Taxes For Small Business

March 17, 2010 By 7 Comments

qbThe following is a guest column that offers advice on taxes for small business, courtesy of UnderstandingMarketing.com and QuickBooks expert Scott Gregory. For the most part this blog focuses on marketing and public relations topics that pertain to small businesses and entrepreneurs, but since it’s tax time we also want to offer a little advice to make tax season a little less stressful.

TAX TIME AGAIN – WHAT A PAIN!

But it really doesn’t need to be. In fact, if you are running a real business and not a hobby, it shouldn’t be a pain! Let’s review a few of the reasons that you have likely grown to hate tax time:

1)    You didn’t bother to keep your QuickBooks or other accounting software up to date as the year progressed. “I’ll get to that later” is a common phrase I hear.  And as we know, later never comes. Right?
2)    You are not an accountant and don’t want to be. Ever.
3)    Your accountant frequently speaks to you in a foreign language.

CALLING ALL LOST TAX DEDUCTIONS

It’s sad, but very true. The constant state of disorganization when it comes to small business finances costs them potential tax deductions very year. A lost deduction means a higher tax bill – and who wants that? This is very important to keep in mind as you think back on all the marketing campaigns, email marketing, direct mail, blogs, social media, public relations, press releases, promotional events, and any other business-related expenses.

Expenses aren’t properly categorized (if they are recorded at all), bank accounts aren’t reconciled, and a lot of guesswork goes on right before the tax filing deadlines. All of these predicaments create enough commotion that important tax savings are completely overlooked.

Until a better system is put in place, you’ll have to continue with your current setup – grab everything, cram it together, take 2 Tums, shove it off to your CPA on April 12th and hope for the best.

A Better Way – Invest in yourself and your business to get your financial transactions recorded on a timely basis during the year.  Don’t wait until tax time to pull it all together. Consider outsourcing your bookkeeping to someone with the skills to keep you on track with your finances.

BUT WAIT – MY QUICKBOOKS IS ALL SCREWED UP

So you say you’ve been really good and tried to keep your finances and taxes for small business info up to date during the year – but the reports that spew out of QuickBooks aren’t even close to being correct?

That is a problem I see over and over again too…

Chances are, you might have seen the commercial that mentioned “if you can write a check, you can use QuickBooks” and took the plunge to do your own bookkeeping. The ad you saw forgot one key word – correctly, as in “you can use QuickBooks correctly”.

This is where the idea of “I’m not an accountant and don’t want to be” comes into play. If that is the case, why are you trying to be one?

The keys to success with your bookkeeping are really pretty basic:

➢    Proper setup of your accounting systems and software – This is the same idea as building a house. If the house foundation is cracked and uneven, problems usually follow. Same for your accounting software – if you don’t get it set up correctly, problems usually follow. Sometimes really, really big problems.
➢    Training – without it, you’re sunk. The stakes are much higher if you don’t understand your accounting software than they are if you don’t understand how to use Microsoft Word.

For more insights, read these blog posts:
➢    QuickBooks Should Come With a Warning Label
➢    Seven Sure Fire Signs of Trouble in Your QuickBooks File

THE BENEFITS OF GETTING IT RIGHT

Once you agree that your accounting needs an x-ray and maybe some therapy, you’re on the way to building a better and financially stronger business (not to mention being far more prepared for the “tax man”).

Benefits to You:

1)    Meaningful financial reports – you WILL know each month just how well your business is doing. Your reports will be accurate and timely. Compare that to your current system – inaccurate and anywhere close to being on time.
2)    Ability to measure your ROI (Return on Investment) accurately – a properly organized accounting system will allow you to see the revenue from various sources and also allow you to quickly and easily see the expenses associated with them. The difference between the revenue and the expenses gives you an idea if you are running profitably.  Compare that to your current system – for example, it’s hard to know if your marketing project provided a good ROI if the information is still sitting in the shoebox.

THINK OF IT THIS WAY…

The financial success of your business is so much more than just “getting it together at tax time”.  Make this year the one where you take the initiative to get this critical piece of your business in place and functioning smoothly.  It doesn’t have to be hard. It just has to be done.

If you do that, I promise you will find tax time next year to be far LESS stressful. Note I didn’t say far less boring. It is accounting after all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Scott Gregory is a QuickBooks expert that provides triage, x-ray, and rehab services to small businesses and large companies needing help with QuickBooks and in getting accounting systems shaped up.

