Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, generating 44 percent of U.S.
economic activity and employing half its workforce. With Inauguration Day here,
small business owners and entrepreneurs should be aware of how the new Biden
administration will affect them. Of course, the immediate concern is addressing the
pandemic effectively by providing relief with grants and loans. However, long-term
effects, such as tax increases, wages, and shifts in Chinese policy, will also make a
substantial impact. Here is what to potentially expect from the Biden administration if
you maintain a small business.
FIGHTING COVID-19
Battling the coronavirus is Biden’s #1 priority. More than 400,000 small businesses have
collapsed since the crisis began. Until the FDA-approved vaccine resolves this
tumultuous era, small business owners can expect new stimulus through the Paycheck
Protection Program (PPP). The Biden campaign promises immediate action to extend
relief to struggling small businesses and also plans to provide accounting and legal
advice, which may provide the much needed edge to compete with more prominent
companies.
MAIN STREET VS WALL STREET
Main Street is a colloquial term referring to small businesses as the polar opposite of
Wall Street. The new administration will likely shift focus from Wall Street’s economy to
Main Street, as stated in the Biden election campaign. The President-Elect plans to
increase individual and corporate taxes, but this increase will primarily affect large
corporations and citizens earning over $400,000/year, while 86% of small businesses
make less than $100,000.
LONG-TERM EFFECTS
● Research suggests no correlation between minimum wage increases and a rise
in business failures. If anything, the evidence leans towards the opposite.
● The China-United States trade war is likely to end with the new administration,
which would decrease production costs through outsourcing.
The new Biden administration brings a new sentiment of hope for small businesses and
entrepreneurs, especially in the form of short-term relief. However, more action can be
taken by business owners to ensure their financial success by advertising to potential
customers. Most consumers claim to purchase products/services discovered on radio
and television broadcasts. Therefore, if you’re a small business owner or an
entrepreneur, invest in your business’ future by contacting us.
We specialize in securing the best rates possible in order for you to see the best ROI and spend your advertising dollars wisely.
As small business owners know, there are many challenges to be faced when starting your own company. One of those obstacles is generating leads. Finding the unique way to attract people to your business requires strategy, patience, and creativity.
Here are 5 ways to engage potential customers and get them on the path of eventually buying your product or service.
1. Strong Branding
Customers love authentic companies who are strong with their message and consistent with their content. Millennials are typically more likely to support a brand if they feel they are reliable. (Check out our blog on millennials here!) So, don’t try and be everything to everyone.
Keep your brand strong by having a clear definition of who you are and maintain this definition throughout your content, visuals, and products.
2. Newsletter
If you don’t have a newsletter, you are missing out on ample opportunities to engage with potential customers. Make sure you put a newsletter sign up in every possible place that makes sense on your website.
Email campaigns are a great way to fight your way through the internet noise and be seen. Create your newsletters to include industry news, product announcements, and insights from your company. For more tips, check out our post on email marketing here.
3. Blogs
Nowadays, most reliable companies have a blog. It allows your company complete control of what is said on your niche topic and it also allows opportunities to have the undivided attention of your reader.
Create posts with statistics and credible information to authenticate your brand and allow your readers to learn. Give it real value and don’t make it all about you. Of course, there will be room to promote your product or service. But foremost, relay engaging information and join conversations that are prevalent in your field.
4. Networking at Events
Don’t forget about the real world in this predominately digital market. By going to events, you will meet people, expand your network and gain referrals.
Bring business cards and put yourself out there. Even if the event doesn’t directly pertain to your business, go anyway as it can bring about valuable contacts and leads.
5. Offers
You want to get potential customers to visit your website and an offer is a great way to do that. But keep in mind, that the offer must have enough value to a visitor to merit providing their personal information in exchange for access to it. An example of this would be creating an ebook on something prevalent and informative to your niche, or a special coupon code that offers a discount if the customers provide their email address.
Then you can use this information to send out your newsletter or latest blog post via email, which will keep your customers coming back for more.
Once you put all these elements together, you will establish brand awareness, connect with the potential customer and find what strategy works best for your company.
