Weekly Report 3-30

3 Tips To Maximize Your Small Business Marketing Budget

By d-mars.com News Provider

The effects of the global pandemic have led to economic uncertainty, and small businesses are the most vulnerable due to their lack of resources. According to a survey by Goldman Sachs, 89% of small business owners say broader economic trends, such as inflation, supply chain issues, and labor shortages are having a negative impact on their business. Due to a variety of issues related to these trends, consumers are also spending less.

With consumer spending trending downward and operational costs going up, small businesses will need to reduce costs and attract new customers to stay competitive. Digital advertising is a cost-effective way to achieve these goals and you don’t need to be an expert to get impactful results. Here are three tips to make the most of your marketing budget:

1. Understand your customer

Modern consumer behaviors have changed drastically over the last few years, including how people shop and make purchasing decisions. Whether your customers have switched to working from home or embraced new tools and technologies, it is important to understand these trends.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Where are they spending their time - and are they making purchase decisions at different times of the day? What do they care about most in today’s environment? For example, 85% of consumers say they’ll only consider a brand if they trust the brand. As you think about your ad strategy, look beyond just product features and pricing. Using advertising tactics that reflect your values helps create meaningful connections with potential customers. This could include everything from audience targeting to keyword selection

How You Can Support the Next Generation of Small-Business Owners

By d-mars.com

Provider

In school, students are learning new skills that will help them achieve their dreams. For a growing number of them, these dreams include owning their own business. Small businesses are an important part of the American economy and have accounted for two out of every three jobs added in the past 25 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Investing in budding entrepreneurs today will help create strong small businesses in the future.

One way students learn about what

to ad copy. And staying connected to your customer also means incorporating social media into your strategy. Having a social media presence and creating a schedule to post regularly will allow you to reach your customers where they are spending time.

To learn more about your customers, ask for feedback through surveys, in-person, email, or even through social communities. Also, leverage insights from sources like your own website traffic reports and industry reports on consumer trends. Keeping these learnings in mind will help you make more informed decisions on what messaging will resonate and where your marketing dollars should be spent.

2. Take a multi-channel approach

Small businesses need to be strategic about how and where they advertise to reach those most likely to purchase their product or service by showing up at key points in the decision-making process. These can often span more than a dozen points across devices (PC and mobile) and websites or apps and take place over days, weeks or months. This requires businesses to take a multi-channel approach to their digital advertising, placing advertisements across search engines, websites, videos, and social to reach people at different points in their shopping journeys. Building and managing campaigns across these different types of ad products and sites, not to mention learning the ad tools that power these, may sound complex. However, it can be a lot easier than you expect thanks to modern tools that help you build and manage campaigns across different websites and apps.

it's like to be a small-business owner is through Junior Achievement, an organization that works to provide school-aged children with lessons in financial literacy, work and career readiness, and entrepreneurship. Because Junior Achievement educators directly work with students in communities across the country, they have unique insight into ways to support the next generation of small-business owners.

In fact, according to a Junior Achievement survey, nearly 9 out of 10 (86%) teens indicated they had some level of interest in starting their own business. These students may decide to start their own businesses after graduation or bring their entrepreneurial ambitions into their college endeavors.

Schools provide important lessons about the skills and drive needed to own a business, but the learning doesn't stop when the last school bell rings. Role models in the community can also significantly make a positive impact in forging a path for future small-business owners.

Engage kids

Engage kids

If you have children of your own or friends with children, ask them about their entrepreneurial interests. Tell them about your reasons for supporting small

You can save time and run multi-channel campaigns with a one-stop solution like Smart Campaigns from Microsoft Advertising, which helps small businesses get started with digital advertising and connect with the right customers online. Its new redesign provides a simple and efficient way for advertisers of all sizes and budgets to run ads across devices on Microsoft properties such as MSN, Bing, and Outlook.com, and partner properties, including sites like Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo, and more. Plus, the new Multi-platform feature makes it easy to run ads across leading advertising and social media platforms, including Google Ads, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, all managed from one convenient place.

3. Use automated tools to save time

Time is a limited and diminishing resource, especially for small businesses. To save time and help reduce the stress of promoting your business, consider automated marketing and advertising tools that require minimal maintenance and help streamline the process. These tools often work within a certain set of parameters that you define, along with your desired outcomes. They use various signals and machine learning capabilities to make adjustments in real-time to give your ad the best chances of showing to the right person at the right time in the right place. Tools that use automation take the complexity out of daily advertising campaign management to allow you to focus on other business priorities like quality, customer satisfaction, and retention.

