Becoming Self Employed – Is It For You?

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Becoming self employed is an attractive prospect for many people. It offers a degree of flexibility and you have no boss to answer to. Being self employed can also be lucrative, any profits made are yours once you have met ongoing costs. If taking the plunge to go self employed appears tempting, it is important to take a rain check and remember that there many downsides too.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Freelance
 
One of the main cons of being self employed is that being employed on a payroll actually offers a great deal of security. When you decide to become self employed you give up many of the benefits enjoyed by employees. Employment gives a worker lots of rights including, a contract, regular pay, sickness and holiday pay as well as some legal protection. Of course as a self employed person you can still access benefits, but it will be instigated and paid for by yourself. Thankfully there are lawyers who specialise in offering support to businesses in different sectors, for example a truck labor lawyer will represent truck drivers working on a piece rate basis.

So why do so many people choose to go self employed, when there is so much security and benefits to being an employee? Read on to discover why some business owners choose to make the switch.

Earning potential

Most people working on a freelance basis earn more than if they were self employed in the same role, in fact it is estimated at around 45%. You are able to put certain expenses through “the books” which further enhances earning power. As you are working for yourself you will be able to develop your business without constraints, you will be able to pitch for work at higher prices as your reputation grows and any profit will be yours.

You are your own boss

Being self employed means that you don’t have anyone monitoring your every move. You will need to meet the requirements of your clients, but how you get there is up to you! On the flip side however, you will need a high degree of motivation and a strong work ethic. Otherwise your business will not progress as much as you envisaged.

Flexibility

If you require time off to watch the kids nativity or go to the dentist, you won’t need to grovel to your boss. You won’t be constrained to the 9-5 routine, as you can choose your own hours. This is particularly useful if you wish to become a player on a global scale in the future, as you will be accessible 24 hours a day and not just when you are in the office.

Variety

Being self employed and running your own business is a constantly evolving role. You need to stay one step ahead of your competitors in order to survive in the marketplace. You will need to adapt manufacturing processes, services and product design to meet your target audience requirements. All of which offers variety to your role.

To conclude lots of research needs to be undertaken prior to becoming self employed, but if you’re sure that being self employed is for you and your personality will allow a high level of commitment, then take the plunge and enjoy the freedom!

Free Business Plans for Small Business Owners and Start-ups

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Business PlanIt’s not the most exciting part of starting a business. In fact, if you’re like a lot of entrepreneurs, you’re probably going to find yourself pulling a few all-nighters to get one done before heading into your first pitch for funding. Because that’s the thing – your business plan is important.

Any funder worth his or her salt wants to see it right off the bat. Moreover though, a solid business plan is a living document that will continue to guide your efforts as your business grows.

A lot of those mistakes are the result of poor planning. Bad location, a marginal niche, having no specific user in mind, raising too much or too little money – all these issues can be prevented or at least mitigated with good planning.

Creating your business plan is more than just getting your ideas down on paper for potential funders to see. It’s an exploratory process in which you can evaluate your options, test your assumptions about your idea, and even discover new opportunities. It might even lead you to kill off aspects of your business before investing too much time or money in them.

That doesn’t mean you have to bust out Word and start the plan from scratch. A template is great–you probably aren’t doing anything that hasn’t been done before, so it provides a proven structure for your plan. Pretty much everything on it can be customized. Check out these comprehensive business plan templates you can download for free to get you started:

1. Score’s Business Plan Template for Startups

Score is an American nonprofit dedicated to helping entrepreneurs get their companies off the ground. Its template, available as a PDF or Word download, asks a whopping 150 questions and is generic enough to customize for most types of businesses. The Refining the Plan resource that comes with it is helpful, especially if this is your first crack at writing a business plan.

2. U.S. Small Business Administration Business Plan Engine

The SBA’s template is available to fill out online and then download as a PDF. You can go back in and edit it as needed, so don’t worry about having everything ready the first time you sit down to tackle it. Even broken into sections, it’s a long document and a bit of a slog to get through, but it produces a professional-looking and useful business plan. This is particularly helpful if your idea isn’t fully fleshed out and you know you have homework to do – it prompts you for information.

