Defining the Distribution Channels For Your Business Startup
Laura May 24, 2021 ArticleWhether you are still developing your business idea or already know exactly what you want to do, it is important to define the best distribution channels for your product, for your customers, and for you. The distribution channel is the way your product gets to your customer. Traditionally, businesses relied on a single distribution channel. These days, the most successful startups use multiple routes to reach a broader customer base.
For some products, the route to getting it into customers’ hands is self-evident. For specialized, service-only ventures, you or your employees will personally deliver to the client, either on-site or at your place of business. Selling retail products, on the other hand, allows multiple options for distribution — online sales, brick-and-mortar storefront, direct sales through sales reps, etc. Consider the distribution routes used by your closest competitors. Are they using the most effective channels? Is there any way to modify or improve on the standard methods that will still be appropriate for your product?
Your target customers also play an important role in the distribution channels you select. If you are selling directly to the end user, you probably have more options than if you are targeting distributors to market your product. Think about it from your target market’s perspective. What is the easiest way for them to access your product? Under what circumstances are they most likely to be looking for what you offer? If it is easier for your customers to buy from you than your competitors, they will come.
Your own work style and personality are also relevant in considering distribution channels for your product. If the idea of spending your days chatting up strangers is distressing to you, then a brick and mortar storefront is probably not the best option. If spending countless hours in front of your computer sounds agonizing, avoid any wholly web-based options. Be honest about your preferences — one of the greatest advantages of starting your own business is the freedom to choose how you get work done. Don’t sabotage yourself by choosing a business that requires you to be out of your comfort zone for every sale.
Many modern startups have a broad range of choices about how to distribution their products. Consider all three factors — your product, your customers, and yourself — before deciding the best routes for your business. If possible, consider developing multiple distribution channels within your startup, even if you only start with one initially. The more ways your product can get to your customers, the bigger your potential market.…
Today, more than at any other time, with the uncertainty of job security it is important to have a “Plan B”. Even without the economic termoil, you may find some comfort in developing a secondary stream of income. But what can you do?
Almost everyone has hidden talents that are obvious to those around us but we do not recognize them ourselves. The easiest way to decide what your talents are is to look at your friends and ask yourself “What do my friends and family ask my advice about, or ask for my help with, most often?”
The people who know us best already know the hidden treasures within you. If you can’t figure this out yourself, ask for their advice on what they think you would be best at. Do they always come to you when they need some baked goodies for a party? Are you the one they come to to plan a family event? Are you the yard sale and thrift store queen? Do you love to shop and know the stores so well in your neighborhood that you can find virtually anything you need in one outing?
You may not see these as hidden talents or having a potential for income, but those very traits are necessary if you are considering a catering service, an event planning business, an eBay business or a personal shopper business. Not only can you make money from providing these services to others, you can have fun doing it! Obviously you already really enjoy these activities which is why you have gotten so good at it. Why not turn it into a part-time or full-time business?
Creating a secondary stream of income will take the stress of these economic times away as you will always have that Plan B in place.…
There are several businesses you can start on the internet for little to no investment. You can do a lot of different things on the internet, selling advertising, selling products and other services. Whatever route you decide to use for making money online will depend a lot on your personality and the things you love to do.
Firstly, I am going to go through a few things you can do to make money on the internet and then at the end you can choose what direction you would like to take your business in.
Making Money by Advertising
A lot of the big corporations on the internet make money from advertising. These are companies you have heard of if you have ever been online; you probably use their services every day. Companies like Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, YouTube, Google all make the bulk of their sales from selling advertising. Now you don’t have to be a big company to make sales from advertising. You can simply perform advertising by doing something called blogging and attracting a lot of visitors to your personal blog.
The reason advertisers pay these corporations a lot of money for advertising is because these companies know how to get lots of visitors to their websites on a daily basis. Now you don’t have to be able to be able to drive millions of visitors to your site on a daily basis, if you can drive a few thousand visitors, that would be great. You want to do the same thing the big corporations are doing but you want to do it on a smaller scale.
The good news is that these companies will let you tap into their resources and profit with them. For example, Google has a program called ”the AdSense program” where they connect you with advertisers who want to advertise on your blog and split the revenues with you. Google also owns YouTube, a video sharing site where you can post videos for free under any topic under the sun. You can use this site to make a video on your subject matter and direct the visitors on there back to your blog. you can also use article directories like EzineArticles to write compelling content and direct the people from there to your blog. So this is how easy it is for you to make money from selling advertising on a blog. If you don’t want to partner with Google, you can contact website owners with information related to yours and offer to sell them advertising.…
Starting a Business? Successful Marketing Focuses on Your Customer’s Needs
Laura May 14, 2021 ArticleThe primary purpose of starting a business (at least in most cases) is to make money, and lots of it. Entrepreneurs pick a business idea they are sure will be popular, with product and service features they know will be irresistible to consumers. Their thoughts are filled with how many customers they need to meet their projections, how much traffic they need to draw, and how the operations can be streamlined. They are sure that once they have all the details worked out, the customers will show up in droves.
