9 Ways to Market Your Small Business During the Holidays

Holiday season has already come. Many big holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday are already behind us. However, Christmas, Chanukah, and New Year's Eve are still ahead of us. Most of us probably won't be celebrating all of the upcoming holidays, but collectively, your customers will, and these are all opportunities to push out more sales.

And to eat, of course. Never miss that opportunity.

Now is the time to get organized. Here are nine things that you have to do to be more memorable this holiday season.

1. Prepare your calendar.

Make sure that each one of those holidays is marked and has a reminder. You want plenty of time to prepare seasonal content for each of those holidays, get it online and promote in time for people to cash in. Share the calendar with your team and plan. Create your holiday social media calendar well in advance, because you need to remember that your team will be taking time off. So, the more you plan ahead, the better.

2. Offer a sale.

The easiest way to make the most of the holidays is with a sale. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have no tradition behind them except a chance to boost sales by cutting prices. You won't even have to put up decorations or buy a Cyber Monday Tree. Just make sure that you know which products you're going to discount before the holiday and by how much, and prepare your marketing materials.

image credit: internet

3. Throw in a gift.

A great way to sweeten the deal and show that you're not just cutting prices but also celebrating a holiday is to give your customers a gift. That could be something as simple as an information product or a coupon, or as complex as a Lego Millennium Falcon (hint, hint). In a word, to make your customers feel that you're celebrating with them.

4. Create a video or a few.

If you're not using video to promote your business, you're not making the most of all the marketing power the internet has to offer. You don't even have to spend hours fiddling around with editing software. Platforms like now make it very easy to create a video by choosing from pre-shot and pre-edited high-quality footage, share it and start making the next one.

5. Stay active on social media.

The holiday season is not the time to take a social media vacation. You'll need to be active on all your usual platforms, preparing your audience for the next holiday and priming them to buy. Encourage your Facebook followers to share your video and have plenty of good pictures to share on Instagram.

6. Send a personal email sharing your story of the year.

And don't forget good old-fashioned email marketing! An inbox can feel more personal than a public post, so write up a good story related to your business and thank your customers for being a part of it. And don't forget to include a call to action.

7. Decorate your storefront.

You might not have to run out and buy a Black Friday bush, but you should add some banners to your website, adjust the design of your store window and get festival with your packaging. Customers should feel that they're making the most of a time-limited opportunity, even if there's another one just around the corner.

8. Update your goals.

As you approach the end of the year, this is also an excellent time to take another look at where you are. Review your goals, set new ones and update your content so that it looks fresh and up-to-date. The holiday season is the perfect time of year to shift gears or change direction.

9. Show your personality!

And don't forget that holidays are a time of fun. Don't be afraid to let your hair down and enjoy yourself. You might not be able to party with your customers, but you can joke around with them, be yourself and build a real relationship that will take you right through to next year's holiday season.

The holiday season is inclusive, no matter which one you are celebrating. Incorporating a little bit of holiday cheer into your marketing strategies during these months will make you more relatable and memorable to your customers and audience. Take the time and complete the additional work to make sure that you and your team aren't missing the best opportunity to connect more authentically with customers.

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Why Trump's showed a 'hole' lot of respect in summit with Xi

The second round of talks was held by U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the United States, April 7, 2017.

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Xi made the two-day trip to the southeastern U.S. coastal town of Palm Beach for the first meeting with Trump, in a bid to chart the course of bilateral ties in a new era.

The two leaders agreed that their first meeting, held at the seaside Mar-a-Lago resort in the U.S. state of Florida, was "positive and fruitful."

During their talks over the two days, Xi and Trump exchanged views on key areas of bilateral cooperation as well as global and regional issues of common concern.

Xi said his first meeting with Trump bears unique significance to the development of China-U.S. Ties.

The two sides need to further enhance their relations so as to better serve the interests of the two countries and their peoples, and to promote world peace and prosperity, Xi said.

"I think we have made tremendous progress in our relationship with China," the White House cited Trump as saying after meeting with Xi, adding that the relationship developed by Xi and himself is "outstanding."

U.S. representatives have been meeting one-on-one with their Chinese counterparts, and progress has been made, said the U.S. president.

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People-to-people exchanges remain a solid foundation for the China-U.S. relationship, Xi said, vowing to promote bilateral cooperation in tourism, arts, sports and health care to further enhance the public support and boost ties.

Trump said the United States is willing to further strengthen cooperation with China in economy, military affairs and people-to-people exchanges and support China's efforts in hunting for fugitives and recovering illicit money.

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Ahead of the two presidents' second round of talks, senior Chinese and U.S. officials on Friday initiated the comprehensive economic dialogue, as well as the diplomatic and security dialogue, two of the four pillars of the newly established bilateral dialogue mechanism.

Within the framework, the two sides had frank and in-depth conversations and set the agenda for the next phase.

