The Official BizUnite Blog

Small Business Saturday is November 24th

Sponsored by American Express, Small Business Saturday is held each year on the Saturday that falls between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This year that Saturday is November 24th. While it may seem like you have plenty of time left, it’s important to start preparing your website for the big day.

Each year, American Express seeks to help small businesses by encouraging patronage of small businesses. Customers who register their American Express cards to shop at small businesses on November 24 will be given a $25 credit for each registered cardholder. Customers need only register their cards ahead of time to qualify for the refund.

Today

• ‘Like’ the official Small Business Saturday Facebook page. This will not only sign you up for ongoing updates and reminders about Small Business Saturday, it will also provide information about participating in special contests hosted for small businesses.
• Sign up for ShopSmall to receive ongoing communications about Small Business Saturday, including advice on how your small business can participate.
• Evaluate your small business’s online presence, taking into account local customers who might be searching for you for the first time through sites like Yelp and Angie’s List. Make sure it’s easy for those customers to find  you.

October

• Utilize the many ad tools available in the Small Business Saturday Toolkit. These include signs and tutorials on small business marketing activities like creating a Facebook presence and uploading a YouTube video.
• Work with your web designer to make sure your website is ready for the influx of traffic. Decide which specials you’d like to offer and create banners and signage. The toolkit can help with this.
• Promote the $25 American Express credit and let customers know you are participating in Small Business Saturday. You’ll be amazed how many customers hold American Express cards and will be willing to shop if they know they’re getting a $25 credit.
• Create a way to capture customer information to a database. As you receive a larger-than-usual influx of customers on Small Business Saturday, take advantage of the opportunity to get information on those customers that you can use for future mailings.

November

• Finalize website testing and optimization.
• Hang Small Business Saturday signage prominently in your store’s window and/or near the cash register.
• Promote your Small Business Saturday special offers on your company’s social media sites.
• Don’t forget your current customers. Contact them to let them know about the special offers you’ll have for Small Business Saturday.

When it comes to promotion, it’s never too early to start preparing. Thanksgiving weekend will be here before we know it and with so much competition for attention, small businesses are more challenged than ever to make an impact on Small Business Saturday.

http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2012/09/countdown-to-small-business-saturday-time-to-start-preparing.html/

Video Series

Castle Wealth Advisors. Gary Pittsford is an expert on business valuation and succession planning. He has produced a video series that is detailed below.

Introduction:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_2zGB39KjA

1. “Two Year Window”

This video is intended to give you a few ideas to think about pertaining to selling your business in the next one or two years while we are sure what the tax rates will be. In this short video we will briefly touch upon long term capital gains, ordinary income, tax ideas that would be good for the seller, and tax ideas that would be good for the buyer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ1QEOdsOMs

 

2. “Transferring within the Family”

This video discusses a few ideas about possibly selling your company to children or perhaps key employees. If you are an owner who is thinking about retiring and selling your business in the next three to five years then perhaps you may find the ideas in this video helpful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSj1QoU_6DA

 

3.  “Valuing Your Business”

This video briefly reviews a couple of different valuation techniques for closely held family businesses. Valuations are very important if you are planning on selling the business to family members, key employees, or another coop member.  This video may be helpful if you are planning on retiring and selling the business in the next three to five years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71OhORQkPCo 

 

4.  “Protecting Stock and Stockholders”

This short video will cover briefly ideas that are very important to business owners when children, in-laws, or key employees become stockholders. In this video we will cover the idea of proper Wills and Revocable Living Trust for business owners, and also buy-sell agreements which are very important. These documents help protect the company and keep the stock within the family. The provisions within these documents are very important to maintain control of a privately held family business.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3EV1kfU1Q4

 

 5.  “Retirement Income Ideas”

When current business owners think about selling the company their future retirement income becomes very important. There are many ways that owners can design the sale of a company in order to retain future income. This video will touch upon selling stock, selling goodwill, deferred compensation, consulting fees, board of director’s fees, and several other ideas for you to consider.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td3zS6fwlPg

 

 6.  “Reducing Taxes”

When it comes time to sell your company saving income taxes becomes very important. There are many different ways to sell a company, but the best plan must combine good ideas for the seller and the buyer. There is only so much useable cash flow that the owner of a business has to work with and the plan that you choose must successfully reduce taxes and have enough cash flow so that the buyer can make all of the necessary payments to the retiring owner and still have plenty of cash flow for the buyer to live on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKer1gsohjk

 

7. “Types of Businesses”

There are several different types of businesses that you can use. For example, C Corporations, S Corporations, Limited Liability Companies, Family Limited Partnerships, and others. If you are planning on selling the company in a few years you want to make sure that the entity that you are using currently for your business will give you the least amount of tax obligation when it is time to sell. During the years that you have owned the company has your basis in the stock increased? When you sell your company will you and the company both pay taxes on the sale? This video will cover briefly a few ideas about corporations and give you ideas to think about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H0wmexkGWY

 

 

Visit BizUnite's YouTube Channel Today

If you want to get your business two steps ahead of your competition, you should include online video marketing as a tactic in their marketing plans. Doing so will expand the conversion rates and success of any advertising, marketing, or social campaign investment.
 
