Developing a strategy around your brand and learning how to market it are pivotal to the success of not just your brand, but your business as well. And that’s exactly what we’re discussing in today’s blog post. 

If you’d like to learn more about what a brand is and the different elements that comprise it, check out part one of our Guide to Branding, “What is Branding?” here. 

What is Brand Strategy and Marketing?

A strong brand strategy helps you present a unified, consistent brand identity in market: Ranging from your site design, to your social media profiles, and even to how you communicate with customers. 

Consistency is pivotal to branding because it helps set expectations with your audience, and a consistently good experience with your brand increases brand loyalty. Without a brand strategy to drive that consistency, your business will suffer. 

Crafting a brand strategy isn’t difficult, but it does take time and effort. 

A good brand strategy helps you understand your business values and directs your brand to grow in manners beneficial to both your business and customers. It’ll help you communicate with your audience clearly and effectively, attract the right customers, and positions your brand in a way that helps you grow your market share. 

Why is Brand Strategy Important?

Without a good, consistent brand strategy your business will suffer. 

Crafting a brand strategy helps you understand who you are and what matters to your business, like your values and mission. Those are vitally important to understand when making marketing and business decisions. 

When you have an inconsistent brand, your marketing and communications take a hit, and if you can’t clearly communicate your brand and values to your customers, you’ve lost them. 

So let’s look into how to create a brand strategy and what you can do to succeed against the competition. 

How to Create a Brand Strategy

Before sitting down to create your brand strategy, it’s good to have the following information at hand:

• Who’s your target audience?
  • Who are you trying to reach? Do you know what your ideal customer looks like? To craft an effective brand strategy you must know who you’re talking to and what their needs are so you can offer the appropriate solution. If you know your audience, you can speak to them more effectively.
• Who’s your competition?
  • What other businesses and brands are competing for the same customers and audience? This information is vital to know. If you understand your competition, you can figure out how to position yourself in the marketplace to stand out from them and attract customers. 

Once you have that information handy, it’s time to start strategizing. So, let’s do it. To build your brand strategy, follow the steps below. 

Understanding the Core of Your Brand

Your business holds a set of core beliefs that drives and influences every aspect of your brand. You can think of these beliefs as your business values or your mission. 

When your brand and core business beliefs are aligned, it’s a powerful thing. When they’re not, well, you’re facing some issues. 

If you understand what drives your business, what drives your brand, then you can successfully communicate that to your customers both verbally and visually. It allows you to grow your business in a way that successfully sets you apart from competitors and engenders you to your audience. 

Without a set of guiding beliefs, your messaging will be erratic, employees may feel directionless, and overall, your business will suffer. 

To help you determine your core values and beliefs, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who am I? Why does this business exist?
  • These questions help you understand the purpose of your business. 
• What does the future of my business look like? What does success look like and how do I create it?
  • These questions help you understand your business’s vision and mission, and help you determine what needs to be done to support them. 

It’s essential that you start your brand strategy by diving into the heart of your brand and determining your values. These values and your core brand can then be shared with your audience and in market through messaging and visual representations. 

Define Your Brand Voice and Messaging

Now that you understand what makes your brand tick, it’s time to figure out how to communicate that to your customers and in the market. You can think of this as an exercise in brand messaging. 

Brand messaging is the practice of talking about who you are. Like with any practice, the more you hone and refine your messaging, the better it gets. Defining your brand messaging helps your brand communicate honestly and effectively. 

It’s important to spend time figuring out your brand messaging before jumping into the more visual aspects of your brand. That’s because your brand’s visual assets are largely an extension of your messaging and how you represent yourself online and in market. 

For example, when developing Domain.com’s brand strategy, we determined that our messaging needs to be authentic, interesting, and straightforward. Cleverness is okay, but we’re not cutesy and we won’t pander. We try to be honest and transparent while speaking clearly and simply — no “fluff.”

In turn, this helped us craft our visual identity — bold, strong, and energetic. Our approach with images and the more flexible creative elements of our brand is to find clean, clear imagery for complicated concepts. Our minimal illustration style is designed much like our messaging, again, no “fluff.”

To craft the best brand messaging, you’ll need to understand three things:

• Your brand’s personality. 
  • Long gone are the days when businesses were entirely formal and focused on transactions alone. Now, your brand needs to have some personality. What characteristics and human attributes does your brand express? Are you fun and cheerful or serious and direct? Determining what attributes to highlight in your messaging helps you build relationships with the right audience. 
• What voice to use. 
  • Your brand voice is unique. A car dealership doesn’t have the same voice as a non-profit, and for good reason. Your brand’s voice is your brand’s personality put into words and articulated in your customer-facing messaging. 
• What tone to take. 
  • A good way to determine your tone is to think about how you want your messaging to make people feel. Your voice won’t change, but your tone can depending on the context of your message or who you’re talking to. Just because your voice is clever, doesn’t mean you can’t have a serious tone when necessary. 

Once you’ve defined your brand messaging, it’ll be so much easier to communicate effectively and talk about who you are in market. Your brand messaging and voice should be used when sharing your brand story, making a pitch, or making a promise to your customers. 

Define Your Brand’s Visual Identity

Usually, when someone hears the word “brand” they immediately jump to thinking of colors and logos. However, we chose to include visual identity as the third step in your brand strategy because it’s a continuation of your brand messaging. 

Your brand expresses itself through colors, images, and icons just as much as it does with words. When crafting your visual identity keep in mind that you’re designing not just for your immediate needs, but for your brand’s future, too. 

With that said, your visual identity needs to be clear and intuitive so that the different elements, like colors and logos, work together. There needs to be an element of flexibility so that you can adapt and grow as your business does and as you introduce new products or services. And it needs to be comprehensive. Detail your color palette and what your imagery is meant to convey so that your employees or contractors understand and can apply your visual identity to their tasks and responsibilities. 

Translating Your Brand Strategy into Brand Guidelines

Now that you’ve gone through the exercise of determining your brand strategy it’s time to finalize it. 

Translating your brand strategy into a tangible document that contains your brand guidelines is an essential step in achieving business success. Having this information documented not only keeps you accountable, but it makes it easy to share with whomever needs the information, whether that be employees or an outside contractor. 

We recommend using a cloud-based tool, like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, to track this information. Both tools make it easy to work from wherever you’re located and you can access your files across various devices. They also make it easy to collaborate with others and stay on top of tasks. 

Your brand guidelines should detail the following information:

• Mission
• Vision
• Voice & Tone
• Color Palette
• Logos, Taglines, and Icons
• Typography and font
• Visual Language and Identity
• Media kit 
  • Your media kit should include downloadable files of any logos or design elements that your employees or contractors may need to support your brand. 

Putting Your Brand into Market

Ready to take your business and brand into the market? Congrats!

Now that you’ve established your brand strategy, you’ve set yourself up for success. 

You can use your brand strategy and guidelines to talk your customers online and off — in email, via social media, and face-to-face. And you should absolutely use and refer to your brand guidelines when designing your website, the core of your digital identity. 

If you don’t have a website, we can help. With Domain.com’s WebsiteBuilder, you can get online quickly and easily. And while our AI-powered site builder helps make life a little easier by getting your site design started, you retain full control over customizing your site to support your brand identity. 

So what are you waiting for? Get started today. 

Relevant, insightful, and well-crafted audio content delivered in a friendly yet authoritative voice can be an easy, intimate, and powerful way of connecting with different segments of the audience, educating them about your business and its products, generating brand awareness and love, strengthening your identity and eventually boosting your sales. 

If the numbers stated above don’t make a convincing enough case for the humble podcast as a worthy addition to your content marketing mix, the six compelling reasons mentioned in this article surely will.

However, before you get into making the most of your newfound passion, you must address the first step — building an identity for your podcast. This starts with registering a domain name. 

Instead of going the traditional route, consider getting a little creative and giving your podcast a meaningful and contextual online identity.

For example, if your podcast is more tech-oriented, you could register a domain name on .tech. If you’re talking about small business marketing or subjects like SEO and customer management, you could opt for .online or .site. If you’re speaking to creative professionals, or have something to do with housing, design, or outer space, you could opt for .space.

New domain extensions such as these add more character and flavor to your online identity and make you stand out. This ensures that your listener is impressed with you right from the beginning.

6 Ways Podcasts Supercharge Your Marketing

1. Easy and Inexpensive to Produce

It costs money to produce well-researched, high-quality, professional-looking content. But when it comes to podcasts, your production costs are far less than those for other forms, especially videos. 

You don’t need to hire a professional cameraperson or editor to create a podcast. A basic headset with a mic is all you need to get good audio quality. Podcast editing software such as Alitu and Audacity are fairly simple to use and there are enough tutorials on YouTube to help you get started (Audacity is also completely free).

If you are a good writer, you can write your own podcast script, one that channels your thoughts in your own voice and thus is more authentic. However, if you don’t trust your writing skills, hiring a freelance content writer from a platform such as Fiverr is also an option.

2. Stand Apart from the Competition

Content marketing is highly competitive. Almost every brand has a blog, a YouTube channel, and an active social media presence. Compared to these, podcasts are still relatively untapped, yet they have a fast-growing listener base. The number of podcast listeners globally has increased by 42% during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Moreover, research has shown that podcast listeners are dedicated to the podcasts they love. According to this 2019 report by Edison Research on Podcast Consumers, 52% of monthly listeners will listen to an entire episode. And, even though it is easy to listen to podcasts while doing something else, 70% of the listeners claim that, at least sometimes, they listen to podcasts while doing nothing else. 

This is your chance to stand apart from the competition, create simple, meaningful content, and connect with a niche audience that sees the true value of what you have to offer and has great potential to become loyal to your brand. 

3. Establish Your Authority

People nowadays look toward brands as more than just transactional entities. They gravitate towards companies that are experts in what they do, whose products and services are guided by knowledge and experience, who aren’t just in the business of selling but of truly understanding and satisfying their needs. 

This evolution of the customer-business relationship forms the crux of content marketing, and with podcasts you have an edge over other formats. As revealed in the 2019 Podcast Consumer study mentioned above, 74% of listeners say that they listen to podcasts to learn new things, while 71% do so for entertainment. By tapping into this medium, you can establish your brand’s authority not just as a business but as an industry expert and an authentic source of knowledge and entertainment. 

