by Mark Bloom | Jul 11, 2022 | Small Business Advice
What Is Small Business Burnout?
As a small business owner, you end up juggling to keep all your balls in the air. You often have to do the work that your customers are paying you for. You have to keep your website updated (you do, don’t you?). You have to decide on how to market your business, products or services. You have to find and vet contractors, if you go that route, or employees, if you decide to hire.
It’s up to you to get a logo, use it everywhere and protect it. It’s on you to network, advertise and probably even keep the books. Solopreneurs face a danger of small business burnout. In fact, the numbers of businesses that fail are sobering:
- 18.4 percent of first-year businesses fail.
- Almost half of all new businesses don’t make it five years.
- More than 65 percent of businesses fail after 10 years.
How Can I Avoid Small Business Burnout?
Knowing your limits is great way to approach your business. While you want to succeed — everyone does — you can’t push yourself so hard and so long without physical, intellectual and emotional repercussions. Still, that’s easy to write and more difficult to implement. So here are some tips to protect your business’s greatest asset, namely yourself:
- Guard your time off. Everyone needs downtime. You can’t be a solopreneur 24/7. Take time away from the business and don’t encroach on it. Tell your customers, as well as your employees, that you’re closed on Sunday, for example, and stick to it. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t check email. Unless you have an emergency service, it can wait until the next day.
- Be conscious of how you spend your time. Spend your time doing the things that most help your business. Spend your time doing the things that only you can do. If you’re truly the most valuable asset of your business, make sure you use your time for the highest and best purpose. You don’t — and can’t — do everything yourself.
- Delegate your less-important activities. When a task needs to be done, but you don’t need to do it, find someone else to do it for you. Delegate it to an employee or find a third-party contractor to do it for you. Things like creating your marketing materials or monthly newsletter are perfect for someone to do while you work on more vital projects, such as your business plan. This tip may be the best way to avoid small business burnout.
- Streamline your business operations. If you have to do everything yourself, make it as simple for yourself as possible. That may mean downsizing your products and services. That may mean making your price list more standard (and sticking to it). That may mean focusing on only one or two social media sites. That may mean blogging monthly instead of weekly. These sacrifices may pay off in more time for the other business projects that are paying the rent.
- Review and prioritize your time. Every few months, step back and review how you’re spending your time. Is something important slipping through the cracks? Do you need to focus on other things? This is the time to evaluate how you’re spending your time, to make sure your business is running smoothly, and you’re not overworking yourself.
If you suffer small business burnout, your business is doomed. Don’t let your endeavor become a statistic. To beat the odds and create a successful business, take care of your greatest asset: you. Protect your time and discover how best to spend the time you have.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Apr 18, 2022 | Small Business Advice
How Will Technology Impact the Gig Economy?
Welcome to the future. By the year 2000, many prognosticators expected the world to have flying cars, extraterrestrial colonies and robots. All those technologies are still in development, but the internet has changed everything about daily life, from how we communicate to how we work. That technology has impacted — and will continue to impact — the gig economy.
In particular, three technologies stand ready to change the way you will do your job, how you fit in and the type of work you do in the gig economy that’s already experiencing rapid evolution. These three technologies involve:
- Artificial intelligence (AI)
- The fifth-generation of wireless networks (5G)
- The internet of things (IoT)
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Many gig workers fear AI, believing that artificial intelligence is gunning for their jobs. And some industries may see upheaval due to the development of job-reducing AI. But the goal of AI isn’t to steal jobs, but make the gig economy more dependable and fairer, broadening the access for gig workers.
In fact, AI is more likely to add jobs than steal them. What no one knows yet is what type of jobs the technology will add. Some reports suggest that gig workers will have to continue to learn new skills as they change jobs more frequently. AI may destabilize the gig economy, at least in the short term. The desired skills in the near future may include:
- Agility in the job market
- The ability to learn new skills quickly
- Discipline and organization
- Technical literacy, being able to adopt technology
Fifth-Generation of Wireless Networks (5G)
Like AI, 5G is going to reshape the economic landscape. The newest network capabilities won’t just make communication speed faster, but it adds bandwidth. 5G will enable new technology that we can’t even imagine yet. Gig workers are likely to benefit from the better communications capacity in ways that include:
- Adding $1.5 trillion to the U.S. economy, which will include increases in gig workers’ income
- Increasing productivity for gig workers will reduce project durations
- Diversifying the job market, possibly including more gig workers
It may take several years for 5G to proliferate across the country and become the de facto standard for telecommunications, but it’s coming. By 2025, just three short years into the future, the gig economy may look very different, and gig workers are well-positioned to tap into the economic gains.
The Internet of Things (IoT)
If you’ve never heard of this term, you will. IoT will link more and more devices to the internet. You can expect smart cars, smart homes and smart cities as more things not only get connected, but leverage that connectivity into more features and capabilities. The ways that IoT will likely affect the gig economy may include:
In the final analysis, the world’s economy may change significantly over the next decade. It may become more democratic, allowing even smart workers in poor countries to participate on an equal footing. That means that gig workers today are well-suited to benefit from the technological changes, but they may face greater competition. To learn how content plays a role, subscribe to the Ray Access monthly newsletter.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Feb 21, 2022 | Small Business Advice
Why Do I Need to Have a Newsletter?