Related: 10 tax breaks every small business should know

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Guerrilla Marketing Ideas That Backfire

March 16, 2010 By 2 Comments

guerrilla_marketing11

We’ve previously written about guerrilla marketing ideas and we’re definitely big fans of the endless possibilities for entrepreneurs. The beautiful part about guerrilla marketing is that you can generate a ton of visibility on a dirt-cheap budget – if any budget at all. In truth, the biggest investment is creativity and a little time to make it happen. Obviously, the bigger your budget the easier it may be to pull of something that can attract a lot of attention – but even some entrepreneurs have proven this isn’t always the rule.

As a quick refresher, think of guerrilla marketing almost as a polite way of saying “in your face” marketing. Lots of times the most successful guerrilla marketing ideas take the least amount of thought to process. Also, guerrilla marketing ideas can happen virtually anywhere, but it’s most effective in places where there is high street traffic so more people can be exposed.

picture-6There are some important things to take into consideration, though, when planning and executing a guerrilla marketing campaign. Today we highlight one Colorado fur business that recently got into some trouble over an attempt to launch a guerrilla marketing campaign – or should we say park a guerrilla marketing campaign – right in front of its own store. Denimaxx was recently told (after someone filed a complaint) by Aspen city zoning authorities it can’t park its company van in certain places throughout the city, including in the parking spot right in front of its own store, because the city sees it more as a standing billboard advertisement rather than a company van to be used for deliveries. The van is a very visual display and representation of its brand and products, which for some isn’t appropriate street material.

Important lesson of the day as it relates to anything guerrilla marketing: Make sure you’re abiding by the laws. Guerrilla marketing is fun and can also be highly effective at extending your brand. But be careful with your campaign as you don’t want it to backfire on you (we’ll consider this one a backfire since it ultimately led to someone, possibly more than once, actually complaining about the company). Some may say there’s nothing wrong with a little bad PR, but we’ll refrain from advising any company to take this approach.

So, then, what makes good guerrilla marketing ideas? Check out this list of good examples of guerrilla marketing to get some ideas. Also, use these tips as a reference:

–Go against the grain and do something that is the opposite of what people normally think. You want people to stop, look and think.

–Launch your guerrilla marketing campaign with good timing. Don’t do a football-themed campaign in June, for example.

–Go where your target audience is located. If the people you want targeted are at an event, consider being in the parking lot of that event (or inside the event, if you can get away with it).

–Focus on who will actually be involved in the guerrilla marketing portion, otherwise known as your street team. You want highly likeable and energetic people if it means interacting with others.

–Branding, branding, branding. This is your chance to really get your brand out there, so make sure your logo, colors and any tag lines or messaging are clearly present during your guerrilla marketing.

–Use the guerrilla marketing for future marketing. Video or photo the guerrilla marketing campaign (lots of people interacting with your company) so that you can show people in future marketing opportunities just how big you appear. Also for video you can use in viral marketing opportunities.

–Have a call to action. Small business guerrilla marketing is definitely about getting your brand out there. But it’s also about getting people motivated to take some kind of action (visit a Web site, go to a store, sign up for something or make a purchase).

Tell us about your guerrilla marketing ideas and success stories by leaving a comment.

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Press Release For Small Business Green With Envy

March 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

spdLooking to capture a little luck of the Irish with your next press release? This week’s big event is St. Patrick’s Day, which means you’ve still got time to send out an eye-catching press release for small business that’s worth its weight in gold (or at least a pot of gold). Remember, as we constantly remind you in our PR Toolkit that teaches entrepreneurs how to do their own PR, sometimes the best way to get publicity is to go where the fish are. If you already know the media will be writing about St. Patrick’s Day events, festivities and interesting items, be creative with your press release writing and find a way to get in the game.

Our first example of using St. Patrick’s Day as a way to generate some publicity is courtesy of the Bitter End Yacht Club. Normally, you’d have to connect a lot of dots in order to make the connection between yachting and the Irish (unless you’re yachting down the green waters of Chicago). The folks at Bitter End found a creative way to tie in their yacht club press release with the famous March holiday through an innovative way to also help clean up the environment (this is actually the reason why it’s so newsworthy).

picture-2Simply put, if you go out and help clean up the North Sound shoreline, you can receive a coupon for one free drink at a pub for each bag of rubbish collected. We love this because it’s not just publicity for the sake of publicity, but rather a creative way to highlight a good deed.

