can’t be denied just how much technology makes everything easier for your business.

READ: Embrace Technology, Grow Your Business

Imagine going from manually sending emails one by one to automating everythingusing tools like MailChimp. Or sharing worksheets easily with teammates usingGoogle Sheets rather than using Excel – saving the doc – sending an email to your colleague – editing the doc – sending back to you. 

There are so many ways for you to get ahead and embrace technology. We’ll be discussing them in more detail in other items.

#3 Leverage Customer Reviews

Whether you’re running a restaurant in Singapore, a hotel, retail store, or a startup, one thing that you can’t ever have enough of is positive customer reviews.

For restaurants in Singapore, HungryGoWhere is one of the top platforms you want to have positive reviews. Yelp is also another platform you must have a strong presence.

More than that, you should consider giving incentives to your customers to write a positive review on these sites. Ask them to share their experience online, so that when others view your restaurant in the app, they’ll be more enticed to dine at your place.

For hotels, the same works with Agoda, TripAdvisor, and similar sites.

#4 Know Your Numbers

If you’re not the type of business owner who is a certified Math Wiz, then I’m sure you’ll agree that sometimes keeping everything organized ‘numbers-wise’ can be quite tricky.

But for your business to truly take off to the next level, you must know your numbers. Whether it is your internal stats like Google Analytics for your website, or your financial numbers (sales, costs, etc.) you have to be on top of it.

Here’s a quick guide to get you started.

#5 Better Inventory Management

sample-dashboard-of-tradegecko

Sample Dashboard of TradeGecko

A small business owner should keep close track of inventory in relation to seasonality because inventory costs can run up to exorbitant amounts despite the fact that it can be managed.

TradeGecko is an app that can help you with that. The cool thing about this app is that it gives you real time data on your phone. You can access your inventory data from anywhere in the world with a few clicks.

It’s highly important that you monitor your inventory because being prepared is always best for business. It might not seem like a powerful way to grow your business, but sometimes even the dirty work that you don’t love to do is key to get ahead.

#6 Cut Down on Meetings

Another quick growth hack for your business is to clearly evaluate the time spent on meetings. Here’s an excerpt from one of our earlier blog posts:

Meetings can often be directionless and unreasonably lengthy. You may find yourself spending an entire day running from one meeting to the next and ending the day having done nothing significant at all.

Whether the meetings are with your subordinates, potential clients or investors, it’s worth pressing the pause button, going through the goals for the meeting and deciding whether they warrant a meeting at all.

It’s important to cut these meetings down if most of the time is spent going back and forth on decisions that have already been made.

A good way to do this is to outline the goals of the meeting beforehand and go back to these goals at the end of the meetings and check if they have been met.

The more time you save on dodging or cutting down irrelevant meetings, the more time you have to actually do things that scale to grow your business.

Read here for more ‘time management hacks’ for business owners.

#6 Keep Your Employees Happy

PayrollHero Singapore Payroll Team

One of the biggest business secrets in the world is also the most obvious.

Happy Employees = Good for Business

That’s one simple equation that can literally make or break your business. Virgin’s CEO Richard Branson seems to agree.

And because we love you, we’ve made a quick guide to help you crack the formula in making your employees happy. Check it out!

#7 Learn from your Peers

The best way to scale your business is to learn from others who’ve done it. You can achieve this by reading articles from influencers in your space.

Medium is a really nice platform where you can find articles that is related to your industry.

If you want to get started right now, we’ve compiled a list of 16 Entrepreneur Interviews that can give you inspiration and further knowledge to grow your business.

#8 Build a Website for your Business (skip to #9 if you have one)

Did you know that even a completely fake business that has a nice looking website looks more legit than a REAL business that has no website.

Seriously — read this story on how a completely fake business that had no product / real service attracted ready-to-pay customers.

That’s how powerful having an online presence is nowadays. People are more likely to trust a business that has a website and active social media pages than a brand that has no online presence.

So if you’re one of those who still don’t have a website for your business, it’s about time you get one built.

You can head over to Upwork or find a local freelancer if you want to outsource everything. You can find really talented people who are willing to work at an affordable rate.

Go get your website done now!

#9 Build an E-Mail List

Now that you have a website, it’s time to use it to generate more SALES for your business.

Have you checked your email inbox lately and saw tons of emails from a bunch of fashion brands or some restaurants you like? You’re getting their newsletter and promotional emails because at some point in time, you signed up to their email list.

Believe it or not, these businesses are generating a lot of revenue via email marketing — and the best part is that you too can join in on the fun!