Many businesses, especially small businesses, may consider a newsletter to be an added expense. And it’s true: unless you have the resources in-house to produce a newsletter on a regular basis, it’s going to cost you some money. So, why should you pursue a newsletter for your business?
Newsletters for business do many things to promote your business, such as:
- Put your business name and branding in front of customers and potential customers who gave you their email addresses — in other words, these are already warm to hot leads
- Allow you to reuse your blog content to reach an audience who are already interested in your business
- Give you another platform that you control, unlike social media, to share insights and information
How Much Do Newsletters Actually Cost?
There are many facets to putting out a newsletter on a regular basis, by which we generally mean monthly. Some of the tasks involved include:
- Designing your newsletter, a one-time expense
- Creating content for each newsletter — or collecting content from your blog
- Building the newsletter each month
- Managing your email list
- Arranging and paying for a newsletter service, such as MailChimp
Each of these tasks takes time, meaning each newsletter costs you both time and money. But newsletters aren’t really that expensive. Ray Access, for example, can do all this (not including the start-up costs) for about $100 per month, assuming you have blog content worth sharing, plus whatever the newsletter service charges. Depending on the number of contacts in your email list, the total cost is likely to be less than $300 a month.
What Value Can I Derive from a Newsletter?
In business, every decision impacts your bottom line. No company is going to throw away even $300 a month if it serves no business purpose. Newsletters for business should deliver more than what it costs, although you may have to wait several months for the benefits to kick in.
Having a newsletter gives you a valid reason to collect email addresses from your customers and potential customers. An email list in itself adds value to your company. But it’s the new business and income that make newsletters for business worth the expense. An effective newsletter can:
- Nurture your existing customer base to conduct repeat business
- Persuade new customers to buy from your business
What’s an Example of an Effective Newsletter?
At Ray Access, we walk the talk. We’ve been producing monthly newsletters since July, 2016. Every month, we publish and send out a new edition to the subscribers on our email list. And every once in a while we promote a new giveaway to add to that list.
We invite you to review our newsletter archive, where we have links to every newsletter we’ve ever sent out. After looking through these newsletters, you may want to sign up to receive them yourself! Newsletters for business works, as long as they impart value to your list.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Jan 24, 2022 | Small Business Advice
How Can I Tell if I’m Reaching an Audience?
Most businesses know their customers. They’ve done market research, sent surveys or just talked to the clients they meet. Collecting customer data is often the first step toward creating marketing copy, website content and other outreach collateral. But even if a small business can’t afford a high-tech marketing firm, its owners at least have an idea who buys their products and services.
After all that hard work, your small business can’t rest. Reaching an audience, no matter how well you think you know them, requires continual tweaking, editing and revising. Most importantly, don’t ignore your website content since it represents your company online. If it’s not working, you’re paying the price.
What’s the Price of Ineffective Website Content?
If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you or your sales staff interact with customers who walk through the door. Your goal may be a sale, but in the process, you help customers narrow down their search and pick the most appropriate product. Your website has no sales force. The content, as well as the design and graphic elements, have to function as:
- Subject matter expert
- Salesman
- Trusted resource
The price of not reaching an audience is the deafening sound of silence. If your website connects with your audience, you notice an uptick in contacts and possibly even greater sales. If your message fails, you miss an opportunity to build your customer base that you may never get again.
How Can I Avoid a Bothersome Message?
There are many ways to mess up your message. The more you know your customers, the less likely you are to fail, but it can still happen. To avoid creating a bothersome message, follow some tips that include:
- Respect your audience.
- Don’t waste their time.
- Don’t use a tone that patronizes them.
- Provide valuable information they may not find elsewhere.
- Give them options, when appropriate.
When your message is all about you or what you’re promoting, that means you’re not delivering timely, valuable information. When your message connects, you’re reaching an audience that may buy from you.
How Can I Make My Message Beneficial?
Reaching an audience means delivering appropriate information at the appropriate time. This involves your website hierarchy. When visitors land on your site, your site has to guide them toward what they’re looking for. Structure your website so that:
- Your Home Page provides broad information about your business, its competitive advantage and the problems your products or services solve — you can’t know what they’re seeking, so provide options.
- You provide choices where to go next without overwhelming your visitors — make your navigation menu as short as it can be while keeping it clear.
- Your Products or Services pages delve into more detail about each — if a visitor’s found these interior pages, they’re closer to buying, so state your case.
- You’ve placed call-to-action buttons or links clearly and strategically on your site — be ready whenever the visitor’s ready; reduce the obstacles when visitors want to contact you.
And if a page title promises information about a specific topic, that page had better deliver the goods. Don’t fool your visitors. Don’t mislead them. Don’t even surprise them. Give them the exact information they’re looking for, and you’ll become a trusted resource and they’ll become a customer. If you want help crafting effective website content, contact the pros at Ray Access.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Guest Blogger | Jan 9, 2022 | Small Business Advice
4 Common Marketing Issues That Businesses Face
Why Is Business Marketing Important?
