How to Start a Business

With unemployment rates soaring, some out-of-work professionals wonder how they’ll make ends meet if they can’t secure another position. It may be a scary time to start a business, but when you’re faced with few alternatives, the motivation to succeed is even higher. Learning how to start a business is not as difficult as it sounds.

First, you’ll need to decide on an industry. In the current economic conditions, it would be wise to choose a recession-proof industry. Think about goods and services people will need and continue to buy even during difficult economic times. Your second step is to create a business plan. Consult with an attorney to determine what forms you’ll need to file to establish your business and file your business name. After the paperwork, work on creating a brand identity for your business, have business cards and marketing materials created, and start advertising your products and services.

Gold Alliance Group offers a much more detailed range of resources describing the different aspects of starting a small business. Depending on the type of business you’re starting, there may be other steps involved, such as setting up physical office space or ordering a supply of products. If you plan carefully and make wise decisions, starting a business during a recession could be the smartest thing you’ve ever done!

Persistence Pays Off!

“Persistence Pays Off.” It’s a phrase that’s been used by inspiring entrepreneurs and successful people under a variety of circumstances, yet it rings true in each and every one. Persistence does pay off, no matter what your goal is.

Entrepreneurs, athletes, people on a mission to get fit or lose weight, sales professionals trying to land a great deal, business men and women seeking a promotion, new position, or raise. In each and every one of these situations, persistence pays off. It rings true.

Persistence pays off in marketing, too. Persistence – and consistency, which we’ve discussed before. You will see results if you are persistent in your marketing efforts, no matter what your marketing objectives are for the year. If your efforts are persistent and consistent, they will pay off.

Don’t give up on your new marketing plan one month into the year because you haven’t reached your goals yet. My life coach taught me yesterday that when I look at my goals for the whole year, the rest of the year seems like plenty of time to get it all done. Not everything needs to be accomplished today! Great things sometimes take time to accomplish, which is an unfortunate reality for those of us with Type-A personalities who want everything done yesterday. Practice exercising patience, and keep being persistent with your plan, and give it a chance to work!

Using Your Advertising Dollars Effectively

Business owners are resolving to use their advertising dollars more effectively in 2009. In our current economy, it makes sense to allocate our already thin marketing budget to the tactics that are going to bring us the greatest return on our investment. When you’re developing your advertising plan for the year ahead, think about new media and how it has impacted traditional advertising.

When is the last time you picked up your phone book to look up a business in the yellow pages? Personally, the phone book frustrates me, because I have a stack of about four different ones, all of which are formatted differently. For some strange reason, some don’t include business listings in the white pages, and other businesses are only listed in the white pages or are in some obscure category no one would ever think of. As a result, I seldom utilize the phone book when looking up a business, or a person, for that matter. I find it far more effective to bring up the trusty Google search bar and type in exactly what I’m looking for.

The trend in 2008 was that almost twice as many people said they use an internet search engine to look up a business address or phone number than those who said they still use the phone book. The really nice thing about those local listings that come up in a search engine search is that they appear in the hot spot where a web searcher’s eyes land first in the results. So how do you get listed in the local search results?

You can spend hours looking for search engines and web directories and inputting your contact information into every form yourself, or you can pay us to do it for you, at a cost that’s less than the cost of a simple yellow pages listing in the average print directory. Best of all, you can be listed across multiple categories and keywords, and we’ll update or enhance your listing once a month for free.

Visit our site for more information: http://www.stringfellowcreative.com/services/local_listings.htm

Dedicate Time to Building Your Business

You’ve got to dedicate time to building your business.  Business isn’t going to be knocking down your door without any effort on your part. Unless, of course, you’ve got a niche market totally cornered or you’ve been around awhile and are the absolute best at what you do, and everyone knows it. For most of us, that’s not the case (well, at least the part about everyone knowing we’re the best).  You’ve got to make a consistent effort at marketing your business, or you may end up a casualty of this awful economic crisis that’s happening all around us.

You can’t allow yourself to become distracted by the day to day operations of your business. While those tasks are extremely important, you absolutely must set aside dedicated time each and every week to work on business development activities. If you truly do not have the time, hire someone!  If you’re really that busy working that you don’t have time to work on building your business, you can afford to make an investment in a marketing consultant – such as Stringfellow Creative.  It’s an investment, not an expense, because it should net you a solid return if you hire well.  The great thing about consultants is that they’re not employees, and they can handle short or long-term projects.  If you develop a good relationship, you’ll probably find yourself passing on regular assignments, but if it doesn’t work out, there’s no obligation to continue working with that person.

Otherwise, if the situation above doesn’t describe you – as in, you really can’t afford to hire outside marketing contractors, or you’re truly not that busy working, you’re just busying yourself with other things that could be rearranged – then you need to reevaluate your priorities and your daily routine. In the current economy, it is absolutely essential for any small business to be on top of their marketing efforts. Only the strong and the savvy are going to come through this economic crisis unscathed.

There are simple tasks that can boost your brand recognition that you can easily be conquering each week. Update your blog, submit an article for publication, make a few cold calls. Re-design your website, send out a few brochures in the mail, or attend a local networking event. Work on improving your search engine positioning.  No effort will be wasted.

The bottom line is, no one is going to do it for you. You’ve got to advance yourself towards your own goals, and you can only do that by taking action.