Very often, this confidence in their venture spills over into their marketing materials such that the messages they deliver are misfocused on how great the business, products or services are. Unfortunately, this classic approach is no longer effective. Today’s consumers are more knowledgeable and savvy than ever they are far more concerned with what your product can do for them. The new adage for defining marketing efforts must be Ask not what your customer can do for you, but what your business can do for your customers!
Every bit of your marketing effort, from the website to personal sales to follow-up contact, must be completely customer-centric. Everything you think about your venture needs to start and end with your target market. They don’t care what you need, what you want, or how you feel. They only want to know what your products or services are going to do for them. Just remember, it’s not about you, it’s all about the customer.
Define your venture’s marketing messages by the benefits your customers will receive by doing business with you. Know the features of your products, but reframe those into direct benefits for your customers. People want to know how your product will make them better, happier, more attractive, or solve some other problem in their world. For example, a mobile oil-change service has the feature of “oil changes at your home or office.” Better to focus on the benefit of “saves you time and keeps your car on the road.”
Identify your venture’s USPs (Unique Selling Propositions), or what makes your business stand out over the competition. Three separate USPs are good, especially if each of the three targets the primary needs of different market segments. Of course, to define your USPs as benefits rather than features, you will need to know your target markets inside and out, in order to define the benefit that will draw them in.
One way to improve your marketing messages is to personalize the appeals. Use testimonials from satisfied customers and anecdotes about situations that your products improved. Emotional appeals are much stronger than factual appeal, regardless of the audience. Of course, the facts and statistics about your product should be available, but a laundry list of data isn’t likely to sway too many consumers.
Focus on showing customers what your products will do for them and how it will make their lives better. We are all pummeled by hundreds of marketing messages each day …
Secrets to Starting a Business Blog and Getting It Off the Ground
Laura May 11, 2021 ArticleAre you just getting started with blogging for your business? This article is part of a series that will help you get your blog off the ground.
Choosing Your Post Length
There are differing opinions on this issue. Some expert bloggers suggest longer posts so that with each post, you have the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and capture the reader’s interest in your topic. Others point out that some readers will click away from a post that seems really long before they have even had a chance to read it. They recommend keeping your posts short but informative.
I tend to side with the latter opinion. If it too short, readers may wonder if they have read anything of value, but I think it is even worse to make them too long, but the length will intimidate readers who otherwise might have stayed to read the post.
I suggest posts that are 200-500 words in length, especially if you are writing every day. If you would like to give more information that that you can write articles and provide a link to them in your blog post or create reports that you can offer your readers for free.
Increasing Traffic to Your Blog
Once you have your blog ready and have begun to post, how do you get people to find it? One way is to write articles, as I mentioned before, and post links to your blog at the end of them. Use an article directory, such as EzineArticles, and in the resource box, mention your blog and provide a link.
Another thing you can do is visit other blogs that have a similar topic and leave comments with a link back to your blog. Find the ones you enjoy reading and comment on them regularly. Other readers will want to know more about you and will follow you back to your own blog.
List Building
Ideally, your blog will help you find the customers who are interested in what you are selling. But if you can find a way to increase their exposure to you by adding them to your list, they get to know you better and you get a chance to persuade them to work with you or buy from you.
To add them to your list, you will need to have something on your blog that provides a reason for them to give you their name and email address. A sign-up box that offers a newsletter subscription, a free report or something else of value to them that they can only receive if they sign up for it. Place this sign-up box high on the page in an obvious place so that they will see it every time they visit your blog.…
Whether you are a new business or have been trading for some time, you will at some point wonder whether you should you think of incorporating your business. Is it best to trade through your own limited company rather than as a sole trader or partnership? It’s a very good question to ask for both business and potential tax reasons. In general, it makes more sense to incorporate for business reasons rather than just to save tax, as the tax regime changes and any planned savings may no longer be available.
In some sectors, such as IT contractors, it is hard to obtain contracts unless you trade through a limited company. The reasons for this are not always obvious; it is just the way things are. If you are taking risks such as in ordering large stock for an order that could be cancelled, then there can be a real benefit in the limited liability offered by trading as a company. Your own possessions are generally protected from any claim made against the company. However, in many situations, taking out a good insurance policy is all you need.
