5 Marketing Changes Small Businesses Need to Make in 2016

1. Focus on relationship marketing.

Forging ongoing, personal relationships with consumers is nothing new. But how that evolves in 2016

goes beyond just being helpful to customers, staying in touch and offering exemplary service.

Relationship marketing will see explosive growth in 2016, especially as more consumers turn to their

smartphones for shopping reviews and advice.

Focusing on short term wins won't work in a world where consumers are shifting their focus to ongoing

service and relationships with brands and are looking to their peers to see which companies offer the

best buying experience.

Take Starbucks, for example. The coffee giant has been quietly mastering the ins and outs of

relationship marketing for years, so much so that it’s now a seamless part of their marketing plan.

Stores frequently offer afternoon discounts or free cups when you bring in your same-day morning

receipt, change up their seasonal drinks and treats based on customer feedback, and offer their online

subscribers rare, small-lot Starbucks Reserve coffee delivered fresh to their door.

Your business may not be able to ship free goods to all of its customers, but it’s the thought process

here that matters. How can you go above and beyond in the relationships you’ve built with your

clientele?

2. Get on board with mobile.

I’ve already touched on how mobile and exploding smartphone usage will impact relationship

marketing in 2016. But there’s another reason small businesses need to fully adapt to mobile -- or

prepare to be left behind. There are officially more searches on mobile than desktops or other devices,

and Google has responded accordingly. The search engine now penalizes sites that aren’t optimized

for mobile by giving more weight and relevance to those who do.
It may sound harsh, but in reality, Google is simply responding to what consumers actually want.

Google knows that mobile now serves as a primary touch point for customers on the path to

purchasing. That type of direct feedback and clarity works to the advantage of small businesses. Start

thinking like an on-the-go and mobile consumer instead of relying on the same tactics that have been

working online for years.

Related: How Brick-And-Mortar Stores Are Finding New Uses for Smartphones

3. Embrace content marketing.

Content marketing has gone from being an emerging trend and buzzword to the mainstream norm.

But that doesn't mean everyone is doing it right. Content marketing should incorporate the

philosophies of relationship marketing and mobile in order to succeed. It also requires more robust

content than simply throwing together a blog post and adding some links. More businesses now offer

video content and free, in-depth white papers and infographics to compete.

Other companies have discovered the hard way what happens when you cut corners.

Back in 2011, the New York Times found that JC Penney paid to have thousands of links point back to

the retailer’s website, and incurred a Google penalty as a result. Overstock was also penalized for

offering schools and students discounts in exchange for inbound links. Companies may have wised up

to paying and inflating their inbound links, but that doesn’t mean they’re not trying to take short cuts.

Google is working to identify and penalize sneaky mobile redirectsthat trick consumers into landing on

specific content.

Don’t get caught unprepared.

4. Create geo-precise marketing.

Small businesses can officially stop worrying about how to reach every consumer that could possibly

want their goods and services: Geo-precise marketing and precision targeting is now leading the pack
in consumer marketing. Businesses can use their analytics and purchasing data to identify zip codes

that are extra active when it comes to purchasing -- or even use IP targeting to narrow down their

focus to individual households.

Tools like Google Adwords, Facebook ads and just about any other serious advertising platform offer

robust geo-targeting services that help businesses find the perfect consumer -- either around the

corner or across the globe -- based on exactly where your buying power is coming from. By fine tuning

their targeting, small businesses can increase their conversions by focusing their landing pages or

content marketing campaigns to the geographic norms and preferences in the areas where their

consumers are coming from.

5. Keep testing.

The importance of continued testing and experimentation will never change for large corporations and

small businesses alike. Make regularly studying your analytics, tweaking your marketing campaign

and testing the results a major part of your evolving marketing plan. The huge time commitment

involved in testing may feel out of balance in comparison to actually executing your marketing plan.

But failing to test and adjust your plan accordingly is fumbling around in the dark and expecting to find

success.

It just won’t cut it in 2016.