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Trump met with Chinese president and said they had a great time together

Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping to dine on pan-seared Dover sole and New York strip steak on Thursday. The two leaders of world’s biggest economy spent some social time before digging into thorny bilateral security and trade issues. Trump described it as an honored meeting and promised the relationship with Xi is great.  

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 Trump hopes Xi to raise concerns about North Korea’s nuclear threat and urges him to do more to stop North Korea's nuclear ambitions during the first talks with the Chinese attendants, though no major deal on this issue was expected.

The summit at Trump's Spanish-style Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, got off to a cordial start. Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, joined Trump and his wife, Melania, at a long table in a candle-lit ornate private dining room festooned with red and yellow floral centerpieces. And Melania wore red to show respect to Chinese traditons.

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Trump joked before dinner: "We've had a long discussion already, and so far I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing, but we have developed a friendship - I can see that - and I think long term we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it."

The fanfare over the summit on Thursday was overshadowed by another pressing foreign policy issue: the U.S. response to a deadly poison gas attack in Syria. A U.S. official said on Thursday the White House and Pentagon were discussing military options.

Trump and Xi were expected to get into more discussions in details about trade and foreign policy issues on Friday. Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China and rebuild the country's manufacturing base. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory in November and Trump wants to deliver for them. "We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. That's one of the things we are going to be talking about," Trump told reporters ahead of the meeting.

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Trump is still finding his stance in the White House and has yet to spell out a strategy for what his advisers called a trade relationship based on "the principle of reciprocity." He brought his top economic and national advisers to Florida for the meeting, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. "Even as we share a desire to work together, the United States does recognize the challenges China can present to American interests," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, also in Florida for the meeting. Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, who both work at the White House, also were among the dinner guests.

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4 ways to make your business credit come alive and get loans

Frequently you need access to finance as a business owner. Getting a good business credit is important for your business success. If maxing out your liquid cash is not an option you're likely to consider.

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A good business credit is necessary when you understand that separating your personal entity from your business entity comes with several added advantages. But that aside, a lot of small business owners often find themselves wishing they had done things differently when they run out of cash and have to depend on credit to keep their business going.

Below are ways to avoid ruining your business credit.

1.    Be disciplined with debt.

Debt and credit cards go hand in hand. Credit cards often blur the line between unrestricted access to cash and careless spending, which is why it's often called bad debt. Not only does paying bad debt reduces your financial capability, it also leaves you with little control over the debt. That can be detrimental to your credit score.

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As a small business owner, your personal credit report is very vital to your business credit. This means you should learn to be disciplined with your debt. Your personal assets, which also includes your creditworthiness, may be what your business would rely upon to secure funding in the early stages.

Many articles have treated the topic of how to be disciplined with your debt, but the simple rule is to avoid buying what you have neither cash no need for.

2.    Maintain a sizable liquidity.

Maintaining liquidity will rescue you when things begin to sting financially in your business and securing a loan or credit option for such events is not wise. How do you know when securing a loan or credit option is not a wise idea? If paying it back will make you wish you did not take the loan.

There are several ways to maintain liquid cash in your business, but some strategies will be more effective. Amit Sharma, the founder of Mayaflowers.com, says her strategy involves giving discounts to customers who patronized her business frequently and following up with clients with the potential to run up huge invoices. "We used to follow-up with every sale via phone to ensure that each buyer is satisfied and would also offer discounts to ensure the cash keeps flowing."

Now her business doesn't usually face the problem of unpaid invoices since her operations are now based online and customers pay before their gifts are shipped.

3.    Take advantage of R&D tax credits.

Do you know that your business could get funds back from the government in form of R&D tax credits for staff, contractors and consumable costs spent on development activities? And this option is not only open to big companies -- in fact, the program was designed with small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in mind.

While the process of taking advantage of R&D tax credits in a place like the UK is quite straightforward, factors like your Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) could come in the way in the US. Following the passage of the PATH deal in 2015, small businesses in the US can now take advantage of R&D tax credits.

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Taking advantage of R&D tax credits could help you reduce financial pressure, according to an R&D credit tax experts. According to Barrie Dowsett, the CEO of Myriad Associates -a UK firm that helps UK and US businesses maximize their R&D tax credit claims, "getting an R&D tax credit can help business owners minimize the financial pressure they incur from funding research projects and limit the amount of external funding they need."

Barrie Dowsett goes on to state that a lot of SMEs are not taking advantage of this excellent opportunity because they are either not aware of R&D tax credits or believe that their daily technical challenges and project uncertainties don’t qualify.  It is always worth speaking to a specialist in this area.

4.    Build up your credit rating.

There are several ways to build your credit rating, which is very vital for securing credit from any lender. The best way is to avoid anything that can negatively affect your rating in the first place. Start by canceling any credit card you're not using. Financial advice experts recommend canceling any unused credit cards because it has the potential to hurt your credit rating in several ways.

You should also guarantee you're never late on paying back any debt which includes credit cards, mortgages, bills, personal loan and other debts that could be reported on your record.

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