If you’re the typical small business owner, you began your business with an exciting idea, a passion. No one goes into business thinking, “I can’t wait to work on cash flow challenges.” And yet, cash flow is one of the top reasons businesses close their doors. It’s not that they aren’t making money. It’s that managing it is not everyone’s skill set.
Money management challenges are one of the most critical areas you need to master to be successful. This article is here to provide general information. Consult a financial planner or tax professional for more long-term solutions.
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Small businesses everywhere are enjoying the trend of shopping local. Many organizations, including the Chamber, understand the importance of helping the community realize the value of small businesses. Even with this help, your local business still has two major challenges—marketing (making sure people think about you when they’re ready to buy) and convincing them that shopping local is not an expensive undertaking, especially when 69% of people are saying they’re going to reduce non friends and family buying. While pundits believe spending will increase over last year, albeit not be a large amount, the reality of that prediction is yet to be determined.
With the specter of reduced spending hanging over us to dampen this holiday season, you may be wondering what you can do to ensure customer spending is directed your way. Creating a compelling holiday offer can set your business apart and drive more sales. As the palm fronds turn golden and the air gets a tad cooler, Halloween offers businesses a bewitching opportunity to embrace the spirit of the season and boost customer engagement. With a little creativity and a dash of spooky flair, you can draw crowds and appeal to your ideal customers. Here are some spooktacular Halloween-inspired ideas to help your small business shine during this spine-tingling season.
One note of caution: as in all marketing activities, it’s important to know your audience. A scary phantasma, for instance, would likely not appeal to small children just as talk of witches and devils may upset some adults. It’s important to understand your customers and celebrate accordingly. Now, let’s get on with a ghostly good time. We’re down to the last two weeks before Christmas with some of the biggest shopping days of the season still ahead of us. Since every sale can help your future marketing, it’s essential that over the next few weeks you think not only of the money, but the data you can garner from each sale as well. But don’t stress. You still have time to implement these important activities for big results. Things You Need to Do During Small Business Season
Don’t let the biggest sales season go by without gathering this data and implementing some of these activities to help with future marketing: According to SmallBizTrends.com, “The first set of holiday data and analytics from Adobe reveals online spending is set to increase by 33% in 2020 over 2019.” It’s also likely that this trend will continue as we enter into 2021 and if the pandemic numbers keep increasing. People won’t stop shopping, but they may stop shopping in-person.
Online shopping needn’t be owned by large entities like Amazon or Etsy. Your business can excel in online commerce as well. But first, you need to be top-of-mind. One way to do that is to produce valuable content so that when potential customers are on your website, they are moved to action and purchase from you. Online Necessities Before the Content Before you create the content, work on a few things such as:
The last two will help with the content you produce but the content will also help engage your followers and solidify your brand. Now let’s talk about the content you need to drive online sales. Content That Drives Online Sales The content we’re going to suggest creating should be posted on your website, shared on your social media platforms and through sponsored content on Facebook (and any other social media platform that you participate often on), and posted/linked to in your newsletter. Excellent content will do nothing to increase your online sales if people don’t know about it. |
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