Times have certainly changed. Twenty years ago all you needed was an ad in the phone book and a mailing list to launch a small business marketing campaign. Today you need a website, a social media strategy, an e-mail list, and a blog, just for starters.
Small Business Marketing for Start Ups
Of course, when you are first starting out you can't launch everything at once. It helps to have a plan that starts slowly and builds. Fortunately, today's small business marketing ideas don't cost nearly as much as a yellow pages ad or a direct mail list.
At the heart of any small business marketing plan is the website. You can't get around the importance of having your own website on your own domain name. Most people are not looking in the phone book for business referrals, they are looking on the internet. They are typing their requests in search engines or they are asking their friends on Twitter. If you aren't there, you might as well be nowhere.
Small Businesses Need Their Own Domain
You can find free or shared website plans out there. This is probably one of the worst small business marketing ideas out there. Maybe the price sounds right, maybe they promise you free promotion. You should understand that as long as you are doing business under someone else's domain you are at their mercy. All the effort you put in to building a reputation and getting yourself noticed online accrues to the benefit of the domain holder.
Someday the company that hosts your site may go belly up or sell out or simply change their rules of business and you will be stuck having to start over building credibility from the ground up on your domain. The best strategy for a small business is to start with a small website and build from there. That way all of the online marketing strategy accrues to the small business owner and not the big business domain holder.
Small Business Marketing Growth Plan
Launching a website costs just pennies a day in the beginning. Starting with a website and a WordPress blog you can begin drawing traffic to your site while also circulating your name in free online directories. You can add an email list to your plan and send out weekly tips to keep your name visible to potential clients. Blog posts will provide frequent updates that attract the search engine bots and drive up your rankings. Social marketing will help promote your blog and direct people to your website.expert witness
You don't have to spend a lot of money on a website, especially not in the beginning. Whether you are an accountant or a plumber or a weekend math tutor, a website can be your interactive phone book advertisement for the 21st century. Today's templates make it simple to get started and implement the small business marketing ideas that are keeping other small businesses afloat in an uncertain economic climate.
Marketing in a Recession Benefits Small Businesses
When consumers turn on the TV or listen to the radio, they get bombarded with the words, recession, TARP, unemployment, foreclosures, and other less than positive descriptors. No wonder small businesses are fearful of their long-term viability. But there is one thing small businesses can do to take control of their future. They should increase their marketing efforts. Spend money on marketing because that is the one thing that will increase their chances of surviving the recession.
Traditionally, when a small business faces stagnant or negative revenue growth, they look to cutting expenditures to offset their lack of growth. One of the first areas that typically gets cut is the marketing budget. This practice causes marketers to shake their heads in disbelief. It doesn't make sense that when a company doesn't meet their revenue expectations, they cut the one strategy that is supposed to generate leads and bring in revenue. So why cut the marketing budget? Maybe small business owners are spending their money on strategies that fail to yield a return on investment. Or maybe the owner doesn't know which strategies target their customer base effectively. They could be tired of throwing money down the sink and seeing no customers in return. Maybe their reasoning is all of the above.
Marketers would love for small businesses to deploy internet related marketing and advertising strategies to help them raise their brand awareness and drive traffic to their website. Start the online conversation, get input on your business, determine new market trends, redefine your target customer, offer promotions, gain competitive intelligence, and more importantly, take control of your marketing efforts. Now is the time every business should spend more time and money on marketing". Statistics show that companies who spend more money on marketing in today's environment will be the ones to ride out this recession and exit with a stronger foothold in the marketplace.
Marketing does not start and stop at the small business owner. Every person working for that business should become a marketer and help promote the company and it's value proposition. Marketing is something that employees should do to ensure that their company will prosper during these hard times. Harvard Business School's Rosabeth Moss Kanter summed it up best when she said, "are you facing falling customer orders? Slower renewals? Cancellations? Requests for even deeper discounts? And you have probably cut budgets and jobs more than you like. So now what? When you can't (and shouldn't) cut any further, you can leverage the creativity of the people on your team. In a recession, everyone should be in marketing." What Ms. Kanter is alluding to is that marketing is not a single player game. In times like these, everyone needs to be a marketer.
