Thinking about starting a business, you might be focusing on earning an income and taking care of your family. But, what you might not have seen just yet is the impact that small, local businesses can have on their communities. Keep reading for more information on how to get started and why it makes sense to keep it in your own hometown.

The Big Impact of Small Businesses

The word small is a bit of a misnomer, as there is nothing small about the impact that local businesses have on the economy. According to American National University, there are more than 56 million people employed by non-corporations, meaning the small businesses are collectively the number one employer in the US. Plus, these “mom-and-pop shops” take up nearly half of all commercial retail space and account for four dollars out of every $10 spent in retail.

As a small business owner, you also have an opportunity to support your local community in ways you may not be able to as an employee. You might, for example, sponsor a children’s softball team or take a day off once each month to deliver meals to the elderly and infirm. You also are in a position to get to know the people that buy from you through things like community events and open houses.

Launching Your Small Business

Like all businesses that have come before, your small business will start with an idea. You also need to identify the things you love and that you’re good at. In our post finding your niche asserts that finding your niche is a matter of knowing what you love, who would value it, and what problems it might solve.

Once you have your business idea in place, you can then work on writing a business plan. This is a crucial step in the formation process that allows you to create a roadmap of sorts that will outline your path toward success. Your business plan will include everything from your company name and marketing strategies to information on how you plan to pull a profit, which is especially important if you want investors down the road.

Something else to consider during the early formation process is establishing an LLC or other business structure. In Tennessee, your LLC can help you keep your personal finances away from your business since it allows you to open a bank account in your business’s name. To get started, register your official company name and appoint a registered agent. They will need to fill out an operating agreement and then file an official certificate of formation. You can use an online service to get this done. Finally, apply for a VIN with the IRS.

You also want to check if you’re required to have a business license or to register with any particular organization. If your business is located within the state, and you make more than $10,000 each year, you will need a license. According to the Tennessee Department of Revenue, this also means you’ll need to pay taxes, which are due within four months of the end of each fiscal year.

Marketing Like A Local

Marketing your business might sound like a huge chore, and it can be. But, once you get the momentum going, it’s much easier. A few things that can help you get your business off the ground in the early days include:

• A digital presence. Your online digital presence matters more than you might think. Having a website legitimizes your business. It’s also how most people will get in touch with you. Even a simple website can help you stand up against the competition by integrating mobile capabilities, which allow customers to contact or navigate to you with one click or to shop online.

• An open house. Hosting an open house is a fun and exciting way to engage with your customers and business neighbors. Plan to open after hours to showcase the best of what you have to offer. You might even provide refreshments and give away small tokens of appreciation, such as branded Chapstick, hand sanitizer, or embroidered hats.

While you may start your new business with the primary goal of supporting your family, don’t lose sight of the fact it will also support your community. Not only do you have a chance to create jobs, you can also support causes near and dear to your heart. Getting started takes work, but it’s worth it, and becoming an entrepreneur takes you one step closer to achieving the financial independence you desire.

Green Thoughts Design offers web design, search engine optimization, and other digital marketing services for businesses throughout the Chattanooga area. For more information, contact 888.263.6626.

What Role Can Consumer Financing Play in Boosting Merchant Sales?

Consumer Financing

By providing financing to clients, groups can increase their income, land large contracts, and increase their average income per transaction. Financing permits clients to make normal, low-priced bills towards the price of a large-price price tag object. This can increase sales as it gives customers the choice. Cost is frequently the primary pain point for clients searching for a large purchase.

By leveraging purchaser financing, you may dispose of the edge of sticker shock for your clients and shift the verbal exchange from cost alone to value. Instead, you can show clients how lower month-to-month bills can permit them to shop for precisely what they need or want. Providing financing permits you to place the focus on your customer’s desire to get an item they desire NOW.

What does purchaser financing mean?

The term ‘Consumer Financing’ refers to a store that provides purchaser financing alternatives to its clients. it allows the customer to decide the terms given the financing range options. This permits the purchaser to buy a product or service they would otherwise not be capable of purchasing outright.

Additional financing points:

‘Consumer financing’ covers all the factors at the point of sale, and may include the customer’s credit score, and installment loans.

Businesses of all sizes benefit substantially from providing purchaser financing.

Why should your business provide purchaser financing?

For a store, providing purchaser financing may be important in changing passive browsers into lively customers. Therefore it may increase income and conversion rates. Consumer financing encourages a purchaser to buy now, providing the resources to the customer to make the purchase today on terms that are amenable to the buyer.

