The Rise of Women in Business
As the marketplace expands, more and more women in business are leaving their mark on the white collar industry. Over the last 50 years, women have begun to enter the workforce. As their numbers increase so have their influence. From line worker to CEO, women have showed that their strong will and leadership can strengthen companies and start revolutions.
As of January 2011, women make up more than 46% of the workforce; and within this working class, 74% work full-time. The increase of women in the job market is a direct result of the number of women graduating with a college degree. Though the most popular jobs for women are secretaries, nurses, and teachers, more and more women are creating their own jobs by becoming entrepreneurs.
Most women start-ups are home-based businesses because they want to be able to raise a family. Luckily, women can have the best of both worlds with the rise of technology that allows for better communication with anyone in the world at any time. DooBizz is here to help you get your business venture started so you can create and sustain a successful business on your terms.
To Groupon or Not to Groupon?
Groupon got started at the end of 2008. Since then, it’s grown to be a $6 billion company in three short years. Groupon has grown has grown really fast, but will it grow your business?
Reasons Not To Groupon
Maybe you haven’t heard the horror stories, but they’re out there. Groupon has seriously hurt quite a few small businesses. If you haven’t heard their stories yet, you can Google it because there are many. But sometimes horror stories don’t tell the truth. Horror stories can paint a picture, but that doesn’t mean that they paint the big picture.
What does the data say? The data definitely confirms that many of the horror stories are true. A report from Forbes shows that one-third of businesses that have used Groupon lost money. Strong margins are crucial for any small business, and the large discounts that Groupon requires can cut into your margins to the point where you lose money.
Another common complaint is this: Groupon brings in bad customers. Many big-time Groupon users are cheap. That’s why they use Groupon so much; they aren’t necessary looking to find a great place as much as they are looking to find a great deal. Many of them won’t become repeat customers because they aren’t willing to pay full price. These types of customers aren’t the ones that most small businesses want or can handle.
Reasons to Groupon
One-third of businesses that used Groupon lost money. The flip side of that coin is this: two-thirds of businesses that used Groupon made money. A marketing campaign that offers a 66% chance of being profitable isn’t a bad bet. It’s not a sure thing, but the odds are in your favor.
It can be difficult getting people to try a new product, and some companies use Groupon to try them. Groupon reduces the risk for the customer who is afraid to try something new. It gets them in the door, and sometimes, when people are in the door, they spend more money than they anticipated.
Groupon can lead to discovering new repeat customers. It can help you get rid of excess capacity, and it can get your name out there quick.
A Good Thing Isn’t Always A Sure Thing
Will Groupon be great for your company? The answer is like with most things: it depends. Do you have excess capacity? Can you handle a large surge of customers?
4 Helpful Entrepreneurial Books to Read While Starting Up
Starting a business is like going somewhere you’ve never been. You have an idea of the destination, but since you’ve never been there before, you’re not quite sure if the route you planned will really work. Luckily in today’s world, there are a few revolutionary books for entrepreneurs that will help you arrive at your destination.
1. The Startup Owners Manual by Steve Blank. Steve Blank revolutionized the world of entrepreneurship about 10 years ago with a book called 4 Steps to the Epiphany. His newest book, The Startup Owners Manual includes all of the key concepts from his first book and adds upon them. Steve is a highly successful entrepreneur that teaches entrepreneurship courses at Stanford and Berkley. He is widely regarded as one of the global leaders in entrepreneurship thinking.
2. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. This book builds on some of the key concepts taught by Steve Blank, however, it goes a different direction as well. This book is specifically for tech and web based businesses, and it is extremely useful. Ries applies principles from the legendary Japanese car manufacturing methodology called Lean Manufacturing. He tweaks these principles and teaches how they apply to startups. He’s a successful entrepreneur, and he trains startups using these principles.
3. Nail It Then Scale It by Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom. This is a great book for any entrepreneur. Nathan has a PhD. in Entrepreneurship from Stanford, and Paul is a successful entrepreneur. In this book, they write about how to take a lot of the risk out of starting your business. The first step is nailing a customer pain, and then nailing the solution. They go in dept on how to do that, and then give ways for companies to discover their go-to-market strategy so they marketing to the right people at the right times.
4. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alex Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur. Everyone knows that business plans don’t really work for startups. There are too many assumptions and too many unknowns. The business model canvas used in this book teaches you how to figure out what assumptions exist in your business model. The framework helps you test them. You’ll see how to tweak your business model and build upon what you already have. Many times the difference between a great business and an average one is the business model. The canvas used in this book helps you to rediscover better business models and to evaluate the current one you are using.
These books are used in some of the top entrepreneurship programs in the world. While you may not go to those universities, you might as well be reading what they read. These books will help you discover what your customers truly want, how to best help them, and how to grow your business.
