A Startup’s Guide to Business Insurance

You’ve finally reached the end of the grueling journey in creating your first startup. We know the feeling, and we know how good it must feel to be here at the end. But before you start celebrating we need to cover a very important to do. Insurance. Your business needs it. After a grueling process of forming your company, you might have forgotten that you could lose all that hard work in the blink of an eye if you go forward without checking for the proper business insurance quotes. Below you will find business insurance tips that will help your startup stay safe and profitable for years to come.

Key Person Insurance

As a business owner, many people depend on you. Customers and employees alike look to you for leadership and guidance. Your company could suffer if you die without a mechanism in place to replace your expertise. If you have key person insurance, you have the assurance that your business has the means to continue if you or your key employee dies.

Upon death, key person insurance pays a sum to the company that will help the company recruit and train a replacement that can fill the shoes the death empties. When you buy this insurance, your key people will know how much you value them, building a cohesive team that will loyally work to achieve your goals. Vendors and banks also like to know you have key person insurance because it improves the chances your company will pay bills after your demise.

Directors and Officers Professional Liability Insurance

If you formed a corporation, you might need to buy directors and officers professional liability insurance. If you hold a board position, if your board of trustees makes controversial decisions, or if your products or services have the potential of harming people or property, people can sue your business for damages. When you have this type of insurance, your insurer will pay for claims made against you. With so many people in our society looking for ways to gain wealth through litigation, you cannot afford to go without this type of insurance.

General Liability Insurance

Regardless of where your business operates, its facilities represent a potential liability that could destroy it. General liability insurance provides coverage if someone gets hurt while on your premises or if a fire or natural disaster destroys your business property. According to personal injury attorneys, in cases of premises liability, a judge and jury look at several factors when determining if the injured person should receive a settlement, but ultimately a property owner is legally liable for injuries suffered by others on their premises. Your insurance will also cover problems resulting from false advertising, copyright infringement, and other acts that hurt others without bodily injury. You could incur substantial legal and medical costs if one person gets hurt on your business property. So buy insurance with the optional coverage you need to protect your firm.

Workers Compensation Insurance

If an employee gets hurt while working for your company, you could be liable for thousands of dollars of medical expenses. Workers compensation insurance makes sure your employees get the care they need for job-related injuries while protecting you and your company from liability. Laws and regulations where your business operates might mandate that you buy workers compensation insurance. As you shop, keep applicable requirements in mind to make sure you buy coverage that meets your legal and business requirements.

Business insurance for your startup can help your company survive lawsuits, accidents, deaths and other routine occurrences. Although you might face the temptation to avoid buying insurance to save money, the reasonable costs associated with business insurance makes it worthwhile in the end. So don’t think you’re cutting any corners by not getting insurance. What you will be doing is creating more of a headache later on down the road if you skip this very important step.

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Accelerate your business

Do you want to grow and scale your business? Do you have an idea you want to make a reality?

ESpark

Entrepreneurial Spark and Ulster Bank would like to invite you to our Accelerate Your Business event to showcase start-up and entrepreneurialism in Northern Ireland and to give you the details of the Belfast Hatchery.

Commitment to support the country’s entrepreneurs and pro-actively help them grow and develop

RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank recently announced a commitment to support the country’s entrepreneurs and pro-actively help them grow and develop. A key part of this announcement was a pledge to set up a network of business accelerator hubs in partnership with Entrepreneurial Spark, the world’s largest free business accelerator – located in cities across the UK known for their entrepreneurial dynamism, including Belfast.

Jim Duffy

Hearing from Entrepreneurial Spark’s CEO (Chief Executive Optimist) Jim Duffy, the session, specifically designed for Northern Irish start-ups and entrepreneurs, will:

Explore what it takes to make your business successful
Look at typical pain points and challenges for start-ups and entrepreneurs
Explain how Entrepreneurial Spark works and how it supports businesses
Hear from Dane Ralston, CEO Losstek, on his entrepreneurial journey

#GODO

Working on mind-sets and behaviours, with a focus on an action orientated #GoDo mentality, Entrepreneurial Spark has an enviable record in making start-ups a success with 82% of the businesses they work with still trading a year later, compared to the usual 40% rate. Since 2012 they have supported 350 businesses with a combined turnover of £41m – creating over 1,000 jobs.

