People are facing many problems at present and need to find small business grants for 2013. The economic crisis is the main problem which they have to face. To get released from this problem, they must try to earn more. And they have to be entrepreneurs to give some more opportunities for the other ordinary people too, therefore, people have to make an effort to be an entrepreneur. So starting of a small business is the main solution for this problem.

The government provides some opportunities to help these small businesses through small business grants. It is sure that no one will be able to stand up without any help and without support the likelihood of failure is higher, therefore the government should give some supports to help develop these small businesses. From this even the government will be able to earn more and more because these small businesses are willing to pay taxes for the government and when these small businesses build up as huge companies, the tax amount which they have to pay will also be increased, so the government should help these small businesses.

Government grants for small business

Many government grants for small businesses are available all over the world for their people to uplift their business and standard of living. It is a main condition that they have to offer. If not they will not be able to win the hearts of their people. But most of the federal and state governments are not in a condition to provide grants small businesses for all. For instance they will not provide grants to start a business. People have to make their own way to start a business. But it must be a good way. And also most of the federal and state governments will not provide grants for personal debts. It is not relevant to the field of the government. And also they will not give any grants for the business operating expenses.

Small business grants in 2013

However it is good to know that the government of United Kingdom will give small business startup grants under some of the conditions. United Kingdom will give financial assistance to the people of their country as a loan or any other aid program. This grants or financial aids will be given to developing businesses to purchase their equipment or even to build their own web site. The main aim of getting these financial aids is to help them in achieving the aim of their company. Therefore they have to set a target for the long term and short term. If the targets are realistic and achievable, the government will issue the financial aid.

In 2013 the government of the United Kingdom is in hope to issue much more grants for smaller businesses to uplift them. The EFG program which is also known as the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) is such a program. This was first issued in 2009 and will available until 2015. Therefore the people will be able to gain the help from this even in 2013. Regional Growth Fund (RGF) is launched in 2011. Under this many grants will be issued to the small businesses in the United Kingdom. The people will be gaining the advantage of this in 2013 too. Other programs which are offered by the government of the United Kingdom are to promote the small business in 2013 are European Regional development Fund (ERDF), Export Enterprise Finance Guarantee (ExEFG) , and Regional Development Program for England (RDPE).

Grants given to Small Businesses in the Wales

It is important to get grants for small businesses to provide a necessary help to grow. If this is not available then it is very hard to start the business. From the inception somebody has to give the backup for the business.

business grant to help business grow

By mentoring on the business and by giving the financial aid for the business somebody has to protect it on behalf of the business owner. Then therefore it will be very much easy to protect and uplift the business. When a small business owner is looking for a grant to uplift its business, it is the best way to get the help from a government institution. Then there will be a trust between the both of you and there is a legal background for both of you. But if it is unable to get the assistant from an institution of the government, search for a trustworthy place which has a long history. Therefore you can keep trusting in them. But be careful on the interest they may charge from you. If it is too much and cannot be afforded by you, just ignore the institution. And plan your own market and accordingly get the aid.

If not you will not be able to pay it in return. And it is better to get the support from the foundations, corporations and government small business grants to start your small business. Foundations will give grants for small businesses to reach their long term goals. Even in United States of America it is easy to find more than 65 000 private foundations which will offer more than 20 billion dollars to the applicants.

Grants given to Small Businesses in the Wales

Small business grants wales are also available through several public and private institutions which will offer a great support for small businesses. Their concept is to promote the small business and make them bigger so it makes a healthier economy and make the population happier. After some time, they will be able to earn much taxes from those small businesses. Therefore even the small business owners and the country both will be developed. In is the principle which is followed by them. They focus mainly in the private companies rather than the public. When it is developed it will also help the other small businesses to build it. This is the main theory which should be followed by other countries too. Now it is clear that smaller businesses should get a grant at the inception of their business. Then it will be easier to uplift the business.