Perhaps most significantly though, a company structure makes it easier to involve outside investors in the company. Any business seeking to involve new investors will find it easier to structure the business by issuing or selling shares rather than complicated partnership agreements.
There can be tax advantages in trading through a company as there is also more flexibility in handling the owner’s remuneration in such a way as to minimise the tax liability. Limited Companies are taxed on their trading profits, in addition to other sources of income such as interest and rent, and corporation tax is assessed after any owner’s salary has been deducted. It is possible therefore to adjust the amount taken from the company in any one tax year, as well as the way in which it is taken out. Some profits can be retained in the company if the owner would otherwise be likely to pay higher rate tax personally.
For sole traders all income is taxable on their business profits, in addition to any other sources of income. There is little or no flexibility for deferring some of those profits to another year if you happen to have a particularly good year and are taxed at the higher rate. An additional advantage of a company is that shareholders can take profits as dividends which do not attract National Insurance Contributions. It may not sound exciting but significant savings can be made by an appropriate remuneration strategy.
The company will be regulated by Companies House, which has strict rules for reporting trading accounts and for the conduct of directors and other company officials. You will need to be satisfied that you can manage the additional administrative burden. You can always start as a sole trader and later incorporate. In fact, this is a common route when a new business is unsure of how large it will grow and …
Starting a business on a low budget and succeeding sounds quite unrealistic but it holds true when you are talking about an online business. Online businesses have numerous advantages compared to a traditional one. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to get started; even if your idea flops you do not loose a lot of money, and you can promote and sell a variety of products from expensive items to perishables.
Selling your product online also does not require you invent new wheels; all you need to do is to choose the proven ways and get started. This approach will also be helpful in avoiding any scams and fake programs.
When staring a business online with a low budget your first investment would be to buy a domain name and hosting for your online store. Next step is the choice of product. Choose a product that has no inventory. The product should have its worth is today’s debt ridden world and it should help people make there life better.
Now comes the most important thing that is how you market your website to get targeted visitors keeping in view you low budgets. Advertising you business is not a piece of cake it requires hard work and commitment. It’s advisable to keep advertisement budget next to zero. The reason for not spending big sums in the beginning is that you are still in the learning phase and by this tactic you are forced to learn. Once you gather enough knowledge about internet marketing than you can spend bigger amounts on advertisement and it would be called secured investment.
There are number of ways by which you can market your online business. SEO, search engine optimization technique can be used to submit your website to different search engines; you can place a link of your website on other similar websites. Some websites take money just for placing your ads while others charge you when these ads are being clicked. Business with very low budgets can also send emails to targeted customers.
Direct marketing is also an effective and cheap way to market a newly started low budget business. You can reach your audience by posting on different online forums and social networks, inserting fliers in newspaper is also a good direct marketing tool.
Starting a business with a shoestring budget and attaining success is a possibility in today’s world. All you need is a little hard work and motivation.…
Like any other major endeavor, figuring out where to start in launching a business can be the toughest part. Of course, the path to successful entrepreneurship is long and winding with innumerable steps, but just getting started can be enough to build the momentum you need. Here are, in no particular order, the first five things you can do to get ready to strike out on your own.
1. Evaluate Business Ideas
Some would-be entrepreneurs know exactly what business they want to start, others have no idea but just want to work for themselves. Either way, it is essential to realistically assess your ideas and options before you spend money on it. Do some cursory research into the market and competition. Think about what you would need to get the business started. Talk to others (family, friends, networking contacts) about your ideas and listen for useful feedback. The more background work you do in evaluating your business ideas, the easier it will be to hone in on the best opportunity for you.
2. Make a Commitment
If you are serious about taking the plunge into entrepreneurship, you need to mentally and emotionally prepare yourself. Set a deadline for taking the next step (choosing which business to start, beginning the business planning process, opening date) and figure out what needs to be done to get there. In most cases, finding the time to do the planning is difficult, so work on clearing time in your schedule to focus on your goal of entrepreneurship. Figure out what will keep you motivated to stay on track and set yourself up for success.
For example, gather some pictures or symbols of why you want to be an entrepreneur and place them prominently where you will see them frequently. It sounds cheesy, but can be very effective reminders to get you through the tedious aspects of starting a business.