4. Better Engagement

Unlike videos and articles that require people to focus their sight and thoughts on a screen, podcasts can be consumed anywhere, anytime, and in conjunction with other activities. People can listen to them while driving, doing household chores, exercising, or just before bed. 

But ease of consumption isn’t the only way in which podcasts offer better engagement. This is a chance for you to also engage more personally with your audience. Through your voice, you are able to infuse your personality in your content, while a conversational tone makes your matter more relatable. It’s like a person is having a real conversation with you rather than reading an email from you. 

In fact, you should consider including real conversations in your podcasts to encourage audience participation. You can do this by incorporating live chats and Q&As, reading comments and feedback shared with you in real-time, and giving shout outs to people who are tuned in. All of this makes for a wholesome interaction that is missing from other forms of content.

5. Connect with New Audiences

Your podcasts can cover a range of topics all directly related to your business industry — such as trends, product reviews or tutorials, or other general interest topics. For instance, a bike company can have a fitness or travel podcast, while a travel company can have a nature or photography podcast. 

As the owner of a company, you can even leverage your personal brand to gain more customers for your business. For instance, let’s say that you’re an avid surfer who runs a sports equipment company. Talking about your passion for surfing on your podcast and sharing your expert tips and exciting experiences is all sure to help you attract fellow surfers. By identifying topics that interest different segments of your target market, you can reach new audiences and build brand affinity with them. 

If you’re collaborating with another brand on your podcast or inviting people to co-host or interview, you are also opening up immense opportunities for cross-promotion and tapping into yet another consumer base. All you have to do is make sure that all parties involved are actively sharing and promoting your podcast on their platforms.

6. Build Deeper Connections

When you’re talking to your audience through your podcasts, you are quite literally telling your brand’s story in your own words and in your own voice. The very nature of the medium makes it one of the most authentic, personal, and heartfelt forms of communication. It helps people see your brand in a more personable light.

Writing about your brand’s journey, the passions that led to it, the struggles you faced, and the successes you celebrated are good enough, but nothing beats the sentiments that a human’s voice can evoke. It helps people relate better, feel empathy, get inspired, and form a deeper connection with your business; and these are the kind of connections that transform into long-lasting relationships based on friendship and loyalty. 

Get Started with Podcast Marketing

Now that you are well aware of how a podcast can boost your marketing, it’s time to hone your speaking skills and put your voice out there! 

Ensure that you have the right recording equipment that does justice to your content and voice. Find a recording space that permits minimum disturbance. Look for the right music to complement your podcast’s theme and mood. If you’re looking for co-hosts or guests, try to find people who would appeal to your target demographic or whose demographic you’d like to connect with. 

Make sure you put out at least a few (typically three) episodes to start with, so that people who are curious to engage with you more get a chance to do so. This increases their likelihood of becoming your subscribers and potentially becoming your customers and brand ambassadors. You can experiment with different formats and episode lengths to see which ones work best for you. 

Remember that the key is to deliver great content consistently to entice people into coming back for more. 

Author Bio

Alisha is a Senior Content Marketing & Communication Specialist at Radix, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions, including .STORE and .TECH. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

There are millions of published blogs — over 570 million, and that number keeps growing. And nowadays, it’s easy to start a blog with no technical knowledge. 

If you have a passion for beauty, skincare, and appearance, then creating a beauty blog is a great outlet for you. With a blog, you can share your passion with the world, earn income, and potentially make a name for yourself in the industry. 

The beauty business is booming and is anticipated to grow annually at 5.1%. The sooner you get started and make your mark, the better your chances of establishing yourself as an essential part of the industry. 

Today, we’re talking about how to create a beauty blog. From planning, creating, branding, building, marketing, and best practices — we’ve got you covered. 

Keep reading to learn how to start a beauty blog step-by-step. 

Start a Beauty Blog

Beauty blogs are popular and there are quite a few out there you can look to for inspiration before starting your own. 

Why do people start beauty blogs? There are many reasons, but here are some of the common ones:

• Connect with a wide audience of other beauty aficionados.
• Provide tutorials on how to achieve the perfect look.
• Build a brand.
• Become an authority in the beauty industry.
• Earn an income doing something you love.
• Inspire confidence in others.
• Access to exclusive or limited edition merchandise and samples.

What is your motivation to start a blog? Your reasons and motivations will help inform the type of blog you ultimately create and the audience you target. 

How to Create a Beauty Blog

You wouldn’t build a house without a framework, and the same thing is true for your blog. Now that you’ve had some time to think about your motivations and reasons for starting a blog, it’s time to plan. 

There’s no right way to plan your blog — some prefer good ol’ pencil and paper and others prefer to keep their plans online. If you choose the latter, consider using a tool like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Both offer the ability to create, edit, and track documents from wherever you have an internet connection. Your plans are your blog’s roadmap, so you’ll want to keep a record of them to refer back to and make adjustments as your blog grows. 

What kind of planning is needed to start your beauty blog? Let’s look at what it takes. 

Decide on Your Audience and Niche

We see a lot of first-time bloggers fall into the trap of thinking that they’ll make waves and draw lots of visitors by creating a broadly generic blog that “appeals to everyone.”

But here’s the thing… nothing appeals to everyone. 

If you want to establish a well-known and trusted beauty blog, start small and identify your niche. Doing this allows you to define your target market and create content for your blog that resonates with your readers.

Let’s work on defining your niche. Your niche is “the industry or genre that you specialize in and the types of products or services you offer.” 

Beauty is a great place to start, but it isn’t your final niche. Think of beauty as a large, overarching category comprised of many subgroups. 

Are you an expert on eye makeup? Is your take on beauty inspired by your culture or how you identify?

Representation is important, so for example, your blog could focus on “Indian beauty” or “Trans beauty.” Even those niches could be further refined. Perhaps your beauty blog isn’t about everyday looks and instead focuses on extreme makeup tutorials. The more you narrow your niche, the more your blog will benefit. 

What Are Your Goals?

What do you hope to accomplish with your beauty blog? Take some time to think about your goals and how your blog can support them. 

Want to make revenue? That means you’ll need a hosting plan that offers eCommerce functionality. Just hoping to make connections in the biz? A more basic hosting plan could do the trick. 

At this point, it’s okay to keep your goals high-level. However, as you work on your blog you’ll want to create smaller S.M.A.R.T. goals to keep you on track. 

Building Your Beauty Blog

So, are you ready to turn this blog idea into a reality? 

To create a tangible blog you need two core things:

1. A Domain Name.
2. Blog Hosting and Building. 

Domain Names for Your Beauty Blog

Ever heard the saying, “The first impression is the last impression?” Your domain name is the first impression someone will have of your blog, well before they ever land on one of your posts or makeup guides. 

Now, we’re going to hazard a guess and say that, as a beauty aficionado, you understand a thing or two about appearances and impressions. Don’t you want your first one to be good?

With that said, let’s explore some domain name options. 

You really have two choices when it comes to a domain name for your beauty blog:

1. Purchase and own your domain name. 
   1. Example: yourblog.com or beauty.blog
2. Use a free subdomain that belongs to a larger business. 
   1. Example: yourblog.othercompanyname.com

Of those two options, which do you think is the better choice for making a good impression? The one that emphasizes your blog and your brand — or the one that advertises for another company in the domain name? 

Obviously, we think the first option is the better choice for anyone looking to establish themselves as an authority in the beauty blogging sphere. 

When you register your domain name, you’re its sole owner for the duration of your registration period. Domain name registrars offer multiple-year registration lengths, and good domain registrars offer a way to auto-renew so you never lose your domain name. 

Getting a free domain name sounds too good to be true… because it is. 

If you run a quick online search for “free blogging platforms” you’ll see a plethora of results. These services are great for the casual blogger who doesn’t intend on growing their blog into their own business or brand. When you create an account with one of these services they offer a free domain name, but be aware that what they’re giving you is really a subdomain. It’ll look something like this: yourblog.bloggingservice.com. 

Why is that an issue? Well, if you want to move your blog to another service, you don’t get to take that domain name with you. That means you’ll have to start from square one all over again. 

And what if you want to monetize your blog by running ads? Most free blogging platforms don’t give you an option to do that or they might give you a small percentage of the profits from the ads that they run on your blog. Doesn’t sound like a fair deal to us. 

Tips to Choose a Domain Name

When it comes to choosing a domain name, you can get as creative with it as you can with your makeup. 

While it’s true that .com is the most popular domain name, it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the wide array of available domains. It’s also notoriously difficult to get the .com you want because it’s been around so long that many highly desirable .coms have already been registered. 

So what are these other domains you should consider? For starters, there’s .blog. That one seems pretty straightforward. Is your blog going to focus on tutorials and makeup guides? There’s .academy, .camp, .expert, .guru, and .info, and we’re only just beginning. 

No matter what domain name you choose, keep the following things in mind:

• Make it memorable. 
  • Keep it short and don’t get unique with your spelling. 
• Think about keywords.
  • Your readers will likely find your blog via an online search. Help those search engines know you exist by targeting the keywords your desired audience would use.
• Pass the radio test. 
  • If someone were to hear your domain name on the radio and never see it written down, could they make it to your blog? Keep the hyphens and irrelevant numbers out of your domain name. 

Your blog is an investment in your future. While searching for the perfect domain name, you might come across some domains that are more expensive than others. Those domains are probably premium domain names. Premium domain names have already been registered, but whoever owns them has made them available for purchase.

Premium domain names are often short, memorable, and keyword-rich, and are perfect for brand-building. While they may cost more upfront, they’ll renew at regular rates, just like the average domain name, and they’ll only grow in value. 

Once you’ve selected your domain name go ahead and register it. There’s no “holding” or “dibs” on domain names — what’s available today may not be available tomorrow. 

Blog Hosting and Building Options

You can build and host your blog without any technical knowledge, we promise! If you want to build your blog by coding it, that’s an option, too. 

WordPress

WordPress is an immensely popular choice for building websites and blogs. It’s a free open-source software that can be used and edited to build your site, and it powers 39.5% of all websites. 

Depending on your skill level and technical know-how, you can either work directly with the WordPress code to build your site, or you can customize a WordPress theme. WordPress offers a great deal of flexibility and customization options, so even if you use a popular theme, your blog can differentiate itself from the rest. 