Key advantages of having purchaser financing:

• Boosts income and conversion rates
• Promotes purchaser loyalty and repeat commercial enterprise
• Increases the average sale

What is purchaser financing?

Customer financing breaks down the price of high-priced items and services, permitting clients to make smaller installment payments. Rather than paying the whole retail charge at the time of purchase, clients pay normal bills on a month-to-month, bi-weekly, or weekly basis. 

Do you need help getting your business set up for customer financing? We can help simply get a quote below.

Why you ought to provide financing to clients

Here are the top commercial advantages of providing financing alternatives to your clients:

1. Increase your income and average transaction length

Financing will increase a purchaser’s buying power, making large purchases easier to stomach with low-priced installments. Not only does financing make it easy to close sales, but it’s also an effective device for upselling. You can show clients how value-added services can be added to month-to-month bills and in doing so increase your average sale. Financing will effectively increase your revenue.

For example, the average sale price increases 15 to 30% for businesses that provide purchaser financing.

2. It gives you an advantage over competitors

Offering purchaser financing gives you a distinct market advantage, permitting smaller businesses to compete with larger players in the market. Merchants can upload extra purchaser incentives, to enhance their competitiveness. You can provide promotional applications to sweeten the deal for clients, like fee deferrals, hobby price buy-downs, or no-hobby loans. These incentives permit you to near income and pressure repeat commercial enterprise.

3. Attract new clients

Your small business can draw in new clients with the aid of providing purchaser financing plans. If a potential purchaser is shopping around for a large item or service, they’ll be much more likely to pick your business over a competitor that doesn’t offer financing alternatives. It also assists you in getting repeat customers. 93% of customers that use purchaser financing said they would use it again.

4. Get paid quickly

One issue with providing installments for small businesses is that they may not get paid quickly- thus creating a cash flow issue. However, if you sign up with a company like Financeit, you don’t need to take on the dangers related to providing your own financing Rather you can get a third-party company to pay you in full and take on the debt of your customer.

Once the credit score is checked and approved by the third-party financer and your customer, you will receive a commission for the entire sale. Your cash flow isn’t affected and you avoid the danger of getting stuck with your customer’s debt in a default.

How to provide purchaser financing

Customer financing permits businesses to offer their customers alternatives if a potential customer can’t manage to pay for the whole price point. The simplest and most secure manner to provide purchaser financing is to apply to a third-party lending company like Financeit. It guarantees you receive a commission quickly and it removes the threat of non-payment that businesses face after they provide their very own financing.

Most clients will not look for financing unless you bring it up during the purchase decision or checkout, so it’s vital that you usually make these alternatives clear to potential clients. Give concrete information about what their expenses could be in the event that they choose a financing plan, in place of paying the whole income charge upfront. Financeit’s Payment Calculator helps your business quickly.

By discussing financing alternatives with customers you increase the individual buying potential for sales and upsells within your value ladder. If you don’t have a value ladder you can get in touch with us about that important need.

Get a free marketing consultation today.

Author Bio:

Aline Huseby is a Sales & Marketing Manager at ChargeAfter. She would like to share content on the Finance Industry like Point of Sales financing, Buy now Pay later, consumer financing & Ecommerce financing for the valuable readers.

How To Get Business Leads Using Social Media In 2021?

Improving your brand awareness and generating more business leads are the two main targets of every digital marketer and social media strategist. Social media platforms are no longer only surviving the only communication medium’s purposes. Along with the communication medium, these platforms are now the best medium to increase your brand awareness and lead generations.

You may be thinking that branding is possible from social media platforms, but how to generate genuine business leads? Yes, revenue lead generations are possible. Only you have to follow some easy tactics.

6 Easy Tips To Get Business Leads Using Social Media

Through the social media marketing trend, you can improve the audience’s engagements. And these engagements are going to drive more traffic to your website pages. Social media is a vast platform even you can expand your business internationally on social media. Your audiences are ready to listen. You only have to create some interest for them.

Check out the six easy tips to get genuine business leads using social media pages.

1.   Optimize, Optimize And Optimize

For every social media, lead campaigns depend on the organic method. Always use the optimized content to reach up to the maximum number of audiences. More features mean more interest you are creating among the audiences.

Every content positioning needs more precise information about your products, services, and contact details. This is the reason you always have to use optimized content. And for creating the optimized content, use the analytical tools to analyze the consumer’s requirements.