To small businesses this sounds like a marketing call to action. They must
take control of their future and use smart marketing strategies that yield
a high return on investment. They can finally track their marketing performance,
tweak, and re-implement strategies to achieve a higher return. Small businesses
need to elevate their marketing strategy and get involved in social media
and other internet-related strategies. Small businesses need to start that
conversation with their target audience; they may be surprised with the
results.
Financing Business Expansion for Your Small Company
How you finance the expansion of your business is important. Borrowing and understanding the consequences of borrowing for your financing is extremely important. If you are going to borrow the money to finance the expansion of your business, you need to make sure that you are not going to get yourself into a cash crunch situation. This is where you are going to have a lot of money coming in from new business completed and invoiced but not have enough current cash flow. When you borrow you will be financing new equipment, locations, signage, or perhaps a new work truck on a credit line, lease or loan payments. The initial payments are going to be due before you get your increased income from the expansion in. This can be a major critical problem and we do not want this to happen to you.
When you finance your business location or expansion, you need to make sure that if you will be borrowing and will have to pay that money back with interest charged on the various loan programs. This is going to cut into your cash flow. You could also charge the equipment on a credit card, which is about the same rate as an equipment business lease. Maybe even a little less believe it or not.
The easiest way to get financing for expanding your business is to go down to your bank and get a loan. But you are not going to be able to get a loan if you have been hiding all the cash from your business, not making any deposits. That is something to think about. So many small entrepreneurs start out on the wrong foot hiding or skimming cash, then when they need to expand they have no proof of income or sales and cannot get qualified for a loan.Business & Finance
Now you may be in a position with your business where you can just pay outright for an additional units, equipment, locations or outlets, if this is the case hats off to you're my friend you are truly in a good position. This is a great position to be in but remember that if you put the money out in cash, you no longer have use of that money for other business needs. But it is a nice position to be in to be able to pay up front as your business grows. Remember though, some business investment assets are easily financed while for the purchase of others it is often easier to pay cash or just write a check.
Pkay then you are all set and have determined that the business needs to expand to take advantage of increased sales opportunity in your market place. So, Where to Get Financing? When financing your business expansion, there are many important factors that can make your task a total nightmare (the loan from hell) or extremely easy and a relative piece of cake. The smartest way to finance your business isn't the easiest. The easy way is to pay for it your self out of savings or use a credit card. Unfortunately if you take money out of savings that was there in case of emergency or for a down payment for your house or something equally important, this may put you in jeopardy later if you need that money.
The SBA would be a nice way to go but it takes a long time for them to approve a loan. If you own a home they want you to put it in the loan as collateral in case you don't pay your loan back. By the time they give you the money your investment opportunity is often lost. That big account you got that would nearly pay for all the new equipment has to be started ASAP. If you finance through the SBA 7(A) program, they will not let the loan term extend beyond the term of your franchise, if you are a franchised outlet. You may also be required to pay that loan off before you get any others Hacusa Business Marketing
In summary, when doing business with the SBA you will: Pay more as a down payment; Spend more time in the approval phase; Need more collateral; Face shorter repayment terms; Be very aggravated by the whole process.
Approval of Credit for simple business bank loan takes time. If you are
trying to get credit from your bank or from an SBA loan or something like
that, it takes time. Be prepared to wait anywhere from several days to several
weeks for approval. You need to factor this in if you are thinking you want
to have a new location or more equipment for your current operations. If
you need to expand look at your bottom line, can you afford it? Will your
cash flow be able to handle the new debt if you are delayed for any reason
from local building regulations, an inopportune lawsuit, competitive changes
in the market, downward sector rotation in your industry. Think long and
hard about these issues and if you decide to go for it, check all your options,
interest rates, pay back periods and do what is best in the short term and
the long run.
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