So now, I want to hear from you. What other marketing changes do you plan to make in 2016? Share

your plans and what you hope to achieve by leaving a comment below.
 What Makes Small Businesses
Successful?
The first week of June, Mike Glauser, Professor of Entrepreneurship at theJon M.
Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University and Co-Founder of My New
Enterprise, and his team set off on a cross-country bicycle tour with the goal of
interviewing and documenting the stories of 100 small business owners in 100 cities
across the country. They started in Florence, Oregon and will end up
in Washington D.C. on July 28th. When I spoke with Professor Glauser last week, they
were in Ilinois and about six weeks into their tour.
This isn’t the first time they’ve interviewed small business owners to learn about what
makes them tick and what makes them successful, either. Glauser has been in the
trenches talking to small business owners for roughly 20 years and regularly shares the
insight he gains with his students at Utah State University. The goal of this trip is to
write a new book entitled, “Living the Dream on Main Street America” and to create
case studies and teaching materials to share what they learn.
“My colleagues and I have noticed that graduating students looking for jobs have fewer
interviews than they have had in the past,” said Glauser. “In every industry, employees
are being replaced by technology. The U.S. economy is becoming more efficient,
enabling companies to generate more revenue with fewer employees.”
Glauser referenced a 2013 study done by researchers at Oxford University that looked
at 702 occupations and determined that 47 percent were at “high risk” for being
replaced by computers and machines.

Despite what he sees as a decline in new jobs, he sees great opportunity in

entrepreneurism, and encourages his students to think about starting a small business.
We read a lot about new high-tech businesses all the time, but Glauser is talking about
the kinds of businesses that you and I can relate to along Main Street. Businesses like
merchants, small manufacturers, and restaurants.
In an effort to determine what makes these small business owners successful, they’re
interviewing entrepreneurs who have been in business for five or more years. They
wanted to know what helped them beat the odds. He’s been doing this for long enough
I doubt he was expecting any surprises, but he’s had a few. Traveling across the
heartland of America has put him on the doorstep of a number of small business
owners who share similar motivations for owning their own small businesses and what
they think makes their businesses successful:
They wanted to stay in their hometown and help the community grow: He was surprised
that none of the people he’s interviewed said money was their prime motivator—
although many of them have very successful and profitable businesses. “The Silicon
Valley model has hijacked entrepreneurship,” said Glauser. “It doesn’t need to be a
model that scales quickly to enable a quick and profitable exit to be successful. $2
million in annual revenues and eight to ten employees is a very viable business that
can thrive long term.”
The small business owners Glauser and his team interviewed are doing business in
these small towns because that’s where they want to live. They’ve simply figured out a
way to create profitable businesses in places some might consider off the beaten path.
They’re not interested in an exit, they’re interested in solving a market need: I’ve
observed a difference in how a founder runs a business he or she intends to exit in five
years and one that’s building something intended to become a life’s work. Skratch Labs
in Boulder, Colorado is a great example. Founder Allen Lim says, “The most annoying
question that I ever get asked is, ‘What’s your exit strategy?’ Usually, I tell people that,
you know, it’s probably dying.” Lim doesn’t have a plan to exit, because he is building
his dream and loves what he is doing.
This type of business owner understands the decisions they make today have long-
term consequences they’re going to live with five, ten, or twenty years down the road.
Making knee-jerk reactions to ramp up short-term profits to satisfy a potential
investor just isn’t in their DNA. Their focus is on creating a product or service that
their customers will want to buy and find related products their customers might also
be interested in. They diversify what they offer their customers so they can stay viable.
“Most of these business owners have two or three streams of income,” said Glauser.
“And, they’ve always got three or four new opportunities they’re considering.”
They love getting their hands dirty doing the real work of the business: My first
experiences in small business were in just such a family business. In fact, this describes
my Dad and how he approached his business. It also describes Jeff Wester of
Ponderosa Forge in Sisters, Oregon. His successful welding and blacksmith shop
employs several blacksmiths, but Wester doesn’t want to sit in the office managing the
business every day, he enjoys the two or three days a week he gets to spend in the
forge.
“What I most enjoy about this business,” Wester says, “is that I love to be in the shop
and get my hands dirty and swing a hammer and create something out of the fire.”
It’s true that less than half of the small businesses that start today will be around five
years from now. Glauser and his team are out to share some of the traits these
successful small business owners share in common so others, including his students,
can follow in their footsteps.
After five or six weeks on the road I asked him if he was encouraged by what he’s
learning from Main Street America. Not missing a beat, his answer was an emphatic,
“Yes.”
“100 years ago there weren’t any big corporations, small business owners saw a market
need and went to work delivering a solution,” he said. “I think we’re going back to that.
Fortunately, technology makes it possible to work almost anywhere to do it. We need
to teach our up-and-coming entrepreneurs to build communities—figure out what they
need and be the best at doing it.”
Glauser believes anyone who wants to do it can. After speaking with business owners
all across the country that are doing it, I’d think he knows what he’s talking about.