Do more research and analyze the viewer’s interesting areas to create optimized content. These content optimizations and SEO are the essential integral part of organic lead generations.

2.   Give Your Business Contact Details

For real-life product sales and branding, radius targeting is a good option. But did you know you can even use radius targeting for your individual product marketing and lead generation? Most of the viewers are likely to contact you after they see your content.

So do not forget to use your contact details in your individual advertisement contents. Even now, you can mark your business locations on social media pages. This is a good strategy to generate more leads through organic traffic.

Contact details mean your office’s contact numbers, email id, and all social media pages link. These all types of information are bringing more belief to your products and services.

3.   Initiate Call To Action Command

The call to action command and the button both are good strategies to generate more leads. Call to action means you are initiating the communications and providing the proper directions to the audience. Usually, the audience views the advertisements from social media pages.

Then the interested consumers visit your website for more details. The easy guided pages are creating more interest among the consumers. And call to action is denoting the value of the advertisements.

Call to action is like initiating the urge among the audience. Supposes you are announcing some discounts on your products you always have to add the time frame of the order.

4.   Clickable Engaging Content

Enagaining contents and the proper directions are the tricks to attract organic traffic from the social media pages. So for your branding and advertisements, you have to create engaging content. And you have to add the clickable links which open up the separate page.

The written long content is not creating enough interest among the audience. On the other hand, theThe short story and the video contents always create more interest among the audiences. And because of the engaging nature of the content, audiences are starting to share it among their friends and other followers.

And when your content is viewed by some interesting audiences, they always want to visit your websites and find more details about your services. For this, you have to publish the contents with a clickable link and button.

5.   Social Media Lead Ad

You can try the social media lead ad after you are fed up with trying different organic methods for lead generations. In 2021 maximum numbers of media are introducing additional attractive marketing features for marketers.

For example, you can use the Facebook Toolkits to see the views list and the shared numbers. Facebook, Instagram, and other popular social media have also initiated many new tools for marketers. These tools will refine your search and help you analyze all aspects of lead generation.

6.   Attractive Easy Design Landing Page

Your website landing page is like a mirror of your brand. When you are starting to add the links to your advertisement content, it is sure that almost 70% of the viewers are likely to visit your website from the link. And for your website landing page and the instructions, they are going to set their mind over the purchases.

Add the discounted products and services on the landing page with clickable links for a better impression. And when viewers click on your links, that means they are interested in your services.

But if your website starts taking more time to load, you will potentially lose a lead. On the other hand, fast-loading websites with attractive guided landing pages are constantly generating more leads.

Need help? We offer 1 on 1 expert digital marketing advice at Green Thoughts Consulting. Just reach out.

Conclusion:

Social media is giving you a large number of audiences. But if you can not convince them properly, you can not get the exact numbers of potential business leads. These six tips will help you generate more potential leads and improve your sales turnovers. So, what types of tactics are you going to follow? Do not forget to share your opinion in the comment sections.

Author Bio:

Jais Frank is a freelance content writer and enthusiastic blogger. He is the co-founder of SB Newsroom. He contributes to many authority blogs such as Emblem Wealth and DreamLand Estate. He also likes to write in many international magazines and journals.

What are the Major Benefits of Smart Contracts?

Smart contracts allow businesses to perform credible transactions without the help of any financial body like a bank or government or financial institution. As smart contracts operate through blockchain technology, payment can be made in bitcoin or with other digital currencies.

Many businesses are also investing in blockchain and bitcoin through bitcoin profit calculator. The good thing about this is transactions can be trackable. Have you heard about smart contracts before? First of all, let us know what exactly a smart contract is before we learn about its benefits.

Smart Contract

A smart contract is a computer program that helps businesses to settle a business contract in a simple way. The computer program operates through blockchain technology which is decentralized in nature and there is no central authority. That means, everything in the network is transparent, secure, and immutable. Everyone in the network can see the data but nobody can modify it. So in simple terms, smart contracts are the program that helps businesses to replace the conventional contract process.

As the whole process of smart contracts is automatic it can replace the traditional legal contracts. It can potentially reduce the complexity as well as transactional cost. Now let us understand how a smart contract works.

How Smart Contract Works?

To understand how smart contracts work, let us take an example of a mortgage agreement. In a mortgage agreement, there are many things that include personal data, credit score, income statement, outgoings, etc.