At Domain.com, we offer a few different WordPress hosting plans for your beauty blog. 

WP Live

If you’d like in-depth guidance and one-on-one support while working on your WordPress blog, our WP Live plans are the perfect fit. With WP Live, you get unbeatable WordPress help from experts who customize sessions based on your needs. Live screenshares and step-by-step walkthroughs make it easy to follow along and solve issues fast.

And we don’t stop with set-up assistance. When you use WP Live, you’ll receive the following features:

WordPress Hosting Plans

Want to use WordPress but don’t need as much assistance as our WP Live plan offers? We’ve got you covered. 

Domain.com offers two WordPress hosting plans: WP Starter and WP Essential, both of which offer unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, a customized control panel, and a plethora of pre-installed themes and plugins. 

Our hand-picked selection of popular WordPress themes are sure to start your blog off right. With a multitude of customizable options, you can edit these themes to build a beauty blog that reflects your brand. And to optimize your initial setup, we automatically install and configure your WordPress website with some of the most helpful and widely-used plugins.

WebsiteBuilder

Getting your beauty blog online has never been easier. With Domain.com’s WebsiteBuilder, you can build your blog in minutes. 

How does it work? 

No time to waste wading through hundreds of templates? WebsiteBuilder has you taken care of. Our intelligent technology starts your blog design for you. Answer a few quick questions and our AI-powered builder will select the right layout, including images and initial content, for your site.

There’s no need to fret with code when you use WebsiteBuilder. Its mobile-responsive templates offer built-in design protection to help ensure your blog’s look stays consistent and professional across desktop and mobile devices. 

Did we mention that it’s just fun to use? Our drag-and-drop functionality and image library (over 550,000 images for you to freely use!) make editing enjoyable. Or you can also upload your own images and logos to make your site completely personalized. We’re pretty serious about security though, which is why every WebsiteBuilder plan includes an SSL certificate to ensure your data stays safe. 

And if you want to grow your beauty blog into an eCommerce site where you can sell your own makeup line (dream big, amirite?), WebsiteBuilder is there for you, offering everything you need to scale your online business. 

Beauty Blog Content and Marketing

Once you’ve built your beauty blog, it’ll need some content. 

Content is what engages your audience and keeps them on-site and interacting with you. As a beauty blogger, your content opportunities are as endless as your creativity. 

It’s a best practice to create a content calendar, somewhere you can track all created and upcoming content to help you stick to a schedule. When you post consistently, your readers take note and will come back to your blog time and time again. Search engines are also fond of a regular content cadence or content updates. 

Consider using cloud-based software, like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, to create and maintain your content calendar. This way, you’ll have access to view and edit it wherever you are and can share it with others if need be. 

Beauty Content Ideas

What type of content should you create? 

Blog posts are essential to success, but don’t stop there. Multimedia content is your best friend in such a visually-driven niche. Videos, infographics, GIFs, tutorials, and guides all appeal to your audience. 

Here are some suggestions to spur your imagination:

• Product Hauls
  • What are you shopping for? Share your latest finds with your audience and give them all the deets — where’d you get it? Why? What does it do?
  • There are many ways to frame your haul, from seasonal hauls to specific-look hauls, your options are endless. 
• “Get the Look”
  • “Get the Look” type makeup tutorials are immensely popular! How many times have you seen a celebrity or influencer and thought, “I wish I could do my makeup like that,” or “I wonder how they get such clear skin”? If you haven’t, your audience certainly has!
  • Not sure what looks to cover? Engage your audience by asking them and give the people what they want. 
• Product Reviews
  • Pretty self-explanatory. Buy a product, use it, and review it. 
  • Be helpful above all else. Sure, you can take two seconds to tell someone you did or didn’t like a product, but how does that help them? Tell them the why behind it. Did it make your skin super oily? Did it cause a breakout? Hard to blend? As you provide more information, your audience can make more informed decisions about what they purchase, and they’ll thank you for not wasting their time or money. 
• “Empties”
  • Okay, so why on earth would you want to share empty and used-up products with your followers? Because there’s no better testament to how much you loved that product! 
• Recurring features
  • Monthly favorites
  • Weekly steals
  • Recurring features lead to recurring visitors, so give them something to expect and look forward to on a regular basis.

Content Marketing

There’s one thing to always keep in mind when marketing your beauty blog: You are your biggest champion. 

Want people to share your posts and tutorials? Ask them. Need subscribers? Ask them.

Your beauty blog is only part of your brand. We recommend supporting it with social media accounts where you can share your content, connect with like-minded individuals, and grow a larger audience. You don’t need to have a social media presence on every platform, but make sure you’re present in the channels that your audience uses. Instagram immediately comes to mind as a great option since it’s such a visually-forward platform. 

Pro tip: Your social media handles should match your domain name for branding consistency. 

Email marketing is another great way to keep your audience engaged. Include an email sign-up form on your blog so that you can share new blog posts or recently-published content with your subscribers. 

And last, but certainly not least, focus on your SEO!

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s essential if you want to be found via online search engines. Now, it may sound counterintuitive, but SEO isn’t about optimizing search engines. Instead, it’s about optimizing your site so that it performs well in search results. We put together an SEO cheat sheet so you can create perfectly optimized posts, check it out here. 

Monetize Your Beauty Blog

You’re putting a tremendous amount of thought and hard work into starting a beauty blog — why not make some money from it?

Remember, this isn’t usually possible when using large, “free” blogging services. If you’re hosting your blog and own your domain name, it’ll be a lot easier to monetize your blog.

To start, consider including ads on your blog. You can do this either by working directly with advertisers or by creating an account with Google AdSense. 

If you choose the former and want to work directly with advertisers, then make it easy for them to contact you. Create an Ads Page on your blog that details important information for advertisers like your site traffic, views, and demographics, and mention what ad spots you have available. Don’t forget to include your contact information. You can then share this page with your desired advertisers while pitching your blog. 

Start Your Beauty Blog Today

Ready to create your beauty blog? We’re excited to see it.

Once you’ve created your blog, drop a link to it in the comments below. We’d love to hear about your process and learn more about your experience. Don’t hesitate to share any tips or tricks you learned along the way, too. 

That will change as your business grows and you add more talent to your staff. As your team expands you’ll find yourself asking things like:

• Who’s working on what?
• Has anyone even started those projects you’ve been asking about for the past three weeks?
• How much has your team completed on certain tasks?

It’s tough to know the answers to these sorts of questions without tracking down your individual employees and getting a status update from each of them, right?

Wrong.

Nowadays, cloud-based tools make it possible for everyone to be on the same page. Using these productivity tools your team can align on common goals, know what other team members are working on, and hit deadlines more efficiently — no matter where in the world they’re located.

How to Increase Productivity.

One of the most frustrating things about working remotely is wasted time. And a big time waster across remote teams is duplication of effort — when two or more people are working on the same thing (unbeknownst to one another) because of poor planning, communication, and tracking. When that happens people get discouraged because all parties involved realize they could have been using their time more wisely.

Sharing your documents and files with one another prevents this issue from happening. With cloud-based documents and tools, files automatically sync so that one person can see what another is working on. What’s even better is that multiple people can work on these files at the same time if need be. Shared documents are a great and quick way to knock things off your to-do list.

Cloud-based productivity tools don’t stop there, though. They also offer things like video calls. Video calls help your team stay together as if they were meeting in the same room. The face-to-face interaction removes the chance of confusing tone in an email, so your team knows the importance of hitting a deadline without feeling over-managed. Set up a weekly video meeting with your team, and individuals, so everyone can stay on the same page with your business.

Make the Most of Your Time with Cloud-Based Tools.

What cloud-based productivity tools do we recommend?

At Domain.com, we’re big fans of both Google’s G Suite and Microsoft 365. You may be more familiar with one or another, but both offer intuitive, helpful solutions for working from home or remotely.

Do you identify with any of the following statements?

• I need to improve my productivity.
• I need to access files at the office, at home, and in-between.
• I sometimes do work on my laptop, but also my smartphone or tablet.
• I need an email address that my customers’ recognize.
• I need big workplace solutions at small prices.
• I need to maintain the security of my work documents while at home or elsewhere.
• I need to know what my team is working on and when.

If so, G Suite and Microsoft 365 are here to help. Let’s take a look at what they offer. 

Google’s G Suite

G Suite is perfect for those looking to increase their business credibility, build their brand, communicate effectively with employees and customers, and improve productivity.

G Suite Communication Tools

Gmail, Calendar, Hangouts, and Meet are tools designed and built to help you maintain open and effective lines of communication. These resources offer instant messaging, email (that matches your domain name for a professional look), and video chat capabilities.

G Suite Collaboration Tools

Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides, and Sites are tools created to allow for work and collaboration from anywhere. They let you work harmoniously with your team from across the room or across the globe.

G Suite Storage Tools

Having hard copies of your documents can be nice, but it certainly isn’t convenient. G Suite offers Google Drive and Cloud so you can store, edit, and securely maintain your important information. Access and share your files instantly, from anywhere, without worrying about merging documents or attaching and downloading files.

G Suite Management Tools

You want your team to have access to the materials they need while working remotely, but how do you make sure your important business documents don’t get into the wrong hands? G Suite offers Admin, Vault, and Mobile tools to help you easily and securely control your data, devices, and users.

You can learn more about G Suite and our offerings here.

Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft 365 is a great solution for those who are building their digital identity and establishing their business online.

With Microsoft 365, you’ll receive familiar and trusted business tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and so much more. Its tools allow you to analyze your business data, protect your business information, and enable social networking and real-time communication with your teams.  

Domain.com offers various Microsoft 365 plans so you can begin with your domain name and a matching email address, and grow into the solutions you need. If you’re already an established business, we’ve got the perfect Microsoft 365 plan for you, too.  We’ll dive into what each one covers right now.

Email Essentials

This plan offers business-class email and calendar services. It includes 15 GB of Exchange Online storage and offers the familiarity of Outlook you know and trust.

You’ll receive an email address to match your domain name with this plan, and that gives you credibility and instant recognition in your customers’ inboxes. 

And don’t forget to keep the team on track and working together with the shared marketing calendar that you’ll receive in the Email Essentials plan.