3. The $100 Startup’s One-Page Business Plan

Who said a business plan has to be a long, complicated document? Some funders are going to want to see a lot of detail, but you can provide that in appendices. The $100 Startup, the website for the best-selling book of the same name, has a ton of stripped-down resources for entrepreneurs, including a super simplified business plan template.

4. LawDepot’s WYSIWYG Business Plan Template

This one says you just have to answer a few simple questions and will be “done before you know it!” Don’t believe it. A business plan should take time and a lot of homework, but if you’ve already done that, LawDepot’s template is a decent choice. It walks you through getting started, marketing, product, competitive analysis, SWOT, and more, with a window below the input fields to show you the plan as you work away at it. You can download it free with a trial subscription, but you’ll have to remember to cancel it within the week if you don’t plan to continue using it.

5. SME Toolkit Business Plan Samples

The SME Toolkit, jointly offered by IFC and IBM, offers a simple two-page outline of what should be included in your business plan to meet the minimum requirements of funders and tax authorities (in the U.S.). It contains 10 broad sections, including market analysis, management and organization, etc., with a one-paragraph explanation of each. A second download on the same page is an Excel file to help with your financial projections.

6. Office Online Templates Galore

Of course, Microsoft offers a ton of business plan templates for Office users (you can get birthday invitations while you’re at it). If you’d rather do a business plan presentation than a Word doc, you can download one of Microsoft Office’s half a dozen or so PowerPoint templates for just that purpose. You’ll want to customize it with your company branding (you have your branding down, right?), but it’s easier than starting from a blank PPT.

7. Invoiceberry Templates for Word, Open Office, Excel, or PPT

U.K. online invoicing software brand Invoiceberry offers free business plan templates in .docx, .odt, .xlsx, and .pptx formats. Each one also contains a marketing plan and executive summary template. There’s a catch, though – the company asks you to take one of the following three actions before you can download the template: like it on Facebook, give it a +1 on Google+, or give it your email address. If you don’t mind doing that, it’s a good deal. Kudos to Invoiceberry for figuring out this effective lead-gen tactic too!

8. Santa Clara University’s My Own Business Institute Plans

Santa Clara U’s MOBI is an initiative of its Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Leavey School of Business. On the site, you can download each of the 15 business plan sections individually as Word documents, or grab all 15 together in one doc. There’s a ton of other helpful resources as well, including guidelines for evaluating your potential sites, a list of key people to review your plan, and sample financial sheets.

9. RocketLawyer’s Business Plan Templates by State

Like some of the others, you fill out RocketLawyer’s form and download the business plan when you’re done. These plans are tailored to meet your financing requirements which is a huge bonus for those seeking funding through banks. It’s also heavily geared toward financing, making it a good choice if that’s a priority for you.

Once your plan has been created

Creating your business plan is only the first step. Effectively executing against the plan is often what separates the winners from those businesses that stumble along.

  • Keep your business plan as a living document – don’t leave it to gather dust on a shelf.
  • Make sure it’s easily accessible and top-of-mind for you and your team.
  • Reflect your goals in the day-to-day operations of your business.
  • Outline the most practical and cost-effective way to achieve each goal – make a note of any extra resources you’ll need.
  • Make it clear these goals are the top priority for the business.

What’s often not included in templates like these, but is a critical component of business planning, is business insurance. For more information on the types of insurance available for your business visit https://www.state.co.nz/business

Solutions to Effectively Reach Your Target Audience

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | Target AudienceReaching your target audience can often be a struggle. For a business just starting up, understanding how to best achieve this goal is vital in the early days. Start on the right foot and spend time, money, and resources focusing on appropriate ways to reach and appeal to your target audience. Below are a few handy suggestions for implementing the best strategy going forward.