Guest post by Mr Singh of introspace.com

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Post tags: business grants, finding small business grants, Government grants for small business, grant's given to small business, small business grants, small business grants of 2013

The business is the main subject which the succeeded people are speaking of. And they are to win the challenges and to face them. Therefore entrepreneurs have to develop their talents in an effective way. And they have to plan the succession of them and their business. By identifying their talents, they have to plan their future. And through them they have to make sure of their success of the business. For this everything the management has to manage their talent. If the management is unable to manage their talent, it will not be an easy way to success their business.

Therefore at the modern time, talent management has been an important subject that entrepreneurs have to talk. To manage these talents in an effective way succession planning talent management system also came into being. Talent management system produced to help or assist the organization. When there is a long term goal with the organization, it is very important to have a talent management system. Then it will be very much easy for the managers who are managing the human resource. And this system will also pair with an applicant tracking system (ATS).

Talent management Software

There are a number of software which will manage the talent of the human resources. Among them Lawson Talent Management software can be considered as main and great software which manages the talent of the human resources. When the managers who manage the human resource implement the Lawton Talent Management system on their business, it will be very helpful to reach their aims without any hindrance. The importance of the Lawton talent management system is that, it can keep the critical talent without any changes. And this will be very much helpful for the motivation too.

The Lawton Talent management software helps the managers to be linked with the people and also it will be a link between the business strategy of the business and the people. Therefore this can also be concluded as a mediator who helps to promote the business strategies. This software will help the management to arrange the Human resource function and will show h\them the right path to find and keep the right people. Because of this reason the management is able to identify the most valuable candidates who engaged in the business. And they will be able to enable more hires on strategy.

By using this software the management will be able to gain more and more benefits. Among them designing of the training plans to reach the goals, identifying the most valuable performers and develop more opportunities for them, creating of more benefit plans in a perfect way are very important.

Succession planning and talent management or talent management and succession -planning

To develop or to success the business, talents of the human resources must be managed in an effective way. F not it is not an easy task to uplift the level of the business. The main aim of a talent management program is to develop the talent of the employees. Therefore a competition will occur among the talented employees and the business strategy will also increase in an effective way. The talent of the employees is very much important for the organization or the business and, as well as the succession planning are also important for the organization.

When the management is planning its succession they must concern about the strategy of the business and the development program to success the business. When they are managing the talents to develop the business, they must first get each and every report of the potential successors. Therefore it is very much easier to develop the talent of them.

After all, the management has to identify the needs of the business. This is the most important part of the succession planning. As this will be the goals of the business, it will be a great opportunity for the management to fulfill their needs on the needs. After that the management has to conduct the assessment. This is the first action of the succession planning. Therefore they must be very much concern about this. And after the management has to concern on the plan deployment and develop the successor’s pipeline.

When it comes to the talent management, the management of the business has to do several things. Identifying of high potential, selection on a one to one basis, engagement of the long term employee system are more important among them.

Talent management strategy

Acquiring of the basics of talent management is the most important aim of the Human resource management and the executives. And also they will hire the talented employees to gain this position. But it is important to get high performing employees to drive to the optimal level of succession. To come to this position management has to inspire their business strategy and they have to manage the talent according to the strategies of the business. And the management has to align the talent management with the strategies of the company or the business. Then it will be much easier to identify the talents of the employees and the business strategies separately.

Talent management strategy can be considered a process which leads the way to the success. And by this it is considering about the right people in the business who have to be at the right time in the right place. The theory is to ensure the success with accurately. No mistakes can be found when using this theory. Because of this the management will be able to earn many benefits. As the human resources are a capital to the business it has to be aligned with the business strategies. Therefore by using this theory it is easy to reach this level. And also some more benefits of talent management strategy are identified of responsibilities in a time base (Current responsibilities and the future responsibilities), development of the recruitment efforts, and maximization of the contribution of each and every employee.

As the business is the most important way to the success it is very much important to have a strategic planning and the talent management system.

© Nathan for The Start Up Business Hub, 2013. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: startup, succession planning, talent management, talent management software

Startup business costs

There are so many sites and other resources which can provide guidelines and sheets to help you with this stage of planning the costs involved with starting your business and looking at the startup business costs involved, these include:

1. Local government
2. Business information centres in your local areas
3. Enterprises and community specialists set up in the local area
4. https://www.gov.uk/

Don’t break the Bank

Be sure to work out how much money will be needed before you start so that you don’t run out and break the bank.

