Category: Personal Product & Services

Whether you run a brick-and-mortar store or an e-commerce business, Black Friday is a great opportunity to find new customers and increase your profits. That’s because 30% of all retail sales occur between Black Friday and Christmas. Let’s look at seven steps you can take to prepare your business for Black Friday.

[Read more: How Stores Can Prepare for an Unusual Holiday Season]

Watch what bigger companies are doing

Your business may not be able to replicate Amazon or Target, but studying their promotional strategies can help you come up with additional ideas. How are these companies marketing their Black Friday deals, and what tactics are customers responding to?

For instance, in addition to highlighting its daily deals, Amazon also provides

Influencer marketing may once have been the punchline of a joke about lazy millennials on Instagram, but it’s become one of the most powerful ways for small businesses to reach customers. Influencer campaigns have been shown to generate eleven times higher ROI than normal outbound marketing campaigns.

Small businesses can get in on influencer marketing without shelling out big bucks. Some micro-influencers can stir up quite a bit of interest among their followers at as low as $50 per post. Here are some great ways to find influencers in your particular industry.

Use a networking platform

PeopleMap is just one way to find an influencer in your specific vertical. The site connects companies to budding influencers and micro-influencers for a low subscription fee. It’s used by brands like Warby Parker, Etsy, and Outdoor Voices,

Before the pandemic, whole segments of businesses relied heavily on in-person interactions, including running product-based businesses in retail locations or operating on craft show circuits.

Once the pandemic forced shutdowns, owners of small businesses like those had to find alternative models to keep their cash flow positive.

“It’s been a real eye-opener for a lot of makers,” said Sue Monhait, a business coach for handmade business owners. “Many of them … were able to have a full life-sustaining income through face-to-face shows, so this past year they were really caught off-guard. They didn’t have anything else in place.”

According to Monhait, if these handmade businesses wanted to survive, they were “pretty much forced into doing something virtual.”

The evolution of the handmade

It can be challenging to grow a business digitally without the right tools and strategies. An even bigger challenge for entrepreneurs is understanding how to establish trust and communication with consumers.

Mary Rabago, a Grow with Google coach and founder of Mary Rabago Productions, teaches her clients that the best way to grow your business is by establishing a digital presence using a variety of tools, which can help you organize information about your business, engage customers and provide a space for you to tell your entrepreneurial story.

“You have a digital presence, and you can use this as your business platform, social media platform, [and] to engage with new customers,” Rabago stated.

Here are four ways that

In our Startup2021 series, we’re helping aspiring entrepreneurs navigate the new business climate of the COVID-19 era. Each week, we’ll share an in-depth look at one step you can take toward launching your business in 2021.

Are you considering outsourcing your business’s social media efforts? Although often assumed to be an expensive and time-consuming endeavor, outsourcing can be an affordable and beneficial step for your business. There are different routes you can take depending on your needs, from working with a freelancer to a full enterprise. Here’s what you should consider.

When is it time to outsource your social media?

It’s time to outsource your social media when you’re unable to meet your business’s goals within your available time. Many CEOs find themselves wanting