You don’t need technical skills to have it set up on your website. Just signup with SumoMe, a free suite of tools that can help you get more emails. It’s 100% free to use, but for more power, you can always upgrade to their PRO version.

With SumoMe, you can start building email up your email lists. You can set up a Welcome Mat just like one of the few that we use in one of our PayrollHero websites.

Here’s a sample:

sumome-tools-by-payrollhero

There are more variations that you can use to collect more emails using SumoMe. Once you’ve built up a list, you can then send strategic emails to market your product and drive more sales.

#10 Start A/B Testing

Okay… now this is a term that isn’t usually thrown around in brick and mortar businesses. It’s much more common in the tech space, but that doesn’t mean you can’t A/B test in your business.

Before we go deeper, here’s a quick snippet on what A/B Testing means.

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Yeah, it says ‘web page’. But A/B testing can be done in literally anything you can imagine.

You can A/B test your restaurant menu, your window display, your Customer Support replies on Twitter; the list goes on!

The objective of doing an A/B testing is to make a data driven decision to grow your business. Whether it’s to generate more sales, or to improve how you treat your customers, the main objective is to get the best possible iteration and stick with it.

If you’ve been using the same menu in your restaurant for years, you can start mixing it up and put out new menus. Just distribute a few pieces and observe how your customers react to it. You can conduct a survey on what they think of your new menu to give you more context.

Obviously, the more data you can get, the better. But you can start testing out small things, and eventually you’ll be able to appreciate what it can do to boost your business.

#11 Use Slack

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Here @ PayrollHero, we use a ton of tools at work. Aside from email, one of our main communication tools is Slack.

If you haven’t heard of it, check out their website to learn more. But basically, Slack is a communication platform where you and your team can start conversations, share files easily, and host meetings. The true power of Slack though is through it’s various integrations.

You can have a bunch of tools integrated with Slack to help streamline many of your day to day business processes. Here’s a short article on how we use Slack at work to give you a better idea.

If you’re thinking that Slack may not be a fit for your business, then let me tell you that I’ve personally seen a local barbershop using Slack. I was surprised at first, then I realized that it’s just a really powerful tool that allows businesses that operate in multiple work locations to be able to communicate and work together.

Try it out and improve your team’s productivity!

#12 Run Social Media Contests

Remember Tip #1? If you’ve invested enough time building your brand pages and community on Social Media, you can start giving back to your fans.

Who doesn’t want a freebie? Everyone does, and social media platforms are the perfect venues to hold a contest. If you’re kinda on the fence about social media contests, these statistics from Hubspot prove that contests are a huge boost to customer engagement and carving out a loyal following:

  • Contests can increase new audiences by 34 percent on average
  • A third of entrants don’t mind receiving email updates from participating brands
  • Running your contest on mobile increases the number of entrants by eight times
  • Sweepstakes (e.g. Instant Win apps) is the most effective way to hold a contest if your goal is to increase fan base (entrants can turn into subscribers) while photo contests work best if you wish to boost customer engagement.

By and large, a social media contest can provide you with these two game-changing benefits:

  • Whether you get 50 or 500 entries, contests will generate buzz and drive people to your restaurant’s social media page.
  • Once you have this people’s attention, you can collect valuable data (such as email addresses for future newsletters or mobile phone numbers for weekly special reminders) from the entries. Be careful not ask for too many details though.

Running social media contests for your business is a great way to boost your following, increase brand awareness, and attract more customers to your store. You should definitely try it!

READ: Here’s One Cebu Restaurant Who Is Nailing It On Social Media

#13 Organize / Attend Meetups

Meetup_Logo_2015

A quick way to attract more customers to your business is by networking.

Events such as conferences, industry meetups or seminars is a great avenue for you to meet other people and network.

By building relationships with likeminded individuals, you’ll be able to share experiences with each other and learn new strategies to growing a business. You can even take things a notch by collaborating with other business owners in launching cross-branding promos and the like.

A good way to get started is by downloading Meetup. It’s an app that helps you connect with groups / individuals in your space. You’ll be able to attend regular ‘meetups’ and meet new people in the process.

#14 Give, Give, Give, for FREE

In the words of the very successful entrepreneur / marketer Gary Vaynerchuk, you have to ‘Jab, jab, jab, right hook’.

This means that as a business, you have to give, give, give, before you ask. Giving away something valuable for free can go a long way in building customer loyalty. You can’t expect customers to just buy from you all the time if you don’t provide them value.