The reasons for using online video fall back to video being the best way to build business value at every stage of the customer life cycle.  Here are few ways that online video content marketing helps businesses:
 

• Bringing products and brands to life
• Converting browsers into buyers
• Improving customer service efficiency
• Building trust and authenticity
• Increasing traffic and time on site
• Expanding audience and building brands
• Improving internal communications with stakeholders

 
Because the use of corporate online video marketing is relatively new to the field of digital marketing, too few organizations use video content marketing effectively. Most are using traditional advertising and TV newscasts as their main web video productions. While most are posting these web videos on YouTube, some are just posting video content in a static video player that has no social sharing functionality or takes a long time to load.

Check out BizUnite's YouTube Channel Today! http://www.youtube.com/user/bizunitecom

Choose A Co-op

We are excited to share with you an exciting initiative that we have started at BizUnite through our parent company CCA Global Partners. As you may have heard, 2012 will be the international year of the co-op. Our hope is to use the International Year of the Co-op as a springboard to an ongoing movement to educate consumers on the value of co-ops in helping our communities thrive. To start this movement – Choose A Co-op – we have created a powerful video and social media sites to begin spreading the word about cooperatives.

We need your help in spreading the word and really getting the conversation started. After you watch, the Choose A Co-op video at www.Youtube.com/ChooseACoop forward it on to your family, friends, and employees. You can send them the link above or use the “Share” feature on YouTube. You can also use this feature to share the video on Facebook and other social channels. If you are active on Facebook, find Choose A Co-op on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ChooseACoop and “Like” it. You can also add Choose A Co-op as a “like” on your business page if you have one. Choose A Co-op is also on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ChooseACoop.

Please help us in spreading the word about how cooperatives can help build a better world.

Small Business Saturday: November 26th, 2011

Pledge your support for Small Business Saturday®

The 2nd annual Small Business Saturday® is a day dedicated to supporting small businesses on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.

On November 26, we’re asking millions of Americans to Shop Smallsm at their favorite local stores and help fuel the economy. When we all shop small, it will be huge.

Watch this video to learn about Small Business Saturday! http://youtu.be/rIYHjs1vEAo

 

Small Businesses, make the most of the day

From Twitter posts to posters, we have all sorts of tools to help your business get new customers and have a great Small Business Saturday

 

Constant Contact is helping small businesses get ready for the big day

Holiday Planning Webinar

• Learn how to make your email and social media efforts stand out from the holiday clutter

Promotional Worksheet

• Follow these simple steps for developing a special offer that will drive customers to your door.

To-Do Calendar

• An at-a-glance look at how to plan your promotional schedule across social media and email.

BONUS

• Small Business Saturday-themed email templates make it easy to tie in your business with this special day. And they're yours FREE when you use Constant Contact

 

Learn More: visit http://smallbusinesssaturday.com/

Done right, Video Converts

Just like ten years ago when you needed a website to be competitive, website video marketing is very quickly becoming THE must have. There are many reasons why website video marketing is being line-item budgeted by marketers. One of these is that online video production content is the only marketing tool that has a long tail…meaning that a video today can be used for many years to showcase your company and establish longevity and credibility. This long tail means amortizing the marketing investment over a longer period of time. 

Additionally, a consistent video production strategy will improve your Google and YouTube algorithm rankings (they both give higher credit to more established content) and will make it easy for viewers to get more relevant content.

Business video marketing is also great for your daily sales and marketing tactics. Research from Forrester, ComScore, eMarketer, and other top organizations all support how marketing with online video production creates some form of action to move prospects into or deeper through the sales cycle.

• Video boosts conversion rates by an average of 9%. (Internet Retailer, October 2010)
• Videos are 53 times more likely than text pages to appear on the first page of search results. (Forrester, January 2009)
• Products that have videos are 95% more likely to be bought. (Internet Retailer, April 2010)
• Video adds two minutes to visitors' stays on websites. (Comscore, August 2010)
• Video increases the likelihood of a front-page Google search result by 96% with proper page optimization. (Forrester, January 2010)

Online video marketing drives action! Immediately after viewing a company’s video, buyers are far more likely to visit the company’s website or contact the company via phone. In fact, they can be up to 40% more likely to make some sort of contact. This is a pretty dramatic compared to other marketing tactics. 

Video is one of the best ways to engage and convert casual browsers into leads and paying customers because, simply put, video reaches out, informs, and builds trust with your customers more quickly, more easily, and more effectively than any other marketing tactic.

Given this, many businesses understand the power of video but are unsure where to begin. Here are five types of easy-to-create videos to help you get started.

1. Product education/demonstration. You have product/service information on your website…you talk about your products and services every day! Now do it in front of the camera. You are the expert; show your stuff.
2. Post-presentation objection handling. Record answers to the top three objections your customers have after you give your presentation and use them as follow-up material. Present them with confidence and conviction that will build trust in your team to drive more sales.
3. Customer testimonials. Your customers love you and most likely have relevant stories about your team, product, implementation, and service. Find a customer for each product/service you have and start filming!
4. Key people behind your sales team. Don’t your customers love your back office staff? These are the people that support your sales team and deliver the benefits to your customers. Give your sales team videos that educate your prospects on your talented team of professionals, which will be servicing them post-sale.
5. Thank-you videos. Differentiate your company with a video after that important sales meeting. Remind the prospect of your firm’s key value propositions and experience in a personal and information-rich video.

After your videos are produced, distribute them every day in your sales and marketing efforts, on your websites, and at other places on the Internet (such as social networking websites, i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube).

Don’t wait until you have to catch up to your competition…gain a competitive advantage today and produce your first series of web marketing videos.

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