Looking for 80 companies

The unique accelerator and partnership with Entrepreneurial Spark will provide office space, mentoring and access to fundamental startup support in bank premises. We’re looking for up to 80 companies or budding entrepreneurs to join this 6-18 month programme of hands-on coaching and mentoring, an initial #GoDoBootcamp and regular workshop events. Thanks to Ulster Bank this support is completely free of charge to entrepreneurs, regardless of whether they bank with Ulster Bank or not – and taking no equity.

When? Thursday 8th October 9am 9.30am – 11am

Where? Lombard House, Floor 6, 10-20 Lombard Street, Belfast, BT1 1RD

Who? This is for all aspiring entrepreneurs – from idea stage to operational. Anyone who wants to make their business dream a reality and for those stakeholders interested in hearing more.

Agenda

9:00am Event kicks off with Breakfast

9:30am Showcase from Entrepreneurial Spark – What is it? How can businesses apply? Why Belfast?

9.45am Dane Ralston, CEO Losstek and Entrepreneurial Spark Alumni

9:55am Panel Q&A

10:10am Pitching Competition

10:30pm Close and networking

Numbers are limited and are expected to be snapped up quickly – register now to Accelerate Your Business with Entrepreneurial Spark. #GoDoBelfast

You can find out more and apply now for the February intake by visiting www.entrepreneurial-spark.com

Book your ticket here

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How to Create an Inventive Marketing Strategy on a Budget

We’ve all been faced with a situation in life when we haven’t necessarily got the funds to simply buy what we want or need. Being canny with a budget and creative in our approach is an important part of life. Having these skills in the business world is an essential requirement.

When it comes to marketing it can be daunting to deliver a strategy on a modest budget. Traditionally making a big noise required the budget to back it up. Large print ads, TV commercials, celebrity endorsements, radio jingles, billboards – all tools in the armoury of marketing departments and all relatively expensive.

Yet the modern world – and the technology that the world is obsessed with – plays into the hands of those looking to be canny and creative. There are essentially three things you must do to create an inventive strategy when on a budget: plan properly, embrace new technology, and share your wisdom.

Plan

If money is tight then you need to get it right. You need to be specific and you need to plan everything properly. How much money do you have exactly? What does your strategy have to achieve? Who does it need to reach? Ask yourself important questions and ask important questions of your target market so that you are clear before you begin.

Often by focusing solely on the essential goals you can deliver a focussed campaign that is successful. By setting out a good, well-researched plan you can track performance and monitor costs at all stages.

You also need to plan in advance. Rushed, last minute campaigns are likely to attract greater cost.

Digital can disrupt

One of the very best things about the technological advancements of recent years when it comes to marketing is that they have greatly reduced the cost of getting your message across.

Expensive print runs for big batches of flyers can be replaced, for example, by sending out a large batch of SMS messages. It’s quicker too. If sending too many SMS sounds like it’s going to be painful for your thumbs don’t worry. Technology exists to send hundreds or thousands of messages in seconds. People much prefer a text, too, to a leaflet pushed through their door.

Videos no longer need to be made for television or cinema screens – YouTube and social media have reduced the barriers to getting these to your customers.

You should harness social media well. This is your chance to show a human face for your brand and create content that can be shared by your customers who, in this scenario, act as ambassadors for you. It’s powerful, effective and does not come with a big cost.

In general you should think about how digital technology can deliver some of the traditional marketing methods at a fraction of the cost. Stage a virtual trade show, for example, use eye-catching poster images on Facebook instead of billboards and pay for web banners instead of print ads.

Share wisdom

Don’t confine yourself to the short term. One way to boost your marketing efforts is through content. Set yourself up as a thought leader through sound, well-written blog posts on your own website and offer your services as a guest writer for good, relevant industry websites.

In the long-term being a thought leader will establish your brand as something to be respected and will help you to have greater authority when marketing new products, services and practices. If you have a flair for writing and interesting thoughts to share, this can be a lucrative long-term way of extending your marketing efforts in a cost-effective way.