Business Plus

This plan consists of the core cloud services you’ll need to run your business, including business-class email, online meeting tools, and cloud storage to edit, collaborate, and share your files. You’ll never have to worry about uploading and attaching documents again!

Our Microsoft 365 Business Plus plan provides you with 50 GB of Exchange Online storage, Microsoft Office Online (with familiar tools like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel), 1 TB of business cloud storage with OneDrive, and online meetings, IM, and video chat capabilities with Microsoft Teams.

If you’ve got a remote team, consider starting with this plan, Business Essentials, or the following plan, Business Pro. 

Business Pro

Microsoft 365 Business Pro gives you the freedom to take your office anywhere you go. Working from home, the cafe, or while traveling? Microsoft 365 has your back. 

With this plan, you’ll receive Microsoft Office for desktop, Microsoft 365 apps for mobile and tablets, and automatic syncing across all your devices. 

Put some time back in your day by automating tasks like booking appointments and meetings with Business Pro!

Learn more about Microsoft 365 and get started here.

Work Together Like You’re All Local.

The internet has changed the meaning of a typical workday. Your team members can work anywhere they want, but it’s up to you to make sure they’re not working on whatever they want. Centralized productivity tools address that issue, and make them feel like they’re working in the same room. With close collaboration and the sharing of ideas, your business gets better work from the team.

When your team is spread far and wide across the country, or the world, the tools you use are the thread that holds your business together.

Once team members can work towards the same goal, see what the rest of the team is working on, and efficiently hit all their deadlines, your business stays on the right track. Even without being in the same room, your team can come together to complete the essential tasks that grow your business.

2020 wasn’t kind to traditional retail models — malls and main streets have seen declining foot traffic for years, and the Coronavirus pandemic isn’t helping.

So, what’s an aspiring business owner to do?

Luckily, brick-and-mortar isn’t the end-all-be-all of business models. Instead of investing in a physical property, consider taking your small business dreams online.

Today, we’re taking a deep dive into dropshipping. It’s a great way to start your online business both quickly and easily. In fact, with dropshipping, you can start your business for as little as it costs to create and host a website.

In this guide, we’ll discuss the following questions and topics:

• What is dropshipping?
• What are the pros and cons of dropshipping?
• How do I find a dropshipping supplier?
• How do I determine what products to sell?
• What kind of website do I need for dropshipping?

What is dropshipping?

As you begin researching how to start an online business, you’ll come across the term “dropshipping.” But what does it mean?

Dropshipping is “a streamlined form of retail business wherein the seller accepts customer orders but does not keep goods sold in stock.” That may seem a bit confusing at first… how are you supposed to sell products when you don’t have any inventory? Is it a scam?

Hardly.

The dropshipping eCommerce model takes the fulfillment of customer orders out of your hands. Instead of paying for an inventory that may not sell and the storage fees to house it all, you’ll get your customers’ orders fulfilled at the source. This is usually done by a wholesaler, manufacturer, or 3^rd party vendor (i.e. – “dropshippers”), who’ll manage packaging and shipping the product to the customer. 

Dropshipping example

Renata is a makeup artist living in New York City. She wants to grow her career in her industry. In addition to teaching people how to enhance their natural beauty, she wants to provide them with the makeup and tools they need. As she researches how to start a business, she realizes she has a big problem. Where is she supposed to store all the goods in her 300 square foot apartment? Property is expensive in the city, and she can’t afford to take out a new lease for storage space.

Enter dropshipping. All Renata needs is an eCommerce website where she can adopt a dropshipping model. She selects the products she wants to sell, and every time someone orders makeup or tools from her site she passes that order along to the dropshipper. They then package and ship the item to the original customer. In this scenario, Renata never touches the product (and this process doesn’t have to be disclosed to the end buyer, so they’ll be none the wiser.)

The pros and cons of dropshipping.

Dropshipping, as convenient as it may be, isn’t for everyone. If you’re trying to determine the best eCommerce model for your online business, consider the following pros and cons. 

The benefits of dropshipping.

• There’s a low barrier to entry — all you really need is a website.
• When you choose to pursue dropshipping, you’re freeing yourself from the worries and obligations of manufacturing, inventory, fulfillment, leasing space, and staffing, thereby saving yourself from those substantial expenses.
• You have a greater ability to test products in the market. Since you aren’t buying products in bulk to store and sell, you can quickly adapt and change your offerings depending on market interests. If something isn’t selling, switch it out!
• It’s almost like having a passive income stream. In a traditional retail model, you’re responsible for every aspect of the transaction. With dropshipping, you can focus on other aspects of your business, like marketing, while customers shop your site and a 3^rd party fulfills it.
• Work from anywhere when you dropship. Want to work from the comfort of your couch? Go for it. Prefer a typical office environment? You can do that, too. Like working from exotic locations? That’s doable as well. You can be anywhere in the world and rest assured that your products are reaching your customers.
• No issues with logistics. Worried about having too much inventory to move? Or not enough in stock to meet demand? You don’t have to worry when you dropship — these issues are all taken care of on your behalf.
• You only pay when your customer does. With dropshipping, you only pay for products that your customer has already ordered and paid for, so you’re not losing money on stuff that doesn’t sell. 

The cons of dropshipping.

• There’s a low barrier to entry — all you really need is a website. This looks familiar, we know because we also listed this as a “pro” for dropshipping. Since the barrier to entry is so low, many people can start a dropshipping eCommerce business. If you’re using the same dropshippers and selling the same goods as everyone else, it’ll be difficult to stand out and succeed.
• There can be quality issues. Take this “con” with a grain of salt. If you don’t do your research and choose a poor dropshipper with a less-than-stellar reputation, you’re likely to have issues with your products. This issue can be avoided by researching your suppliers before entering into any agreements with them.
• Your products can change, and you’ll be none the wiser. Your supplier may decide to start using cheaper materials to craft products, or different packaging materials, and you’re likely not to know about it until a customer complains or asks about the change.
• You bear the brunt of customer returns. As a business owner, it’s your responsibility to handle customer complaints and product issues. If someone decides to return a product, they aren’t sending it back to the dropshipper, they send it back to you. You’ll be responsible for providing any refunds unless you have a no-refund policy (n.b. — that might not sit well with potential customers.)
• Shipping times can be lengthy. Amazon Prime, Instacart, and many other services offer near-immediate gratification with super fast shipping. Consumers understand that they may not get the same lightning fast shipping with a small business, but if your dropshipper is located on the other side of the world it can take weeks for products to arrive. Either choose a dropshipper with faster shipping times or be very transparent about shipping times prior to purchase. 
• If you’re selling the same products as everyone else, you may end up paying more for your SEO keywords to try and get a leg up on your competitors. 

How do I find a dropship supplier?

As with most things nowadays, an internet search is a good place to start. If you aren’t finding many options by searching “dropshippers” try going beyond page one of the search results, or expanding your search with other terms like “supplier” or “eCommerce distributor” along with terms relating to the products you’re interested in selling. 

Take time to review the dropshippers you find — have other customers left reviews? If so, do they trend positively or negatively? Find out what their average shipping time is, and always, always read any contracts thoroughly before signing. 

Can’t find what you want on the Internet? Don’t fret — just contact the manufacturer of your desired goods directly. Those manufacturers can provide you with information on their vendors and dropshippers, and perhaps even set up a connection. And then there’s always the possibility that they’ll work directly with you, so don’t hesitate to ask!

If you really want to make sure you’re choosing a reliable manufacturer and dropshipper, consider ordering some of your potential products for yourself and testing them out.

What kind of products should I sell on my eCommerce site? 

Want to know what kind of products you should be selling on your eCommerce website? Well, it depends on your market and more specifically, your niche. 

You aren’t going to succeed trying to be a jack-of-all-trades. Amazon and Walmart already exist, and as a small business owner, it’ll be hard to compete. 

Do your research instead of allowing your personal passions and interests to dictate your products. What does your ideal customer look like? By targeting a niche and understanding their spending habits, along with other demographics, you can cater the perfect selection of products to entice them into purchasing from your site. 

Another big thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t be thinking in terms of your own pocketbook. Just because something may seem a little too expensive for you, doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there willing to pay that amount. This is why market research is vitally important to your success. 

Need some ideas to start identifying products you can sell? Take a look at the following suggestions. 

• Items geared toward hobbyists. 
  • Hobbyists and side-hustlers are booming right now, and there are many who’d pay a pretty penny for a desirable item in their niche. 
• Clothing and accessories. 
  • People purchase clothing at unprecedented rates. If you’ve got an eye for style and trends, and know your market, this can be a lucrative path to follow. 
• Repeat purchases or subscriber products. 
  • What’s better than making a sale? Making multiple recurring sales. If you sell subscription products or products that need to be replaced often, you’re in a good position. 

What kind of website do I need for dropshipping?

Wondering what kind of website you need so that you can start your business? You’ve come to the right place, we’re experts on websites (and domains, obviously.)

When creating your website, you need to build it with the future in mind. If your thought process is something along the lines of, “I don’t have any customers yet, I’m going to get the most basic thing I can find,” then you’re not planning for your business growth or your future. 

If cost and pricing worry you, they shouldn’t. You can create great websites for less than the price of a couple of coffees. 

Here are things to consider when planning and creating your website:

• What is my domain name going to be? 
  • Your domain name is like the digital address for your site, and oftentimes the first impression someone has of your site. 
  • A good domain name is short, memorable, and relevant. Too many hyphens and random numbers, and no one will remember it meaning they won’t get to your site. 
  • Maybe you’ve heard that .com is king, but that isn’t necessarily true. A key tenant of a good domain name is relevance, so perhaps consider a .store or .shop for your eCommerce site. 
• Can you sell products with the plan you select?
  • Not all quick website creation plans offer the ability to sell goods and services online. Make sure yours does. 
• Hosting and bandwidth. 
  • As your website grows and gains more online traffic, you want to make sure everyone visiting your site has a good experience. If you don’t have great hosting or enough bandwidth for your visitors, it can make for a poor experience. (Think slow-loading pages and pages timing out.)
• Do I want to create it myself or hire someone?
  • At Domain.com, we offer a smart WebsiteBuilder that helps you get online with ease. Answer a few quick questions and our AI-powered builder will select the right layout (including images and initial content!) for your site. Don’t waste your precious time wading through tons of templates — let us help. 
    • It is important to compare the features and select the plan that best fits your needs, however for anyone intending to create an online store, the eCommerce Plan is going to be ideal. Not only does it include everything needed to sell goods, services, or even downloads of digital goods online, but also priority support to help ensure any issue you experience is resolved as quickly as possible.
  • Would you rather someone help you through the process of creating your website so you can focus on other aspects of your eCommerce dropshipping business? We can do that, too. Our experts can build you a beautiful site from start to finish, provide a strategic marketing plan that’s tailored to your needs, and teach you how to manage your site for long-term success. 

