What is marketing? The definition that many marketers learn as they start out in the industry is:
Putting the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time.
Its simple! You just need to create a product that a particular group of people want, put it on sale some place that those same people visit regularly, and price it at a level which matches the value they feel they get out of it; and do all that at a time they want to buy. Then you’ve got it made!
There’s a lot of truth in this idea. However, a lot of hard work needs to go into finding out what customers want, and identifying where they do their shopping. Then you need to figure out how to produce the item at a price that represents value to them, and get it all to come together at the critical time.
Most small businesses never reach $1 million in annual sales. Instead, they struggle just to survive. Of businesses started in 2004, barely more than half — 56 percent — were still around in 2009, a study from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation found.
In fact, cracking the $1 million barrier at any point in a company’s lifetime is a major achievement. U.S. Census data from 2007 shows that more than three-quarters of the country’s 6 million firms with employees made less than $1 million in revenue. And most solopreneur businesses don’t earn anywhere near that much: According to IRS data for 2008, the average solo business brought in less than $60,000.
The whole concept of branding is foreign to many small businesses. They view it as something that only matters in the ivory towers of global corporations.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Branding is all about making your business memorable, and it’s the small business rather than the big one that’s likely to get lost in the shuffle. Here are five core concepts that small business owners should know about branding.
1. Repetition and consistency are paramount. Any parent knows that when you say something once it seldom sinks in. And, parents who send mixed messages confuse the child … and perhaps themselves! The same dynamics apply to branding: the market needs to see the same imagery and the same message again and again and again.
Entrepreneurs often talk about how they started their businesses with loans from family and friends, seed money from investors and even by maxing out their credit cards. But, for every one of these feel-good success stories, there are more than a few with unhappy endings.
Noelle Federico, the business manager and chief financial officer of Dreamstime.com, a stock photo service, said that while it is not easy to start and grow a business without incurring debt, it is possible.
“We’ve proven that it can be done,” she said. “Myself and the leadership team at Dreamstime.com have never taken loans, used credit cards or tapped angel investors to grow our business.”
Office workers are interrupted—or self-interrupt—roughly every three minutes, academic studies have found, with numerous distractions coming in both digital and human forms. Once thrown off track, it can take some 23 minutes for a worker to return to the original task, says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies digital distraction.
Many small business owners and entrepreneurs pride themselves on being able to wear several different hats and juggle many different balls at the same time. But is this really something to brag about?
Identifying the Signs
As the leader of your organization, it may not be wise to spend your time micromanaging all the details that go into running your business. Your time could likely be better spent on big-picture strategy such as casting vision and direction for the company. Here are five signs that you need to hire an assistant so you can spend more time on tasks that add value to your business:
The e-commerce behemoth is coming, but that’s no longer news. Amazon is nearly 20 years old now, eBay just a year younger.
What is news? The behemoth is arming itself. New tactics, new friends and a hefty war chest mean that the old defenses insulating traditional retailers are no longer enough. Venture funds dished out $242 million to online retail startups in the last quarter alone, more than any other period since 2000. E-commerce, meanwhile, is now a $200 billion-plus industry in the U.S., set to ratchet up 15% a year as consumers realize there’s no reason to trek out to the local strip mall anymore.
In the retail arms race, e-commerce is winning. Here are five trends driving traditional retail towards the grave:
What is Small Business Saturday®?
Small Business Saturday is a day for everyone — from the business owners who create jobs to the customers who buy locally — to support small businesses that invigorate the economy and keep communities thriving.
It began in 2010 when American Express founded Small Business Saturday to help small businesses get more exposure during one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year. Last year, over 100 million people came out to shop at independently-owned small businesses on the day. Now, in its third year, Small Business Saturday will be even bigger.
Dispatches From The Front 