Tagged: Small Businesses

February 6, 2012

Business Accounting

Whatever happened to free business checking? Well it will soon be a thing of the past. Recently, in a scathing editorial in the Wall Street Journal a business man complained that Free Business Checking is now dead on arrival thanks to the Frank-Dodd Banking Reform Bill, which was later signed into law by President Obama – indeed, that was one man’s opinion, but is he correct?

Well, from a banker’s perspective they must raise their prices to comply with the new consumer laws, and they don’t often make a lot of money on their small business customers, as they did previously, when banks provided a greater array of services and enjoyed enormous economies of scale due to the numbers of small business clientele. With the increased regulations, this also means more oversight, more costs, and more bank employees to comply. Guess who has to pay?

Okay so, this brings me to my next point. If you are running the accounting for your own small business or if you work in a small accounting firm with small businesses as clientele, you must not forget that you need to deduct those new bank charges for the monthly fees of the business checking account. And you must understand that if you don’t account for that, the business checking account balance will be off by that amount.

Indeed, the consolation in all this is that whereas, you have more costs now, at least you can deduct the expense you will be charged by your bank now, for something that was free before. If this upsets you in anyway, whatsoever, you can call your congressman, and see if they care. It’s not my job to take sides, just explain the accounting issues involved here. Please consider all this and stay in the black will you?

January 27, 2012

Mobile Marketing for Dry Cleaners

Be it jewelry or laundry, every business has its own set of competitors and their number is constantly on the rise. The aim of every business is to garner more and more profits everyday. But given the large number of competitors vying for their share, small businesses are in for some drop in their earnings provided they do not adopt innovative marketing strategies.

Dry cleaners and laundry services fall among the small or medium businesses. These services are much needed for the people as they do not have time to do their laundry in modern day’s hectic lifestyles. Here lies the opportunity for the dry cleaners to offer specialized services to the people amidst their busy schedule.

Mobile marketing offers an effective solution to small and medium businessmen like dry cleaners. Mobile marketing has some unique features that can immensely help in reaching and widening customer base. Some of the innovative and interesting features of mobile marketing are:

* Short code
* Mobile coupons
* Bulk SMS
* Interactive marketing
* SMS marketing and many more.

Let us see how these features can be utilized by dry cleaners.

* Mobile coupons: Dry cleaners can send mobile coupons to the users to grant them discounts on the services. Anyway, people have to get their clothe dry cleaned; if they get a discount at your store, they will be willing to avail it to save money. This can bring in more customers to your shop and in turn, generate more income.
* Special offers through SMS: You can send text messages or bulk SMS to your targeted customers to inform them about special offers. You can apply this strategy to bring in business even on the slow days.
* Reminders to bring in clothes: You can send reminders in the form of text messages to your customers at specific time of the day to bring in the clothes. This will ease a lot of troubles that customers take to remember their tasks for the day.
* Short code: In case you are offering door to door service, you can define a customized short code and keyword that customers can use in case they want to inform you that they need your service or want to seek more information.

Thus, mobile marketing offers a technical solution to businesses like dry cleaners to take their business to every possible customer who hold a mobile phone. This simple everyday gadget can do wonders to expand your business without incurring huge expenditure.

August 9, 2011

Online Marketing Strategy 2011

What is the first step in online marketing strategy?

Everyone wants more customers, but do not always think about how to reach customers. I saw dozens of companies that traffic to your website, where there is a number. After setting the goal, everything else falls into place. All that should not be built around this goal.

What is search engine optimization is and how it will affect my business?

When people are looking for a company, cannot use the Yellow Pages more, but they need online. Optimizing search engines using keywords or phrases that help companies in the face of its competitors.

What is the best strategy to combine and optimize social search, mobile and online marketing tools to help consumers find local business on the Internet?

In an effective campaign, this supports all aspects of online marketing of other elements. Pay-per-click can be useful for testing to find out what keywords and phrases of the optimization efforts should focus on search engines. Social media can help build relationships and improve its SEO. SEO is also influenced by a short, so that when people use Google Maps on your iPhone or other smartphone, the company is more likely if they were good for SEO.

How can small businesses make better use of social networking market?

Groupon and social life can be a good choice for companies who are ready to start an advertising campaign. The mistake many business owners who believe in these sites as a marketing solution. The truth is that most companies that make a piece of Groupon losing money. It is not enough that you get your name once – you must use this coupon as a springboard. For example, restaurants are trying to drive orders for plain text messages. Offer a drink or something to order and send the contract once a month.

Is online advertising really help local small businesses?

Mobile phones are the No. 1 way people find local information. 80 percent sales are 10-20 km from the consumer’s home. Online marketing is better than any other marketing method to help local businesses find new customers.

My small company can compete online against much bigger, richer competitors?

The field of SEO has changed dramatically in recent years because everything is moving locally. A company can request a keyword in your city, but is not found anywhere in the world. The trick is not to be better than the competition from supermarkets; the trick is to be better at the local level as competition from supermarkets.