For restaurants / hotels, this could mean giving out discount coupons, or better yet, giving away free accommodation or a romantic dinner for two. If you can build excitement and give back to your customers, you’ll definitely get some positive reviews online and the word will spread quickly.

And when people start talking about your business in a positive light, you’ll be attracting more and more customers.

So yes — don’t be afraid to give out something for free because you’ll reap the rewards later on.

NOTE: We’re practitioners of this concept, which is why we always do our best to create valuable content and tools that we give away to our valued readers forFREE.

You can check out our Restaurant Knowledge Kit here, and our Service Charge tool here. All yours for FREE!

#15 Exercise Regularly

Seriously.

A study shows that entrepreneurs who exercise regularly are more likely to be successful. So don’t take it for granted and start allocating 30 minutes up to an hour a day for exercise.

You can hit the gym, or take a 30 minute swim; whichever you prefer. The healthier you are, the better decisions you make at work.

#16 Use Snapchat

snapchat

Snapchat is one of the fastest rising social media apps of all time. It hasn’t reached Facebook’s level in Singapore yet, but Snapchat is trending upwards quickly.

Snapchat users are primarily teens up to 26 years old. If your business is targeting this age range, then you should be making efforts to market your business on Snapchat.

This trending app isn’t widely used by brands yet, so you have a chance to be one of the top pioneers of Snapchat marketing in Singapore. It’s definitely worth a try.

#17 Attract Top Employees

If you want to grow your business in Singapore, then you definitely need a huge dose of talent to help you get there.

We made a blog post on how to attract top employees for your business. Be sure to check it out and apply some of the tips when you start hiring people.

#18 Ask your Employees for Advice

Ha! Why would a manager do that? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

Social psychologist and author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert Cialdini offers one seemingly counterintuitive yet effective suggestion to making your employees like you: Ask them for advice. This could range from personal advice like book recommendations to professional advice such as asking their opinion about social media platforms that they deem are ideal for your digital marketing campaign.

By and large, this gives the impression that you, as a manager, value their opinions. Bonus points if you follow their advice and update them that you’ve done one of their suggestions!

#19 Business Cards – Give and Receive

It’s 2016 and yes, business cards are still a thing. Although there are now apps that can house business cards in the cloud, the act of giving and receiving physical business cardsare still appreciated by entrepreneurs / execs.

The idea of business cards stem from networking. Building relationships is still a very important part of growing a business. You can’t expect to take off and grow at a rapid scale without having built strong business relationships along the way.

Image from – http://www.cardfaves.com

Image from – http://www.cardfaves.com

Now… how exactly can this help you? First, you have to make sure that you have a healthy stock of them.

Next, make sure your employees have business cards too!

They have lives outside of work — they go out for drinks and meet people. Wouldn’t you want them to hand out a business card with YOUR LOGO and YOUR BUSINESS NAME to new people they meet? It could open up a door of possible opportunities for your business.

Isn’t that much better than just having yourself do the networking for you?

We’ve prepped up a nice little guide to help you make your business card stand out.

#20 Empower Your Employees

There’s no better brand ambassador for your business than your employees. Make sure that they are heard and empowered in your company.

Motivate them, understand them, and hear them out. Sometimes employees aren’t as engaged and focused because they don’t feel that you trust them or they’re not being given a chance to showcase their skills.

READ: 3 Reasons Why Employees Get Bored

The best you can do is to talk to them and motivate them. Ask them what you can do for them.

Once you know what’s on your employees’ mind, you can then help them reach their full potential. Sometimes, growing your business should start from within.

#21 More Days Off 

landing-stage-sea-holiday-vacation

This applies for both you and your employees.

Now, before the pitchforks start coming in, understand that in order for you to be at your best, you also need to unwind and relax a bit.

You can’t keep up the 24/7 grind and not burn out. The same goes for your employees.

So if you want to grow your business this year, you MUST take vacations.

You can even organize a company-wide retreat so you and your employees can bond, relax, and clear their minds. After that, you can expect a more vibrant and rejuvenated team that’s ready to work harder than ever!

VIDEO: PayrollHero Leave Management in Action

#22 Sponsor Events

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Depending on what industry you’re in, you might want to consider hopping into Events Marketing.

There are more and more rave parties and events happening almost every day. There are beach parties, club parties, you name it.

Being a sponsor in one of these events can give your brand huge exposure from potential customers. Not only that, you can also generate sales in these events because most event organizers will allow you to put up your own stall in the event venue or play your marketing video in front of thousands of attendees.