For more information on lead generation or how to market your small business, contact us here at Media PartnersWorldwide via phone (562) 439-3900 or email [email protected]
Starting a business can be overwhelming, to say the least. Because small business owners have to be whatever their small business needs, it can be difficult to master all the nuances that go into sales or marketing. And if you are not a salesperson, to begin with, you face an even bigger challenge.
However, innovative marketing ideas that will set you apart from competitors is essential.
Here are some marketing tips and tricks to help you with your startup or small business:
1.Create Credibility
Networking and sharing your expertise with others can help you prove your abilities to your community. After establishing your niche, channel your energy into assembling a culture around your business. You can do this by offering an insider’s perspective to those on the outside.
Entrepreneur.com gives a few suggestions on how to achieve this: ” A blog can offer laymen the chance to understand your trade with a new perspective. A webinar or a podcast can help viewers (or listeners) feel like experts in your field. Speaking at an incubator, expo or niche event can put you in the role of the teacher and allow you to share your groundbreaking ideas with an immediate audience.”
These methods will establish a level of credibility in your field, which is more apt to generate interested customers.
2. Get “Out There”
Allow with establishing your niche and increasing your credibility, you need to “be everywhere.” You want to be that brand that people notice when they’re walking down the streets.Even if they don’t know what your startup does, they’ll recognize your name.
This means going above and beyond blogging and being active on social media. Although these platforms and services are important, you can do more.
According to Forbes.com, “Some examples would be commissioning a mural on building and covering the streets with chalk, paint or displays. You could also make up bumper stickers and t-shirts and give them to employees or as freebies at events. They may not be the most unusual, but a creative shirt not only lets people have the chance to be different, it will make others want to jump on board – think Zaarly shirts floating around the Bay Area.”
This may seem a little “out there” but if you following the same method as everyone else, you could get lost in the crowd. Don’t be invisible.
Also, help the people discover your content by improving your ranking on Google. Use hyper-targeted keywords to power your social media-based audience. There are many platforms that can help you do this, like Socedo, a social media automation tool, where you can, for example, find Twitter users who post content using your niche keywords and engage with them over time.
It will take a little bit of fight to get noticed but it will be worth the hard work in the end.
3. Listen To Your Customer
Customers may at times defy logic, but they are usually right. If you want to know what your potential audience wants, you need to pay attention to what they are saying. Review data, interview customer service reps, build a rapport through email, create a survey and, above all, be open and ready to listen.
4. People and Places
It never hurts to pair with an unexpected partner or place to promote your product. A great example of this is, “the time M&M’s were offered a starring role in E.T. The offer was turned down, so the film went with Reese’s Pieces instead. While that hiccup didn’t remove M&M’s from grocery store shelves, it did help make Reese’s Pieces an extremely popular candy.”
A risk is involved with every avenue of business. So don’t be afraid to branch out into the unexpected. You could be rewarded in the end.
5. Engage, Don’t Sell
As a startup business owner and an entrepreneur, your first inclination will be to push a sale to everyone you meet. However, start with engagement first and sales will follow later.
With social media, it’s easy to engage your target demographic without looking like you’re just trying to advertise. Build brand trust by showing your support, whether of your community or your online following. This goes along with previous steps mentioned in this article. Sales will come after customers are listened to, credibility is established and your presence on various social platforms is recognized. In short, engagement.
Fear of public speaking is on the same list as fear of spiders and even death. We are all at least a little afraid to speak in front of a group of people. Whether it’s in a board meeting with your peers or on a stage in front of strangers, the fear is the same. But resisting public speaking engagements can hold an entrepreneur back since workshops, presentations, and pitches are a great way to network and gain support. With this in mind, here are some ways to improve your public speaking skills to get you out of your shell and into the spotlight.
1. Begin with the End in Mind
Like everything in business, you need to have your plan. Before you start working on your presentation, know your purpose. A great way to figure this out if you are struggling to articulate your main points is to ask yourself some focus questions. Such as:
What are you trying to accomplish?
What impact do you want to have on your audience?
Are you looking to inform? Inspire? Persuade?
