More than 50% of new small businesses fail within the first five years. The main reasons are lack of cash flow and unsustainable processes within the company. As a new business, your main goal is to build your product or service and attract customers as quickly as possible.

So far so good.

However, in order to create a functional working environment for you and your employees, you need to consider hiring certain service providers to speed up the process and ensure your business runs smoothly and profitably.

1. Legal Services

Launching a business comes with an array of legal considerations you need to handle. These include not only the legal requirements of registering your business but also the ones associated with running the business itself. Even minor legal violations can result in hefty fines and complications that can easily leave you out of money and out of business. To ensure you are setting up the right processes and following the law, it’s a good idea to turn to a legal service provider. They will also help you with any licenses and permits that your business may need.

2. Accounting Services

Hiring an accounting firm when starting a new business is a must unless you are an accountant yourself. It’s important to understand your tax liabilities and registrations, as well as any exemptions you are entitled to claim, which your accountant will be able to explain. You will also need help with tasks like managing your expenses, cash flow projections, asset purchases, payroll, and other processes.

3. Digital Marketing Services

Now that you have the legal and financial processes in place, it’s time to focus on getting customers. The most efficient way to do that, in the long run, is by promoting your business online. Digital marketing services typically include social media marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), content marketing, and PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. Getting help with one or all of these aspects of digital marketing will help you boost your business and start getting ROI faster. Our team at 411 Locals specializes in helping small businesses get more leads and more calls by offering affordable digital marketing services. If you’re curious to learn more about our work, we’d love to talk with you!

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Digital marketing is at the heart of most successful businesses in the modern world. While word-of-mouth and using marketing collateral to advertise your products and services are still highly effective methods, nothing beats the efficiency of digital marketing. So, how do you create a winning digital marketing strategy for your small business? The four ideas below are the perfect starting point!

1. Evaluate Your Resources

In other words, assess and strategize first. Before you start adapting other people’s strategies to your business, take a step back and evaluate your resources and what you can realistically afford to do. As a small and medium-sized business, you probably view your marketing as a patchwork effort to try and tap into as many channels as possible with the smallest investment you can get away with. Diversity is key here. Consider improving your website, using social media to promote your services, focus on Search Engine Optimization, and consider giving paid advertising a chance.

2. Maintain a Blog Section on Your Website

When it comes to having a long-term marketing strategy, you need to understand that its backbone is content. If you want to have a powerful and effective strategy, you should focus on content marketing. In simple terms, that means you need to dedicate a blog section and regularly publish useful content to your audience. This is an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and experience in your industry by offering sound advice to locals looking for solutions to their problems.

3. Research Your Target Customers Online

As a small business, you probably already feel like you know who your target customers are. Still, if you want to be effective online, you need to go the extra mile and do additional customer research. There are a ton of free sources available, like the Pew Research report on social media, to help you better understand how and where your audience is most engaged online.

4. Set and Track Metrics

Any successful strategy requires you to find measurable metrics to track its success. Yes, digital marketing is not a perfect science, and finding key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress is difficult but not impossible. If you’ve never done that before, start small and simple. For example, one of your metrics can be the number of followers on your Facebook page or the engagement percentage of your social media posts. Set realistic goals, however humble they may seem, and build on your progress as time goes on.

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