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    Saturday, January 4, 2020

    Why is social media marketing so hard to do? Is it all hype or is there something I'm missing? small business

    Why is social media marketing so hard to do? Is it all hype or is there something I'm missing? small business


    Why is social media marketing so hard to do? Is it all hype or is there something I'm missing?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 03:58 PM PST

    I've literally paid for hundreds in ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and some dating apps but with no success. I've gotten a few signups but absolutely no purchases at all.

    For context, I have an ecommerce site Bromane that sells cosmetics for balding men.

    Ive gotten a couple thousand visits this past month and no purchases. I didn't expect it would be this difficult to get conversions. Is it my landing page that's bad, the places I'm marketing it, or just the product? I've noticed tho that the bounce % for the paid traffic is in the 90s so maybe it's just bad traffic? Literally at wits' end.

    Edit: Team: Just me. I'm 26 and a recent college grad. The project started out as a way for me to hone my web design skills and evolved into what it is now.

    Edit: Thank you Reddit for the feedback! :) I've definitely got some work to do.

    submitted by /u/Veyorokon
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    Chinese business name?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 07:28 PM PST

    Hi, I am starting a designer handbag business. I am Chinese and I want to use my name for the brand. It means "comfort and authenticity"—essentially, be yourself, but can imply natural materials and integrity.

    How do you think this will be received in the Western market? If any of you are Chinese, what are your thoughts on that.

    I've checked out WConcept and they carry a lot of Korean brands and many of them use Korean romanization for the brand names. Then there are Chinese design brands that are up and coming such as Angela Chen, Neiwai, and Shushu Tong. What are your thoughts on these brands?

    I want to use my Chinese name because of the meaning and I don't want to pretend to be something I am not.

    Thank you for your input.

    submitted by /u/sydorreddit
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    Ecommerce Store & Brand website Review

    Posted: 04 Jan 2020 02:32 AM PST

    Hi Everyone a few months back we launched a new brand and website.

    Since then thanks to feedback from several members from here on Reddit and the r/shopify community we have been able to adjust numerous pages and sections of our website to improve customer interaction and reduce our bounce rate which has been great.

    Thank you, everyone, who made suggestions however after making these changes we are still struggling to get customer and convert interested buyers, we'd love some feedback again on the newly designed home page and if the flow of the website layout helps the buyer experience and or if we have forgotten to add anything else to make out site stand out and appeal from the crowd of brands out there.

    we have been partnering with influencers to get the word out which can be seen on our Instagram page however we still have not seen an increase in traffic or engagement.

    Would really appreciate any help and ideas on-site flow and design that may be impacting traffic that we may have done wrong. As well as any ideas to drive traffic that is cheap but targeted or ways to increase sales.

    Regards

    Website - www.zuitra.com

    Thank you, everyone, for your support and feedback! :) If anyone would like to see and feel the quality of our sunglasses, we are more then happy to send you out one, please send us a message.

    submitted by /u/Reemal09
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    I am starting a Web + Marketing Agency, should I give away free services to build my portfolio and relationships?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 06:43 AM PST

    I quit my job to start my own small business and now I am looking to build a clientele of my own but I am not sure where to start. I don't have a visible portfolio so I am wondering how do I convince my initial clients to give me a chance and build relationships to catapult this freelance venture into a successful small business? Should I provide my services for free or should I offer heavily discounted pricing?

    Here is a bit about my background. I am a web engineer who's been specializing in marketing engineering for the last 5 years working behind the scenes for a marketing and web development agency. I was responsible for some of the biggest contracts we got. For example, I lead a project for Amazon that generated over $150 million dollars in transaction volume. I contributed some innovative solutions and strategies to over 300 small to medium e-commerce business and none of them even know my name. Although I had a great time providing solutions for clients and seeing my work reaping great results, I still felt dissatisfied and I felt that I wanted to do this on my own. To make matters worse, I was not being compensated fairly based on what I was bringing to the company. So, towards the end of last year I gathered some courage and I quit to try it on my own in 2020. And here I am trying to get things going.

    Here is a brief rundown of my experience to give you a bit of context:

    • Marketing & Sales Funnel Development: leads development, copywriting, automation, data collection and analysis tasks for marketing and sales assets such as landing pages, microsites, lead generation web forms, email campaigns et cetera.
    • Marketing Strategy: SEO, SEM, Email, Social Media. I even have developed my own social media tools for efficiency and campaign optimization.
    • Content Marketing: Research and content development, blog editorial, content writer.
    • Full Stack Engineering: backend LAMP, frontend CSS/HTML/JS, eCommerce, CMS (Wordpress, Magento, Laravel), Databases (MySQL)
    • Systems Administration: setup and maintaining server and database infrastructures mainly on LAMP stack, AWS EC2

    I'd appreciate any feedback from some of you that may have successfully built a similar kind of small business from scratch or just any general advice and suggestions. Thank you and Happy New Year.

    submitted by /u/xbrian10
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    Virtual Pitch Competition - for HachTeq 2020 intake.

