Posts Tagged small business
Small Business Owners Liking Facebook
According to the MerchantCircle Merchant Confidence Index (MCI) survey, the total Q1 2011 MCI score is 5.1% higher than a year earlier. The largest contributor to its growth is respondents’ expectations for sales revenue growth during the next three months.
| Merchant Confidence Index | ||
| Expectation | Average Response on 1-5 Scale | % Change vs. Feb 2010 |
| Rate today’s economy compared to past 12 months | 3.00 | +11.5% |
| Change in sales revenue over next three months | 3.52 | + 4.8 |
| Change in marketing/advertising expenditures over next three months | 3.07 | +2.3 |
| Change in headcount over next three months | 3.13 | +2.6 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | ||
More than four in 10 small and local business owners expect sales revenues to improve somewhat in the next three months. 13% expect significant improvement, a combined 57% of respondents anticipating some sort of rise in short-term sales revenues.
| Expectations for the future (How do you expect your sales revenues to change over the next three months?) | |
| Expectation | % of Respondents |
| Improve significantly | 12.9% |
| Improve somewhat | 44.0 |
| Remain relatively the same | 28.9 |
| Decline somewhat | 10.3 |
| Decline significantly | 3.9 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | |
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Advertising, Facebook on April 5th, 2011
8 criteria to meet for building a business you can sell
Ninety-nine out of one hundred businesses are not sellable because their owners, as the experts, are requested by customers personally. Thus, the business becomes centered around owners, and a business that is too dependent on its owner is not sellable. You can be part of the one percent who create a sellable business by following these eight steps:
1. Identify a scalable product or service. Scalable products and services exhibit three qualities. First, they are broadly valuable so that more people will want them . Second, providing them is a teachable skill so that you’re not the only person who can operate the business. Third, they are scalable, so that the owners can take the valuable and teachable products and services and grow the business.
2. Create a positive cash flow cycle. The more working capital an acquiring company must put into your business, the lower its potential return on equity, and the less it will pay for your business. Create a positive cash flow cycle by charging up front or at least in staged billing so that you get paid before buying the products or services you’re selling.
3. Hire a sales team. Most business owners are their company’s best, and sometimes only. salesperson. That may seem a positive, but if you want to build a company you can eventually sell, you need to show that sales are not dependent on you personally. Hire at least two salespeople, and an acquirer will see a sales system—not just one great salesperson.
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Small Business on January 13th, 2011
eBrand Media Research Brief: Retailers increasingly invest in site optimization
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
According to Internet Retailer’s recent monthly survey, retailers are creating interactive page treatments and adding video, customer reviews and other advanced features. Merchants also are making site optimization a top priority and redesigning their web sites to achieve speedier navigation and faster performance.
The survey finds retailers updating their web sites, with 49.9% of merchants having rolled out a new design in the past year, including:
– 26.6% in the last six months
– 13.3% within 90 days
Improved site optimization is the top priority for 72.9% of merchants, followed by:
– Clearly organized home, category and product pages at 62.4%
– Better navigation at 49.4%
– Improved site search at 47.1%
– Faster checkout at 40%
Posted by Tom Polanski in Website Optimization on May 4th, 2009
Why banks (still) aren’t lending
By David Weidner, MarketWatch
Banks need to stop the charade, ignore the political and public pressure and admit they’re not lending.
It’s not because they don’t want to, but because it’s bad business.
Don’t think so? Take this pop quiz. Bank of America (BAC, news, msgs) posted smashing first-quarter profits and its chief executive, Ken Lewis, said the Charlotte, N.C., company is lending as if the good times never ended. So, in the bank’s conference call, which of the following statements did Lewis make?
A. “Credit is bad, and we believe credit is going to get worse before it will eventually stabilize and improve.”
B. “Even our internal economists are a little at odds as to the timing (of the recovery), with some seeing recovery earlier (than year’s-end).”
C. “We believe unemployment won’t peak until next year at somewhere in the high single digits.”
D. All of the above.
E. None of the above.
Posted by Tom Polanski in The Economy on April 23rd, 2009
Sloppy retailers won’t survive 2009. Respect for customers and business efficiency are of paramount importance.
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
We all should be recovered from anesthesia by about now. There are companies that I think are really going to be in trouble this year. Did anyone really need to decorate their home solely with Pottery Barn and Williams and Sonoma furnishings? How many businesses started, and grew, because of the real estate and credit bubbles? Of course they had to grow to serve a hungry public but did they have an exit plan? Were they working hard to build and maintain quality relationships with their current customers? Did senior management understand that there really would be a day when the easy money would stop flowing? Did management invest in preparations for the economic dénouement?
More often than not, in my experience, the answer is, “no”.
Here is what we suggest to help put your business in a position to succeed in 2009:
Posted by Tom Polanski in Marketing on January 19th, 2009