Be sure to work out how much money will be needed before you start so that you don’t run out and break the bank.
Knowledge is Power and startup business costs can escalate

• Cost of Rent – If you are using your home then factor in a % of that property e.g. if you are using 1 room and you have 8 then the business should absorb 1/8th of that properties costs.
• Utilities – You can get accurate estimations from utilities companies
• Capital Expenses – Any major purchases should have quotes for them, items such as , vehicles, property, specialist equipment, IT equipment. Furniture and fittings Any items which will have be an asset and therefore have value on your balance sheet
• Licences – These are not always free so be sure to account for any costs you may incur in applying, complying and retaining these licences.
• Research and Development costs- Often overlooked, but how much will it cost you to find out as much as possible about your target market? Include market research and anything you are going to outsource.
• Business Plan – If you are writing this yourself then the costs are minimal, but if you are going to use specialised software or a professional writer then you need to budget for this.
• Product development – If you are manufacturing or creating your own product how much will this cost?
• First inventory – If they are not built to order then you need an inventory of stock.
• Advertising and Promotion – Unfortunately these are important you need to start advertising or promoting, you can do this your self for free but be sure to budget.
• Financing – You may take products on HP or using loans, consider the interest payments on these.
• Insurance – You probably need public liability, you may want insurance to cover loss of earnings and such
• Hiring – HR has more costs than you realise, job adverts, interviewing time, hiring costs, NI and tax contributions be sure to include all of these
• Professional fees – If you are drawing up contracts, have complex book keeping you will likely need a specialist so include their fees.
• Website costs – Website development, hosting, domains these all mount up so be sure to have these costs included.
• Miscellaneous – As i said earlier whatever your total is add 10% of the total for unexpected costs, there will be a lot. Don’t worry investors and banks know this and are use to it appearing on the financial statements.

Other valuable sources of information include; trade unions and also by shopping with competitors and networking with other business people who have gone through a similar process to you. Do not underestimate the power of information gleaned through networking this can be vital especially for uncovering some of those hidden costs.

Do not start purchasing equipment and sourcing suppliers/products until your investigations have shown that it can be a viable venture and you have all the information you can possibly get. Take a look at this and get more information and a useful business startup checklist to help you with starting up your business.

© Nathan for The Start Up Business Hub, 2012. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: business costs, business startup costs, don't break the bank, how much does it cost to start a business, small business costs, startup business costs, startup costs

Pinterest is fast becoming a marketing platform for many companies. Originally meant for social networking, businesses found a new way to utilize Pinterest by creating marketing campaigns to endorse themselves.

In spite of being relatively new, Pinterest have already earned the third spot as most popular social network in the U.S. in terms of traffic, accumulating 14.9 million users as of July 2012 according to AppData and 3.3 million unique visitors last October as reviewed by TechCrunch. And the statistics is just growing at a rapid rate.

Pinterest offers great marketing potential because of its easy click-throughs by “re-pinning” and the possibility of it to go viral. Because it is image-based, users can effortlessly find interesting images that they like and pin them on their Pinterest board. As far as marketing is concerned, companies can present their products more effectively without the heavy sales pitch that usually goes with it. Since people are more visual in nature, Pinterest is an ideal avenue to win customers.

Attract a large audience and create new followers while engaging with your existing fanbase through interesting boards. However, more than offering your products by posting pins of it, there are other creative ways to advertise them.

Let me show you the 5 most common marketing campaign styles used in Pinterest…

First, the contest campaign. Viral sweepstakes, most votes or re-pins or best pinboard contest are just some of the contest approach applied by companies. This marketing campaign is the most prominently used style among all others. Participants are instructed to create their pinboards of certain images from the company’s gallery based on a particular theme. Then users may either win by random selection, most number of likes or re-pins or by creating the best pinboard.