    Posted: 04 Jan 2020 02:41 AM PST

    5 Startups to Win a Funding of $15,000 Each.
    Just Send Your Pitch Deck and a Recorded Video presentation.
    Industry Agnostic.
    While all companies that apply will be accepted for HachTeq incubation, competition is limited to US based companies run by Entrepreneurs who have work authorization in the US.

    Apply: https://dir.hachteq.com/pitch-competition/

    submitted by /u/Flemming427
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    Anyone here uses Google ads?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 10:53 AM PST

    I am using it and so far am doing a $5 budget a day (I know it's not a lot, but I'm being payed very little and my mom doesn't know I'm creating ads) did you find more clients calling in? We run a little Mexican restaurant and it's casual the food is great and I'm super proud of it. The only problem is that our block doesn't have much traffic. If you didn't find Google ads, which ones do you recommended? We already have a lot of repeat customers, to the point where we know their order and I always try to up sell. But I would really love to have more people come in. We have many locals that had no idea we were here. If you didn't like Google Ad (and if you did, please let me know how to make the most of it) which other ad companies do you prefer?

    submitted by /u/Ayyylookatme
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    Investing money into marketing in January?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 06:10 PM PST

    Hey guys, I launched my business, Vancouver Island in a Box during the Holiday season and got some good results from paid social advertising. That said, I started off on a bit of bias foot as the the majority of my orders were for Christmas gifts. Now that it's January i'm hesitant to sink money into advertising when I gift basket purchases are probably at an all time low. Any ideas for keeping the lights on with minimal ad spend? Also, if any one has experience in this industry, any insight would be appreciated!

    submitted by /u/VancouverIslandBox
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    Marketing an Application

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 10:20 PM PST

    I joined a start up as a marketing intern. It's an everyday use application that the company has developed. They have integrated all the offline transactions into one platform. Like grocery, milk,water, car washing, laundry anything you could think of. So this platform needs to be used by the customer and the vendor. While my role demands me to get vendors to sign up, I did get a few vendors and not many customers. The vendor's don't really want to give their customers to us but that's the only way the application can run because it was designed to be a medium between the existing customers and the vendor. The only way a vendor would definitely use the application is if the customer asks the vendor to, now the company director told me that they don't want to use 50% off or any kind of discounts to lure people because initially there will be a crowd but after that there is no guaranteed transactions happening.

    I personally think unless there's an incentive for the customer he/she isn't going to tell the vendor. So I spoke about introducing a charity angle but he wasn't really that much into it. Any ideas on what other approach I need to take to get the customers into it?

    submitted by /u/unknownelixir
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    Question: multi-party contracts and billing

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 05:33 PM PST

    I run a single-person LLC. A friend of mine does the same. We combined our service offerings for a client and billed 50% up front and 50% upon delivery. To keep things simple, I invoiced the first half and planned to cut a check for half of that to the other business entity.

    I have no idea what to make of this for taxes. I was just trying to keep things simple for the client.

    Can I just count my half of the money towards my revenue and ignore the half I paid to the other company? It would essentially be the same thing as if the company had paid each of us individually. I'm guessing not, but I want to ask.

    Further complicating things is the fact that I received the money in 2019 and the other business didn't respond on how to get paid, so I haven't cut the check yet and it's now 2020. Do I have to count the full revenue in 2019 and the check as an expense in 2020? That might not be the worst thing in the world for 2020 as my revenue is growing, but it does cause a bit of pain for 2019 taxes.

    Does it make a difference if I cut a check to the person or to their business entity?

    Thanks in advance for helping me with my growing pains.

    submitted by /u/clussman
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    TractionMate 50 Curated Cold Email Templates For Makers | Product Hunt

    Posted: 04 Jan 2020 01:00 AM PST

    https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/tractionmate-50-curated-cold-email-templates-for-makers

    You dont have time or energy to work on writing a perfect cold email to your prospet? No worries! This free eBook "50 Curated & Tested Cold Email Templates for Makers" has your back covered. Cold messaging is one important traction channel, more so in the beginning and templates in this eBook gives you a head start. With minor tweaks, you are ready to go!