Be a Resource to Gain Clients and Customers

One of the best ways to market your business is simple: Be a resource to your potential clients and customers. There are many, many ways to do this that are very effective. Being a resource gives you more credibility than you get with a standard advertisement. It’s less blatant, less in-your-face, and actually provides value so your potential clients are more likely to pay attention, particularly if the information is relevant to them.

By being a resource, you’re basically providing information or some expertise related to a topic within your industry. It doesn’t have to be exactly the same thing that you get paid to do, but should be within the same general area, and it should be applicable to your client base. For example, this blog allows me to be a resource to my potential clients, because I provide relevant information and advice that my customers can use today to help build their business. 

Marketing and business are my expertise. It wouldn’t make sense for me to write articles on minimizing your insurance costs, because the people who are interested in reading an article like that are not my target client. If the reader of the insurance article would happen to also be a business owner, they’re not seeking out information on marketing at that moment. If they were, they’d be clicking on marketing articles instead of insurance articles. The key to being a resource to gain clients is to put relevant information in front of them at an appropriate time.

So how can you use this marketing tactic? Writing articles is an easy way to start, and it’s free. You can summarize what you already know about your industry into targeted articles and submit them to article directories all over the web. If you don’t have time to spend on that sort of thing, you can hire an expert, like Stringfellow Creative, to write and submit articles on your behalf, with your name as the author and a link to your website in the byline. It’s a totally hands-off way to conduct an effective marketing campaign.

Blogging is also an easy way to generate publicity for free. You can set up a WordPress blog just like this one, completely free. You’ll have to make an investment of time to keep your blog fresh and up to date with new content regularly, or you can hire a blogging expert, such as Stringfellow Creative, to keep it up to date for you. We have multiple blogging packages available to meet your specific needs, and we can assist in designing your blog as well.

Depending on your industry, it is often useful to offer free seminars in your community. With the ever-growing popularity of the internet and technology, it’s now easy to offer a seminar online to a global audience. Stringfellow Creative can assist with seminar production, marketing, and design. We can create your materials, design powerpoint presentations, and design online delivery systems.

Take advantage of any opportunities in your community to lend a helping hand. Yes, you might be giving out valuable information for free, but it will only build your reputation. Educational opportunities are abundant, you just have to seek them out. Network with other professionals – someone might be holding a panel discussion relevant to services you offer, and you could easily end up being a panel expert. Discussions like these frequently end up getting free media coverage. It’s a win-win situation.

Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. When you offer your knowledge as a resource to your clients, it’s an easy way to get free advertising, and it’s often more effective than traditional advertising. You’ll boost your reputation and your brand awareness, while at the same time saving your advertising budget.

Create a Plan

If you’re like me, you frequently have tons of ideas running through your mind, different ways that you’d like to try marketing your business. My problem is, I never have nearly enough time to implement them all. That’s why it’s important to have a plan. By having a plan, you can be sure to devote the proper amount of time to all the various marketing strategies that you want to try. Giving each idea the time and effort it deserves will really give you an idea of whether a particular method has been effective.

The good news is, you don’t have to try all your ideas at once. Without a dedicated marketing team, it would be difficult to implement too many marketing methods at one time, and even more difficult to determine which ones were working and which ones weren’t. Creating a strategic plan will allow you to clear all those great ideas out of your head and put them on paper. One good way is to try one or two new techniques each quarter. Three months is usually enough time to get an idea of the effectiveness of a marketing technique. If one method is showing signs of promise, you can continue it.

When you come up with new ideas, write them down and add them to your plan. That way you’ll have a few months to prepare in advance, and you can continue your proven marketing efforts while trying one or two new techniques at a time. This will help you eliminate the confusion of trying to try out all the new and exciting marketing ideas at one time, and over time you’ll develop a base of marketing strategies that are successful in building your business.

Consistent Marketing Efforts

Well here we are at the end of September and I haven’t posted to the “new” blog since March. I’m ignoring my own best advice that I always give to clients: Be consistent with your marketing efforts! Many marketing strategies don’t produce immediate results, and a lot of businesses miss the boat by giving things a try for a very short period of time and then giving up on them too soon because they didn’t receive this amazing response after very little effort. If you are continuous and consistent with your marketing strategies and your message, you will see results over time. Unfortunately, there’s no magic pill in the world of marketing, and it often takes a combination of strategies over a period of time for a marketing campaign to achieve its full potential. In some cases, it may be possible to acheive a tremendous response from a single message, such as sending a hot new offer to a huge list of email subscribers, but that kind of response requires a lot of back-end planning and building. It takes time to build a subscriber list, to build a brand, and to gain name recognition among your clients. Be consistent with your efforts and your message, and one day you’ll reach a point at which you can boost your sales by sending a single email!

Too many businesses fall into the trap of thinking they don’t need to advertise because business is booming. Any business will experience periods of feast or famine, and maintaining a consistent marketing campaign throughout both busy and slow times can make your income stream a little more consistent. Marketing only when times are tough will only exacerbate the feast or famine syndrome we all hate. You can certainly ramp up your marketing efforts a little when you have extra time between clients or when business is slow, but you should have a plan that you stick to regardless of the amount of business you have coming in at any given time.

My commitment now is to follow my own best advice and start maintaining this blog to provide my clients and visitors with the advice that I’ve promised. During times of feast and times of famine, you’ll now see regular blog posts from me!