Plan properly, embrace digital and use content smartly and you’ll deliver a winning creative strategy at a cut price.

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Improving Efficiency Through Business Processes

Invoices, receipts, and business communication are one of the most voluminous bodies of writing going back all the way to the civilizations of Sumer and Egypt. And while there are also many different business methodologies tried out over the past 4000 years, it still surprises people that it has only been in the last 20 years or so that the technological business infrastructure necessary to directly improve results through BPM has been in place. In this post we look at improving efficiency through business processes…

The internet browser changed the business world

Of course even 20 years ago, projects and products were being created and completed by companies that were utilizing software as a tool to enhance their results and increase efficiencies. But due to technology limitations, it wasn’t either as easy or as apparent how to leverage technology to collaborate better.

Into that world stepped Netscape, a company that created an internet browser and had a secret goal of turning the world into a place where all business tasks were accomplished through the browser. Netscape was not completely successful during its lifespan as a company- yet today, their distributed computing model is what the majority of companies use, making geographical barriers obsolete.

Adding more intensity to your work day

With the technology barriers dropping, integrating BPM into the lives of all workers became a matter of porting philosophies and process methodologies into software that could utilize the internet or intranet and several companies sprung up that did this well. Not only did BPM models get integrated into project management software, business tools that were designed to manage everything from assets to software development began incorporating traditional business process management steps and procedures into their software packages so that greater efficiency at work could be part of their sales pitch.

For workers, greater organization and greater flexibility in communications meant that greater benchmarking could be done- making them more efficient over time because what they were capable of on a regular basis became much more of a known quantity. At the same time, benchmarking allowed management to add intensity to employee schedules for the same reason: what was being accomplished and what was possible were now much more transparent.

It’s a Matrix!

After the popular film series the Matrix was released, even Americans that didn’t go to business school began to appreciate what matrix management was all about. Still, the one person, many masters approach can be both complex to understand and murky to accurately get ROI from. The great debate, therefore, at the beginning of the 21st century was whether multi-tasking were to be cultivated as desirable or not. Experiments were run to determine what the limits of an acceptable work day was for many workers and the data that was collected found its way into new benchmarks that more accurately assessed what was possible.

While this was going on in parts of America, more true business process change started to take place when General Electric started to share their Six Sigma quality program with the rest of the business world. Six Sigma rapidly became one of the driving forces in the technology industry and gained a toehold in many other industries.

Am I therefore more efficient?

Even the scientific management people 100 years ago knew that by providing mechanisms that give attention to people doing their job, they could positively impact performance. So when it comes to understanding whether the plethora of systems like Six Sigma or Lean are actually helping to drive efficiency gains, company results that are not subject to bias due to the additional attention effect- are hard to come by.

Theoretically, workers are more efficient. More gets accomplished during the day than ever before. But are technology gains masking true worker efficiency gains? One study by Imaginot LLC found that workers at a very large company that had their ROI measured to determine the efficiency of a new system were very efficient at performing the tasks that were measured. The problem, if there was one was that when the workers, who were largely autonomous, were measured against a benchmarked utilization number, their efficiency dropped precipitously- making the the management challenge one of providing a system that not only measures and rewards workers for task efficiency, but also for utilization efficiency.

Overall, BPM theory and practices have advanced quite a bit over the past couple of decades. They certainly have become much more integrated into the toolset of managers, which has been a positive for the firms that they work for.

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Website Builders Empower Small Businesses

Small businesses benefit dramatically from a solid web presence and the rise of Etsyin recent years is just one indicator of how the Internet can boost their sales. But for many small business owners, creating a customized website seems daunting. The process can be costly and lengthy and many business owners don’t know where to begin.

DIY Website Builders Mean Any Small Business Can Have a Website

The recent boom of many do-it-yourself website buildershas helped to empower small businesses by reducing the barriers to entry into the digital market. To build a professional, well-designed website today requires tens of dollars rather than thousands, or sometimes nothing at all.