Africa’s women digital entrepreneurs

are driving innovation
It’s easy in the West to believe that we’re the leaders and innovators, but the majority of
innovation comes from places with less resources. And with so little, they achieve so much.
A prime example of this is the case of Onwaba Mrhwetyana, a single mother from a township
who has developed an application called Creche Connect, which is billed as “TripAdvisor for
crèches”. Mrhwetyana was a member of Project CodeX, a full-time apprenticeship scheme for
budding software developers in South Africa, and last year ended up winning a hackathon
offering the prize of R10,000 ($680) in seed funding to develop ideas for tackling early
childhood development issues.
Elizabeth Gould, co-founder and chief executive of CodeX, explains the reason for
Mrhwetyana’s success:
She was up against people from university and the like, but her idea won as she
wasn’t just developing something that she thought could be useful. She was solving a
real-life problem that she was facing herself as she couldn’t find a good crèche for
her baby. It makes all the difference.
But it is in the mobile tech arena that innovation more generally is particularly marked in Africa.
Despite, or maybe because of, having inadequate fixed line infrastructure, the continent has
leapfrogged its counterparts in the developing world in this arena. For instance, it
was Safaricom in Kenya that invented mobile money in the form of its M-Pesa money transfer
service in order to address a pressing need in rural and traditionally unbanked communities.
The idea has since been copied around the world.
And according to Ashish Thakkar, founder of conglomerate the Mara Group and entrepreneur-
in-residence at the United Nations Foundation, such mobile creativity is only set to increase.
He explains:
Eighty five percent of the continent use mobiles now, but there will be 700 million
smartphones in Africa by 2020 and it’s generating a leapfrogging effect…So a big
element here will be ‘m’ not ‘e’. Seven hundred million smartphones will disrupt
agriculture, communications, everything. In Africa, people already spend $1 billion
on e-commerce, but in the next five years, it will be $75 billion.
Dell’s van Terheyden also believes that mobile capabilities could help the continent take a lead
in up-and-coming areas such as genomics and precision medicine. He says:
We’ve seen the continent leapfrog over landlines to mobile and the same might
happen with genomics, which today can already improve life expectancy by eight
years due to an explosion of data and knowledge. I’ve already seen  some small
pluggable devices for mobile phones and, although the focus is currently on western
disease as that’s where the data is, that will change as things are tested in the field.
They’re portable and easy-to-use and they offer a tremendous opportunity for Africa
to leapfrog in terms of innovation.
 Innovation and entrepreneurship