You can easily recoup whatever amount you spent to get into the event just on on-the-ground sales alone. And after the event? You can expect more prospects checking out your page / website thanks to the exposure you got.

#23 Maintain a Record of Expenses

As mentioned in tip #4, you can’t grow your business if you don’t know your numbers. This is why it’s very important to maintain a record of your expenses.

All too often, we start the year enthusiastically, taking not of expenses and filing them meticulously to find ourselves a month later struggling to keep up with our expense records.

It is easier with some help. Apps like Expensify or Mint help you keep track of your accounts, expenses and income. If you are a small business owner, these apps are a good place to start.

Of course, as you grow bigger, you will have to move to accounting software that can keep up with the growth of your business.

#24 Join the Conversation on Twitter

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Twitter is a great platform to learn more about your customers. If you use it right, you can really take advantage of its powerful search tool.

You can join any conversation on your space and attract potential customers.

Imagine an angry customer of Restaurant X. The angry customer didn’t enjoy the super expensive burger he ate. Now, as a burger chain yourself, you can then hop right in and tweet the said angry customer — offer him a free burger if he visits your store on the same day.

Doing that not isn’t only good for publicity… You can also potentially earn a loyal customer for life!

That’s just one way of using Twitter for growing your business. We’ll go deeper into this in future blog posts.

#25 Use Chat Apps for Customer Support

It’s 2016, and by now you should be more accessible to your customers more than ever.

People naturally hate waiting, so a displeased customer isn’t too happy waiting for an answer to their concerns via email.

A good way to make your business more accessible to customers is by using Chat apps. You can either set up a Zopim chat box on your website, or use Facebook Messenger so that customers can chat with you in real-time.

If you don’t really have staff who can man the Chat account 24/7, you can use Twitter instead.

#26 Automate Your Internal Processes

If there’s anything at all that your company is still doing manually, it may be time to reevaluate your processes.

Thanks to technology, a lot of internal processes can now be streamlined and automated. So if there’s still something in your business that takes up too much manual labor, such as doing payroll, it’s best to outsource it or simply use a service to make your life easier.

payrollhero-cool-logoPayrollHero offers a complete end-to-end solution to your time, attendance, HR, and payroll processes. We help businesses grow by giving them back one of the most important assets they have.

#27 Trimming the Fat

No, I’m not urging you to lose weight…

What I mean is that you should start re-evaluating your company from top to bottom. This doesn’t mean you have to fire your employees left and right. What you should be doing is really taking time to look into the different challenges that your employees are facing.

Are some of them doing work that they’re not supposed to do? Should you be cutting down on a few tasks that can easily be outsourced? Is there someone who is unhappy in your organization? 

You have to wear the HR hat and clean things up because there might be something going on internally that is hindering your company from getting to the next level.

#28 Incorporate Great Graphics using Canva

For your business to stand out this year, you need to produce more visually appealing content.

Thanks to Canva, you don’t need elite photoshop skills or a Graphic Designer on your payroll to produce high quality and visually appealing images.

Canva-PayrollHero

Canva in action.

As you can see in the image above, there are lots of free templates to choose from. You can also upload your own image, and add your own caption with tons of fonts to choose from.

PayrollHero-Blog-Ads

Here’s me adding a caption to an image I uploaded. It’s simple and easy, you can do it in less than 5 minutes!

Canva-PayrollHero-2

And the best part is that all of that is 100% FREE. Canva does offer a paid business version if you want to take things up a notch, so do check out their website for more details.

 #29 Take Action

Reading through this blog post won’t get you anywhere unless you take action.

One bad habit of people is that we tend to consume too much content, but get lost in the shuffle at some point. We either don’t follow through and take action, or we simply forget it altogether.

Now for you to truly grow your business in Singapore, you must learn how to act fast and take action. This doesn’t just apply to following the tips laid out in this article, but moreso in making business decisions.

You have to be decisive, smart, and ready to get your feet wet. The only thing that’s standing between you and success is not taking action.

So go out there and take that leap you need to help your business grow! 

Okay, that’s the last pun I promise!


Please tell us your thoughts on this! We’d love to hear from you.

Good luck with your business and may you make the most out of this 1 extra day of 2016!

[GET] FREE Service Charge Tool to Automate Your Payment

restaurant-payrollhero-service-charge-tool

If you work in the restaurant or hotel industry, you’re most probably familiar with Service Charges.

