How to Market Your Business’s Reopening on a Budget

Shutting down temporarily - especially for a pandemic - can land a major blow to your business. Customers often don’t mentally distinguish between “closed for now” and “closed for good.” As a result, you can wind up losing clients who simply assume that your business is shut down for good. How do you avoid this? You create an effective reopening marketing campaign. Once you’ve taken care of all the legal aspects of the business, including filing all that paperwork, you can make the right moves to let customers know you’re back in business. Here’s a look at some of the most cost-effective marketing strategies.

Marketing Mail

It might seem old-fashioned, but mailed marketing can be an extremely effective tool for business. If your target audience is a highly localized market, it makes sense to connect with them via their mail boxes. Focus on low-cost ways to achieve this, such as using Staples coupons to cut down on your materials costs.

You can also use mail to take a targeted, personal approach. This is a great move for small businesses that have developed relationships with clients. A handwritten, individualized letter sends a big message: I remember you, you matter to me, and I’m back in business. Remember, customers are people first. Connecting with them on a personal level will always leave an impact.

Targeted Advertising

More and more of our lives are happening online and, as a result, nearly any company can benefit from targeted digital advertising. The benefit of this kind of advertising is its specificity. You can buy ads through Google, Facebook, and other online platforms that go directly to your target audience.

This means your money is being spent on potential customers only, which saves you money. No more spending a ton on casting a wide net just to hope the right people get caught along the way. Sites that sell these kinds of ads pride themselves on creating effective algorithms that understand their users needs. Take advantage of this research and get your message seen.

SEO Marketing

Another tool you can use to enhance your reopening campaign is focusing on SEO best practices. When you have good SEO, your website is more likely to come up when people search for your product or services. A high SEO rank is crucial for both online-only and in-person businesses.

This is achieved through a combination of inbound and outbound links, online content, and SEO-friendly web design. Search engines value high-quality, useful content, so establishing your company as an industry voice is extremely effective. Think about what kind of content you can produce that relates to your company’s mission and position in the industry, and use that to guide your online voice.

The great thing about this is that you can really tailor it to any budget. If you don’t have a ton to spend, you can hire consultants to help you come up with a game plan, then do the work yourself. If you have more budget to work with, a marketing company can handle everything from keyword generation to content and ROI evaluation.

Safety Messaging

No matter what method of marketing you decide to use, you need to think about what message you’re sending clients. “We’re open!” is the first and most basic part of your message, but you must go deeper. Address the pandemic, and specifically address what you’re doing to keep customers safe. Social distancing, mask usage, and virtual services are all great things to emphasize right now. Clients want to know you’re thinking about their health and safety, so incorporate that into your advertising.

Focus on using the advertising routes that will be most cost-effective for your market, audience, and business model. With the right marketing moves, your business reopening can be a major success!

Written by Naomi Johnson | October 2020

"Naomi Johnson created lifebasedbusiness.net for small business owners, creatives, solopreneurs, boss babes and bros, and side hustlers who are committed to designing their careers to accomodate how they want to live, instead of the other way around. Through her site, Naomi offers practical advice and inspiration to help others adopt the life-based business mentality and change their lives in immensely positive, fulfilling ways."

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Pick Your Own Fall Colors

Fall Colors are as close as your local farmer's market

Fall is here with its treasure of tempting colors. You can capture those precious colors as palettes and use them in your social media posts, digital art, and print projects with Adobe Capture. The Adobe Capture App for your phone or tablet makes it pretty simple to turn a picture into a palette. Adobe Capture can also capture gradients, materials, type, shapes, looks patterns, and brushes. You can get the Adobe Capture mobile app for no cost with a Free Adobe Creative Cloud account. Otherwise Adobe Capture is included with a Creative Cloud subscription.

Adobe Capture

To capture a few Fall colors I brought a photo into Adobe Capture and created a preliminary palette using the color option, then changed the color model to CMYK, and after naming this palette I saved it to my CC Library. If you don't want to save it to your CC Library, save or send your palette to any of the usual places using the options on your phone or tablet.