4 Ways to Do Public Relations on a Budget
Public relations isn’t cheap. Public relations (PR) firms are notorious for being really pricey. They say that PR is too complicated and that you can’t do it yourself, and part of that is true, but part of it isn’t. PR is complicated, but that doesn’t mean that without a PR firm that you can’t make it happen. Here are four ways to do PR on a shoestring budget to get people talking about you:
1. Network with Journalists: This is essentially what PR firms do—they network with journalists so they will write the stories the firms tell them too, but the reality is that anyone can network. And if PR firms can network with journalists then you can too. Find news publications where you would be most likely to be featured, and then start reading. Which journalists are most likely to tell your story? Figure that out, and then go to them. Take them to lunch. Talk about what they write, and learn their story. Then, after you know their story, they will be more likely to tell yours.
2. Gorilla Marketing: People love stories, and that’s what Gorilla Marketing does— it creates stories. Gorilla marketing is best understood through examples. A great example is how Coca-Cola set up a vending machine on a college campus that kept on shooting out free bottles of coke after one student bought one. This video got over 4 million views on Youtube. A skydiving company painted the floor in an elevator so it looks like you are looking over the city. You can see that here. You give them a different advertising experience than they are used to. This makes for great stories that people want to talk about and cover.
3. Give A Blogger Free Stuff: In the internet age, the voices that are most listened to and trusted are the bloggers. Bloggers have an intense amount of power over their readers. If a power blogger says to do something, people do it. If a power blogger says to eat something, people eat it. And if a power blogger tells people to buy something, they buy it. Many power bloggers will blog about your product in exchange for free products, but other power bloggers might charge money to talk about them. Different bloggers charge different prices, but bloggers are almost always a cheaper option than hiring a PR firm, and it will yield similar, if not better results.
4. Be different. This point might sound a lot like gorilla marketing, but there is a difference. Gorilla marketing is usually a one-time event or a campaign that is done in specific location with the goal to generate buzz. Being different isn’t a one-time event. It’s a constant part of your company, and your brand. For instance, Jet Blue offers a lot of legroom and TV’s for every passenger. That’s different. Other airlines don’t do that. Being different gets people talking about you, and it’s a sure way to create stories that customers love to tell.
You don’t have to do all four of these things but you should definitely do a couple of
Why Public Relations Matters for New Companies
Public relations doesn’t just matter for big companies; it matters for all companies. Why? It’s simple: public relations (PR) builds your brand; advertising maintains it.
A brand is to a company what a reputation is to a person. Brands, like reputations, are how people perceive you, look at you, and view you. When you were growing up, you didn’t decide what your reputation was—others did. Sure, you can tell stories about yourself, but it’s the stories others tell about you that everyone believes. We believe what our friends say about others more than we believe what others say about themselves. That’s why PR is so important—it builds a brand’s reputation. Your brand isn’t built by what you say about it, but by the things that others do.
“A company’s brand is essentially the promise that companies make to customers about their product or service.”
Once you get others who are viewed as non-biased sources to talk about you, then people trust that the promise is true. Many
companies spend money on studies to validate their claims about products. Why? Because when someone else says it—we, the consumers, believe it.
In essence, the reason that PR is so crucial for a startup is that people might have heard of your company, but they probably won’t trust it. People might have seen your store, but they don’t know if it’s any good, and people might know where you are located, but they don’t know if it’s worth going yet. Most people won’t be willing to take a chance on your product or your company until they know that someone else has. That’s what PR does—it tells them that someone has taken a chance on your product or service and that they had a good experience.
Perfect PR isn’t always possible for a young company, but some PR is always better than none. So next time you sit down and look at your marketing budget, make sure to leave some money on the table for PR because your story is always more believable when someone else tells it.
Discovering a Niche Market
What is a niche?
A niche is small area of the market. When you focus on a niche, you target a subset of the main market or you target a specific customer need that not all in the main market have.
A great example of a company that caters to a niche market is ESPN. ESPN doesn’t try to appeal to everyone. ESPN tries to appeal to people who love sports. That’s it. ESPN doesn’t care about politics, and they don’t care about the weather—they care about sports. (more…)
The What, the Who, and the How of SBA Loans
Small businesses and entrepreneurs often need help—financial help. The Small Business Administration (SBA) was started by the government in 1953 to assist small businesses.
What is an SBA Loan?
When people see that a government agency helps with financing they often think free money. That’s not the case with SBA loans. With SBA loans, the government doesn’t actually loan anyone the money. The SBA guarantees a certain percentage of the loans from banks. This helps businesses get financing that they normally wouldn’t receive. Once a small business has a government guarantee backing them up, it’s a lot easier for the bank to loan them money. (more…)