Here’s what’s written on the Philippines Labor Code:

“Art. 96. Service Charges.—All service charges collected by hotels, restaurants and similar establishments shall be distributed at the rate of eighty five percent (85%) for all covered employees and fifteen percent (15%) for management. The share of the employees shall be equally distributed among them. In case the service charge is abolished, the share of the covered employees shall be considered integrated in their wage.”

We’ve also written about Service Charges in the Philippines in one of our Knowledge Base articles, which you can read if you want to learn more.

In layman’s term, this means that employees get 85% of the service charges, while management keeps 15%. Seems simple right?

Unfortunately, paying service charges to employees can still get a bit tricky. There’s still going to be a lot of manual computation involved, and quite frankly, you surely don’t have that much time in your hands. After all, you’ve got a business to run!

And if there’s one thing we love to do here at PayrollHero, it’s to save valuable time and make everything easier for our clients.

So today, client or not, you can have exclusive access to our basic Service Charge Tool. Awesome, right?

All you have to do is sign up here to get your Service Charges Tool for FREE.

P.S. We can’t keep this available forever, so we are only offering this for a short period of time. So don’t miss out and get it now!

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Of course, with PayrollHero everything in your payroll process can be completely automated, including Service Charges. So feel free to reach us at sales@payrollhero.com if you’re interested to learn more.

More Than Just a Payroll Solution

payrollhero-benefits-features

If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware that we are a time, attendance, and payroll solution that meets your company’s needs. That’s true.

But let’s move away from that for a while and let’s look deeper into what PayrollHero truly is.

You see, PayrollHero is a cool app that lets you clock in to work with a selfie, and generate payroll with just a few clicks. That’s one of our biggest selling points, and one of the biggest reasons why our clients love us.

But that’s not why our product is genuinely enjoyed by some of the best companies in the Philippines and Singapore.

The real reason why our product is valuable to your business is because we save you time.

Time Management Redefined

Beyond the #selfie clock ins, facial recognition, leave management feature, and many more, what PayrollHero wants more than anything is to give you back the time you lose from outdated time, attendance, and payroll methods.

One of our clients, The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Philippines, shared their experience on how PayrollHero makes their payroll processes faster and more efficient.

Here’s a snippet from CBTL’s CEO Walden Chu:

We wanted a payroll solution that was cloud based and built for the Philippine business environment, PayrollHero was exactly what we were looking for and took our payroll processing time for 700 employees from 16 days to 5 minutes” – Walden Chu, CEO, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Philippines

WATCH: Walden Chu’s Testimonial on How PayrollHero Helps Their Business

16 days to 5 minutes.

That’s 144 working hours (or more, due to OT) brought down to just 5 minutes. I don’t know about you, but that’s A LOT of time saved.

Walden-Chu-PayrollHero-Testimonial

And that’s not all… The time that our ridiculously efficient product saves results into a world of other benefits for businesses.

Time Saved Results to Happier Employees

Because time, attendance, and payroll becomes easier to do, employees who act as primary stewards of these processes are taken a huge load off of their shoulders.

It’s not a secret that HR staff, payroll administrators, and accounting / finance employees are the ones that are most affected by the hassles of traditional payroll processes.

With PayrollHero, these employees can relax and focus on other important aspects of their work such as recruiting and employee engagement (for HR), and internal audit / accounting for those in Finance.

The system was not made to replace these employees, but rather, to help them become more efficient and less stressed with the rigours of traditional payroll. A more streamlined, easy, and hassle-free payroll solution can make these employees less stressed and happier at work.

Happy Employees are Good for Business

It has long been proven that happy employees are the best brand ambassadors you can ever have.

The happier your employees are, the more energized and motivated they are to work; and those little things eventually add up. Your customers will notice how happy and engaged your employees are, and this in return, causes them to love your brand even more.

Word of mouth referral goes a long way in growing your business. So the happier your employees are, the more customers you will attract. It’s a domino effect that you can take advantage of.

Beyond Business

Of course, making employees happy isn’t just done to boost your profits. As an employer, it’s important to always put a premium to your employees’ happiness.

With PayrollHero’s selfie clock in, we are able to help your employees start the work day with a smile.

Check out this video of how employees clock in and out of work using PayrollHero’s TeamClock App:

Not only do employees start the work day with a smile, they also clock out happily as they get ready to come home to their loved ones.

The overall mood of employees skyrocket, and because of this, their personal lives improve as well.

Right Person. Right Place. Right Time.

Not only does PayrollHero save you time; we also save you money.

Biometrics and time cards for time and attendance can be tricky. For one, it can easily be gamed by dishonest employees. There’s the case of buddy punching and ghost employees that is pretty much prevalent in the Philippines.