Adobe Color Wheel

You can also create palettes with Adobe Color Wheel. For a short 'how to' for using Color Wheel go to Adobe FAQ.

Photoshop

In Photoshop I opened my Libraries, located my saved palette, and continued to build and refine my captured colors. I adjusted the saturation and brightness of each color to create a well balanced palette. Four hues is enough to unify your projects and designs, a dark, a medium, a light, and a neutral works well.

Well balanced palette

It's difficult to see the true values of your colors unless they're de-saturated. Test your palette by bringing it into Photoshop or Lightroom and use the saturation slider to take the 'color' out leaving shades of gray. Another option to test your palette is to use your phone or tablet and then de-saturate your palette using the editing saturation option available in photo apps like Google Photos or Apple Photos.

Appears to be a balanced palette

Same palette when de-saturated shows how poorly it's balanced

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The following are a few palettes I created from photos taken at Big Marine Country Farms here in Minnesota. I chose CMYK for print. Adobe capture also has options for RGB, Hex, and HSB.

Gorgeous Gourds palette

Green and Pink Pumpkin palette

Gooseneck Gourds palette

Pumpkins palette

Happy color picking!

All images by WittnerDesign 2020 ©

Should You Become an Entrepreneur? Tips for Making the Leap

Are you bored with your ho hum career and dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur? Starting a small business means being your own boss and following your dreams, but along with opportunity comes a lot of challenges. Do you have what it takes? Here’s what to know about starting a business before you make the leap.

What does it take to start a business?

Running a business requires more than technical prowess. These are just a few of the responsibilities on a small business owner’s plate:

• Applying for business licenses and permits.

• Paying income, sales, and payroll taxes.

• Invoicing and bookkeeping.

• Ordering and managing supplies.

• Monitoring inventory.

• Responding to customers.

• Marketing your business.

Many of these jobs can be outsourced. In fact, many of them should. Whether it’s hiring a web developer to build a custom website, an illustrator like Wittner Design to create print and digital designs, or a Certified Public Accountant to manage your taxes, some jobs are best left to the professionals. Not only will you get better results, you’ll avoid spending all your time on tasks that don’t generate revenue.

How to brush up on business skills

Delegating makes a business owner’s workload more manageable, but it doesn’t eliminate it. As the head of a company, you’re still in charge of making strategic decisions for your business.

With so much at stake, you want to be confident the decisions you make are smart ones. But how? If you’re uncomfortable with learning through trial and error — and losing money in the process — invest in education before starting your first business.

As Business Insider notes, informal learning through podcasts is a great place for prospective entrepreneurs to test the waters. Here, you can get introduced to a variety of business concepts without investing a lot of money or time. However, when you’re serious about starting a business, consider a formal degree program. 

Going back to school for a master’s in business administration takes time, but your efforts pay off with the knowledge you need to build a thriving business. You could even complete your MBA online while working a full-time job as you prepare to become an entrepreneur.

How to reduce financial risk when starting a business

Learning before you leap is one way to prepare yourself for the rigors of starting a business, but lack of knowledge isn’t the only reason small businesses fail. Many small businesses succumb to financial problems when they can’t access capital, fail to manage cash flow, or encounter unforeseen expenses.

The best thing any entrepreneur can do to minimize financial risk is develop a business plan. A business plan is more than a rough framework; it’s a step-by-step guide that lays out what your business will do and how it will do it. In addition to writing a solid business plan, first-time entrepreneurs should improve their personal finances before taking the plunge. By saving up to start your business, you limit the loans you need to take on so you can focus on building profits instead of paying debts.

Grow notes some entrepreneurs opt to start their business on the side of a full-time job. While building a side business means slower growth, it offers the benefit of cash flow and financial security in a small business’s early years. This is an especially good choice for entrepreneurs building a service-based business, where all it takes is a website and marketing to start building a customer base.

Starting your own business can be incredibly fulfilling. However, don’t let your passion for entrepreneurship cause you to rush in unprepared. By spending time learning, saving, and planning before putting your entrepreneurial skills to the test, you can start a business that’s built to last.

Written by Derek Goodman | September 2020 Inbizability.com

Image by Pexels