Ready to launch your eCommerce business?

We’re excited for you! We hope you’ve found this guide to dropshipping helpful, and let us know in the comments below if you have any questions. We’d also love to hear about what has and hasn’t worked for your eCommerce site so we can all learn from it. 

We wish you the best of luck and let us know if you need any help with creating your site — we’re here to help!

●  You’ve grown so much that you’re struggling to keep up with customer demands.

●  Your growth has plateaued.

Planning for future growth is crucial for any online business. In today’s time, entrepreneurs have to be prepared to face any unexpected challenges. That’s how you become a leader and stand out in your niche.

The only hiccup here is: preparing your exponential future growth demands a lot of time and patience.

But — it’s not as difficult as you think.

Having a vision for the future and making smart decisions from day one can help you build a scalable business model that can make a significant difference in the longevity of your business.

In this article, we explore five ways you can take your online business to the next level.

How to scale your online business

1. Get your foundation right

This involves two things — your domain name and your website. These form the foundation upon which your online business stands. Your domain name is your business’s online identity. It’s the address that you communicate in presentations, on your business cards, on your banner ads, in a podcast, and more. Registering your domain name is the sign that your idea is now a business.

When registering your domain name, think about how you can make your website more brandable. This doesn’t mean you www.stuffallthekeywordsinyourdomainname.com.

It means making use of new domain extensions that are more meaningful, industry-specific, category-defining, relevant, and most importantly, keyword-rich. For example, a technology startup could opt for a .TECH domain name, an e-commerce business could go for a .STORE domain name, a creative agency could choose .SPACE. And if you’re looking for a more versatile and open name then you could go with .ONLINE or .SITE.

These domain extensions give you a domain name that’s brandable and meaningful to your business. Add a well-made, fully-functional website to this concoction and you have a strong online foundation to build and scale your business.

2. Always plan for the future

Building a business and planning go parallel to each other. That’s because planning is vital to your business whether you’re on day one or year one.

A good way to plan ahead is to start by setting realistic goals for growth. These could be yearly goals that are further broken down into smaller quarterly goals. Doing a simple exercise such as this gives you time to prepare for the coming weeks.

As you start preparing for these goals, you’ll be able to outline the resources and features that you’ll need to move to the next level. Here are some components that you can factor into your plan:

●  Possible resources that you might need.

●  Digital marketing goals.

●  Customer acquisition plan.

All these components will all come down to one key factor: budget.

3. Arrange for funding and spend wisely

A great option here would be to get featured on Shark Tank and get the necessary funding, however, that’s not an approach most online businesses can take advantage of.

Most small business entrepreneurs have one big responsibility to run and scale their business: secure the right amount of funding and collateral.

One of the options here could be bootstrapping where you either dig into your personal savings, take a loan from family members and friends, or get crowdfunding through sources such as Kickstarter.

Another way for entrepreneurs to get funding is to pitch to investors. While investors can provide great value to your business in terms of funding, valuable advice, resources; they’ll also take part ownership of your company.

Most small businesses opt for the latter, however, if you’re unsure about partnering with an investor then you could consider other options such as scholarships and grants. Many large organizations offer scholarships to startups and small businesses. These can range from $5k and up to a larger sum to help you reach the next level.

A few that you could consider include:

●  Fundbox Small Business Funding Scholarship

●  FedEx Small Business Grant Contest

●  U.S. Small Business Administration Grants

4. Study your analytics

Monitoring your business performance gives you a clear insight into the speed of your growth. Sales performance is one of the first metrics you should be studying when your objective is to scale.

●  Is your sales trend healthy?

●  How fast are your sales growing?

●  During what period do you see a spike in sales?

●  What do you attribute that growth to?

Strong sales performance is a key indicator of the overall health of your online business. If your metrics are positive and growing, then you know your business is scaling.

Other important metrics that you could consider to measure business growth are:

●  Primary platforms – which platforms are bringing in the most sales / new customers?

●  Product performance – which products or plans (in case of a service) are your top sellers? Is there an opportunity to add another feature to your product/service?

●  Lifetime Value:Cost per Acquisition (LTV:CAC) – how effective is your marketing? Can you justify the cost per customer acquisition?

Having a strong grip on your analytics will give you confidence and a competitive advantage when pitching to investors. It’ll also give you enough data to justify any expenses on updated technology or tools.

5. Determine your resources

The more you grow, the more resources you’ll need to manage your online business. These resources could be human or technological.

Here are two instances where you might want to invest in human resources.

1. If you’re looking to build a strong content marketing strategy and build a strong company blog, you may want to consider hiring an experienced SEO professional, a content manager, and a few freelancers who can write good content that can help you lead the search results.

1. If you’re looking to build your community on social media, you may want to consider hiring a professional who understands the nitty-gritty of all the social platforms. Someone who can curate engaging posts, drive engagement, and target relevant audiences on different platforms.

For technical resources, let’s explore these two examples.

1. While you could hire an agency to manage your accounts and keep track of your expenses, you could save time by getting a simple accounting software that can do all this and more.

1. As your business grows, so will your customer queries. Instead of managing a customer line that receives an overwhelming amount of calls in a day, you could install a chatbot on your website that could resolve basic customer queries 24×7.

Identifying areas where you can be more productive will help you prioritize your investments. However, once you do invest in these resources, ensure to check their performance periodically to make sure that you’re getting value for your spend.

Ready to scale your online business?

Your next step from here is to get started!

Carve out a plan and list down all the resources that you might need to scale your business.

●  Create systems and processes.

●  Look for investment and other income streams.

●  Find new clients and collaborators.

●  Have the time to step back, relax, and work on your own development.

Author Bio

Alisha is a Senior Content Marketing & Communication Specialist at Radix, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions, including .STORE and .TECH. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

It’s the end of September, folks. Can you believe it?

Soon, we’ll need to put out the pumpkins, draw out the broomsticks and black cats, and prepare for the holidays to come. Do you know what to expect?

It’s one thing to deck the halls with boughs of holly, but another to prepare your website and marketing plan for the holiday season. Today, we’ll explore why you need to participate in the holiday cheer, how you can plan for holiday sales, and ways to engage your site visitors and customers. 

Create a holiday marketing plan for your website

According to Deloitte’s annual holiday retail forecast, holiday sales are projected to “result in sales between $1,147 billion and $1,152 billion during the November-January timeframe.” Of the $1.1+ trillion dollars in holiday sales, $182-$196 billion is expected from e-commerce alone. That’s a 25%-35% increase from last year! And the Pew Research Center states that “Today, 79% of Americans say they make purchases online.” So if you’ve been dragging your feet on creating an e-commerce website, or have been putting off giving your website a festive facelift, there’s no time like the present. 

As autumn proceeds and the days get shorter and darker, people are on the hunt for the best deals and gifts to complete their holiday shopping. Let’s discuss how you can identify your goals so you can finalize your holiday marketing plan and attract these online shoppers.

Holiday goals for your website

Stop and think through your goals before making any changes to your site. What outcomes do you most want to see from your holiday campaign? Are you looking to:

• Drive new business?
• Increase repeat business?
• Focus on sales of a specific product?
• Increase site traffic?
• Something else?

It’s important to remember that you can have multiple goals as they are not mutually exclusive. Once you’ve identified what’s most important to you, you can cater your holiday marketing plan to include campaigns that support your goals.

Building your holiday marketing plan

Your plan serves as the guide to moving prospects through your marketing funnel so they become customers.

A marketing funnel represents the pivotal steps prospects take on their journey to becoming customers. Funnels are broken down into different sections. People start at the top of the funnel, drawn in by your marketing materials (like blog and social media posts), and proceed through to the last step of your funnel which represents a conversion. A conversion happens when the prospect takes the action you want them to take on your site (like making a purchase or signing up for your email list) and becomes a customer or subscriber.

Keep in mind that not everyone makes it all the way through your funnel. There are fewer and fewer people, or prospects, the deeper they go into your funnel. This is why it’s important to make sure your marketing plan is well thought out. You want to encourage as many people as possible through all the steps in your funnel. 

Know what holidays to plan for

Can you make a holiday marketing plan without knowing the key dates this season?

We didn’t think so. 

Here are some holidays to consider planning for:

• Thanksgiving — Thursday, Nov. 26, 2020
• Black Friday — Friday, Nov. 27, 2020
• Small Business Saturday — Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020
• Cyber Monday — Monday, Nov. 30, 2020
• Giving Tuesday — Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020
• Hanukkah — Thursday, Dec. 10 – Friday, Dec. 18, 2020
• Christmas — Friday, Dec. 25, 2020
• Kwanzaa — Saturday, Dec. 26, 2020 – Friday, Jan. 1, 2021
• New Years Eve — Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020
• New Years Day — Friday, Jan. 1, 2021

Drafting your holiday marketing plan

Have you stopped to think about your goals? Are they strategic and measurable?

Good.

Know what dates to plan for?

Good.

Let’s think through a holiday marketing plan together so you understand how to build your own. 

What’s your first goal? For this example, we’re going to set a goal of increasing our revenue by $10,000 this December.

Now that we’ve decided on a goal our next step in creating our plan is to determine the strategy we need to reach our goal. This strategy can actually be comprised of various different methods that can all contribute toward reaching the goal.

If we really want to increase our revenue by $10,000 then a couple of things need to happen. We should:

1. Focus on what products to highlight to drive more revenue
2. Attract more visitors to our site in hopes of converting them into customers

Marketing tactics to include in your plan

Once you know the pivotal actions you need to drive (for us, we need to increase site visitors and decide on a product to focus on to drive the additional revenue) you can figure out the tactics to do so.