Take a look at how much money you can lose just because of buddy punching:

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Even if you only have 1 buddy punching employee (which is very unlikely), you’ll be losing P4,000 a year! Now, in most cases, for companies with a very unreliable time and attendance process, buddy punching is more common.

If you had 500 employees, and 10 of them are regular buddy punchers, you could lose as much as P40,000 a year

With PayrollHero, you are LITERALLY free from buddy punchers because our system makes sure that the right person clocks in at the right place, at the right time.

You can learn more about Selfies vs Biometrics in this post.

Time to Make a Change

If you’ve made it this far down, then I can only assume that you are considering PayrollHero for your business. Whether you are running a restaurant in the Philippines, or a retail store in Singapore; or even any business in Asia, there’s just so much PayrollHero can offer for you.

time-attendance-with-PayrollHero

Handling time, attendance, and payroll for your business will never be the same once you go for PayrollHero.

It’s time to make a positive change for your business. Let us help you save money, and most importantly, save precious time for you and your employees.

If this is something that you’re interested in, we’d love to chat with you. You can contact us at sales@payrollhero.com or visit any of our websites: Philippines, Singapore, Global, to learn more.

How to Grow Your Business in 2016 with Social Media Marketing

Growing your business in 2016 won’t be a walk in the park. After all, more and more businesses are popping out literally every second. Make that 3 startups born every second!

Competition will surely be stiffer this year. You’re going to have to exert a lot more effort just to get noticed by potential customers.

It’s going to be an uphill climb just to increase foot traffic to your restaurant. After all, what’s stopping your target customer from checking out your competitor’s profile on Zomato (for restaurants) and choosing them instead?

But today, we’ll do our best to help you learn how you can beat out your competition and drive more sales with ZERO marketing budget.

Yes, you read that right! We’ll be teaching you tips and tricks to boost your sales this 2016 without having to spend a dime on ads.

Let’s begin!

Social Media Marketing

What You Need: 

  • Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Account
  • Time
  • Canva account (it’s free!)

How it Works:

Assuming you already have an account on these social media platforms, (if not, go ahead and make one now!), the first thing you have to do is optimize your profile.

Fill in the important details such as company info, a short bio, Operating Hours (for Facebook), and a link to your website.

Here’s a look at well-optimized Social Media pages of restaurants in the Philippines:

Facebook-Nice-Profile-1

Niner Ichi Nana’s Facebook page has everything filled up right: Profile Picture, Cover Photo, Contact Number, and official website.

Consumers nowadays want to know EVERYTHING about what you offer before they buy, so it’s best to have a link to your website so your potential customer can view your menu beforehand and get a better feel of what you have to offer.

It also helps that they know your operating hours and contact details.

Here’s a look at Chili’s Philippines Instagram Account:

chilis-philippines-instagram

Nice looking posts, and as you can see up top, they have a link back to their website.

On Instagram, the Bio / Profile Description is the only place where you can place a link, so it’s a must to have a link back to your website in that section.

Once you’ve fixed up your Social Media Accounts, you can now post updates, and engage with your followers.

It doesn’t matter if you have 30 followers or 30,000; answering questions and providing valuable updates to your followers will go a long way.

Make sure you are posting good quality content on your Social Media pages. Invest on creating nice visuals as it has been proven that posts with images convert higher on Social Media than ones without. Humans are naturally visual creatures, so take advantage of that.

But of course, we did tell you at the start of this post that this guide will allow you to grow your business in 2016 without having to spend. Yet producing great social media posts with nice visuals will require hiring a Graphic Designer…

Not quite!

Thanks to Canva, you don’t need elite photoshop skills or a Graphic Designer on your payroll to produce high quality and visually appealing images.

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Canva in action.

As you can see in the image above, there are lots of free templates to choose from. You can also upload your own image, and add your own caption with tons of fonts to choose from.

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Here’s me adding a caption to an image I uploaded. It’s simple and easy, you can do it in less than 5 minutes!

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And the best part is that all of that is 100% FREE. Canva does offer a paid business version if you want to take things up a notch, so do check out their website for more details.

Now that you have your Social Media Accounts ready, and an awesome tool to do your visuals, now what?

Next step would be to post consistently, and keep growing your following. A good way to do this is to cross-promote your other Social Media profiles.

Here’s how Philippine fashion retail giant Penshoppe does it:

On Facebook:

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and Twitter:

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The brand is consistently cross-promoting their Social Media profiles which allows them to target and market to different kind of consumers. Do the same and you will be able to grow your fanbase faster.