Maximize your time and resources while growing your business by leveraging these three tips in your digital marketing.

Source: BPT

businesses and take them to these stores in your community. Oftentimes the owners are present, and if they aren't too busy, are happy to discuss their experiences.

Grow Big program by The UPS Store is designed to support future small-business owners and entrepreneurs by enabling customers across their network of 5,100+ locations to donate to Junior Achievement USA upon checkout. All donations benefit Junior Achievement programs in the communities in which they are received. Learn more at TheUPSStore.com/StartSmall.

Start an entrepreneurial project

Mentor and hire interns

If you own a small business yourself, consider hiring students and interns. This can help you during busy seasons while also exposing young adults to what it's like to run a small business. If developing a hiring program like this doesn't work for you, consider being a mentor instead. Your local business association or college would likely love volunteers and you'll feel good about making a difference.

Whether part of a school assignment or just for fun, consider ways children can get a taste of what it's like to own a small business by choosing an age-appropriate project you can assist them with. You might help young kids run a yard sale or lemonade stand. Adolescents might start an online storefront for their arts and crafts, or perhaps for their tutoring or childcare services. Whatever the project, talk about goals, budgeting, customer service and other important components of a good business plan.

Support businesses making an impact

Support businesses making an impact

Put your money where it matters by shopping at businesses that are helping entrepreneurs. For example, the Start Small,

The future is bright as the next generation of small-business owners are learning important life skills and dreaming big. With these steps, you can help ensure their early visions empower them in the future.

Source: BPT

Mentor and hire interns

1. Understand your customer

2. Take a multi-channel approach

3. Use automated tools to save time

Department of Education Seeking Loan Forgiveness Applications by November 15

By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

ollowing President Joe Biden’s announcement canceling student loan debt of up to $20,000 for specific borrowers, the U.S. Department of Education said applications for relief under the plan should be submitted by Nov. 15.

Department officials said they’ve made the application process simple, and if borrowers fail to apply by Nov. 15, they’d still have until the end of 2023 to file for forgiveness.

However, by waiting until after Nov. 15, borrowers risk having to resume payments after the federal pause in repayment ends on Dec. 31.

Biden said it’s vital for the more than 43 million eligible borrowers to take advantage of the loan forgiveness plan.

“All this means people can start to finally crawl out from under that mountain of debt to get on top of their rent and utilities, to finally think about buying a home or starting a family or start-

ing a business,” Biden stated.

And while earlier reports revealed that about 13 states could still tax borrowers on the amount of debt forgiven, Mississippi and Virginia are the latest to come off that original list as officials said they would refrain from levying taxes on individuals who receive loan forgiveness.

How do you know if you’re eligible for debt cancelation? Here are the criteria set forth by the Department of Education:

• Your annual income must have fallen below $125,000 (for individuals) or $250,000 (for married couples or heads of households)

• If you received a Pell Grant in college and meet the income threshold, you will be eligible for up to $20,000 in debt cancellation.

• If you did not receive a Pell Grant in college and meet the income threshold, you would be eligible for up to $10,000 in debt cancellation.

What does the “up to” in “up to $20,000” or “up to $10,000” mean?

• Your relief is capped at the amount of your outstanding debt.

• For example: If you are eligible for $20,000 in debt relief but have a balance of $15,000 remaining, you will only receive $15,000 in relief.

What do I need to do to receive loan forgiveness?

• Nearly 8 million borrowers may be eligible to receive relief automatically because relevant income data is already available to the U.S. Department of Education.

• If the U.S. Department of Education doesn’t have your income data, the Administration will launch a simple application available by early October.

• Please sign up on the Department of Education subscription page if you want notification of when the application is open.

Once borrowers complete the application, they can expect relief within 4-6 weeks.

Everyone is encour-

aged to apply, but there are 8 million individuals for whom the Education Department has data and who will get the relief automatically.

Borrowers are advised to apply before Nov. 15 to receive relief before the payment pause expires on Dec. 31, 2022.

The Department of Education will continue to process applications as they are received, even after the pause expires on Dec. 31, 2022.

Source: National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA)