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Smarter Office Blog
Learn about marketing, entrepreneurship, and more. Officing intelligently means you have the resources you need to grow.
Alexandria, VA
Creating a Business Backup Plan
Things can change quickly in the entrepreneurial world and it’s important for you to be able to adapt quickly. Nobody goes into business expecting for their entrepreneurial venture to fail. The very idea violates everything that the entrepreneurial mindset stands for, which doesn’t change the fact that 92 percent of startups fail. It’s because of these unkind statistics that it’s important for every entrepreneur to be realistic about their chances for success and develop alternative strategies to ensure the success and longevity of their business. Here’s how to build a backup plan in case your business needs to take a quick 360.
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Top Reasons Startups Fail
Not every startup will succeed. In fact, according to a recent study co-authored by experts at Berkeley and Stanford, 92 percent of startups will fail within the first three years. But plenty of those entrepreneurial ventures might still be around today if they had avoided these top reasons that most startups fail.
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Tips for Improving your Sales Pitch
One of the most challenging aspects of being a small business owner is focusing less on the finances and more on how, where and when you engage and welcome new customers. Differentiating yourself from competitors is the only way to reach out to new customers and win new business. Here are some tips to improve your approach.
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Optimizing your Landing Pages for Digital Marketing Success
You’ve been running paid search campaigns and optimizing your website but you’re still not seeing great results from your digital marketing. It could be that your landing pages aren’t up to par.
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What to Do if Your Business is the Target of Fraud
Unfortunately, business fraud is an all-too-common loss that businesses can suffer. Whether it’s internal or external someone could defraud your business in any number of ways. From stealing corporate credit card numbers to hacking data systems that contain sensitive customer information it’s important to know how to recover from business fraud. Here’s how you can clean up the mess and prevent future fraud.
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Reviewing Your Mission Statement
Your business has been around for a few years now, so is your original mission statement still relevant? It’s important to assess how your current business model and strategy aligns with the mission statement that you started with. Things change, businesses evolve, and goals are (hopefully) being met. With all of that in mind you might be surprised to realize that it’s about time for a mission statement refresh.
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4 Reasons Your Small Business Needs an Online Marketing Budget
Now, more than ever before, your potential customers are shopping for and researching information about products and services online. There’s tons of competition in the search engines, and having an online marketing budget and a plan is imperative to making sales from your online presence.
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Determining Loan Size and Needs in a Startup
If you’re looking for a small business loan or other financial resources, before you apply you need to accurately understand how much you need to get to the next level. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common ways of funding a startup business that don’t involve the murky dealings of angel investors or venture capitalists.
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Setting Attainable Business Goals
Everyone wants to swing for the fences when setting business goals, but then they often fall short of these lofty expectations they made for themselves. As an entrepreneur, how do you go about setting up realistic and attainable business goals?
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How to Choose Your Business Structure
When it’s time to choose a business structure for your startup, things can quickly get confusing. From sole proprietorships to LLCs, it can be very difficult figure out what business structure is right for you. While there are many options, there’s no one best choice for the type of business entity you choose to legally operate under. There may be, however, a best choice for your particular company based on your business or performance goals. Let’s outline the most common types of business structures to help you decide on the best one for your startup now and in the future.
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Using Social Media to Grow Your Business-to-Business Business
Social media is largely seen as a B2C channel. But can B2B leverage it for growth? The answer is yes. Business-to-business social media marketing is no longer simply an efficient and effective way to boost sales—it’s an essential tool in your organization’s arsenal for competing in the B2B market.
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Handling Increased Administrative Tasks as Your Business Grows
It used to be simple. Your business grew, so you hired more salespeople, more secretaries, and more receptionists. Then the world changed and now we carry around our offices in our pockets via our smart phones. But databases still need to be filled, phone calls need to be fielded and appointments still need to be scheduled. As your business grows, so will your workload. How can you cope with the increased administrative load?
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Virtual Assistants and Delegation
One of the most important parts of running a small business is keeping your eye on the big picture. But between supervising operations, keeping up with inventory and monitoring the books, most entrepreneurs can get bogged down in day-to-day activities instead of focusing on strategic initiatives and planning for growth. At the same time, many small businesses have not yet grown large enough to afford an entrepreneur the luxury of a secretary or an administrative assistant. That’s why virtual assistants offer the perfect solution to the delegation challenges faced by entrepreneurs.
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11 Reasons You Need a Virtual Assistant
Running a startup is a tough job, and there’s never a shortage of tasks that need to be completed. It’d be great to get all of those sidelined projects underway, but who’s going to handle it all?
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What to Do if your First Efforts at Fundraising Fail
Your first attempt at raising money for your new company or business enterprise didn't go as planned and you fell short of your fundraising goal. Your self-imposed deadline for raising funds for your startup has come and gone. Now it’s time to dig deep and figure out what went wrong and correct your trajectory. Where do you go from here?
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How to Leverage Instagram For Your Business
New studies prove that Instagram has massive brand-building power, generating more engagement than traditional social media standbys like Facebook and Twitter. In fact, Instagram generates more engagement than any other major social network (there were two caveats: consumer products and telecommunications companies tend to get more engagement on Pinterest).
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13 Things Entrepreneurs Should Worry Less About This Year
It’s all too easy for entrepreneurs to get stressed, and in many ways that stress is completely understandable—you’re building and running a business! Don’t let stress ruin youryear, though. As we enter the new year with hope and enthusiasm, here are 13 things that entrepreneurs and business owners should worry less about.
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