Consider the following:

• Blog posts
• Social media posts
• Email marketing
• Coupons and discounts
• Contests and giveaways

But here’s the thing — just listing out your tactics isn’t going to cut it. As you think through your tactics try setting smaller goals for them, like in the following example.

Instead of saying, “I’m going to run a social media promotion offering 20% off my top-selling product to new customers” try setting a more specific goal.

This goal could look something like, “I will use a coupon code for my top-selling product to drive 200 new customer acquisitions by XX/XX/XX date.” This is called a S.M.A.R.T. goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.) Go ahead and create S.M.A.R.T goals for all the tactics you’ll use in your holiday marketing plan.

Creating your offer

Once you have your S.M.A.R.T. goals for your marketing tactics identified you can get down to the business of creating your offer(s).

It’s vital that you have a good understanding of your ideal customer and the audience that you’re looking to attract. Sure, you could run a contest where the winner receives a free weekend getaway to the Poconos, but if you sell financial planning consultations then what’s the point? You’re likely to have folks across all spectrums enter your contest and there’s no telling if the person who wins will be your ideal customer and continue a business relationship with you post-getaway.

Your offer should be relevant to your audience. So if you do sell financial planning consultations on your site, consider running a contest where the winner receives a free planning session to help get their finances under control in the new year. This offer is more relevant to the people who are in your audience.

Make your offers look good

As a professional, we’re sure you want to be taken seriously. In that case, presentation matters. Instead of writing a normal Facebook post to announce your offer, consider creating materials specifically for your offers. There are many free tools you can use like Canva. You can “use Canva’s drag-and-drop feature and professional layouts to design consistently stunning graphics.”

Don’t miss out on getting new customers by using outdated graphics when you have free options that help make your business and offers look good.

Measuring your marketing success

In order for you to understand the success of your marketing campaign, you need to implement a way to measure it.

Google Analytics is a great way to measure your website’s performance and figure out what campaigns are working and what might need to be tweaked for better performance.

You can check out our guide to Google Analytics here.

Ready for the holidays?

We bet you are.

We wish you the best of luck in creating your holiday marketing plan and running your marketing campaigns. Let us know what has worked for you and what hasn’t in the comments below. And if you have any other tips or tricks for making the most of the holiday season on your site, let us know!

No matter how beautiful and functional your site is, you can’t gain traction and build a successful business if no one knows about it. Sure, you can craft a few social media posts and create some flyers, but those ad hoc efforts won’t result in much if they aren’t part of a larger, strategic business marketing plan.

If you’re not a trained marketer, the idea of creating a marketing plan for your business can seem intimidating. Where do you begin and what’s included?

Rest assured, you can write a great marketing plan, and we’re going to help.

In this post, we’ll start by defining what a marketing plan is, then we’ll discuss the different elements that make up a marketing plan, and finally, we’ll provide tips so you can craft the best plan possible.

Creating a Business Marketing Plan

What is a business marketing plan? It’s a strategic document that outlines how you’ll communicate your products and services to your audience. It details what you’re setting out to accomplish, why you’re doing it, how you’ll get there, and in what time frame.

Marketing plans aren’t static documents, they are actionable guides that can and should be edited and reworked when necessary.  

Your plan helps take the guesswork out of connecting with prospective customers — it serves as a roadmap for your marketing efforts and ensures you aren’t throwing money away on random tactics. Unless you have plenty of disposable income (and who does?), you want to know that the money you invest in marketing is well-spent.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

-Benjamin Franklin

Keep in mind that no two marketing plans are exactly alike. Depending on your business and specific needs, you may end up with a more simple or complex plan. But regardless of its length and complexity, your plan should always be backed by research and data.

Let’s look at what you need to have prepared in order to write a business marketing plan. 

Preparing to write your business marketing plan

Before you sit down to write your marketing plan, you should have an idea of what data supports and informs it. Take a look at the following list and make sure to have this information handy as it will help guide the shape your plan takes.   

Your business’s mission statement

A mission statement sets the tone for your business. It’s a short, and to-the-point statement that describes the purpose of your business and it informs your business decisions.   

Ideal customer persona

Your ideal customer persona, also called a buyer persona, is like an archetype of your perfect customer. Creating a customer persona gives you a better understanding of their needs and how to address them.

This persona should include actionable information, like:

• Their demographics (age, income, location, etc.).
• Goals and challenges.
• Their interests.
• Any relevant behavioral traits.

Your customer persona should give insight into how you can better communicate with your prospective customers — from where you can find them to share your message (i.e. on social media) to what language you should use (for example, avoiding jargon and buzzwords.)

Target market information

Identifying your target market is a lot like identifying your ideal customer persona; however, there are a few key differences.

While they both involve demographics and psychographics, your target market deals with a broader group of potential and prospective customers. Your target market could be people in a certain age or income bracket, whereas your ideal customer represents a more segmented piece of that market. 

General market information

When we talk about knowing your general marketing information, we’re talking about your customers, competitors, suppliers, along with industry news and trends.

Look at your competitors, the businesses offering products and services similar to yours, and try to identify the following things:

• What are they doing well?
• What are they doing poorly?
• Do you know what their customers look like?
• What differentiates you from them?
• What marketing materials do they use?
• Where do they share their message?

Knowing these things helps you understand what works and prevents you from making their mistakes.

Have you taken the time to know your suppliers? What’s available to you and when? This helps you plan your inventory and can help as your business picks up and demand grows.

Keeping your finger on the pulse of your industry is always a good idea. It helps to know when there are new trends you can capitalize on, and it can provide insight into your own products and processes.

Your business goals

Your business marketing plan exists to support your business goals. It’s never a bad idea to restate your goals and come back to them often. This keeps them front-of-mind and helps you craft a marketing plan that ultimately supports your goals.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

Business marketing plan elements

Now that you’ve prepared, it’s time to work on drafting your marketing plan.

Not all marketing plans look exactly the same — you can create email marketing plans, social media marketing plans, and various others. Below, we’ll provide a basic framework you can use to create a general business marketing plan, but feel free to customize or tweak it for more specialized marketing plans.  

1. Description of your business and goals.
2. Describe your target market and ideal buyer persona.
3. Defining SMART goals.
4. Marketing tactics.
5. Measuring success.
6. Roles and responsibilities.

1. Description of your business and goals

The first step in writing any business marketing plan is to lay the groundwork.

Your mission statement helps direct your business, and it helps direct your marketing plan, too. Don’t use your general mission statement in your plan; instead, adapt it so that you have a similar statement to set the tone for your marketing plan.

For example, HomeChef’s mission statement is “to make cooking fresh food at home as easy as possible.” That could be turned into a marketing mission statement by editing it so that it reads, “to engage an audience of amateur and time-starved home cooks, educate them on the joys of cooking, and turn them into subscribers of our service.”

In one fell swoop, you’ve both set out your mission statement and created a goal that the rest of your plan will help support. 

2. Describe your target market and ideal buyer persona

There are people out there who need and want your services, but they don’t know about you yet: Who are they?

Let’s continue with the example we used above — in that statement, we’ve identified that we’re looking to market to an audience of “amateur and time-starved home cooks.”

This section should address that market: Where do you find these people? What are their worries and how can your product or service answer their needs? What do they “look like” (demographics, income, etc.)?

This is also a good time to think about your competition. How do you stand out in your target market? Do you have a unique selling proposition (USP) that differentiates you from other similar businesses? If you don’t know what sets you apart then it’s going to be difficult to target your market and make sales.

All of this information helps you think of, discover, and revise your marketing strategies and tactics, which we’ll get into shortly. 

3. Define your S.M.A.R.T. goals

Smart goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. They make you think practically and realistically, breaking down lofty ideas into achievable goals.

Your marketing mission statement is a great starting place when drafting your specific goals. In our example, we said that our mission is “to engage an audience of amateur and time-starved home cooks, educate them on the joys and techniques of cooking, and turn them into subscribers of our service.”

Now, it’s your job to think of how that can be turned into more specific, actionable goals. We’ll share an example to give you an idea of how it’s done.

We know our target audience cooks at home, but they’re often at a loss for time and might not know all the proper cooking techniques. In researching their behaviors, we discovered that they use certain social media channels for meal ideas. With this information, we can create the following smart goal:

• Set aside one hour each week to create short videos that illustrate our simple, delicious recipes, and share those on social media to create interest in our service.

That goal shows you understand your need to create brand awareness and are sensitive to your ideal customer’s time and abilities, and that you know where to find them online. It also gives you a concrete, achievable goal that you can easily put into practice. 

4. Marketing tactics

Fundamentally, your marketing strategy is designed to promote your products and services so that you can convert customers.  

Your marketing tactics are the specific things you do to support your overall strategy and plan, and can be made up of many different activities, like the following:

• Public relations
• Online marketing
  • Social Media
  • Email
  • Website
• Sales and promotions
• Other marketing materials

You can use this section of your plan to detail the tactics and channels you’ll use to communicate your marketing messages in support of your smart goals. 

5. Measuring success

As a small business owner, you don’t have the time or energy to invest in wasted marketing efforts. Implementing KPIs, or key performance indicators is a great way to measure the efficacy of your marketing and helps you understand what’s working and what isn’t.

If one of your goals is to increase brand awareness through the use of social media, then you might want to consider social share of voice as a KPI. Social share of voice (SSoV) helps you understand how much people are talking about you versus others in your industry. If your SSoV increases on platforms where you share your marketing messages, you can assume that your strategy and tactics are working.

If you’re running a seasonal promotion on certain products, you can look to your click-through rates and conversion rates to see if they drove any increase in traffic and sales on your site. Google Analytics is a great, free tool that can help you understand your website performance. 

6. Roles and responsibilities

Do you require others to help support and implement your marketing plan? Use this final section to define what everyone’s responsibilities are so there’s no question or debate.

Implement your business marketing plan

And there you go! Using this guide, you should be able to craft a business marketing plan that helps direct your efforts so you can achieve your goals.  

Do you have any tips and tricks to share with other entrepreneurs as they craft their marketing plans? If so, share them in the comments below and let us know what’s worked for you.

You’ve developed your stellar business idea, worked on your plan, but wait… what’s this? You still need funding?

