4 Reasons Why You Need to Street Market

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Street marketing is a popular tactic for many businesses

It has the ability to bring their brand and services to the public’s attention in a memorable way. If you’ve ever driven down the street and noticed costumed mascots, huge statues or giant signs randomly stationed throughout a park, you’ve witnessed street marketing. This offbeat strategy employs devices that are uncommon and may even seem out of place at first sight. But they successfully draw potential customers to your campaign and services.

If you’re looking for a new way to reach your target audience, consider the various ways you can use this strategy to your benefit. Here are some key tips for introducing street marketing in your area.

1. Create Emotional Ties With Your Audience

Street marketing will empower you to create an experience for the audience member that lingers well past the event. This ensures your brand leaves a mark on their mind and their hearts, and that’s not sugarcoating. The core of the street market strategy is to engage with people in public spaces by allowing them to see a brand differently from a traditional ad campaign, typically by tying the brand to an issue greater than the product.

This encourages an emotional response that sticks with the audience and ensures your company is the first name that comes to mind the next time their stomach growls.

2. Avoid Digital Obstacles

When you create a street market campaign, viewers can’t skip ads like they do on their computers or ignore them by turning off the radio and plugging in their phone. Street marketing is up close and personal, engaging customers in their precise location and providing content in a way that makes it fun and easy to consume. You’re not wasting your money on ads that won’t be seen when you choose this method. Street marketing helps you share your message in an original format that won’t be easily dismissed by someone who doesn’t feel like hearing it.

Discuss your options with a marketing expert or small business solutions firm to choose the right format for your business.

3. Mirror Your Company’s Values

It’s very easy to mold street market campaigns to your company’s individual values and character in order to stand out from the crowd. More conventional advertising methods, such as direct-mail dinner coupons or newspaper ads, can quickly run together. A billboard or print ad is always the same format, but street marketing can take many different forms. Consider these examples:

  • Restaurant with mascots who greet customers and provide photo ops
  • Vehicle wraps that drive around town, including scooters or bikes
  • Thought bubbles next to a plate to show what the food is “thinking”
  • Tents at neighborhood events offering food samples and raffles

4. Stay Within Your Budget

One of the top benefits of street marketing is the low cost. Business owners can reach a larger audience on a limited budget. For marketing managers and owners who are hoping to maximize the impact of their dollar, street marketing is the best of both worlds. It’s a way to connect with the community and save money all at once. The popularity of alternative advertising in recent years has made this marketing strategy more affordable.

The Value of a Great Appointment Management System

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Are you absolutely sure you’re doing everything in your power to boost the efficiency of your healthcare practice? If you’re not currently using an appointment management tool, the answer is a hard and fast “no.”

Physicians and other medical providers can compromise the integrity of their practice and lose both new and existing patients due to faulty or outdated appointment scheduling systems. Here’s why you need to jump on the digital bandwagon and introduce online appointment scheduling for your healthcare practice.

Why Is Virtual Appointment Scheduling Important?

Think about it: In today’s society, people expect to do everything from their smartphones. They book flights, purchase tickets to concerts and movies, and they order takeout from local restaurants. Why shouldn’t they be able to just as easily book an appointment to see their family physician, dentist or chiropractor?

You count on patients to make a phone call to book an appointment. You also depend on staff to manually input appointments into the system. But this creates endless opportunities for someone to slip through the cracks. What happens when the lines are busy and a patient can’t get through? What if the staff confuses dates or times?

Research shows online appointment scheduling is the way of the future. According to a study conducted by management consulting firm, Accenture, 77 percent of patients consider online accessibility for scheduling or cancelling appointments a top priority. Perhaps that’s why Accenture projects that by the close of 2019, 66 percent of U.S. healthcare systems will provide digital self-scheduling. If you’re hesitant to modify your current appointment system, you just may find your practice is left in the dust.

10 Advantages of Online Appointment Scheduling

Are those numbers enough to persuade you to make the switch? Check out the many benefits of virtual appointment scheduling if you need more convincing:

1. Retain patients:

Patients, particularly millennials, who are able to conveniently schedule appointments online feel like their needs are understood and supported. This will make them more likely to stick around.

2. Reduce mistakes:

Human error accounts for a great deal of accidentally canceled or overbooked appointments, resulting in angry, dissatisfied patients. Online scheduling eliminates that problem. Plus, reminders are sent out automatically. This way, there’s no chance for patients or staff to get the dates or times mixed up.