Defining your target audience

Before you do anything else, you need to take time to work out who your target audience actually is. By identifying your target audience, you can begin to understand the niche that your consumer would fall into. With this knowledge, you can ensure your marketing activities will reach these people. Factors to research include:

  • Demographics – gender, age, profession, income
  • Psychographics – values, attitudes, likes/dislikes, how they think/purchase
  • Behavioral – the way they consume media and data. Is it offline/online? Any key sites or publications?

Once you have a strong understanding of the above you can begin to tailor your marketing, so you can directly connect your audience.

Reaching your target market

Now that you are familiar with the behavior and demographics of your target market, you can look into the best ways to reach them. For some, this will involve offline marketing techniques such as direct mail marketing, word of mouth, newspaper campaigns, and billboards. However, an overwhelming majority of marketing these days takes place online. Your digital marketing campaign needs to be top notch for audiences to discover you among the competition you’ll likely be facing.

Digitally reaching out to your audience

Email Newsletters

This technique may seem old hat to some, but email newsletters are still a simple, cost-effective way that you can directly reach out to your audience. You can deliver targeted messages efficiently and it won’t need a big team to implement. You can keep content simple and create instant impact with broad reach. Be aware of the GDPR regulations; but apart from this, the world is your oyster.

According to Econsultancy, ¾ of companies agree that email offers ‘excellent’ to ‘good’ ROI. Active email accounts are expected to hit 5.6 billion by 2019.

Hubspot

Facebook / Instagram ads

Social media marketing is the current trend that looks like it’s here to stay. With constant updates and content to capitalize on, such as Insta Stories and Facebook Live Video, it has never been easier to tap into audiences. Keep your social media pages current, looking out for opportunities to through hashtags, for example, and spend resources on fresh, visually appealing content that will get your target audience stop scrolling and pay attention to you.

Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing is paving the way for businesses to find their audiences. Having an intrinsic understanding of who your audience is can assist you in more ways than one. You will be able to identify not only what your target audience is searching for, but how they are searching. Through keyword research and analysis and Google Ads campaigns, for example, you can ensure your business is right where it needs to be for customers to find you. Get a team behind you and visit digitalmarkgroup.com. Outsourcing will provide you with the expert knowledge to take your campaign the extra mile.

Banner advertising

Banner advertising works by providing a visual ad that links to your website and is intended to generate traffic. This type of display advertising relies mainly on aesthetics. It promotes your services like a physical banner or poster, but is instead visible on another web page. You can use advertising guides and networks to assist you in creating the ads. Used effectively, this are a great way to share your services through sharp visuals that are designed to attract your target consumer.

How to Create a Front Office that Everyone will Love

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | OfficeThe reception of the office is one place that the management should never ignore. It should be a combination of form and function. The reception area must be able to create a positive first impression and make guests satisfied when they leave. How is this possible? Keep on reading the rest of this post as we briefly tackle some of the best ways to create the best front office.

Use a Digital Receptionist

These days, you no longer need to employ a human receptionist to be at the front desk. To cut down the costs, consider using a digital receptionist in the front office. This makes visitor registration more innovative, which can be completed through a tablet or a computer instead of manually logging in with a pen and a paper. The digital receptionist will also capture the photo and signature of the guests.

If you are looking for the best check in apps for business, take a look at Greetly and see how this digital receptionist can revolutionize the front office.

Choose the Right Furniture

When choosing furniture to be used in the front office, make sure that you go beyond the aesthetics. While it is undeniable that style is important, you should also emphasize ergonomics. Make sure that it will promote the highest level of comfort to the guests so that they won’t mind the time they have to spend waiting.

Offer a Branded Experience

In one article from Forbes, the author reiterates that brand identity is not enough. The business needs to offer a total brand experience. While this can be done in many ways, one of the best would be in the front office. From the moment a visitor steps in, the front office should already be reflective of the personality that the business would want to establish. A good way to do this is to choose colors and designs that are associated with the company.