You have a plethora of options when it comes to small business or startup funding: Traditional lenders, alternative lenders, grants, and then there’s another thoroughly modern way of getting funds — online crowdfunding.

As some loans are becoming harder and harder to acquire, crowdfunding sites are seeing an increase in usage and funding.

So, what is crowdfunding? How can it help you launch your small business? That’s what we’ll discuss in this blog post. Stick around to learn about crowdfunding, tips for crowdfunding success, and the top ten crowdfunding sites for small businesses and startups. 

Crowdfunding your small business

Crowdfunding “is the use of small amounts of capital from a large number of individuals to finance a new business venture.” A big issue with traditional lending methods is that it can be incredibly hard to receive the capital you need to succeed. Unless you have proven success in business, positive cash flow, and great credit history, banks aren’t likely to approve your loan requests.

Crowdfunding is a great answer to this problem as it allows you to get backing from friends, family, established investors, and complete strangers who believe in your business. Crowdfunding has really democratized the world of small business and startup funding.

Before starting a crowdfunding campaign, it’s important to note that on many sites (but not all), if you don’t meet your crowdfunding goal you won’t receive the funding. That said, here’s how you can boost your chances of meeting your crowdfunding campaign goal. 

Tips for crowdfunding success

A great business idea alone won’t help you get the crowdfunding results you’re seeking. We’ve put together the following tips to increase your chances of running a successful crowdfunding campaign so you can fund your business. 

Preparation and planning

Crowdfunding isn’t a shortcut to launching a business, and people are wary of investing in half-cooked business ideas as they’re too risky.

If you haven’t already, now is the time to develop and vet your business idea and create a small business plan. 

Review successful crowdfunding campaigns

Time is money, don’t waste yours by reinventing the wheel. Instead of striking out alone, look to other crowdfunding campaigns to find what worked and what hasn’t, focusing on campaigns in an industry similar to yours.

Can you find any similar traits among successful campaigns? Perhaps they offered equity stakes in their small business or offered big rewards to initial investors. How did they present their campaign? Did they use lots of images and videos to convey their message and appeal? After reviewing these campaigns, you should start to notice common themes and elements. 

Familiarize yourself with the Terms & Conditions

It’s your responsibility and in your best interest to review different crowdfunding sites’ terms before utilizing them for your campaigns. Each site has its own billing policies or ways of collecting revenue, some sites may prohibit certain industries, and others may have certain age requirements in order to use their services. As you review, you may find one site’s terms more agreeable than another’s.

Be your own PR person

When it comes to crowdfunding, you are your biggest advocate. If people don’t know about your business and crowdfunding campaign, how are they going to invest in it? Here are a few ways you can work on your business and brand awareness:

• Create a website.
  • Where should people turn if they need more information about your business? Creating a website establishes your digital presence and not having a site is pretty inexcusable these days. If you don’t have a product or service to sell yet, focus on your “About” and “Contact us” pages. If you’re really serious, create a “Press” page that offers images and information that journalists and others can use in their features.  
• Your domain name should be relevant. 
  • Help motivate people to visit your site by making your domain name short, memorable, and relevant. If the .com you want isn’t available, don’t panic — there are multitudes of available TLDs for all sorts of industries. Can’t find the .com you want for your new yoga studio? Try the .yoga TLD. Is the domain you chose for your e-commerce store unavailable? Try .store or .online.
• Leverage the power of social media.
  • Social media is a form of social proof and helps you build your brand while keeping you in touch with potential investors and customers.
  • Encourage your friends, family, and followers to share news and posts about your business. It’s called social media for a reason — networking is essential!

You want people to know about your business so it can gain traction and get funding, so don’t be shy in promoting it and your crowdfunding campaign. 

Back your campaign before it goes online

Being the first person to do something can be nerve-wracking, and that includes being the first person to back your crowdfunding campaign. However, it’s easier to justify doing something when you see that others are doing it, too. Use this to your advantage by having some investors already lined up before your crowdfunding campaign goes live.

You don’t need professional angel investors — having some friends and family willing to donate at the beginning of your campaign works just as well to lend credibility to your business idea. 

Add a little character

Every good campaign uses facts to help support the appeal, but the great ones know that emotions matter, too. When a person finds your crowdfunding campaign, what do you want them to feel? What emotions should your campaign elicit? Excitement? Desire for your product? Write your crowdfunding appeal to influence the emotions you want someone to feel when reading it.

Show the people behind the scenes making it happen. Your investors want to know about the team that’s turning ideas into reality just as much as they want to know about your business. Ideas are great, but it’s the people that make them happen. 

What are the different types of crowdfunding campaigns?

Crowdfunding campaigns can be broken out into four main categories:

• Donation – when people donate money to your crowdfunding appeal and are promised nothing in return.
• Debt – any money pledged by your supporters is paid back (usually with interest) by a certain deadline. This is a lot like a traditional loan.
•  Rewards – in this scenario, you promise a certain reward based on the amount of money someone pledges to your crowdfunding campaign. You can offer services or products as rewards to entice people to donate funds. Consider offering different reward tiers with corresponding pledge tiers. For example, you can offer one reward to people who pledge between $10 – $100, a better reward for people who pledge $101 – $500, and so on.
• Equity – this is exactly what it sounds like. When you perform an equity crowdfunding campaign, you’re giving an investor a percentage of ownership in your business in return for funding. 

Top Crowdfunding Sites

GoFundMe

Since launching in 2010, GoFundMe is one of the most widely-used crowdfunding platforms. They describe themselves as the “world’s largest, free social fundraising platform.” However, one thing to note is that the platform is only free for campaigns in certain currencies and countries. Also, they apply standard transaction fees to debit and credit card transactions.

Unlike some other platforms that return funds to donors if you don’t meet your goal, GoFundMe allows you to keep whatever amount you raise. With “over $9 billion raised from more than 120 million donations,” you should take the time to review the platform to see if it’s a good fit for your needs. 

Kickstarter

Do you have an innovative product or service that you know will make a difference in your industry? Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform that helps “make ideas into reality.” Their mission is to “help bring creative projects to life.” This crowdfunding platform launched in 2009 and since then $5.3 billion has been raised for different projects with 188,101 of them being successful.

Kickstarter is all-or-nothing. If you don’t meet the funding goal for your project then your financial backers won’t be charged for their pledges and you do not receive any funds. Kickstarter charges a flat 5% fee from the funds your campaign collects, but only if it’s successful. If a project doesn’t reach its goal then no fees are charged. Also, they charge a standard payment processing fee of about 3%-5%. 

Indiegogo

According to their website, “Indiegogo is where early adopters and innovation seekers find lively, imaginative tech before it hits the mainstream.”

Indiegogo is both a crowdfunding platform and a marketplace. They help small businesses and entrepreneurs take their ideas from concepts to reality and even help you ship your products. They provide services and resources, including access to key partners for the duration of your project. Unlike some other crowdfunding sites, Indiegogo is there to support you for the lifecycle of your campaign and project. Since its launch in 2008 Indiegogo has successfully helped entrepreneurs bring over 800,000 ideas to life.

They charge a 5% platform fee, and that amount is based on the amount of funding you raise, not your ultimate project goal. They also charge a standard payment processing fee that’s dependent upon your location and currency, though it appears to hover around 3% for many currencies. 

Crowd Supply

Crowd Supply’s mission is to “bring original, useful, respectful hardware to life.” Like Indiegogo, Crowd Supply is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs from funding to delivery, and 100% of funded projects have been delivered to backers. They’ve got a great success rate, too — 70% of launched projects have achieved funding.

When you bring an idea or product to Crowd Supply for backing, you’ll see two “Launch Plan” options: Basic and Standard. Here’s how they differ:

Patreon

Patreon exists to “change the way art is valued.” Over 200,000 creators use Patreon to allow their “most passionate fans [to] support [their] creative work via monthly membership.”

To use Patreon you establish a monthly subscription rate (you can create tiers) for your fans and followers. When that amount is paid, they receive exclusive access to your content. Your supporters join a community that supports you and receive a behind-the-scenes look into your creative process. Patreon allows you to make recurring income — it’s not a one time backing or funding for your creative pursuits.

Like Crowd Supply, Patreon has different pricing based upon the plan you choose:

Crowdfunder

Crowdfunder is a place “where entrepreneurs and investors meet.” When you choose to use Crowdfunder you’re joining a community of over 200,000 members and 15,000 accredited investors.

This site is based around equity crowdfunding, meaning that you’ll need to offer an equity stake in your business in order to receive funding. Like most other crowdfunding sites, Crowdfunder offers resources to help you create the perfect crowdfunding appeal.

They also offer a few plans at different price points:

CircleUp

CircleUp allows you to create two types of crowdfunding campaigns: equity and credit. They are selective about the businesses they work with, but if you make it through their approval process then you’ll find an array of services available to you.

CircleUp focuses on helping small businesses find the right investor. Many traditional funding and loan opportunities aren’t made available to small businesses, and so they seek to fill the gap, primarily focusing on consumer brands.

Before you can start using their services, you have to apply here. 

Fundable

Fundable is designed around business crowdfunding, and they’re “dedicated exclusively to helping companies raise capital.”

The team at Fundable takes a hands-on approach to help customers, “from profile creation to marketing, [they’re] there at each step.” To date, people have committed $615 million in funding on their platform.  

It’s free to set up a company profile on Fundable, and a flat fee of $179 USD per month to fundraise. If you choose to run a rewards-type campaign on their platform then there’s a standard credit card processing fee charged by WePay, their payment processor. 

Republic

Republic recognizes that “many startups’ success depends on their ability to get funded.” They built Republic to address that, and their “funding portal and broker dealer are SEC-registered and members of FINRA.” And they support diversity. “25% of investments on Republic have gone to companies with underrepresented founders of color and 44% have gone to companies with a female founder.” The industry average is 1% and 13%, respectively.

As an SEC-registered business, their cost and pricing structure is a bit different from other crowdfunding sites. Find out more about how much it costs to raise money on Republic here.   

Wefunder

Wefunder has helped fund 451 startups and raised over $164.5 million. They’re the self-described “Kickstarter for investing,” the difference being that Wefunder lets people invest in your company with small ownership stakes whereas Kickstarter allows you to sell products. Right now, Wefunder is only available to businesses and startups located in the United States.