Another important consideration, however, is simply the scale of entrepreneurship across the
continent. Elizabeth Gore, Dell’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence, points out that a huge 90% of jobs
in Africa are generated by entrepreneurs compared to a mere 70% in the UK and US, which
makes them vital to economic development in the region.
Africa is also the only continent in the world where equal numbers of women to men start up
new businesses, according to Karen Quintos, the supplier’s Chief Marketing Officer who
recently changed her job title to Chief Customer Officer.
Women across the world are, in fact, the fifth largest contributors as a group to global GDP and
as such make a real difference to individual country’s economic growth levels – despite having
much more limited access to resources than their male counterparts. In reality, women face
issues ranging from access to capital as they are considered a riskier bet to a lack of self-
confidence and mentoring support. They are also subject to hidden cultural bias and prejudice
both in business and wider society. But Gore says:
If we can get technology and capital into the hands of entrepreneurs, we’ll solve the
world’s problems as they’ll monetise and make profits. And women in particular put
90% of the money they earn back into their community and families.
In a bid to support entrepreneurs of all genders regardless of where they happen to be in the
world, however, Dell has just got together with 1776, which offers funding to start-ups,
incubator Capital Factory and Microsoft to set up an online networking platform called Union. The
platform hooks up local start-up hubs around the world and provides users with access to
relevant content, mentors and consultants as well as potential investors, customers and business
partners.
Another development that could well also prove useful in supporting growth specifically across
the African continent, meanwhile, is the creation of a single African e-Passport  for citizens of all
54 of the African Union’s (AU) member states. Due to be launched later this month at the next
AU Summit in Kigali, Rwanda, the electronic document will enable citizens to travel across the
continent without requiring a visa.
Although it will initially only be available to heads of state, foreign ministers and permanent
representatives based at the AU’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the plan is to roll it
out to all AU citizens by 2018. The e-Passport is seen as a first step towards creating a common
market on the continent in order to boost trade and development and encourage a free flow of
people, ideas, goods, services and capital across borders a la European Union. And such a move
is important because as Thakkar says:
It’s currently easier for people from the UK and US to travel across the continent
than it is for Africans.
But such a vision is still a long way from being realised and, in the meantime, he warns against
the all too common mistake of treating African countries as if they were one homogenous mass:
There are 54 countries in sub-Saharan African and what works in South Africa
won’t work in Botswana. In Africa, you have to be local to each market and so the
answer is partnership and combining the best of global with the best of local… But
there’s always a problem with the perception versus the reality because people don’t
understand the African continent. So, for example, the IMF has downgraded Africa
in growth terms, but it’s still at 70% in some countries. So it’s important to come and
see what’s really happening on the ground here.

My take
Africa is an incredibly entrepreneurial continent but is as diverse in terms of countries and
cultures as Europe. As a result, tapping into the high levels of innovation there, especially in the
mobile space, should not be braved alone but rather with the help of partners to provide local
knowledge and support.

Small Business Owner, Defined. By Shobhit Seth | September 25, 2014 — 1:50 PM EDT.

An Entrepreneur I

s an individual who starts and runs a business with limited resources and planning, taking
account of all the risks and rewards of his or herbusiness venture.Sep 25, 2014
 How to Run a Small Business

Drafting a Usable Business Plan

1 ideas
Put your idea into writing. It is important to take the ideas in your head and get them
down on paper. Most successful businesses offer a new product or service or fill an
existing niche in the market. Whatever your reasons may be for starting a small
business, make sure to clearly and concisely put them in writing.[1]
 It can be helpful to go through many drafts or iterations of your business plan.
 Include as many details as you can in your business plan. Overthinking the details is
never as damaging as ignoring the details.
 It can also be useful to include questions in drafts of your business plan. Identifying
what you don't know is as helpful as listing things you are sure about. You do not want
to present a business plan with unanswered questions to potential investors, but laying
out relevant questions in your initial drafts will help you identify questions that require
answering in your final business plan.

2 customer base
Meet with your local Small Business Development Center. SBDC's provide help
during all stages of the business life cycle. They can help you create a stellar business
plan to approach a lender with and their counseling is always free.[2]

3 finances
Identify your customer base. In your business plan, you need to identify who you think
will buy your product or service. Why would these individuals need or want your product
or service? The answer to these questions should help to determine all other aspects of
your business’ operations.[3]
 Here, it useful to ask questions of your service or product. For example, you may want
to ask questions like, does my product/service appeal to younger or older people? Is my
product/service affordable for lower-income consumers or is it a high-end purchase?
Does my product/service appeal to people in specific environments? You won't be
 selling many snow tires in Hawaii or beach towels in Alaska, so be realistic about the
appeal of your product.


4 project growth chart

Outline your finances. In your business plan, you need to address key questions about
your business’ fiduciary situation.

 How will your product or service generate money? How much money will it
generate? How much does it cost to produce your product or service? How do you
intend to pay operational costs and employees? These, and others, are critical question
you need to answer in planning your small business’ financial future.[4]

5
Project growth. All successful small businesses need to grow their customer base and
production capabilities over the first few years of operating. Make sure you have
identified how your business can and will respond to growth potential.[5]
 Be realistic with your growth potential. Keep in mind that growing your business requires
a growth in investment capital as well. Projecting too much growth in too short a time
period can quickly deter potential investors.