Now that you’ve started your business and told all your friends and family, you may be wondering, “how do I get more customers?” or “how do I branch out to other people?” Marketing your company and increasing your business presence are ongoing tasks throughout the life of a business that every entrepreneur faces. You can never have too many customers and putting some time into finding those customers is well worth the effort. The following are some helpful ideas for increasing your business presence.
1. Make Your Business Look Official. The first step to a successful marketing campaign is to make your business look official to the outside consumer. With the threat of identity theft ever present in the mind of the American consumer, the more official your business looks, the more likely a customer is to use you and then recommend you to a friend. Making your business look official can consist of filing it with the state, listing with the Better Business Bureau, or even just getting letterhead and a website. In today’s online-based economy, finding a company with a website or that is reputable is just a click away. You don’t want to lose consumers because you looked too much like a fake company.
2. Obtain Relevant Trademarks. After making your business official, keeping up the high standards of operation is important. Unfortunately, a great reputation can be ruined easily by a company with the same or similar name. Getting a trademark for your business or the product you make is important to protect against potential confusion of consumers and gives you recourse against those individuals who do steal your name. U.S. trademarks also protect you from someone stealing your name or ideas nationwide, providing you the opportunity to expand your business beyond your city and state. Applying for a trademark may sound difficult but in reality, many online business filing services will prepare the trademark application materials for you, saving you the hassle of hiring an expensive lawyer.
3. Create a Marketing Plan. Advertising and marketing is the biggest way to make consumers aware of your business, and creating a marketing plan will give you some direction. Think about what you do and who your targeted consumers are. That will often dictate how you focus your marketing and advertisements. For example, a company that offers in-home services to elderly people (a hot industry FYI) probably isn’t using their resources wisely if they use mostly internet advertising. On the other hand, a company that sells college textbooks would do well with almost all online marketing. The audience you sell to and the products or services you offer will help define where your advertising and marketing resources and efforts should go.
4. Different Media Options. Now that you’ve made yourself look professional and reputable and you’ve got your target audience in mind, here are some places you can start your publicity.
Social media is a great place to go for companies that appeal to the younger generation. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are widely popular in the under-30 crowd and even professionals in the 30 to 60 bracket are starting to get in on the action. Having accounts with these sites allows you to create a page where people can find out more information about you and “follow” you. Facebook also allows companies to do advertising with its site, further increasing your presence in the social media scene.
In addition to social media, there are other online techniques to gain and keep customers. Taking the website you created and making it as user-friendly as possible will encourage consumers to use you instead of going to another site. Also, applying search engine optimization techniques (commonly known as “SEO”) to your website will bring it up higher on search engines for certain terms, helping consumers find you. Lastly, listing yourself with trade associations and writing articles relating to your industry or field will help get your name out there and that will go a long way towards bringing in new customers.
For more traditional fields or older generation consumers, print marketing will be much more beneficial. Many trade associations continue to publish print newsletters and journals so look into publishing with them. Mailbox flyers or mailings are also good ways to reach out to consumers and make them aware of your business. Posting these flyers in places that your consumers might frequent will further increase your company’s presence.
Remember, marketing and advertising are only the first few steps on the road to running a successful and profitable business. Keep customers and provoking customers to recommend you are just as important as the initial publicity. Customers will be most likely to recommend you when they have a good experience so keep your standards high!
(Editor’s note: Kevin Sproles is the CEO of Volusion. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)
Heads up, entrepreneurs! There’s increasing political interest for an Internet sales tax.
Although we’ve seen calls for this in the past, the topic has seen a resounding resurgence amidst budget deficits in almost all 50 states. This deficit crisis has presented many lawmakers with a golden opportunity to recoup some revenue by collecting tax on online purchases.
As a brief recap, online businesses are only required to charge sales tax in a state where they have nexus, such as a physical location. For example, if you’re running an e-commerce site from a home office in New Jersey, you only have to charge sales tax to customers that reside in New Jersey. Although your customers are required to pay use taxes on sales made in other states, this is a complicated process that’s nearly impossible to enforce.
While this lack of enforcement is enticing to online shoppers, state governments claim that they’re losing over $23 billion in revenue because of the current tax code. In Texas alone, the state comptroller notes that almost $600 million in local and state sales taxes were lost from online purchases in 2009.
On the federal level, the push for new tax legislation came with the introduction of The Main Street Fairness Act. This proposal calls for an online sales tax under the reasoning that online stores should face the same tax regulations as their retail counterparts. To complicate things even further, several states are independently working to broaden the definition of nexus so that they may be entitled to online sales tax. The most vocal cases come from states like Nevada, Florida and Washington, all of which rely on sales taxes in the absence of a state income tax.
Debates and opinions don’t impact bottom lines, though. Here are five major implications you would face if you do business online. (Some are more obvious than others and I should note that this list is by no means comprehensive.)
Need for additional software: Since there are over 7,500 independent tax jurisdictions with varying regulations, you’ll need to invest in software that can automate tax calculations, collections and filings for you. Managing differences across these jurisdictions would be impossible without drowning in maps and numbers.
To further complicate matters, each state has varying tax exemptions. For example, some states require no sales tax on digital products like software. Other states have reduced rates for food items or children’s clothing.
Thus, be ready to shell out some extra cash or wait for an integrated system to automatically process sales tax for you.
A big push in paperwork: An Internet sales tax will require you to place an extra emphasis on record keeping and form filing. To begin your new path to tax compliance, you must register in every state in which your business sells. Thus, if you’re selling nationwide, you’ll have to submit business registration forms in all 50 states, and various cities, counties, boroughs, etc. , each of which have different requirements.
Next, you’ll need to submit tax forms at the end of each tax season to each jurisdiction in which you’ve sold something. And in the event of an audit from any of these states, you’ll be required to keep detailed documentation of each transaction to protect yourself.
So whether you decide to hire an extra hand, invest in a giant filing cabinet, or create a new database, be prepared for an unprecedented increase in record keeping.
Inability to position on price: In this current heyday of ecommerce, many marketing strategies are based on price. This is particularly true if you’re active in comparison shopping engines like Google Product Search. Online shopping trends, particularly during the economic downturn, demonstrate that customers are more price conscious than ever.
With the passage of this proposed sales tax, you’ll now have to convince customers to shell out money for an additional 7-9 percent sales tax, on top of convincing them to pay those dreaded shipping fees.
In a world with an online sales tax, your business will have to shift its marketing promise away from price to focus on product benefits and customer service. These two selling points will become more and more important to help justify higher prices to customers.
Smaller margins: Unfortunately, price will always remain an issue, and smaller online businesses must remain competitive with their larger counterparts. So even though your customers will be the ones paying the tax, you’ll likely have to lower prices to compensate for this new surcharge and prevent prices from becoming astonishingly high. This will be particularly true for luxury items.
With an Internet sales tax, customers will become even more price-conscious than before, leading to an increased dependence on discounts. And once you start slashing prices and running more promotions, your profit margins will begin to diminish. This revenue hit will then require cost-cutting measures in other aspects of your operations.
A shift toward local marketing: An Internet sales tax will also require your business to take a more local approach in its marketing strategy. This includes an increased push toward local SEM, such as targeted PPC and local listings like Yellow Pages. While interstate e-commerce will continue to play an important role in any revenue stream, it will be much easier and convenient to sell within your own state.
This impact should actually be beneficial. It’s typically easier to manage local marketing campaigns, particularly in regards to budget allocation. There will also be a shift of marketing dollars to more traditional advertising, such as local newspapers.
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