For example, Kotex featured 50 inspiring women and the things they pinned on Pinterest. They created a contest by sending the women a virtual gift and sent them a real one in the mail if they pinned it. Since it was an inventive approach to the usual online contests, the women went beyond Pinterest and mentioned something about it on other social media networks. Because of this, their company gained more than 2,200 interactions from the 50 gifts they gave away. Talk about effective marketing.

Second, pinning videos. Even if Pinterest is more known for posting photos, it also allows pinned videos by providing a section dedicated to it. Not many companies have taken advantage of this yet so you can leverage on this. Distinguish your brand by posting attractive Youtube videos of your company, your products and your services.

Third, the Pinterest shop. You can make use of pinboards to exhibit your products as pins. Pinterest provided an opportunity for these pins to be featured in their “Gifts” section. Companies can even add the price to the pin, although currently it is only limited to US Dollars ($) and British Pounds (£).

Fourth, the blog connections. If companies have WordPress-based websites, they can use a Pinterest widget to feature their recent pins. Also with its embed option, pins may be published as content in blog posts or websites. You may even pin your blog entries in Pinterest although we strongly advise not to overdo it.

Fifth, the story board approach. Come up with a pinboard that tells who you are in pictures. Feature your products and how they can be related to people’s daily lives. You may also introduce your mission as a company and your key team players through pins. Highlight your customers and clients by sharing their stories in visual appealing images. You may even make it seasonal by designing pins that are apt for the occasion.

Pinterest is an effective tool for online marketing because of the high traffic and its knack for making your company more engaging and visually interesting. Make the best use of this social media channel to spread awareness for your brand and reap the benefits that the pinning brings.

Author bio:

Celina Conner is a Yoga Instructor, a holder of a Marketing Diploma from Martin College Australia and a mother of a beautiful daughter, Krizia. She has a passion in cooking and formulating vegan recipes.Follow her adventures on her Twitter.

© Nathan for The Start Up Business Hub, 2012. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Celina Conner, guest post, pinterest, pinterest competition, pinterest marketing, pinterest story board

Starting a business is one of the most intense experiences a person can undergo. That may sound a bit extreme, but it’s true. A true startup is generally taking something that does not exist (an idea) and attempting to translate it into a physical reality, which will hopefully generate income.
During the ideation and beginning phases of a startup, the energy is incredible. It seems easy to knock out 16 hour days because the vision is so clear and the expectancy is so high. It’s like falling in love! But, unfortunately, the honeymoon eventually ends, and then it’s time to lock and continue to build the company and drive it to profitability. Two extremely important characteristics of successful entrepreneurs are:

1. 1. An ability to stay focused on important tasks-at-hand, and an ability to push non-essential tasks to the background.
2. 2. An ability to stay focused on selling.

When entrepreneurs start getting bogged down by menial tasks that do not directly impact bottom line cash flows and company growth, the very survival of an early-stage company can come under attack. Furthermore, an ability to sell will surely drive a company south. Fortunately, there are technology solutions for both of these issues. Let’s discuss them.

InfusionSoft

Do.Com

• Attaching and sending files
• Calendar Sync (ie. with Google)
• Sharing task lists
• Organizing projects
• Tracking contacts
• Emailing tasks
• Creating groups
• Setting reminders

As an entrepreneur staying focused on the important things and driving sales is essential to startup success. Finding and consistently using an effective task management and personal organization software, along with a high-level sales and marketing software is not an option—it’s a necessity.

Danielle Thomas is a graduate from Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, now working as a freelance writer, entrepreneur and researcher. She covers a wide range of topics for www.merchantseek.com with a particular interest in technology, the Internet, and the emerging business systems of the 21st century.