Building a website doesn’t have to be complicated. Most small businesses don’t need websites with an encyclopedia of bells and whistles; they need nothing more than a simple “business card” website which includes important details such as services, contact information and social media links. But even for those small businesses with extensive product lists and dozens of options, many popular website builders can provide them with just what they need. In fact,today’s website builders offer such a range of functionalities and design options that for most small businesses they are a better choice than hiring a dedicated developer.

Choosing the Best Website Builder for Your Business

There are many options on the market today. From the website builder by Wix, a platform now boasting more than 70 million users, to Weebly, Squarespace, Jimdo and dozens more who are all vying for market share.Each one has its pros and cons, but at the end of the day most charge a nominal fee for a website (from being absolutely free to $300 a month) and allow users to drag-and-drop page elements where they want them without needing to know code. Building a website is as easy as playing a game on your smart phone, so small business owners can go from no website to a live version in just a few hours.

Add Endless Functionalities to Your New Website

Whether a small business needs impressive eCommerce features which can track the inventory of a brick-and-mortar store, email newsletters, secure check out, or the ability to advertise specials in social media, website builders have really begun to push the envelope in terms of offering great tools which used to prohibitively expensive.

Here’s a breakdown of some of thesmall business tools website builders are providing… sometimes for free, thus saving businesses thousands of dollars in development costs.

Shopping Carts:It might seem strange to hear, but shopping carts are technically difficult to code and have many different variables where things can go wrong. But website builders provide easy-to-use shopping carts for their clients, often at no additional cost, or for just a small percentage of sales.
Secure Payment Gateways: Having a shopping cart is one thing, but accepting various forms of payment quite another. It used to be true that unless they were willing to shellout big bucks, small businesses with websites were limited to payment options like Paypal. But today businesses can choose from many payment options and website builders handle all the security issues for the small businesses.
Great Design: No one wants a template-looking websiteand several of the top website builders allow such a depth and ease of customizationthat almost no two websites will look similar. No matter how unskilled a user is, the final site can look terrific.
Business Emails:Setting up an business email account can be a costly headache even with the help of a developer, but website builders have taken the hassle out of the equation, and most offer an affordable business email solutionfor clients.
Reaching Clients: How can a business owner make sure that customers will see their new website? Today, many website builders offer great tools and information to help their users learn best practices in everything from PPC to SEO, banner advertisingand social media campaigns. Proud of your new website? The right website builder will help you promote it and bring in traffic!

Small businesses are often short on resources and also often face steep competition. It can be challenging for them to compete on the web for potential clients. Luckily, the do-it-yourself website builder platforms have helped to level the playing field, putting many of the same tools, tips, and tricks that larger companies use in the hands of start-ups, individuals and small businesses.

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5 Necessary Skills for Every Entrepreneur

Successful entrepreneurship requires a certain mindset, collection of personality attributes, and a battery of skills. Each CEO and entrepreneur may have a slightly different way of doing things, but the essential elements of success remain the same. The following includes 5 Necessary Skills for Every Entrepreneur. These skills are necessary to achieve, persevere, and dominate in the world of business as an entrepreneur.

Necessary Skills for Every Entrepreneur: 1. Leadership

Not everyone has the ability to lead. Leadership qualities are more than just ordering subordinates about. A true leader inspires people to want to well for the company. This is not necessarily accomplished by ruling with an iron fist, but neither is it suggested that an up-and-coming entrepreneur take a relaxed attitude toward management.

Leadership encompasses many skills that required decisiveness, finesse, and sound decision-making. A leader needs to be willing and able to delegate tasks to employees, have a clear, workable plan fully formed before implementation, understand the financial expectations of the business, and build an effective staff by hiring applicants that will be assets to the business. An entrepreneur who can work with their staff is more likely to succeed than one that simply dictates orders without being in touch with what is actually taking place within the company.

2. Motivation

Without drive success will never occur. Slacking off and procrastination will get a person nowhere in the world of business and enterprise. Someone who starts at the bottom and works their way up by being a team player, taking initiative, and possessing a willingness to both learn and volunteer for tasks that are unpopular can create a reputation with important people who will remember the work put into achieving success.

