Most companies think they are doing well until they compare themselves to their closest competitors; especially if they are ahead of them. What they see is their much guarded marketing plan is no longer “effective”. They must adjust it to coincide with the current trends and changes in customer behavior which is necessary to effectively “communicate” their message and product and service attractiveness.

What Do I Do?

You must look at “out-of-the-box” solutions as well as professional online marketing experience. Innovativeness is what “sparks” a company to the head of the line. Utilizing the expertise of professional advice and management in areas you are not a Master in will transfer this experience to your overall marketing campaign and revenue maximization.

Introducing Internet Marketing specialists; particularly Social Media specialists, can open up channels of communication both vertically and horizontally enabling you to promote your products and services to prospective customers who might have “never” known you were there.

How Does this Help Me?

It helps you to know that you are reaching them, so now all you have to do is figure out their “hot” buttons and communicate with them accordingly. A well-planned Internet Marketing plan will ensure that every measure of the campaign is analyzed and quick adjustments are made to optimize the overall results.

Reaching these additional channels also gives you “free” advertising as their partners see that they are implementing and communicating with you and thus they are looking at you as well.

What Measures Should I Be Looking At?

The measures depend on your specific industry but the following are key ones that most companies can use.

• High Bounce Rates – are people coming but leaving in droves? If so, why and where? Are they coming to your “conversion”pages and leaving? Look at any forms on those pages, how the page structure is and what are you asking your visitor to do to get a conversion. Other ways such as page optimization using A/B and Multivariate testing are an answer to this problem if it occurs.
• Email Marketing Abyss – are people paying attention to your email messages? If your campaigns are not providing you the estimated results; look at how your messages are sent. Examine your subject lines, initial content, where your conversion or call to action resides on the page, and do you have multiple calls to action to get a higher response rate. Finally, who are you sending it to? Is it only your customers or is it to prospects. If it is to your customer base, design it to be more of a newsletter and increase its overall “value”. If it is to prospects; consider designing “automated” drip campaigns with multiple choices so that you increase the chance of getting “higher” quality responses and targeted leads. To add to this, spread out the first four emails to no more than four in the first month. The second month is where the emails increase to one a week and “force” the prospect to either respond or “unsubscribe” because they are “truly” not your customer!
• Social Media Quietness – many companies hear all the noise about social media marketing but many do not know how or why it is important for them to implement in their marketing plan. There are a lot of opportunities marketing on sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. They have many easy you can promote and communicate with your target market and get them to “try” your products and services to see if they work for their company and increase their performance. Utilizing paid search campaigns here is tricky but implementing additional ones like Sponsored Stories and Twitter integration using Selective Tweets for Facebook, are great and allow you to measure and transmit your messages to your audience.Monitoring your social media is a must! Whether you use free or paid tools, the key is to use them! We personally like Raven Tools for moderate budgets and Lithium for those who have a more aggressive budget. Both, allow you to monitor your social media attractiveness, but Lithium goes to a new level with their “Social Community Suite“, however, be prepared to pay in excess of $10,000 a month to benefit from this.
• Add Fuel to Your Paid Search Campaigns – it’s nice that you are able to get people to come to your website from you Google AdWords, but is that enough? What if they come there and still do not convert? This could be that they want what you have but are not patient enough to “search” for it on your site. To battle this and add fuel to your campaigns, try Optimized Landing Pages. What this does is send them to “targeted” quick response single-page or multi-page mini-sites that literally take your prospects hand and leads them to making a decision to learn more, reject or purchase your products or services.
• A Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Words…What About Many? – yes, you can show people pictures of your product and hope that gets them all excited. Or, you can animate those pictures..better yet, produce small videos that “demonstrate” your product or services; show video testimonials; and provide How-To videos that cater to both prospects and current customers. Designing these videos to be unique, allows them to go “viral”. When they go viral, you benefit from “Millions” of impressions that can lead to many sales, especially if the “link” from that video goes to one of your optimized landing pages.

So, what do have here? We have a few suggestions of how you can determine if you are “really” giving your customer your “A” game. If not, then it’s time you do…your competitors are already doing it!

Mr Tony Hudson has over 14 years experience in the Sales and Marketing field; and I am well versed in the areas of Product and Sales Marketing, technology, digital media product and services sales and advanced as well as conventional media advertising sales. His skills also extend to a vast knowledge of the online environment to include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and eMarketing. MS in Internet Marketing and MBA in eBusiness.

Free government grants for business owners, minority-owned or otherwise, is an unfortunate myth that persists despite the statements of various government entities to the contrary. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for example, clearly states on its website that it does not provide business grants. While individual states may offer grant programs for minority businesses, the fact remains that the federal government does not.

Locating State Business Grants

If they want to investigate state opportunities, minority business owners can contact their state’s business departments to inquire about grants. Most do have some limited grant programs; some are indeed aimed at minorities but most are not. If your state does offer such small business grants, they will be able to provide you with the requirements and application details.

Don’t be fooled by the TV commercials and websites that promise to open the door to free government money for your business. The vast majority of information they provide is in regards to state programs that is already freely available on the internet. The reality is you can only access opportunities in the state where you live and each state has, on average, less than half a dozen grant programs. The money you spend to get this information is money you could have spent investing in your business.

With the possibility of government’s grants as slim as it is, the best bet for minority business owners is to look to private foundations and corporations who are willing to help. The Foundation Center is one of many organizations that can provide you with a ton of information including where to find private grants, how to apply for them, how to write a grant proposal, and how to write a business plan. Their information is fee-based as well, but it’s legit. It is a national non-profit service that’s been around since 1956 helping match grant makers with grant seekers.