They don’t charge any up-front fees and offer to price match if you find a better offer elsewhere. Wefunder collects 7.5% of your total fundraised amount if your campaign is successful.

Ready to crowdfund your small business funding?

Crowdfunding is a great and thoroughly modern way to find and raise capital for your small business. 

There are a multitude of crowdfunding sites, many of which cater to specific industries and products, so don’t despair if you didn’t find a perfect solution in the list above. 

If you’ve run crowdfunding campaigns before, share your best practices with us in the comments below!

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

Today, we’re talking about grants. Receiving a grant is a lot like getting free money to start your business, but here’s the rub — they’re not easy to land.

Don’t let that deter you. If you like the idea of getting free money to start your business, then keep reading as we explain what you can do to improve your chances of getting a small business grant.  

In this post we’re learning about who can qualify for a grant, how to prepare and apply for a grant, exploring the different factors that can increase your odds of successfully getting a grant, and sharing a list of small business grants worthy of consideration.  

Small Business Grants

What is a small business grant?

We referred to grants as free money, here’s why: Unlike a traditional small business loan, you don’t have to pay back a grant. A grant doesn’t come with monthly payments and APRs — it’s money freely given to you for your business and startup costs.

Yet, that doesn’t mean you can use the funds however you’d like. Grants are awarded for specific purposes, so if you receive a grant to cover marketing and advertising costs, that money can’t be used toward payroll, products, your next vacation, or for anything other than it’s intended and stated purpose. 

If you use grant money inappropriately you’ll likely have to pay it back, and what’s worse, you could face legal issues and be guilty of fraud.

The agency that awards the grant will provide instructions on accounting and reporting, and you must meet these guidelines and report on your progress and use of funds.

Who awards small business grants?

Grant money is awarded by various government-approved agencies (not the government itself), nonprofits, and even individual persons and businesses.

Money and grants can be found in the unlikeliest of places, so do your homework.

If you have an established relationship with vendors and banks then call them. Ask if they offer any grants and what the qualifications are. Most banks employ someone called a “Trust Officer,” a person in charge of the trust department. Their role is to manage the accounts for individuals involved in philanthropy and money-giving.

American Express’s Small Business Economic Impact Study found that two-thirds of every dollar spent at a small business ($0.67) stays within the local community. Most cities and towns have an economic development agency and it behooves them to promote small businesses and entrepreneurs so they’ll often have public funds available. If they don’t, call your governor’s office and ask about state-level agencies that offer grants.

These opportunities are unlikely to be advertised, so put yourself out there and ask around.

How do I qualify for a grant?

Well, that depends on the grant. Some grants are awarded only to female entrepreneurs, others to minority-owned businesses, whereas others are awarded based on industry. There’s a multitude of grants available with varying qualifications, so there are sure to be some you qualify for.  

When an organization or business decides to create a grant, they will set aside the funds and determine the necessary qualifications and application process.

How do I apply for a grant?

After determining whether or not you qualify for a grant, you’ll want to apply. This process is known as grant writing.

Grant writing is notoriously detailed and requires diligence. In fact, many nonprofits seeking grants often hire out their grant writing to professional grant writers. If you can’t afford to do that, it’s okay, you can write an awesome grant proposal all on your own.

Tips for Grant Writing

Every grant appeal or application contains the following three elements:

1. A need statement that is in line with the grant-making organization’s stated purpose for the grant.
2. An explanation of how your small business or organization fits the grant-makers’ qualifications.
3. Illustration of your need for the grant.

Increase your chances of landing a grant by using the following tips. 

Don’t go rogue.

Every grant will offer different instructions on how to apply. Follow these instructions meticulously. If you can’t follow instructions on how to apply for the grant, why should someone take the time to entertain your request? 

Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Instead of striking out on your own, look to previously funded grant applications. You can write to government funding agencies and request copies of these applications (the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, gives you access to these documents.)

As you read these funded grant applications, do you notice any common threads or information they all made sure to include? Make a note of it and include similar ideas in your application, just make sure they’re relevant to your small business.  

Talk to others.

You are not the first person to seek a grant. Leverage the immense power of social media or your local chamber of commerce to connect with others who have received grants. Ask for their advice and listen to it. 

Keep it focused.

Tailor your proposal to the specific grant you’re applying for, don’t use a carbon copy of an application you created for another grant. Writing a compelling proposal means you have to cater your message and appeal to the funder and their vision. How does your proposal align with the funder’s goals and intents? Acknowledge the funder and show your gratitude and appreciation for the opportunity they can provide. Make clear how your future success can be attributed to and enhanced by them. A personal appeal can go a long way in influencing someone’s willingness to award you a grant.

Be prepared.

Before sitting down and writing, think about what you want to convey in your proposal. You can use your business plan as a starting point for inspiration. Create a framework and work to substantiate it. 

Don’t be pretentious.

Your reader must understand what you’re saying in your grant proposal. You’re more than encouraged to use a thesaurus to add variety to your vocabulary but don’t choose big, cumbersome words in your proposal just because they look impressive. The goal is to use the right word to convey your thoughts, not lose your reader in a sea of jargon. 

Make it clear.

Use short and to the point sentences. Don’t lose sight of the forest through the trees. Set up your main ideas and expound on them as needed, making the connections clear. Your proposal should seamlessly transition from one section to the next, not leave your reader wondering where on earth that last idea came from. 

Make room for white space.

Use different sized headers and include space between major ideas or shifts in thought. Leaving white space on the page helps your reader understand the break between ideas and makes your proposal easier to read. 

Make it memorable.

Use supporting details, graphs, and charts when necessary. And don’t underestimate the value of creating an emotional connection with your reader.

The person reading your proposal isn’t always the person who awards the grant. Oftentimes, the person reading your proposal will report back to the awarding organization’s board of trustees. They will present a condensed version of your proposal, boiling it down to the main ideas and the information that’s most important to the foundation. What information do you want them to share? Focus on supporting those ideas.

Appreciate the power of persuasion.

How do you persuade a reader to your cause? Grantsplus.com writes about three different “modes of persuasion”: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.

• Ethos — this relates to ethics. Your writing should convey that you are credible and trustworthy. What credentials or qualifications do you have to support your trustworthiness?  
• Logos — this relates to logic. You should support any claims you make in your appeal with data and facts. Do you have any customer testimonials you can include? Give your reader a reason to believe what you say.
• Pathos — this relates to the heart and appeals to emotion. Use your business story to further your appeal, making sure to illustrate your points with words that evoke imagery and quotes, if you have them.

Proofread and edit. Then do it again.

It’s 4 o’clock in the morning and you’ve stayed up all night and finished writing your appeal, which means it’s time to submit it, right? Absolutely not!

Don’t even think about submitting your grant application if you haven’t proofread and edited it. Read it out loud so you can hear any mistakes in grammar or spelling and fix them accordingly. After you’ve done that, take it a step further and ask someone else to review your grant application. Sometimes, an impartial set of eyes can find issues that you’re otherwise blind to.  

Small Business Grants available in 2020.

Now that you know what a small business grant is, how to qualify, and how to write an appeal for a grant, it’s time to explore the small business grants available to you. The following list is by no means exhaustive — there exist grants for almost every niche and industry, but these resources can help jumpstart your search for the perfect grant. Keep in mind that the government itself doesn’t provide money to your business, but it does partner with numerous agencies that can help you seek grant funding.

Grants.gov

Here, you’ll find information on grants administered by government agencies. You can search through a wide variety of grants and filter your search and results. To access the full eligibility details of the grants listed, you’ll need to register an account with grants.gov.  

This site doesn’t just help you find a grant, it offers resources and guidance for both applicants and grantors. If you’re on-the-go and can’t sit down to peruse their site on your computer, download their app. 

Challenge.gov

Got a great idea? Check out this site to determine if it could be of use to the government. At Challenge.gov, “members of the public compete to help the U.S. government solve problems big and small. [They can] browse through challenges and submit [their] ideas for a chance to win.”

Most of the challenges offer a cash prize, so go ahead and take a gander to see if your small business or idea solves any of the problems listed there. 

The Minority Business Development Agency

This agency is dedicated to assisting minority-owned businesses find the grants and resources they need. It’s managed by the U.S. Department of Commerce. 

National Minority Supplier Development Council

The NMSDC “advances business opportunities for certified minority business enterprises and connects them to corporate members.” You can receive capital loans through the NMSDC and grant funding through the Business Consortium Fund, which is a network of suppliers and vendors that work with the NMSDC. 

Verizon Small Business Recovery Fund

Verizon recognized early on that the Coronavirus pandemic would greatly affect small businesses. They developed this fund to provide, “…grants of up to $10,000 to small businesses, particularly in historically underserved communities hit hard by the pandemic.” 

Small Business Innovation Research & Small Business Technology Transfer Programs

These programs are “highly competitive [and] encourage domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development with the potential for commercialization.”

4.0

4.0 is an organization that “invests coaching, community, curriculum, and cash in promising leaders to test tomorrow’s learning models with students and families in their local communities.” You can apply for a fellowship on their site. 

The Small Business Administration

The SBA offers various grants and cooperative agreements to help fund your small business. Just as with every grant, there are specific requirements to apply, so check out their site for more information on specific grants and eligibility standards. 

GrantWatch

GrantWatch is a great site to use to locate your next funding opportunity. They list grants available in both local and international communities. They currently have over 25,000 grants listed on their site for your perusal.

If you didn’t find the right grant or solution for your needs in that list, here are a couple of things you can do:

• Google it.
  • There’s a vast amount of information online. Use search engines to find the right grant for you.
• Consider other forms of funding.
  • Have you thought about applying for a small business loan or alternative lending?

Apply for your grant and put it to work

We hope you found this guide to small business grants helpful.

If you have any grant-seeking suggestions for other small business owners and entrepreneurs, share them in the comments below! We’d love to hear from folks who have sought grants to learn what has and hasn’t worked for them.

Have you received a grant and are you ready to take your business to the next step? If so, don’t forget about your business’s digital presence.

Today, more than ever, having a digital presence for your business is essential. Start by claiming your domain name and then building a website where your customers and clients can interact and transact with you. You can start today at Domain.com.