Our second St. Patrick’s Day press release for small business example comes to us from the Doggie Couture Shop. Who doesn’t love to see a cute pup dressed in an even cuter St. Patties Day-themed costume? Doggie Couture Shop is all about touting good fashion for dogs. If you’re a dog lover, you get it. Trust us. We love to spend on our furry little loved ones because we think they’re a real extension of our family – not just a pet that needs to be fed.

picture-3What better way to obtain publicity for a small business that caters to people looking to dress up their dog than to tie in a St. Patrick’s Day publicity opportunity for dog fashions. We’d like to see doggie Couture Shop bring in a little newsworthiness into their next press release, possibly by doing a survey on how many people will be planning on spending money on their pets this holiday.

picture-4Our third and final example of a press release for small business is via Jennifer Cary Designs, a jewelry designer who’s appropriately playing off the St. Patrick’s Day theme by touting their Irish styles through a press release. Although the press release is a tad bit light on any real newsworthiness and a little heavy on promotion, we’ll accept it here because of the fact they’ve got a strong tie into the holiday. But next time they might want to also think about doing a contest on letting people vote on the most authentic looking piece of Irish jewelry and then announcing the results. Here’s a hint, by hosting this contest on a blog they can build up a nice little bit of traffic which can be used for email marketing and other viral marketing in the future.

Are you planning any press releases for St. Patrick’s Day? Tell us about them here and please provide a link!

Also, keep in mind that UnderstandingMarketing.com now offers a press release writing service so if you’re an entrepreneur looking for a press release for small business, drop us a line and we’ll be more than happy to help you.

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Virtual Tours Help Email Marketing For Small Business

March 12, 2010 By 2 Comments

social_mediaHere’s yet another example of how today’s technology can drastically improve your email marketing for small business. Are you leveraging your Web site to offer a virtual tour to showcase your products and services? Virtual tours can be a great way to bring your showroom to your customers, rather than worrying about bringing customers to your showroom. This strategy has been working for home builders and can work for small business as well (with a little investment).

The great thing about virtual showrooms is that they’re easy to integrate into other marketing strategies, especially social media. You can house your virtual tours on your Web site or blog, but you can also post them on a social media Web site such as YouTube. You can use other social media communities like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to drive traffic either to your Web site or to YouTube so that interested people may browse your virtual showroom (make sure to have them sign up so that you can collect email addresses – a staple of email marketing for small business).

Naturally, there will be a cost associated with developing a virtual showroom. After all, if it sounds like it may be cost prohibitive, you’ll have to weigh all of your budget options. However, if you shop around you may be able to find a freelance designer on Craigslist, or hire a company like Focus360 to develop one for you. If you’re panicking about the decision, simply compare the cost of putting up a virtual showroom with the cost of getting a sufficient amount of people into your brick and mortar showroom. For some, this will be a no brainer decision while for others it may be a more difficult decision.

Finally, let’s discuss the implications on your email marketing for small business opportunities. If you’ve been in business for a while, you already know the importance of sales prospecting and leads generation. A virtual showroom can do wonders for increasing the amount of leads you can capture to ultimately beef up your existing email marketing campaigns.

Home builders are able to place virtual showrooms on their Web sites, allowing people to navigate through and familiarize themselves with the products, services and options made available by the builder. If you want your customers to see something and let the visual representation do much of the selling for you, it’s critical to give them plenty of visual stimulation so that you can increase your sales conversions.

To integrate even more deeply with your email marketing, be sure to promote it on any relevant landing pages to drive more traffic. Also consider blogging about it to get others involved in the virtual tour (maybe hold a contest to have people spot things on your showroom that are out of place?). And of course, build virtual tour visits into your loyalty program where the more you view the tour the bigger reward or incentive a person has when making a purchase.

Have you tried using a virtual tour on your company’s Web site? What were the results?

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Small Business Press Release Tip: Men vs. Women

March 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

headlinesWant a great way to spice up any small business press release for virtually any company in any industry? Send the media a press release that compares the impact of something on men compared with how the same thing affects women. The media love to feed into the “battle of the sexes” because it’s filled with interesting angles and, when done correctly, can be littered with light humor.

Start out by taking a step back and analyzing your company’s products or services. Simply ask yourself how men and women view your company. Next, do a little research on any possible stereotypes that may be involved with men vs. women regarding your product or service. Once you’ve identified the opportunities as they relate to your business, do a little research by going “inside the numbers” of your business to extract some real-world data that you can plug into this angle. You can also accomplish this press release successfully by commissioning a survey (you can do your own survey but your story will carry a little more weight if you commission a third-party firm to collect the data). Oh by the way, if your data goes against the grain of typical stereotypes, this may actually be better for news value.