    Subscribe to get early access

    submitted by /u/growthmate
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    Can online presence name be different than registered business name?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 08:23 PM PST

    Names have been changed for the sake of anonymity.

    I have a corporation registered under the name "HelloFreelance123 Inc." which invoices for freelance work done by me in the marketing/advertising sector.

    I would like to start another hobby business on Etsy selling handmade stuff. If my name on etsy is "Mr Handmade XYZ" and my products ship with labels saying "Mr Handmade XYZ", would I have to register another business under that name or can I run my Etsy business through "HelloFreelance123 Inc."?

    More info: Business is registered in Ontario Canada.

    submitted by /u/chainvibe
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    Do I need a upc/gs1 prefix if I only plan to sell my own product online. Can I add it later? Is there a downside to adding it later?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 08:07 PM PST

    Discussion: How do you conceptually separate "recurring" tasks and "one-time" tasks in your company / team?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 08:30 AM PST

    Happy new year to all! Seems like as good of a time as any to get started with setting up a better foundation for productivity in all of our ventures.

    I run a conference business and have spent a huge amount of time and resources building up a running list of recurring tasks needed to set up a conference. All conferences have similarities, in that they all need a place, people and communication. I have set up and ongoing Google sheet with a list of hundreds of tasks that can be built upon, replicated, copied and pasted to start a new list for a new conference. This is how we manage, "recurring tasks." The idea is to make the organization scalable by not re-inventing the wheel for every conference.

    Of course, not every task in every single organization can be repetitive or recurring. We have lots of one-off tasks as well, which could be as mundane as, "Oh hey can you fix that font color on the website," or as important as, "Oh this larger customer wants X by Y date."

    So basically what we do for these is just write them down on to-do lists on physical pieces of paper and then cross them off as we go. We then three-hole punch these tasks and put them into a binder in chronological order, and later evaluate whether they should become part of the recurring task list. The advantage of this method is that it's easy, it makes it so that everything gets done, difficult to avoid, and just simple. The disadvantages include that this method does not work well for remote work, it's messier, there is less central accountability (e.g. you have to page through individual task lists for individual people rather than looking at a central database).

    I am looking for a creative way to organize one-off tasks, while also being able to maintain recurring tasks.

    If you Google, "best tool for one time tasks," which is essentially blog post after blog post of "Top 30 Task Management Programs."

    Looking for, "Management of Recurring Tasks," I found this link from Quora which lists out a ton of software platforms for managing recurring tasks.

    Going through software tools is all well and good, I think it's better to buy a solution than build a solution wherever possible and economical. However, I would like to really fundamentally understand my company's needs before even going through the process of evaluating what we need. What I am really trying to do is better understand conceptually how to manage building procedures vs. completing one-off tasks.

    Has anyone had luck with using something like a basic running Google Sheet formatted like this? If so what kind of business do you run and how many people are on your team? What advantages and disadvantages have you seen from this approach?

    Does anyone vehemently disagree with just using spreadsheets to manage tasks for one reason or another? If so why and what kind of business case have you experienced to show that this is a bad choice for improving your operations?

    Edit, here is some further discussion on Hacker News on "checklists."

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17537675

    Thanks,

    submitted by /u/confrnz
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    London, UK: Newsletter advertising swap wanted

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 08:04 AM PST

    I'm looking to advertise a bit more effectively, and I'm wondering if there's anyone in London willing to have me advertise in their newsletter for free, in exchange for the same privilege? Ideally we have similar numbers of subscribers, and are targeting a similar market to make it equally worthwhile!

    About us: Plate-deals promote the best places to get half-priced - or free - food and drink across London.

    About you: You deal with food or drink to Londoners i.e. resto, cafe, pop-up, small food business etc

    submitted by /u/Plate-Deals
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    Starting a pizza delivery and take out business

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 08:30 PM PST

    Hello redditors, im planning to start a pizza delivery and take out business and only works for 4hrs, for example, I will work at night doing the dough,sauce, shredding the cheese and portioning the meat and vegetables and I will just hire employees to work during operation hrs, how can I be sure that they dont steal from me or how can I secure the sales for the day, any machine that I need to purchase, thanks for all suggestions.

    submitted by /u/Veanz101
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    LinkedIn

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 10:41 AM PST

    Not currently on linked in, I own a small construction company in england, Would there be any benefit in me joining? Bit unsure of what its about tbh

    submitted by /u/allyb12
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    Paying Back Credit Card Debt

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 02:19 PM PST

    I have a service-based business that's been open for 3 1/2 years. I am a single-member LLC, with 4 part-time employees.