A career or business that is stagnant or stuck in a rut will likely fail. Entrepreneurs who actively seek out new business, solutions to problems, and make the tough decisions quickly and decisively will reach their goals in a timelier manner than their lackadaisical counterparts will. It may take time to become a successful entrepreneur, but patience and perseverance will win out in the end, and last far longer. Expecting an overnight success will last just as long, and the flash-in-the-pan entrepreneur will burn out as quickly as they sparked to life.

3. Communication

Communication is essential for an entrepreneur is two major areas: within a business and outside in the business world. Effective entrepreneurs understand that communicating clearly and effectively with staff can mean the success or failure of a business. The ability to explain what is needed, and the specifics of a business plan are paramount to effective leadership. Staff should not need to have tasks explained in minute detail, but should have a good grasp on the style and focus of the business beforehand. This can only be done if management communicates these expectations from the beginning.

Networking throughout a specific area of the business world to further contacts and business relationships can only aid in the success of an entrepreneurship. Reliable contacts among people with influence can only benefit the budding entrepreneur, and possibly increasing future patronage.

4. Innovation

Some old-fashioned entrepreneurs have difficulty in keeping up with the times, refusing to modernize or adapt to changes in how and what business is conducted. This stubbornness can lead to the death of a business. A successful entrepreneur keeps abreast of new trends and technologies to keep a business updated, well maintained, and accessible to new clientele from younger generations.

In order to achieve this goal, an entrepreneur needs to be willing to accept and implement innovativeness to the business. Sticking with outdated methods and technology may be cheaper in the short term, but it will eventually lead to higher costs and loss of revenue. Embracing change in deference to accommodate the ultimate end goal of the company may help an entrepreneur realize that goal that much sooner.

5. Accepting and learning from failure

Every successful business person has a story about a failure on the way to success. Failure should never be viewed as the end of a business venture or a dream. Failure is an opportunity to learn from mistakes, and should be motivation to start again. Yes, failure can definitely hurt, and taking a hit in business can make building again more difficult, but simply giving up is never an option for a true entrepreneur.

If a business venture is struggling, it is sometimes better to cut the losses rather than trying to breathe life back into something that is never going to work. A successful entrepreneur learns to recognize the signs that something just won’t pan out. Acceptance that failure cannot always be avoided is a hard-won skill, but essential for understanding what makes a business succeed, and what will cause a business to fail.

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North and South building relationships through the Irishbizparty conference

It’s time to get your tickets folks!

Irish Biz Party

The online phenomenon that is Irish Biz Party have chosen Fermanagh as the destination for their fifth national business conference, which takes place in the Killyhevlin Hotel, Enniskillen, on Wednesday 14th October.

Samantha Kelly

Founded by Bank of Ireland Start up Hero award winner and Tweeting Goddess, Samantha Kelly, Irish Biz Party is an online community of businesses who advise, guide and promote each other. Irish businesses come together every Wednesday night on Twitter, using the hashtag #IrishBizParty and through collective cross promotion and discussion, help each other to reach millions of potential customers in just 2 hours. As well as the weekly Twitter network, Irish Biz Party also have an official membership package, and a very active private Facebook Group where over 3,000 Irish businesses seek and share advice and guidance, support and promote each other. Samantha believes the success of the conferences to date is down to the organic and natural progression to meeting offline and in person. It is also a great way for new businesses to get involved in the Irish Biz Party community, and can really give them a strong launch pad to grow their business nationwide.

Dublin, Kerry and Wexford

Dublin, Kerry and Wexford have played host to the tribe of businesses, with hugely successful events. Samantha Kelly says, “The decision was taken to bring the full weight of the Irish Biz Party movement to the north of Ireland. We know that business owners have the same struggles all over the country, and the north west is an area that we felt could greatly benefit from the event, the support, advice, learning and networking opportunities. “We considered a number of places to host the event, but it was down to the work of local businesswoman, Aine Bermingham, and the support of the local business community, Fermanagh Omagh District Council, and Fermanagh Enterprise, that we chose Fermanagh. There’s a thriving business community here, and we want to offer as much support as we can. “We’re very excited about bringing the conference here, and I’ve been thrilled by the response both locally and nationally.