3. Save Up
Bootstrapping a startup is a good way to keep costs under control, but it doesn’t make it free. Every business requires some capital to succeed, and the cash usually comes straight from the owner’s pocket. Even if you are planning to find investors or loans, you will need to show that you are risking your own assets before they will hand over theirs. Don’t count on finding grants for your startup – they are few and far between for new businesses and those that do exist usually have significant restrictions on how they can be spent. At a minimum, try to save between $3,000 and $5,000, more if your startup requires commercial facilities or inventory.
4. Get Organized
Before you dive into planning your business startup, get organized for success. In most cases your business planning will happen in a workspace at home. Select an office space with limited distractions and the tools you will need to work (desk space, internet connection, good lighting). Gather up basic office supplies and stock your workspace. Start using a planner to schedule your days so you …
The One Essential Ingredient For Starting a Business – Persistence
Laura April 17, 2021 ArticleWhat is the one thing you must have that will compensate for all other problems, short comings and obstacles you will face in your journey to start your business? Persistence is the only quality you really need to make it through everything else.
It is very simple but that is all it will take. You can be very smart but if you give up too soon you won’t get there. You can have a great idea but if you let negative events cause you to quit you aren’t going to get there.
Lots of people who don’t consider themselves especially smart or gifted or even hard working have achieved their goals just by doggedly moving forward no matter what kind of problem cropped up. Other people who seemingly had everything going for them failed because they decided they couldn’t or didn’t want to follow through to the end.
The key to staying persistent is to know exactly what the end goal is and then break down the steps to get there into small and manageable steps so you can complete each one in sequence and always know you are moving closer to your goal. If you simply resolve not to quit until you complete each step and then always resolve to move on to the next step once you’ve completed the one before you will find it impossible to stop and the path forward will always be clear so that all you will have to do is continue to make a little progress towards your next intermediate goal each day until you reach the very end.
I guarantee that if you are persistent and always look for a solution to whatever problem comes up and refuse to quit until you have gotten what you want then eventually you will get there. It won’t always be easy and it won’t always be smooth but eventually you will get to the end result.
I also promise that wishful thinking and planning without taking action will never result in you achieving the goal. It just doesn’t work that way and there is no reason to expect an exception in your case.
Many people are disappointed to find out there really isn’t a trick or secret that will simply give them everything they want without any work but those people will always be disappointed and complaining that life isn’t fair and that things are too hard. That’s fine.
I think they are wrong, though. What could be fairer than rewarding the people who are willing to do the most and keep at it after others quit with ultimate success?
If you want you can have it no matter what point you are starting from and what point you are aiming at. All it takes is not quitting even when quitting seems like the best option and a lot easier than continuing.
So the only question that remains is are you going to start and once you start are you going to finish? Many already …
It is estimated that something like 20% of new businesses fail within a year of starting up, and 50% within the first three years. These are grim numbers, especially for anyone who is considering starting up their own business. Fortunately, there is an upside, looking at those figures in a slightly different way, 80% of all new business survive their first year and 50% make it to at least three years.
What anyone looking to start their own company needs to do is to analyse what the businesses that succeeded did, that the ones that failed didn’t. There are in fact a number of common mistakes that failed businesses have made and knowing what they are will give newcomers the necessary knowledge to help them avoid falling into the same trap.
Business failures are often blamed on insufficient start up capital or not hiring the right people. The truth however, is that the failure of many new businesses comes down to something far closer to home, a failure to thoroughly research the potential viability of the business in the first place. Believing you have a great idea and throwing money into getting it up and running, without first having undertaken proper market research is the number one killer for the majority of new businesses. Fortunately there are ways to avoid this by carrying out relatively simple surveys yourself, without breaking the bank on expensive market research organisations before you have even begun.
Test out the viability of your business by asking the opinion and advice of your own network of contacts. Take a look at government data on such things; it is almost always available completely free of charge. Take a look at businesses operating in areas similar to yours and see if they are succeeding or failing. If they are profitable take a look at why, and find out whom they are selling their products or services to. One of the most common mistakes made by new businesses is that of over estimating the market impact that they will have. Setting up in a larger than necessary office or shop; hiring too many people and purchasing unnecessary and expensive equipment based on cash flow projections that have more to do with hope than reality, are the quickest ways imaginable to send a new business to the wall.
The importance of accurate market research and enforcing a strict cost control regime cannot be overstated. Never be afraid to seek professional, expert advice on financial issues, preferably from an experienced business accountant or financial adviser. Make sure you have enough money to get your business idea up and running and have contingency plans in place should it fail to take off in a short period of time. Also be aware that situations can arise that are entirely beyond your control, such as interest rate rises, for example. Having healthy cash reserves to get you through an unforeseen crisis is an absolute requirement in this day and age.
A professional business plan …
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