Provide Refreshments

The management does not need to spend a fortune to provide refreshments in the front office. Water, coffee, and tea will be great to have. A jar of candies, chocolates, and cookies will also be good. This way, visitors will have something to fill their stomach while they wait. It does not need to be anything too heavy!

Create Reports

Front office management can be improved through analytics. If the office has a digital receptionist, it will have the data that can be analyzed to perform an analysis of visitor data. It can help in the identification of trends and areas for improvement. To add, there should also be a system in place to ask visitors for feedback when they leave. It will make it easier for the management to determine what can be done to be better.

Take note of the things that have been mentioned above to create a great front office, making sure that your guests will feel welcomed once they step in and will be highly satisfied with the experience when they leave.

Simple SEO Strategies for Growing Your Business

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There is definitely no doubt about the fact that every business needs a thought-out SEO strategy, so the only question about it is whether you are willing to spend time or money on it? Speaking from personal experience, the latter option usually proves itself more beneficial than the first one, mostly due to the fact that not all of us are marketing gurus.

On the other hand, even if you are a marketing genius – and especially if you are, you already know that SEO can be quite time-consuming, which makes hiring someone to handle it for you all the more compelling!

However, whether you choose to take up SEO on yourself or you decide to a white label digital marketing agency to do it for you, you should still learn more about some of these simple SEO strategies that will help you grow your business!

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | SEO | Search Engine Optimization
 
That is why we prepared some tips regarding the whole process of search engine optimization, both what to and what not to do in order to grow your business!

Your vision of SEO

The first important thing regarding SEO is how you see it. What this means is that thinking of SEO as a tactic is a mistake most beginners tend to make, because the truth is quite different. SEO is actually more of a strategy that you have to plan out long before you take it up. So, it will take a lot more than just a few weeks to get your business to the top of Google.

Additionally, a lot of people tend to think that SEO is essentially a combination of titles and meta descriptions. Whatsmore, you have to understand that SEO “trends” tend to change from one year to another.

A few years back, search engine optimization was almost synonymous to keywords. Had you asked an SEO expert to give you some tips on the subject in 2014, they would have probably told you that your keyword density is something that will either make you or break you. However, as of 2018, this trend has changed.

Startups such as Yelp and Airbnb made sure to understand that these changes occur all the time, and to have a concrete strategy to drive their traffic through search and this is what brought their success about!

Now, lots of people tend to think that they can take up this task on their own. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to be an expert on the subject in order to create a good SEO strategy, but merely doing some reading and trying to implement what you read into the strategy just isn’t going to cut it.

Knowing what your audience wants is of extreme importance!

At the end of the day, your audience is the most important variable in this equation. This is why you have to get to know your target audience and walk a mile in their shoes. What is it that they need? How will your product/service help them further on? Is there something that your competition can offer them that you can’t?

As you already know, 71 percent of consumers tend to discover new products/services through a search engine, and this search influences about 75 percent of total purchases.

Now, although keywords are not as important as they used to be, they still play a part in the whole process that is SEO. You will still have to do a proper keyword research that will help you in creating valuable content that your audience will appreciate, and that will encourage them to become one of your consumers!

Focus on your links’ quality, not quantity!

A few years back, Google’s algorithm was quite favorable of sites with lots of links, and it wasn’t all that important whether those links were valid and actually useful, content-wise. However, times have changed! Links are still as important as the used to be, but the focus has shifted from their quantity to their quality. The only thing you can do now regarding your links is to look for those that will be engaging and valuable to your audience!

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | SEO | Search Engine Optimization
 
Other things that you have to focus on as well are – your website’s structure (get it as organized and informative as you can!), your social media platforms, and mobile users! All three are of extreme importance for growing your business and are something you cannot succeed without.

Using these simple strategies, you can take your business from being one of the countless startups to becoming a household name, you just have to play your cards right! However, if you would rather play it safe and hire a great digital marketing agency to do this (and more!) for you, visit White Light Digital Marketing for more information!