Fermanagh

Fermanagh businesses are embracing this opportunity, and there are businesses from all over Ireland booking tickets, so there’s a fantastic buzz about it already. I’d encourage any business looking for help and support, or a chance to learn and network with fellow business owners, to join us at the event.” Keynote Speakers on the day will come from across Ireland, the UK and even Europe to share a plethora of expertise, including social media experts, business leaders and pricing experts.

IEDR

The headline sponsor on the day is IEDR. Donal O’Nuallain of IEDR says: “We’re delighted to be the headline sponsors of the Irish Biz Party conference. It provides a great opportunity for Irish businesses to share knowledge, learnings and network with each other with the goal of growing their business above and beyond what the Irish Biz Party team have already achieved and facilitated to date. .ie domains provide an identifiably Irish online presence for businesses so our involvement with the Irish Biz Party is really strong as it allows us to engage with Irish SMEs in a productive and positive environment,”

Local Fermanagh businesses

Local Fermanagh businesses are also getting involved, with the list of sponsors including Inn Stock Services, Monaghan Bros., and Corrigan and Co. Fermanagh and Omagh District Council are also a sponsor of the event, and are actively encouraging local businesses to get involved. “It’s important to us that these events are accessible for small businesses, as that’s what Irish Biz Party is all about, so we keep the ticket prices low, and we couldn’t do that without the generosity of our sponsors, which we are very grateful for.” said Samantha Kelly.

Book now

Tickets for the full day including lunch are priced at only £50.00 and can be booked online via irishbizparty.ie. Book here

Keep the party going by sharing…Thanks everyone! See you there!

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3 Ways To Increase Your Marketing Reach

Many business owners associate additional costs with increasing their brand’s marketing reach. But with the right tools and know-how, a business can increase the impact of their marketing efforts with minimal to no cost. Here are 3 ways a business can extend their marketing reach to targeted audiences across the globe. Let’s look at some ways you can expand and increase your marketing reach.

Categorize Your Audience & Their Respective Behaviors

It can be almost impossible for a business to convey the right message to the right people at the right time. If not entirely impossible, the process tends to be time-consuming and labor-intensive. Nonetheless, it should be your marketing goal. You’ve probably already launched a few marketing strategies, from organic searches to Pay-Per-Click, on search engines or social networking sites. These are all tested and proven strategies in the realm of marketing. But to generate good returns on investment, you cannot execute such strategies so blindly and hastily.

A solid grasp of the fundamentals of your targeted audience is necessary. Age, gender, ethnic background, and any other demographic information you can recover from your audience will play an important part in keeping your marketing approach fresh and relevant. Having a more thorough insight of their activity and behavior also allows you to make more reliable forecasts for your business as well as a more effective follow-through.

Determine The Right Channels

Different marketing channels are accessible for a business. But this doesn’t mean you should dive into every possible channel in the hopes of maximizing reach to your target audience. If you do participate in every available marketing channel, you end up with more monthly costs and more pipelines to manage. Instead of being a jack-of-all-trades, research and focus on 2 or 3 marketing channels that suit your type of business.

Social media is perhaps one of the best marketing strategies to date and is a vital component for every business who wants to compete online. However, not all social media platforms are cut out for your particular business type, model, and target audience. Do the necessary work and research to identify the right platforms to best reach your market. Have a strategic approach when dispensing content on these platforms instead of hastily spamming articles and blog posts. Doing so may affect your brand’s integrity and professionalism.

Work On Your Content

In an attempt to reach the most customers quicker than their competitors, many businesses neglect content quality thus failing to convey the right message to their consumers. Quality marketing content may be trickier or more expensive to acquire, but over time you’ll be able to recover upfront expenses through reduced customer acquisition cost and higher customer retention rate.

So how do you beautify your marketing content? One way is to incorporate subtitling into your marketing videos. Customers have grown more accustomed to subtitling options due to recent advances in entertainment, such as Netflix. Prolonged exposure to films and TV shows that have subtitles in them have trained consumers subconsciously to simply read what the characters on their screen are saying rather than pay close attention. Having subtitles encourages web viewers to keep the video running since they can understand it better.