Knowing your ultimate purpose and the desired outcome will help you stay focused on the preparation process.
2. Simplify Your Message
You are probably where you are today because of the depth of knowledge in your field of expertise. With all the information you have floating around in your brain, it is difficult to know where to start. Your impulse might be to impart as much of your knowledge as you can to your audience. However, don’t do this! You will overwhelm or bore your audience with unneeded details. Plus, you will lose sight of your focus points. Convey a few powerful ideas that your audience will remember. Simplify your message to include only the information you want your listeners to walk away with.
3. Prepare and Practice
Practice makes perfect is a popular saying for a reason. It works!
Don’t just wing your presentation. Have a clear roadmap of what you are going to say and rehearse it. It also helps to practice speaking in front of another person. Whether it be your spouse, partner or co-worker, get comfortable with speaking your points out loud onto listening ears. They might be able to give you feedback on something that you may have missed practicing alone. Preparation will also allow you to avoid the nervousness associated with being not quite ready.
4. Memorize Concepts, Not Content
While you are preparing and practicing, a helpful tip is to memorize your concepts, not your content. If you have a lot of information you wish to convey to your audience, you might feel overwhelmed when it’s time to starting memorizing. Memorization can lead to sounding over-rehearsed and unnatural. Plus if you forget something, you are left in an awkward silence.
Instead, create bullet points of the content, stories, data and key takeaways that you want to get across in each part of your presentation. Then you will be able to speak naturally about them and give a more flexible presentation, which in turn will be engaging for your listeners.
5. Connect with the Audience
Your speaking engagement will be far more effective if it’s tailored to your specific audience. Spend time learning as much as possible about attendees and gear your speech accordingly. Remember you are on the podium for a reason. You are there to inform, not prove that you are smarter than everyone. By trying to impress your audience with your intellect, you create more distance and could come across as arrogant.The more connected the audience feels to you, the more they’ll pay attention to what you have to say.
6. Body Language
90% or more of communication is nonverbal. Your audience will read your facial expressions, the tone of your voice, the way you use your hands, how you stand and move. A warm, easy smile and calm body immediately tell the audience that you’re comfortable and confident. Pent-up energy can be the death of a powerful speech. If it helps, roam the front of the room or the stage to expend some of that energy. And when the speaker is comfortable, the audience is, too. This is also true is you aren’t comfortable! Practice your speech in front of the mirror and critic what your body language is emulating to others.
7. Let Your Passion Show
Passion is infectious and contagious. Your enthusiasm will also keep your audience engaged. People like seeing passion radiate from someone. It is inspiring and entertaining to watch. If you are truly passionate about what you are speaking about, don’t be afraid to show it. Keep your personality throughout your speech and your listeners will feel a connection to your words.
Women’s History Month is a big deal for us at Media Partners. As a women-owned business, we want to see the triumph of female entrepreneurs and businesswomen everywhere. In honor of this historical month, we are spending the entirety of March posting blogs, articles, motivational posts and information centered around women in business and entrepreneurs.
Women’s History Month had its origins as a national celebration in 1981 to recognize the successful and impactful history of women in business in the United States of America. Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28 which authorized and requested the President to proclaim the week of March 7, 1982, as “Women’s History Week.” Later, in 1987, Congress designated March the month to celebrate Women’s History for the entire country, after being petitioned by the National Women’s History Project.
To show how far women in business have come, here is a historical look provided by National Women’s History Museum’s online exhibit. To see their exhibit visit slideshow.
History of Women in Business
This exhibit defines the term “entrepreneur” to refer to a woman who had an idea for a service or product and started a business of her own. American women have owned businesses as far back as colonial settlements.
Women did not historically use the word “entrepreneur” to describe their businesses until the late 1970s; before that, they called them “sidelines” or part-time projects and understood entrepreneurship to describe what men did.
But looking back, it is clear that the history of women in business ownership deserves a place in the broader history of entrepreneurship; hence the use of the term in this exhibit.
1910-1939
Up through the nineteenth century, women-owned businesses primarily included taverns and alehouses, millinery and retail shops, hotels, and brothels, and were often operated as a way to provide an income for women who found themselves without a breadwinning man. Business, then, was a way for a woman in potentially dire circumstances to provide for herself rather than become a social burden.