    Until recently, I've always put every expense possible on the credit card, and paid it off every billing cycle. I do it for the points, although I know they're getting downgraded every day so I should stop doing that with the high interest rates.

    I recently made some big improvements to the business over the last year that will add to more revenue, but have racked up $30K in debt on the credit card. I want to do some more big improvements that will probably cost about $20k, and will also generate more revenue. I could finance it on the card, but racking it up to $50k seems dumb.

    What I most likely really needed was a loan for $50k to make improvements.

    What is my best option here to repay the debt and get new capital? I can repay the credit card in probably 18 months no problem, but it has a very high interest rate. Can I still get a 50k loan and roll the credit card debt into it at a lower rate? Is a that common thing businesses do? I have a 790ish credit score for what it's worth.

    Thanks for any help!

    submitted by /u/touchingpaintings
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    Business closed from Christmas-New Years??

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 09:46 AM PST

    Hey! Have you ever closed your business from Christmas Eve through January 2nd? If so, how did that work out for you?

    I'm thinking about closing my digital marketing agency during that time. It's naturally a slower time anyway because we work with business owners and it'd offer a lot of value to my employees.

    submitted by /u/isanyonereadingdis
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    Help

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 01:04 PM PST

    I have an idea for a small online business start up Just not sure where to go or how to get it up and running . Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    submitted by /u/traz073
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    How much of business is taking smart risks?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 12:40 PM PST

    I remember people saying that their businesses grew once they had the guts to do things they had no 'right to do'. On a podcast there was a couple that landed a deal with Apple to bundle their education cd's with the apple computer, neither of them had any experience with filming or distribution.

    A business takes risks like hiring a top team expensive team that they know will do a A+ job on the internal design work. Spending the money on people that know what they are doing. Making that leap to do a far out there strategy, and really be more forward with their risk. Is this along the lines of what you say big growth in business is about?

    submitted by /u/jesus_ismexican
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    Small business analytics - how and cost?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 12:10 PM PST

    Hello r/smallbusiness I am curious as to how you all get data analytics for your business. Do you use an application or ERP system to analyze your data? For example how do you measure Key Performance Indicators like Top Customers, Historical Sales, Product Performance and so forth. I am in the works to create a process for my own small business

    Any help responses would be great!

    submitted by /u/WorkChores
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    Difference between PayPal, Stripe, etc?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 10:53 AM PST

    Hey, I've been a lurker of a bunch of small business and startup subs and the one thing I can't seem to understand is if there's a preference between payment processors? I've seen so many people get screwed by PayPal but I've also seen some pretty horrific things about Stripe and I was wondering if anyone here had any advice as to avoid the worst with any companies like this if you're using it for your business?

    submitted by /u/blizzardboy3000
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    Who sucks here? My product or the salesperson?

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 10:40 AM PST

    The product is a tool that helps schools increase their student success, and consequently their sales, revenue, funds, grants and reputation. I have reports, brochures, graphs that show the benefits to schools. There are also case studies and experiments done on schools (done in schools from another country) for proof, which show the ROI for schools. I provide these documents to the salesperson. We only target private schools.

    I hired someone on commission. Someone with 2 years of experience. He seemed like a good candidate. He wanted base salary + commission at first but after showing him that he can make a killing only on commission he accepted. His responsibility is representing the company, building local relationships in-person, doing presentations and closing.

    There has been two months with no success.

    Maybe there's no market here, maybe the product sucks or maybe the salesperson sucks simply. How can I answer the question in the title?

    Edit. Part of the pitch: School A used our product for 3 years. Here's the feedback from students, parents, teachers in school A (anonymous survey). Here's the grade improvement stats. School A made over $___ from their $___ investment in our product. Here's the method of calculation.

    submitted by /u/OldDesigner6
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    Training Sales Reps

    Posted: 03 Jan 2020 10:22 AM PST

    Hey Gang,

    I've had a relationship with an independent contractor, where he performers his service for the client directly, refers them to me for a larger ticket piece of the puzzle and we both win. A competitor of mine has offered him a percentage if he starts sending them business, so he asked me for the same deal. We've decided the path forward will be for him to act as a client rep for me, receiving a commission for his sales. This is the first time someone other than me or my partners will have been in a sales role. He will receive direct compensation for his work, and I will have a little taken off my plate so it is a win win.

    Aside from giving him advice based on what I've learned for the past few years in business and training on our CRM/inventory platform, what sort of tools should I give him to help him perform his job to the best of his ability? This will be the first time I have managed a sales person, so I want to set both of us up for success.

    I've considered setting up like PDF brochures of our process, but don't know what other things to consider.

    submitted by /u/Pie4Weebl
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