Business marketing is one of the leading challenges for entrepreneurs. But it’s an absolutely essential skill to master if you want your company to be successful. There are over 30.2 million small businesses in the United States, and they’re all doing what they can to attract sales.
Obviously, not all of these businesses fall into the same niche or industry as your business, but to stand out in your industry, you can’t afford to miss any business marketing opportunities. Once you know the most common marketing mistakes business owners make, you can learn to avoid them. So this blog post reveals the four most common business marketing problems and how to solve them.
1. Low Website Traffic
Small businesses thrive online. The majority of consumers conduct research online to learn more about products and services before they make a purchase. These consumers may also be inclined to shop online because it’s faster, more convenient and less expensive.
So your business needs to have a strong online presence, which is one of the most common marketing issues. If your website fails to attract consumers, you’re not making sales. Low traffic is usually caused by an ineffective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. To improve your SEO:
- Register your website with Google My Business
- Publish keyword-rich blog posts on your site
- Invest in a link-building strategy and pay-per-click campaign
- Click here to work with an SEO specialist who appreciates content and improves your ranking
2. Limited Awareness in Social Media
Other marketing problems involve social media. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram can be amazing for small business marketing. But the algorithms are difficult to master, which makes it a challenge to grow your social media presence. The best way to solve social media marketing issues is by investing time in each platform. Ways to do that include:
- Post several times a week
- Engage on the platform before and after posting
- Use the right hashtags
- Post engaging content
- Use paid promotions
Taking these simple actions helps you gain more visibility online. Your efforts result in more website traffic, leads and sales. Embrace your social side.
3. A Lack of Website Conversions
Poor quality websites often lead to ineffective marketing and a severe lack of conversions. If your website isn’t turning leads into sales, you may be looking at a number of problems. Maximize the customer experience on your website by:
- Optimizing your site for mobile devices
- Using multiple forms of media
- Providing valuable content
- Ensuring your site loads quickly
- Making your site easy to navigate
If you don’t know how to improve your website or correct these types of marketing issues yourself, work with a website design expert. A copywriting firm and even a videographer may help as well.
4. Not Knowing Your Target Market
One of the most detrimental advertising mistakes is not knowing your audience. If you don’t know your target market intimately, you can’t know how to compose a marketing message that appeals to their specific:
The better you know your audience, the more effectively you can craft content that attracts them to your website and social media pages. Furthermore, this content helps you define your brand in a way that makes your company, products and services more tempting to your market.
No matter where you are on the road to success, you can use these tips to overcome the four leading business marketing issues. Let Ray Access handle your content. We work closely with SEO firms, web developers and web designers to get your business more visibility … and more sales.
This was a guest blog post written by guest blogger Ester Adams.
by Mark Bloom | Nov 15, 2021 | Small Business Advice
What Is Local Marketing?
On the internet, you can find websites for international conglomerations, major online retailers and local mom-and-pop stores. Sometimes, the difference is stark, since international businesses have the resources to create a website using the latest, fanciest technology, while small local businesses are often cash-strapped.
But even if you own a local business that has a brick-and-mortar, walk-in location, you can still use the power of the internet to market your business. Even if you want to attract just the potential customers in your region, city or neighborhood, the internet is still the best way to get your message across. The tactics are called local marketing or local SEO (search engine optimization).
In space, no one can hear you scream because it’s a vacuum.
On the internet, no one can tell the size of your company for the same reason.
How Do You Attract Your Audience?
Every store in every city used to use tried-and-true local marketing and advertising to attract customers. Some of these strategies still work: local TV and radio ads, local newspaper ads, billboards and even direct-mail flyers. With more and more people looking online for local products and services, you need a way to attract them.
Fortunately, there are effective ways to optimize your website so that your local customers can find you. Your customers’ mobile phones become a helpful asset in this attempt, for two reasons:
- Most people now use their mobile devices to search the internet
- Most phones are sensitive to the current location
What Are Local Marketing Tips and Tricks?
Just as no one knows how big your business is online unless you tell them, no one knows where you are unless you do the same. So, if you’re trying to attract local customers, let them know where you are. This is, without a doubt, the simplest trick. Modify the content on your existing website pages to include your location. For example:
- Instead of writing: “We’re a local content writing firm,” include your location: “Ray Access is a content writing firm in Asheville, NC.”
- Instead of using a generic keyword phrase like “web developer,” include the place: “web developer in Atlanta.”
This trick, if done extensively throughout your site, cements your business to a particular place, where local customers, who are searching for local businesses, can find you. Other local marketing tips include:
- Google My Business. Claim and complete your “Google My Business” listing. Besides helping locals find your business, it also contains your address, hours, ratings and reviews, photos and other business-related information. It’s free, and it works.
- Google Maps. Develop positive ratings for Google Maps. Another Google product, this one includes your business on local maps that customers use for local searching. But you need ratings that are positive and authentic to crack the Maps app. Google has to know that you’re a quality, reliable local business.
- Google Reviews. Get your existing customers to leave Google reviews. The more and better your ratings, the more Google can trust you. Then the giant search engine becomes an ally, listing your business on maps and relevant searches.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