From 1900 through 1929, Progressivism, feminism, consumerism and immigration all gave rise to a climate that was not only conducive to women’s entrepreneurship but also highly accepting of them. Like many women’s ventures at this time, their primary markets were typically other women, but New Women entrepreneurs often tinged their businesses with a sense of purpose beyond simple economics.
1940-1959
World War II was an important expansion period for the history of women in business as it brought many women into the workforce, filling jobs so men could go off and fight. That same patriotic fervor also inspired many women to consider starting businesses of their own. The Boston Globe’s “women’s pages,” for example, featured Polly Webster’s column, “War Time Wife”, packed with tips for weathering the hardships of the war years—including how to generate income from home-based businesses.
When World War II ended, women were pushed from wartime jobs for returning soldiers, and many went straight into entrepreneurial women owned businesses of their own.
The Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs and state officials—first in New York and then nationwide—ran workshops for aspiring female entrepreneurs with advice from trailblazers such as Elizabeth Arden and male business leaders. There were advice books and free pamphlets. Reader’s Digest included women entrepreneurs among the winners of its 1946 competition for best business ideas. The press hailed women entrepreneurs for helping to rebuild the economy by increasing the number of women-owned businesses from 600,000 in 1945 to nearly 1 million by 1950.
By the 1950s—the age of celebrated domesticity—the home became the new site of, and justification for, starting a business. Everywhere women turned, they received messages that home and family were their primary roles. But the baby boom and an assortment of new consumer goods—from cars to clothes to appliances—also meant that even middle-class families needed more cash. Women stepped up, often capitalizing on homemaking skills to build businesses. They defined their home-based businesses as part of being a good mother.
1960-1979
By the early 1960s, the changing social and cultural landscape provided new incentives for would-be women business owners. Divorce rates escalated during the 1960s and single mothers struggling to balance child-rearing and their new roles as providers saw in business a possible solution. Women, like beauty maven Mary Kay Ash and advertising executive Mary Wells, started women owned companies of their own as a way to assert their independence in the male world of business.
The Civil Rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s brought a new sense of purpose and a language of rights and empowerment to women entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, the result was a change in the way women understood themselves and their ventures, seeking not just to start businesses but to be seen as equals in the world of enterprise.
Feminists founded businesses along movement principles, such as publishing ventures that would give voice to women’s words and perspectives, including the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, the Feminist Press, and Ms. Magazine. Women entrepreneurs also began to move beyond traditionally female categories and into previously male bastions of technology, metals, and finance.
1980-1999
By the 1980s, the hard work of the previous decades was paying off: women entrepreneurs like Martha Stewart and Vera Bradley…owned 25 percent of all US firms. What’s more, the public and politicians widely acknowledged that women entrepreneurs were a vital component of the nation’s economy. New initiatives, including how-to seminars and government programs, sought to ensure that women had the resources necessary to start and grow their businesses.
In 1988, urged on by the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), Congress passed The Women’s Business Ownership Act, which ended discrimination in lending, eliminated state laws that required married women to have a husband’s signature for all loans and gave women-owned businesses a chance to compete for lucrative government contracts.
2000-Present Day
This look at the history of women in business shows it’s been a bumpy ride for women entrepreneurs in the 20th and early 21st century: on the upside, their numbers continue to grow, and Key Bank, Goldman Sachs, and other institutions have increasingly launched financing initiatives targeted solely at would-be women entrepreneurs.
Technological innovation ramped up fast as the 1990s became the 2000s. That not only enabled women entrepreneurs to break into technology-based businesses in record numbers but also to use technology to start, run, promote and accelerate all types of companies. With faster and cheaper Internet, cloud and mobile technologies, women can manage a business from anywhere, with far less startup capital.
But small and big, women’s ventures came to comprise 30 percent of all U.S. businesses—many of them today in categories that were once men’s alone. The lesson they teach is the power of possibilities and passion for transforming lives.
The next century promises to be an even brighter chapter for the history of women’s entrepreneurship in business.
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