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Post tags: Danielle Thomas, guest post, infusionsoft, merchantseek, startup, startup entrepreneurs, technology for startup

Before I go any further I’m going to say whilst I use social media to good effect and have a good knowledge of social media practices, I do not claim to be a social media expert or guru or whatever the fad word at present is, I am merely going to give you my experiences of Twitter and tweeting from a small business and entrepreneurial perspective. My current twitter name is @businessplanhub

Twitter gives you just 140 character tweets to get your point over, so how can it be so powerful? Well as part of a social media strategy it can be extremely powerful. It helps you build brand awareness, exposes you to new customers and markets, drives traffic, gives transparency and acts as a point of customer service! Now do you see it’s power? I’ll take each one and look at it in turn:

1. Twitter as a builder of Brands – Building a brand and customers associating that brand with quality is vital for long term success, many years ago having a brand was the realm of multinationals with million dollar marketing budgets, but with the internet and the introduction of social media and micro niches building a brand within one of those no longer takes up the resources required 20 years ago. So how do we go about building a brand, well firstly your Twitter should reflect your website in terms of logo, background, username, but more than that it should reflect the ethos of the business. Using us as an example we are aimed at helping startups, entrepreneurs and small businesses so the majority of our tweets are small business news, blogs, articles and documents which make life easier to our readers as this is why people are following us and it’s what they need to know. So although twitter may not drive 100′s of unique visitors a day what it will do is keep you as an authoritative source of knowledge on that subject so when one of your followers has questions or a need for your service, you are their immediate thought.
2. Twitter to expose you to new markets and brands – Twitter is fast paced, always moving and people will follow and unfollow as their needs and requirements change. One powerful tool is the retweet, this means that another user retweets one of your original tweets. Let’s look at this from a numbers game. Say you write a controversial news article about the banks ineptitude at supplying financing to small businesses and you tweet that to your 10,000 followers, now it gets retweeted by 6 of your followers each with 5000 unique followers of their own and just 1 from each of their 5000 retweets it again and they have 2500 followers each, your news story has potentially been exposed to 55,000 people/businesses many of whom would not be aware that you even exist, where else can you get that kind of exposure for free? However let me make you aware that it’s not easy to get this exposure and it happens often due to you producing an engaging or controversial tweet.
3. Drives Traffic – From my experience twitter is not the biggest driver of traffic, it regularly pulls in a few visits each day but it will never compete on it’s own with your organic search traffic, in fact from my statistics as of today 23/11/2012 it has brought in an average of 3% of my monthly traffic, but remember that traffic is highly targeted and has a good engagement rate. So is it worth it from a purely traffic point of view, I’d say no, but with all the other benefits you get from it, it is most definitely a vital part of your social media strategy.
4. Transparency and customer service – How maddening do you find it when you can’t find a contact number for a company you have a problem with and all you can find is an email address and it take 12 emails to get them to respond with thank you for your enquiry we’ll get back to you ASAP. A customer knowing that a company is on Twitter allows them to target you with any issues they may have. They then ‘usually’ get a response fairly rapidly as it is in the companies best interest to do so, as not replying looks poor on the service front and bad news spreads fast. Twitter allows you the company to give your customers altimeter updates and is in a public setting which lends what you are saying some authority.

As you can see Twitter is a useful and in my eyes vital customer service tool and one that you should definitely use as part of your social media marketing and customer service plan. If you have any questions on Twitter and using it to help your small business then please leave a comment and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

If you think you’d be interested in what we say, please follow us on Twitter @businessplanhub

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Post tags: @businessplanhub, as a small business owner should i tweet, should a small business use twitter, small business twitter, Start Up Business Hub, tweet, tweeting, tweets, Twitter

Social Media is an important part of any small business and Empire Avenue is another tool in the small business owners toolbox. Customers can chose where they want to do business and with Google and other search engines always trying to connect searchers with EXACTLY what they want you need to stay ahead of the competition. One way is to ensure that you are the best in your target market and have a substantial market share within that market. The other way is to drive as much targeted traffic to your website.

I’ll take a little aside here and tell you that targeted is the key word in that sentence. If you are driving traffic with absolutely no buying intent to your sales page then you are going to get an extremely low conversion rate, however if the traffic you are driving is from searchers with ‘buying intent’ your conversion rate will be much higher.

Compare these,

1. “Business Mentor”

2. “Hiring a Business Mentor in Manchester”

Which of these keywords would have the best conversion rate? That would be the second one, the phrase has the words hiring and a location which makes the search much more specific and indicates that the searcher is looking for someone to ‘hire’ therefore has buying intent and this impression would have a much higher value to you than someone searching the first term.