Small Business Loans for Funding

There are other opportunities for minority business owners in the form of targeted loan programs. The loan programs are established by government entities and private institutions to provide low-cost loans for business expansion or start-up. Examples of these programs include ACCION USA, the USDA Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers, the Mississippi Minority Business Enterprise Loan Program, the Pennsylvania Minority Business Development Authority, and the Tennessee Small and Minority-Owned Business Assistance Program. These loan programs aren’t “free” money, but they are a good alternative for funding your business.

Private Equity Investment

One last option is to consider private equity investment. There are plenty of investors with deep pockets just waiting for entrepreneurs with a good idea and a solid business plan. You’ll have to do some work to convince them, but once they’re on board they’ll help you every step of the way.

When it comes to private equity investment the SBA manages a matching fund program called the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program. The program works with private equity investors to match their seed funding dollar for dollar. So for every dollar the SBIC company invests in you, the SBA kicks in another dollar.

The great thing is that’s it’s not a grant or a loan. It is an investment which makes the SBIC and SBA primary investors in your company. They want you to succeed so they make money. That means they are more likely to help you do whatever it takes to become profitable. Once you reach that stage you can buy out their investment and become totally independent.

Funding options for minority-owned business are out there if you’re willing to look for them. Unfortunately, free grants are largely a myth. You’ll have to work a little bit harder for funding because nothing in this world is free!

Are you looking for that “ideal” program that can assist you in developing your business? Well, soon The Biz eXpress will be providing its own “Business Incubator” and will provide specialized services to those entrepreneurs who “qualify” for our business incubation financing and development program.

The following areas will help you with submitting information to us to see if you are a company who would qualify for this program. We will be selecting ONLY 12 companies, so please provide us with most detail about your company and why you feel you are qualified. 

Business Financing Resources for the Small Business & Entrepreneur

The biggest problem with growing a business is getting capital to start it and run it. We have provided you resources to help you find that much needed money for your business.

The Market Is Growing!

Entrepreneurs play a vital role in stimulating economic growth through innovation and job creation.

According to the latest figures from the Kauffman Foundation, for each month in 2009, 340 out of 100,000 U.S. adults started a new business. That statistic, the highest in the last 14 years, represents a 4 percent increase over 2008, or 27,000 more starts per month than in 2008, and 60,000 more starts per month than in 2007. What that means is that in 2009, 558,000 new businesses were created each month, signaling perhaps that the nation’s entrepreneurs are unabashedly paving the road out of the U.S. recession.

Other key findings include:

• Entrepreneurship growth was highest among 35- to 44-year-olds, rising from 0.35 in 2008 to 0.40 in 2009.
• The oldest age group in the study (55-64 years) also experienced a large increase in business-creation rates from 2008 to 2009, contributing to a two-year upward trend to 0.40.
• Among states, Oklahoma and Montana had the highest entrepreneurial activity rates, with 470 per 100,000 adults creating businesses each month. The other states with the highest rates were Arizona (460 per 100,000 adults), and Texas and Idaho, both with 450 businesses started per 100,000 adults.
• The five states with the lowest rates of entrepreneurial activity were Mississippi (170 per 100,000 adults), Nebraska (200 per 100,000 adults), Pennsylvania (200 per 100,000 adults) Alabama (210 per 100,000 adults) and Minnesota (220 per 100,000 adults).
• Among the United States’ fifteen largest metropolitan statistical areas, Houston had the highest entrepreneurial rate (0.63 percent) in 2009. Seattle had the lowest rate (0.16 percent).

Small businesses are considered the backbone of America and are what many financial analysts predict will be the vehicle to drive us out of this financial downturn. A few small business stats (according to the SBA) that stick out to me:

• There are 27+ Million Small Businesses in the US.
• Between 60% & 80% of all new jobs created in our country can be attributed to Small Business.

An amazing infographic by Intuit that explores the costs of starting a new small business in the United States compared to other markets around the world. The graphic shows that starting a business in the US is relatively easy compared to the largest markets in Asia and a few places in Europe. It also seems that the survival rate of businesses in the US is much larger than any other region in the study. These numbers should go a long way towards small business optimism in comparison to our direct international competitors.

The rising growth of minority businesses

As part of its ongoing survey of the nation’s business owners, the Census Bureau recently released statistics showing that the total number of black-owned businesses grew 45% between 1997 and 2002 — more than four times the national average. During the same period, Hispanic-owned firms grew 31%, while women-owned firms shot up 20%. The report will be completed later this year.

The nation’s 1.2 million black-owned businesses and 1.6 million Hispanic-owned businesses still account for just 12% of all U.S. firms, however. Women own 6.5 million businesses, according to the most recent data.

A Kauffman Foundation report noted that African-Americans experienced the largest increase in entrepreneurial activity rates between 2008 and 2009. The African-American rate increased from 0.22 percent in 2008 to 0.27 percent in 2009, which was the highest rate over the fourteen years of reported data.

Women-owned business market increasing

The 20th century saw a dramatic increase in the number of women in the labor force.

There are exciting things happening inside world of women entrepreneurs. Women are now the dominant force in small business ownership, and succeeding in industries that were once taboo for women.

Between 1997 and 2006, businesses fully women-owned, or majority-owned by women, grew at nearly twice the rate of all U.S. firms (42.3% vs. 23.3%). During this same time period, employment among women-owned firms grew 0.4%, and annual sales grew 4.4%.

In 2006, reports on women-owned (or majority owned by women) in the United States returned the following impressive statistics:

• There were an estimated 10.4 million privately-held firms;
• This accounted for two in five (40.2%) of all businesses in the country; and
• These firms generated $1.9 trillion in annual sales and employed 12.8 million people nationwide.