There are several good reasons why subtitles are the strongest add-on for video marketing. One reason is that having subtitles make your video more visible to web viewers. YouTube and Vimeo captions are itemized by Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. Furthermore, subtitled videos in a native language have a higher chance of getting shared between friends and family members.

If you have sufficient marketing budget, you can implement both voice-over and subtitled video formats to reach a broader audience. Giving users the flexibility to choose how they view your content gives them a more personal experience and makes it more accessible to web users around the world.

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4 reasons to enter the Business Achievers Awards (or any other)

Why do we in Smallbusinesscan think you should apply for the Business Achievers Awards (BAA)? Or any award for that matter. We think it could be a big deal for you and your business.

You still have time to apply and receive the many benefits! You have until Friday 25 September

1. It will help you raise money

Winning a category in BAA or other prestigious competitions is a very strong validation for the winners when it comes to grants or finance applications. All the state agencies, bankers, investors and other money men are part of the eco system of these competitions and they keep an eye on what’s going on. You get a chance to impress them with your application and meet them at lots of different events.

2. It will help you win customers

The BAA and other competitions are a great opportunity to get free publicity. Can you imagine the opportunities if you win a region or a category? Just think of the collateral for your website alone and the validation it gives customers and partners. We know of companies that have won BIG contracts on the back of being part of the business achievers.

3. It will help you strategise

It’s taking about 25 minutes to fill in the online form. That form will help you think about your business and its strategy. It’s designed to help you elucidate your business model. Forget about the judges, it will help give you a clear sense of where your business is and where it’s going.

4. It will help energize the company and all its stakeholders

The Business Achievers, as far as we can see, is one of the few prestigious all island competitions that seems to be embracing all SMEs; that’s acknowledging and acclaiming SME achievement. It is definitely the oldest all Ireland business competition. As business owners we all deserve a little bit of time in the sun, as do the families that support us and the colleagues that are in the trenches with us.

The form will take 20-30 minutes max. It’s worth the time spent!

Submissions are closing on Friday, September 25th, so find that 25 minutes and go here and express what your business is all about.

Need Help?

If you want feedback before you send your submission, book a chat here.

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Marketing Tips and Techniques for Entrepreneurs

Marketing can be seen as an art form in many cases and you need to be aware of the various techniques that will showcase your business ideas in the best light. If you find that you are struggling to get your business off the ground, it could be due to the possibility that you are missing out on something that you can easily incorporate into your marketing strategy. Read on for some key marketing tips for your business…

Get Visual

We are perceptive and visual people, which is why we are always drawn to movies and fantastic works of art. If you want to get your company noticed, you have to start using business stationary and advertising to sell your company. A great option is to use brochure printing from Helloprint to reach a bigger customer base further afield. Other options to use include business cards, flyers, banners or leaflets in order to get your brand out there and start making valuable connections with potential customers.

Showcase Benefits

Instead of focusing solely on the different features that your company has to offer, showcase the benefits that choosing your brand can have on potential customers. Lean towards these benefits whenever you are trying to sell to a new customer and they will begin to realise that your business can provide solutions to their problems.

Marketing Strategy

You need an innovative and productive marketing strategy to lift your business off the ground and see it blossom. Make an app for your company and be available via mobile and social media. According to www.onboardly.com it is important that you test your marketing ideas on small batches that last a period of two weeks. This is so that you can measure the ‘successes and failures of these two-week experiments you will have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t’.

Listen

You need to learn to listen to not only your customers, but other successful business leaders who will be able to give you valuable advice. Ask questions and learn as much as you can about the relevant market in which your business occupies. Research other companies that are similar to yours and discover what has worked for them in the past and what didn’t.
Pay attention to the trending subjects online if you plan to use content marketing in your strategy and seek those who are in need of your company in order to attract new clients/customers.

Trustworthy Team

A successful business always has a talented team of people working behind the scenes to ensure that the business runs smoothly. You need to weigh your strengths and weaknesses up and then hire people who will be able to strengthen those weaknesses. According to Forbes, hiring the right talent is essential to your business’ success. Don’t rush into the decision. As an entrepreneur it may be difficult to come by the finances to be able to hire a talented team in the first place which is why it is important to take on the right people, who are passionate about the business and who are able to advance and enhance it.

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