Pro-Tip: Eventually, as you continue to post, you’ll be able to see when your customers are most active on Social Media. By using Facebook and Twitter’s in-house analytics system and your own experiments and tests, you’ll be able to maximize the reach of your posts even without spending on Social Media ads!

What’s the ROI?

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So what’s the ROI of Social Media Marketing?

While there’s no concrete answer to that, it’s not a secret that consumers love to do background checks before they even spend a single peso on your product.

This means that interested customers will be checking your website, Facebook, Instagram, and maybe even your Twitter account. And whatever impression they get from your online presence will dictate whether they want to buy from you.

So you may not be able to circle in a concrete number in terms of ROI, but social media marketing is crucial to growing your business.

You can literally gain customers or lose them just because of your online / social media presence. 

By taking these important measures, you can grow your restaurant or retail business in the Philippines this 2016 easily. Now start opening your accounts and get to work! 🙂

P.S. Watch out for our upcoming post on how you can use Zomato to market and drive customers to your restaurant in the Philippines.

9 Ways to Promote Your Restaurant in the Philippines 2016 Edition

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Promoting and growing a restaurant business is easier said than done.

On top of the day-to-day operations of running a restaurant, the actual marketing and getting the word out is also a crucial part of growing the business.

PayrollHero understands the challenges and pain points of restaurant owners. Managing an entire restaurant and keeping not just customers, but also employees, is a lot of work to do. So we’re doing our best to help out and give something back for restaurant owners in the Philippines.

We’ve prepared an infographic on how to promote your restaurant in the Philippines. It’s easy to do, and most importantly, you can take action today!

9 Ways to Promote Your Restaurant in the Philippines

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These tips may be just what you need to put your restaurant over the top this 2016.

If you’re a restaurant owner in the Philippines, you can share this with your marketing team or do the dirty work yourself. Eventually, your marketing efforts will pay off and you’ll see an increase in foot traffic to your restaurant.

BONUS: Here’s one restaurant in the Philippines who is nailing it on Social Media. Try and implement the same things to your business and sooner or later you’ll see results.

Keep it locked in on our blog as we offer more and more business tips for your growing your restaurant in 2016. So if you still haven’t, sign up below to be part of our weekly newsletter to get awesome updates delivered straight to your inbox!

If you want to chat about how else you can improve your restaurant processes, such as your HR and payroll, feel free to get in touch with us here: www.payrollhero.ph

Say Goodbye to your Old Philippine Peso Bills

Better check your wallet and piggy banks right now, because according to the Philippine government, December 31, 2015 will be the last time you can make use of your old bills.

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So if you still have some old bills from your last payroll, you better spend it NOW or turn it over to any bank for exchange.

Here’s the full image of the guidelines for your reference:

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The government is giving Filipinos one last chance to get rid of these old Philippine peso bills. By 2017, all old paper bills will be rendered useless so don’t forget to turn them over to the nearest bank this coming 2016.

Top New Year’s Resolutions for 2016

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Greeting the year ahead will never be complete without the traditional “New Year’s Resolutions”.

From losing weight, to saving lots of money to buy a brand new car, people from around the world welcome the New Year with personal lists of pacts, goals, and promises that serve as a motivation for what’s to come.

Curious to know what people are writing on their list?

Here are some of the Top New Year’s Resolutions of 2016. (infographic from Digimind)

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How about you? What are your New Year’s Resolutions for 2016?

Let us know in the comments section below!

Happy New Year! 

PayrollHero’s Top 10 Posts of 2015

Time flies by so fast! 2015 is already coming to a close.

In just a few days, we’re waving goodbye to the year that was, as we say Hello to 2016.

We’re excited for the coming year since YOU have tons of stuff to watch out for! We’ll be making more exciting content for you to read, watch, and listen to.

But for now, let’s take a quick look back at PayrollHero’s Top 10 Posts of 2015.

1.) ATM Withdrawal Limits for Philippine Banks

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Our most viewed post of 2015 is this quick guide on the ATM Withdrawal Limits for Philippine Banks.

There are a lot of banks in the Philippines and they all have their respective ATM withdrawal limits. On top of that, the banks also charge fees per transaction, so this article gives people a better understanding of which bank to use so that fees can be minimized as much as possible.

2.) How To Prepare An Alphalist for the Philippines

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has issued certain guidelines and basic information requirements in preparing a company’s alphalist… But not everyone knows exactly how to do it.

