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More Than a Vendor: How to Turn your Vendors into Partners

For many small businesses, vendors serve a defined purpose: They provide a product or service. Once that is done, the business pays the bill and moves on, until the next time they need the product or service.

Business partnerships with vendors

In some situations, this model works. However, many businesses have found their vendors are an important part of their success, and are instrumental in their company reaching its goals. Those companies that have developed strategic partnerships with their vendors are often in a better position to achieve their objectives and to maximize their results than those who take a more transactional approach to working with vendors.…

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5 Times You Should Relocate Your Business (and When You Should Stay Put)

Deciding to move to a different city when you work for someone else is a major decision. Balancing the emotional with the practical can lead to tough choices, even when it appears that moving is the best thing for your family, your career, and your life.

Relocating business location

When you own a business, making that decision is even more difficult. Even if your business is mostly online, or you work with clients everywhere, pulling up the stakes and heading to a new city requires thought, planning, and a healthy tolerance for risk. That being said, there are a few signs that it’s time to move your business somewhere else, especially if you want to grow.…

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5 Ways to Be a More Ethical Leader

In today’s business environment, perhaps no principle is more revered — and yet more misunderstood — than ethics. Leaders and business owners claim that they want to be more ethical, or that that conduct their businesses in an ethical fashion, yet have difficulty articulating exactly what that means to their daily operations.

Ethics

Often companies will devote considerable time and resources toward becoming a more social responsible — ethical — organization, with the intent of attracting more business and a more loyal customer base. And there is some evidence that those efforts pay off; in a recent Wall Street Journal report, researchers found that consumers are more willing to support, and will pay more for products from, a company that they believe acts ethically.…

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4 New Experiential Technologies for Trade Shows

For many industries, trade shows are an essential component of building brand awareness and major partnerships, as well as generating sales. But increasingly, simply having a simple booth and brand representative aren’t enough, and many great businesses have taken the leap to use new technologies to make dramatic impacts at trade shows. Trade show attendees and potential clients of all kinds are becoming better informed and often more reluctant to make commitments to brands.

Nintendo experiential expo booth

Sure, most trade shows have now included an aggressive social media marketing regimen for attendees and demonstrators. Paper brochures and flyers are now largely a thing of the past, and even pre-event, many demonstrators of a trade show are allowed to share pertinent business information with the social profiles of attendees hours or day before the floors open.…

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How To: Targeted Advertising For Your Underground Print Campaigns

The London Underground has over 1.2 billion passengers annually, making the numerous advertising spaces available very desireable. Unlike buses and overground trains, the tube doesn’t allow access to the internet, leaving many passengers with nothing to look at except ads.

Ads in Piccadilly Circus Underground Station

London poster print company Ro-Am Posters says that the essence of a great poster campaign lies in ‘communicating to audiences through eye-catching visuals and succinctly presented information’. A bigger advert doesn’t need you to include more information, in fact less can be more striking and will grab the attention of passengers.

As with any advertorial campaign, budget plays a huge part in where you can advertise.…

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4 Tips for Building your Brand Using The Internet

There are millions of businesses online, so when you put your business on the internet you have tons of competition for attention. That’s why it is important to make sure that you are getting your name and business out there. There are many ways to do this, from blogging to social media.

Online branding

There are reasons that you need to utilize all of the outlets the internet offers, if you want to ensure that your business has success online. If you have a blog you can increase your sales and social media allows you to get on a closer level with your customers.…

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5 Ways your Small Business Could be Wasting Time

If you are running your own small business, chances are you are going to run into the problem of time management. Wasting time in a small business can be a chronically unnoticed problem by the over-scheduled, busy shop owner. It is critical that when you operate your small business you are running the most time efficient schedule for both yourself and your employees. Included here are a few ways you could be wasting time in your business and how to stop the leaks.

Busy small business owner

Doing Inventory

Do you find yourself completely unaware of how much stock is left? Are you having to do inventory on a weekly or monthly basis?…

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Trade Shows and Exhibits: Easy and Effective Ways to Attract More Visitors to your Booth

When you’re attending a trade show or convention, it’s all about exposure. So, here are some simple and effective ways to get more people to notice your booth.

Gorilla Glass trade show booth

Get a Good Location

Your booth location will determine a lot of your success at a show. The old adage is true: “location, location, location.” Does anyone need to be reminded of this? Yes. We see this advice all the time, and yet many businesses still don’t get in until the last minute, forfeiting the best places in the show. As a result, they’re stuck behind a pole, or in the back where residual foot traffic happens.…

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Self-Employed at Last: The Top Common Blunders to Avoid at Any Cost

Being self-employed is a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work. Most new business owners make a lot of mistakes. Here are some of the most common, and how to avoid them.

Making business mistakes

Failing To Budget

Small businesses are especially prone to accounting mistakes, unless they happen to be accountants.

Make a budget, and stick with it. Budget out, to the penny, how much money you need to keep the doors open. Then, round up. Yes up. Add in 10 percent to that rounded figure. This gives you a nice cushion – a safety net – that hopefully you’ll never have to use.…

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5 Ways your Small Business Could Be Losing Revenue

It is an undeniable fact that the current state of affairs is difficult for small businesses. Trying to compete with Goliath-sized companies is a bit like swimming upstream in molasses for your small business. You may be unsurprised that you are counting every penny and monitoring revenue on a daily basis. But are there options for income that you could be missing out on? Included here are a few ways your small business could be losing revenue, as well as means to correct it.

Losing profits

No Credit Card Processing

Credit cards are like candy in today’s world. Everyone has at least one and they will use them whenever they get the chance.…

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