Now to check every detail and confirming with the mortgage rules and regulations manually is a troublesome process. This can be replaced by a computer code which will confirm every detail within very less time and effectively. Because as the blockchain technology is a decentralized network it does not require any third party involvement. And this reduces the processing time as well as cost. More importantly, the transaction information can be accessed by everyone in the network which maintains transparency and the information can’t be modified. Now let us understand the benefits of using smart contracts.

Benefits of Smart Contracts

There are several benefits of using smart contracts, here are a few advantages.

Transparency

The best thing about smart contracts is transparency. As smart contracts are running through blockchain, everyone in the network can see every term and condition clearly which ensures any form of miscommunication. So there will be no arguments and disputes at a later stage. Moreover, one can see everything step by step, and the program is the same for everyone and no changes can be made to a member.

Accurate

Everything is written in a computer program before it is executed. Each and every detail of the rules, terms, and conditions are written in great detail. As it executes automatically, everything is accurate and there is no chance of error in the terms and conditions. Whereas in traditional legal contracts there may be a chance of errors and misinterpretation of legal terms. As compared to traditional contracts, smart contracts are accurate and precise.

Faster Operation

Traditional smart contracts are very time consuming as there are many middlemen involved starting from lawyers, notaries, bureaucratic persons, etc. The legal documentation takes a lot of time, even many days for a contract to be settled. On the other hand, smart contracts are simple computer codes which can run smoothly within a very little time.

Safe and Secure

Another great advantage of smart contracts is they follow the highest standard of safety. As everything in the smart contract is written in a code that runs by cryptographic verification it ensures everything occurs along with the terms of the contracts.

Final Words

With all of the above benefits, smart contracts can impact every industry starting from banking to supply chain management. It has not adopted fully, but it will have a great impact on the business world in the near future. Hopefully, the article has provided you some insight into smart contracts.

Guest Posting Author Bio:-

Jais Frank is a freelance content writer and enthusiastic blogger. He is the co-founder of dreamandtravel. He contributes to many authority blogs such as financeteam.

Digital Business Resource Center

Welcome to our business resource center to help you find what you need.

We’ve been building great websites, providing high-quality SEO and digital marketing help since 2012 give or take a few years.

We get asked a ton of questions about what’s the best affordable web design option? What is the best WordPress theme for me? Do you provide WordPress training? What do you use for your email list?

The list of questions goes on and on.

I decided to help out myself and the team here at Green Thoughts Consulting, GTC, by providing a list of these resources so others can find them easily and quickly.

We’ve done or research for the best and most current digital business resources. If you’re looking for an affordable web design, stock photos, a platform to design images for the non-designer, or more specific help, our business resource center is a great tool to use to find and connect to a vetted list of basic tools and services you must have.

Disclosure: We are committed to researching, testing, and recommending only the best products and services. We may receive commissions from purchases made after visiting links from this Business Resource Center, at no additional cost to you. We make our recommendations without regard for whether a commission is offered or the amount received from commissions.

Business Resource Center Tech Stack

This is the technology stack I use to generate leads and sales in my business like clockwork! If you are interested in learning how to get leads and sales on a regular basis book a virtual coffee to that end.

Website – WordPress, GeneratePress Theme, and Elementor page builder

Hosting and Domain Name – Siteground hosting and Namecheap for domain name purchase.

Image Compression – ShortPixel WordPress Image Compression plugin

Funnels – [Opt in Pages and Sales Pages] – Elementor. [Segmentation and lead capture] – ConvertKit.

Conversion Optimised Checkout – PayKickStart If you are building your funnel in WordPress then the UpsellPlugin is a simple and solid option too.

Learning Management System (LMS) – LearnDash for online courses.

Scheduling Tool – Calendly.

Video Conferencing and Webinars – Zoom.

Email Marketing and Automation – ConvertKit.

Analytics – Google Analytics and Google Search Console

SEO Keyword Research – Keyword Finder

SEO Rank Tracking – NightWatch.io

SEO helper for WordPress– Yoast

Productivity – Asana

Business Resource Center Usage

If you would like help implementing any of the above tools in my recommended tech stack or understanding how they fit into the bigger picture of your business please just reach out.

Starting from scratch with a list of tools like this can feel daunting. Please book a free call with me to learn more about how they fit together and how to best implement them into your work environment.

Either way you can get the help you need and get your business on track with visitors, leads, and clients with our help. Just reach out.

Marketing ToolBox:

Conversion Rate Calculator

Learn more about the conversion rate calculation below.