Anyway following on from that little aside brings me to the main point of this article to discuss Empire Avenue. Much like search engine traffic, you want the traffic that you direct from your social media efforts to be targeted towards either buying your product or building your brand, reputation and authority within your particular industry. Which means that buying twitter and Facebook followers has very little financial value as they won’t be engaged and will be less likely be looking for what you are offering, you need to connect with your audience.

Empire Avenue: An Overview

Empire Avenue gives you access to some very powerful tools to help build your social audience and help engage with them. Firstly let me give you a little overview of Empire Avenue.

Empire Avenue is a social networking site based around the trading of shares in the fake currency of eaves, with the shares being you the person, so you are investing in other people/brands/businesses. However the share prices are linked to an individuals ‘network score’. So the more active a member is on all the standard social Networking sites and the more that they invest and connect with others, the higher their share price will rise. Whilst this fun and allows you to connect with people you may not have connected with before it is not the most powerful feature of Empire Avenue.

Empire Avenue: The Benefits

The Avenue excels in a couple of areas;

1. It has an excellent and active group of communities dedicated to specific topics, so I am part of the blogging, writing, business, startup and entrepreneurial societies this immediately gives me a group of engaged users who are interested either from a professional or customer point of view in the products and services that I am offering.
2. The second part is that it uses what are called missions, whilst early in your time at Empire Avenue they can feel like a drain on your precious eaves they are most definitely worth while doing. You can create a mission which drives people to a website of your choosing  such as your blog, sales page, twitter, Facebook  G+ and from there you ask them to perform a specific action such as a retweet or a share and then you reward them with a number of eaves. This has a number of benefits firstly it builds traffic to whatever page you are asking them to visit, it makes the individual interact with your page in some way. More importantly you can ask missions to only be available for people part of certain groups, that way you can ensure that the people visiting are more likely to engage with your content.

As you can see The Avenue on it’s own is not that powerful and can seem like nothing more than a stocks and shares mini game, but peel away the layers, and use it as part of a diverse and integrated social media plan it can really help increase your authority, traffic and engagement within your target niche.

I will be looking at many of the Social networking tools over the coming weeks, not from the perspective of a social media expert but as a entrepreneur and business startups and how they can be used to build your brand, traffic and ultimately sales but till then be sure to check out Empire Avenue.

© Nathan for The Start Up Business Hub, 2012. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: empire avenue, the avenue

Past the huge monetary chaos of 2008, scores of people as well as businesses have been struggling with a massive amount of debt load. Under these trying financial circumstances, it’s not really astonishing to see businesses trapped in a nasty debt cycle. With the soaring prices of gas, fuel, food, electricity and all other indispensable items, it’s quite natural for people to get suffocated under an incredible load of credit card debt. Under such financial circumstances, a lot of people opt for credit card consolidation. With this debt relief program, all of your credit card debts get merged into a single and affordable monthly payment.

In spite of numerous hurdles, it’s possible to set up your own business and take it to the next level. If you want to operate a successful business, you have to take on some development policies for your business. With the advancement of the Internet, it has opened new ways of interacting with customers. Internet marketing policies involve understanding the degree of online protocols and efficient marketing tactics for online standards. All businesses, regardless of its size, can use the Internet for improving or replacing their existing marketing strategies to help target a specific consumer group, cut down expenses and improve their communication systems. However, besides online strategies, there are several other techniques to help you make your business venture a successful one.

1. Start local – In the initial phase, it’s wise to test your product or service in a local setting; this will give you ample benefits from the very beginning. Distribution and marketing expenses will be considerably low. You’ll have hold over your local market and you can make any necessary modifications before making a major investment on a new process in a bigger market. This way, you’ll gain publicity locally and your reputation will spread far and wide as your business expends.

2. Go for a smaller market first – Almost every business has at least one potential purchasing group. Concentrate all your efforts on that particular group. Promote, distribute and encourage them, and probabilities are high that your sales will go up. This will push you into expanding your business to more complicated buyer groups. If you fail to have sway over the smaller market, perhaps there are some setbacks with your business that you haven’t yet noticed. You can find that out before you do a full market push. Ahead of conducting a full market promotion, you need to discover the flaws.