According to The PR Toolkit for Small Business, every small business press release must be compelling and well written, no matter the angle. Although a great angle and data can be the difference between great pickup and silence, you’ve still got to adhere to good press release writing. Let’s talk about a few examples so you can see this press release in action.

Here’s a good example of a survey that talks about online behavior of men vs. women as it relates to online behavior. Liberty Mutual, a global insurance group, included the results of a survey in a press release talking about what individuals deem to be appropriate online behavior for certain social media use in the workplace. The press release includes good data and discusses different ways men and women view acceptable social media behavior on popular Web sites like Twitter and Facebook. We like the fact that they include a “key finding” immediately in the first paragraph of the release to help shape the angle of the story – possibly helping reporters with the headlines of their stories.

Or you can have a little more fun with your “men vs. women” press release. Here’s another example of a battle of the sexes press release sent out by PopCap Games, where they cite some statistical differences between men and women that play games in a social media environment. This particular press release resulted in some really nice coverage for PopCap, as it was included in a USA Today gamers blog.

Whenever you include data from a survey or poll in a press release be sure to offer some details of your methodology so members of the media can get a taste for how you collected the data. A good example of working in a methodology sample can also be found at the bottom of both the Liberty Mutual and PopCap Games press releases.

UnderstandingMarketing.com recently launched a press release writing service for start-ups and entrepreneurs. Let us know if we can help you with your small business press release! If you already have a press release written and would like to send it out on the wire, check out a reputable service like Marketwire.

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Email Marketing For Small Business Slowing Down?

March 2, 2010 By 18 Comments

email_marketing1The U.S. Postal Service is again in the news debating whether to drop deliveries on Saturday in a cost-cutting measure. If approved it would bring the number of days of mail service down to five, meaning bad news for the direct marketing industry (and for the millions of dogs that playfully guard the house). It would also mean fewer of the familiar big blue mail boxes lining strip malls and streets. As we continue to debate the health of direct mail is it too soon to wonder about email marketing for small business?

The leading reason for asking this question is the rise of social media marketing being used more frequently by small business and entrepreneurs. Arlene Satchell of the Sun-Sentinel tells the story of one entrepreneur that’s been having a lot of success using email marketing to drive traffic resulting in higher customers and more profits.

The story even points out that Forrester Research indicates there’s growth for email in the future, not contraction. According to the story, Forrester says there were 145 million active email users in 2009 and this number is estimated to grow to 153 million by 2014. Also, approximately 90 percent of Americans using the Internet use email as a “mainstream communication channel.”

You can’t argue with those numbers no matter how popular Twitter and Facebook get.

For those of you on the fence and wondering about a little thing called return on investment (ROI), you can decide for yourself after hearing from the gym owner quoted in the story. The owner of Powerhouse Gym recently sent out a free seven-day fitness promotion to more than 4,000 women in the surrounding area. According to the gym owner it cost him $250 to do the email campaign yet his ROI was above $10,000 (the value of 26 new memberships).

The writers of this blog are certainly impressed with those numbers (although we’re a little curious to know how the gym owner collected 4,000+ email addresses from women and if there was any additional expense in obtaining those emails). We often receive a lot of emails ourselves from small businesses wondering how to get so many targeted emails without incurring great expense – especially if you want to throw together an email campaign pretty quickly. After all, it’s always been our understanding that you either collect emails organically or through an integrated campaign tied in with other marketing initiatives like events, or you pay a service for email addresses – which we don’t advocate. Either way, one could make the argument that your total cost of expenses to do the email campaign would rise (bringing into question the gym owner’s investment of only $250).

UPDATE: Arlene Satchell tells us the gym owner was already tapped into the email marketing service provider’s database so there was no cost to purchase a list. The gym owner paid 5 to 6 cents per email sent (which is how he arrives at the $250 fee).

All that being said, there are enormous opportunities with email marketing for small business campaigns. Bottom line, tens of millions of people check their email inbox more than a dozen times each day giving companies a great chance at finding success with email marketing. But always remember to do your email marketing campaigns the right way, which means having people opt-in to receive, giving them an opt-out of they wish and always abiding by the canned spam laws.

Do you prefer email marketing over social media marketing? Let us know by leaving a comment here.

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