PayrollHero gives you a quick overview on how to prepare an Alphalist in the Philippines.

3.) 8 Restaurant Recommendations In Fort Bonifacio, Philippines

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Because we love you, we’ve listed some of our favorite restaurants in Fort Bonifacio (BGC). Check out our blog post and maybe you can even spend your New Year Celebration in one of these restaurants!

4.) Visit to Manila’s White Cross Children’s Home

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Although the team’s trips to White Cross happened in 2014, this story was still one of our top performing blog posts in 2015.

The team documented their journey to White Cross Children’s Home in San Juan, Philippines with lots of pictures. You can see them all in this post.

5.) What is the SSS? (Philippines)

There are thousands of people everyday who search about SSS (Social Security System). And this short blog post gives you an overview of what SSS in the Philippines is all about.

BONUS: For a detailed guide on how to compute your SSS deductions and other payroll concerns, you can download our FREE Payroll Kit here.

6.) Employer Contributions in the Philippines: Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG)

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Employers also benefit from the wealth of information we share on our blog. In this case, we wrote about PAG-IBIG and how employers (and employees) should handle it.

7.) The Philippines Restaurant Industry at a Glance #infographic

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We created an infographic on the Restaurant Industry in the Philippines. It gives you a quick glance on key stats on the restaurant landscape in the Philippines.

Feel free to share this infographic on your own website or social media pages.

8.) Employee Contributions in the Philippines: BIR and SSS

Yet another top performing post about SSS in the Philippines! Check out this blog post, which is more detailed than the one mentioned above.

In this article, we’ve also provided a link to all the necessary BIR forms.

9.) Employer Contributions in the Philippines: PhilHealth

As you may have noticed, PayrollHero blog readers are really loving our quick guides on information about government deductions/benefits.

This one covers everything you need to know about PhilHealth. (Get our FREE PayrollHero Kit here)

10. An Introduction to Domain Driven Design

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And lastly, the PayrollHero team was able to enjoy two days of intense training on Domain Driven Design with Kiro Harada.

In this blog post, we shared what we learned from Kiro, so you too can be part of the experience. This learning retreat was attended by team members from Manila, Whistler, and Singapore.

Conclusion

It was an amazing experience for us this 2015. We enjoyed writing and creating awesome content for you guys!

Rest assured that we’ll keep delivering only the best this coming 2016! So don’t forget to visit our blog regularly, okay?

Happy New Year, everyone!

FREE Payroll Kit for All Employees

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If you’re an employee and you’re reading this, then you’re in luck!

The PayrollHero team prepared the Ultimate Payroll Kit that answers all your questions and concerns regarding the following topics:

  • How to Compute 13th Month Pay
  • How to Compute Holiday Pay & Rest Day Pay
  • How to Compute your BIR Taxes
  • How to Compute your Government Deductions (SSS, PAG-IBIG, PhilHealth)
  • How to Compute Night Differential Pay
  • How to Compute Your OT Pay

All these and more for FREE! Click here to download your FREE Payroll Guide in the Philippines.

Aside from providing smooth and efficient HR, Time, Attendance, and Payroll processes to businesses, we also provide a wealth of information for employees regarding matters concerning their payroll.

So if you always found yourself making a Google search on “How to Compute 13th Month Pay” or “How much is my SSS deduction”, then our free PayrollHero Kit will do wonders for you.

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You won’t have to Google about these payroll concerns in the Philippines ever again. Simply get the guide, keep it in a folder (It’s in PDF format), and consult it whenever you want to know something that concerns your payroll.

Not only do you get a more clear and defined answer to your questions; you also won’t have to bug your company HR with trivial questions anymore. You will be well-equipped with all the basic and necessary info about your payroll. Sounds awesome, right?

So download the free PayrollHero Kit now and learn everything you need to know about your payroll today!

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Top Industries with the Highest 13th Month Pay Bonus

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In just a few days, you’re going to be receiving your hard-earned 13th month pay from your employer. Although some have already received theirs as early as November, majority of the Filipino workforce regularly receives their 13th month pay during December.

Yes… Just in time for your Christmas shopping! (Check out our Top 5 Christmas Shopping Hacks for 2015 here).

But not all 13th month pay in the Philippines were created equal.

Some industries generally offer higher bonuses than the rest. Check out this infographic from MoneyMax.ph to find out which industry is the most generous when it comes to 13th month pay.

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If you want to know how to easily compute your 13th month pay, you can check out our quick guide here.

So what can you say about this? Are you happy with your bonus?

Let us know in the comments section below!