3. Tie up with another successful company – Suppose you come across a complementary company that has the attention and coverage you need for your organization. See whether you can go for a short-term partnership that will help you gain from your strengths. For instance, if your company deals in sports equipments, consult a local shop about catering to that group on recommending a presentation for your newly launched product. However, remember giving the shop owner a share of your sales profit. Initially, your profit amount might be negligible, but you’ve at least been successful in introducing your product in the mass market.

4. Understand the importance of social media - There’s no better means of promoting your business than employing social media platforms. Internet is the best tool to create an effectual online personality for your business; it is a low-cost marketing tool as well. Social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can be used for issuing discounts, promoting consumer discussions, and making product reports. Using these modes of communication, it’s easier for you to target a specific group of people who prefer spending time on the Internet than reading books, watching television or listening to the radio.

5. Market research – Different online tools can be employed for exploring product choices, gathering consumer criticisms, and tracking customer figures. This research work can be executed speedily and often for less expenses than interview sessions, mailed research items, or telephone call evaluations. Especially in a market that has a speedy production cycle, using the Internet to conduct market investigation can help you meet the data requisites of manufacturing and promotion managers.

Barbara Delinsky is a financial writer who loves sharing his knowledge by writing informative articles for helping individuals who are struggling with monetaryissues. He has already written several articles on debt related subjects like credit card consolidation, business budgeting and business startup fund raising. For more details please visit http://www.ovlg.com/debt-consolidation/credit-card.html

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Post tags: Barbara Delinsky, business strategies, financial circumstances, financial planning, guest post

Starting a small business can be an expensive and complex process. In order to reduce the financial burden on any one individual or financial institution it is often wise to look for small business grants. Business Grants come in all shapes and sizes from a few £100 to £1million+ so looking for the right sized grant is vital to increasing your chances of getting it.

Types of Small Business Grants

Government grants for small business – The government has set aside and allocated resources to promote and aid small businesses, some of this is form of free business advice and courses to help build up your skill sets but there are also financial government grants for small business to help you kick start and help you succeed in your chosen venture. Competition for these is fierce but it is always worth applying.

1. Direct  - This is typically given to fund activities such as training, employment, export development, recruitment or capital investment projects. With a direct grant most schemes usually require the company involved to put up around 50% of the cost.
2. Repayable grant – This type of grant gives small businesses cash for a specific project with future profits used to payback to original amount, however, if the project doesn’t succeed, the grant is written off.
3. Soft loan -A soft loan is a special type of small business grant, it’s terms and conditions of repayment are less stringent than they would be under standard financial agreements. E.G. interest rates may be substantially reduced or non existent and the repayment terms will likely be over an extended period.
4. Equity finance – A capital sum is injected into the small business and the investor takes an equity share of the business and if the value of the company increases the shares can then be returned, but unlike venture capitalists, the expectations and requirements of the providers of public funds are usually less demanding

Where to look for small business grants

This is the tough bit, where do you as a business owner go looking for that small business grant that would help you grow and develop into a fully fledged thriving company. Below are 5 of the best places to look to help you find a grant to suit you.

1. The UK (including the Welsh and Scottish parliaments) offer Government grants for small business. They are a very useful starting point, however sadly there is no central point for looking for these. The government is made up of many different departments and each one awards small business grants based on their own set of criteria. The best thing you can do is to look at these requirements and apply to those which best fit your current situation. There are hundreds of governing bodies, but these are some of the most important (the hyperlinks will take you to the department specific grant pages):

• Department for Employment and Learning
• Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
• Department for Employment and Learning
• Welsh Development Agency
• Industrial Development Board
• Enterprise Ireland
• Scottish Executive

2. Local funding, this can be from the local councils or organisations. Their main objectives is to increase the economic output of an area, so the requirements for these grants is often geared towards how is your business going to affect the local community and economy. This can be in terms of jobs or in terms of them being your customers and you bringing valuable services to the area. I cannot list all the local councils however if you go onto your local council website and then to the starting a business section, e.g. this is the Manchester city council start your own business section. There is also the gov.uk site which replaced the business link site and has a lot of information about local funding for your business and that is located at gov.uk Often these local grants are for smaller amounts but they are often the easiest to get.
   