Conversion Rate Defined

Our conversion rate calculator can get you started with becoming aware of your current conversion percentage.

Conversion rate is defined as a value that informs us of what percentage we are achieving a specific desired result.

Technically speaking it is the desired outcome divided by total interactions.

For example, if you have 1,000 visitors to your website (the total interactions) and of that total 15 choose to take a predefined action, such as clicking on the contact us button, then the conversion rate is 15/1000=0.015 or 1.5% once multiplied by 100

Conversion Rate Questions

Guide to Manual Conversion Rate Calculation

Need help calculating your website conversion rate?

Drop us a line and we will be glad to help you get a handle on your conversion rate. We will help you personally create a conversion rate calculator system that works for you. We can also help you begin A/B testing to increase your conversion rate.

A big part of having a healthy conversion rate is having enough traffic for that conversion rate to be meaningful. A 5% conversion rate on leads with 500 visitors a month is far less than a 5% conversion rate with 1000 visitors. Let us help you with an SEO package.

How much does FreshBooks Cost

Overview of FreshBooks

The affordable FreshBooks cost provides entrepreneurs, solopreneurs and business owners with an easy to use invoicing and accounting solution. This solution is fast, secure and small business easy as FreshBooks says.

Your biggest problem with FreshBooks, and you won’t find many, is finding the FreshBooks login page, which you can find on FreshBooks site.

FreshBooks Login Page

1- Ease of Use

Redicoulsly easy to use. I can personally confess that it is simple and intuitive. My coworker that is accounting challenged uses it from time to time and actually has no trouble at all.

If you are looking for an easy to use solution look no further than FreshBooks.

2- Automation Awaits

One of my favorite things about FreshBooks, and which I harp on in this FreshBooks pricing review, is that the software automates so many of the mundane tasks.

From invoicing to tracking time spent on a project you will find it will only take a few clicks.

3- Cloud-Based for Ease of Mind

FreshBooks removes the worry of “losing” your expenses, invoices and other important financial documents as it is a cloud-based solution.

Gone are the days of losing your data to a computer mishap.

How much does FreshBooks cost per month?

FreshBooks cost is based on three plans: Lite, Plus, and Premium. These plans cost $15, $25, & $50 per month. All the plans contain invoicing, expense entries, credit card acceptance, ACH transfers, auto bank import, and more. Higher cost FreshBooks plans will provide you with more clients and more proposals.

FreshBooks Cost Table

Controlling your costs is important when running or starting up a business and FreshBooks certainly allows you to do just that.

Cost control has many advantages that are unknown to a surprising number of those I coach. Here’s a great post entitled The Advantages of Cost Control

I write a lot about affordability for startups, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and business owners like our recent post on affordable web design options.

FreshBooks Customer Service

FreshBooks is not just an affordable and easy to use option. It also provides stellar customer services.

The customer support team is award-winning and has received 4 out of 5 stars on almost every review site we have checked.

The overall aggregate review for FreshBooks for the 23 sites we utilized was 4.56 for customer service alone.

Further, the support on FreshBooks website itself is excellent. The search tool and support site are first class not to mention the YouTube videos that FreshBooks has provided.

Here’s an example of one of FreshBooks Youtube Videos.

FreshBooks Ease of Use

Perhaps the main reason so many love FreshBooks is the ease of use. FreshBooks is just so easy.

We found the aggregate rating for ease of use or a similar concept was a powerful 4.8.

I’ve been using and recommending FreshBooks for a few years now and I can honestly say that one of the things I hear most often from those that try it is that “it is so easy to use”!

If you aren’t in a position to outsource your bookkeeping or accounting during a particular season or business cycle, such as startup, doing it yourself needs to be easy.

Why? Because your not an accountant or bookkeeper so your time needs to be spent doing what you do best– no matter what that is.

Ready to get started? Click here or why not download our Free Guide below?

FreshBooks Comparisons Review

When comparing FreshBooks to competitors there are many options, however we feel there are only three legitimate competitors. Freshbooks, QuickBooks, and Xero.

While each of these options has a claim and is utilized by numerous businesses and freelancers. As we have laid out above we feel that FreshBooks is head and shoulders above the competition.

I’ve created a chart below where we took the aggregate rating from 23 review sites.

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks vs Xero

As you can see we give the edge to FreshBooks, which is why we call it our go-to accounting and bookkeeping software for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, business owners, and freelancers.

Give it a try and let us know what you think about FreshBooks cost effective software solution. Sign up today.