3. If you are looking to do work on the continent or you are in an area which the EU feels needs development and the EU has also designated areas for schemes called European Structural Funds know as Objective 1, 2 and 3 and being in a tier one area can greatly increase your chances of gaining funding provided you fulfil the other requirements. EU grants are often much larger and are used for large capital investment like property, there are also small business grants available for agriculture. You can find more information on European small business grants on their website.

Those are your main areas to look to, there are smaller and more specialised grants offered by companies, universities and charities, but these are directed at highly specialised companies, who are focusing on a very specific problem, but if you are in one of those industries, it is very much worth approaching them to see if they can help, even if it is in the form of sponsorship as opposed to a business grant. Good luck in getting the grant you need to start your business and if you have any questions or have anything else to help others succeed then please leave a comment.

© Nathan for The Start Up Business Hub, 2012. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Government grants for small business, grants for small business, Grants for starting a business, small business government grant, small business grant, small business grants

There is a very famous saying:

Failing to Plan, is planning to Fail

This was said by Ben Franklin, Churchill and many others in some form or another. It really does apply to business plans. Did you know that 95% of businesses without a business plan fail… yes I know 87.567% of statistics are made up but feel free to go and verify this one. Without direction a new venture is likely to not succeed, which is where a vision statement comes in. Why start if you don’t plan to succeed so get planning. Now you know why you need one, what exactly is it? A business plan is a working document (by that I mean you don’t just write it once put it in that file and dust it off once every three years to show the bank when you want an overdraft or loan) It should be flexible, it should grow and change with the ever changing face of your business, it should reflect your business goals and finally but most importantly it should be current and up to date. I won’t go into detail over how to write one here as that is for future posts. I’ll just leave you with this If you want your business to succeed you have to plan for success, you need targets and plans these can’t be in your head they need to be recorded, so please start by just jotting down your business ideas, what is the general concept, who are your potential customers, what are your short, medium and long term goals.

I want to start a touring theatre company, which will supply theatre workshops to support the national curriculum. I want to deal with schools, local councils and government and social groups. I want to start in my local area probably with one troupe and once this is financially successful I’d like to branch out to other areas in the UK and eventually be the leading provider of TIE (Theatre in Education) for the UK.

This is all your start needs to be it states what you want to be, it’s main market and niche and some short and longer term goals. It is very basic and a top level overview of what you want to achieve, but it is a great starting point. In the next blog we will build on the above and start talking about how we turn our vision statement into a business plan with substance. Please feel free to ask me any questions you like by leaving a comment. and check out businesslink.gov.uk which is a very useful site with lot’s of information about starting a business including writing your business plans. Writing down what you want your business to be,  the main services or products, who your main customers are and finally some short, medium and long term goals is very important, If you did as we suggested above and wrote a little about your business ideas, customers and goals then you can skip the below template. If you didn’t use this little template and fill in the blanks.

Within the next ___years grow (company name) ___________ into a business with £ ______ worth of annual sales. We will primarily operate in ______________ providing (describe products/services)_____________________________________ to (describe target customer and ideal client)_________________________ In the next year I aim to be                

                                       within the next three years I aim to be                            

Using this simple but powerful statements gives you a clear and concise vision statement with which to start your business plan. You can keep looking back and referring to it as you build the plan, allowing you to keep focused on what you want your business to achieve. It will help keep your plan lean and targeted. If you have multiple markets and or products you may want to write something similar for each niche. Believe it or not by writing the above you have already wrote your vision statement as it focuses on the what’s of your business, it describes your idealized perception of what your business will look like under ideal conditions, the key components are:

1. Name of planned business venture
2. The products/services you plan to provide
3. The target markets you intend to serve
4. Top level Goals

© Nathan for The Start Up Business Hub, 2012. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: business plan, business plan vision statement, small business vision statement, vision statement, vision statement for the business plan, your vision