3. Cut down on phone calls:

When patients are able to schedule, cancel or change appointments online, your phone line is freed up for more urgent circumstances.

4. Eliminate strain on staff:

Manually scheduled appointments require your staff to juggle a variety of tasks at once. With fewer calls coming in, they can use their time and effort to attend to patients who are currently in the office.

5. Offer round-the-clock accessibility:

Patients who can’t call during office hours to book an appointment may just go to your competitor. With online scheduling, they can check your availability and book appointments any time day or night.

6. Decreases no-shows:

Empty appointment slots translate into a loss of capital for your practice. When patients can easily pick up same-day or next-day appointments online, you’ll easily fill canceled slots and endure fewer no-shows.

7. Alleviates excess paperwork:

Virtual appointment management systems help your office cut down on unnecessary paperwork by compiling all appointments and other patient information into a single online database.

8. Enhances patient engagement:

Virtual scheduling systems incorporate a wide range of features, such as medical records access, so patients can see tests results and other key info in the same software where they keep track of appointments.

9. Helps new patients find you:

Some new patients may dread calling a practice to talk to someone they don’t know. These people will keep searching until they find a practice with online scheduling.

10. Enables you to stay competitive:

Patients are less likely to pass you up for a more cutting-edge healthcare practice when you embrace technology and give them what they want.

5 Insurance Coverage Questions Your Small Business Needs to Ask

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If you own a small business, it’s your responsibility to ensure you protect your investment and livelihood. If not, all of the money, time, blood, sweat and tears put into your business could be all for nothing.

Luckily, business insurance exists for the primary purpose of protecting businesses from the unexpected. There are a variety of plans offering different levels of coverage. Choosing the right one, along with asking the right questions, could be crucial to the future of your small business.

In this post, we cover the top five insurance coverage questions to ask to ensure that you protect your small business from the unexpected.

The Different Coverage Options

Like any insurance, small business insurance (also known as commercial insurance) provides buyers with different coverage options that insure for a variety of different scenarios and functions of the business. The most common coverages include:

General Liability: If an accident occurs at your business resulting in injury, general liability coverage will help pay for any medical bills associated with legal costs incurred if you’re taken to court.

Business Property: This insurance protects your building, and all of your belongings inside of your business, in case environmental damages occur or if your property is stolen.

Business Interruption: Also known as “business income coverage” by some insurers, but the core functions are the same. The coverage replaces any lost income or increased expenses should your business be subjected to one of the covered perils of your plan.

Now that we’ve discussed the basic coverages, here are the questions to ask to be sure that your business is insured to the fullest. Don’t get caught off guard if disaster strikes. Also included are tips to help you save money on your premiums.

1.  Am I Protected from Hurricanes?

With recent hurricanes in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, many small businesses are finding themselves left with the damages to repair. In many situations, businesses must rebuild. Although many small business insurance plans will cover environmental losses from fires and windstorms, many actually won’t cover flood damage, earthquakes, and hurricanes.

To overcome this, you should speak to your insurance agent about purchasing special hurricane and flood damage insurance riders if you feel that your property could be at risk. If you live in a coastal region, you can’t afford to be without some form of protection for your property. Especially since hurricanes have become stronger and more frequent in recent years and the trend doesn’t seem to be changing.

2. Do I Need Specialty Coverage?

Along with the weather-related insurance riders, there are also specialty coverages that you can purchase depending on your company’s needs.

Common additional coverage options include:

Debris Removal: This covers the expenses related to removing debris from your property in the event of a fire, flood, or hurricane. While many might overlook these costs, removing debris from the site is tremendously expensive and most property insurance only covers the costs of rebuilding.

Glass Insurance: some property coverage may include glass replacement, however not all do. Replacing a broken plate glass window out-of-pocket can get expensive. Having this coverage option will ensure you don’t incur these costs.

Inland Marine Insurance: This is recommended for businesses that are in possession of any property in transit such as your customers’ belongings. If you run a dry-cleaning business, for example, this coverage option would cover your clients’ clothes in the event of a fire.

These coverage options are generally optional, however, if you can afford it, you should consider purchasing them.

3. Do You Have Replacement-Value or Actual-Cash Value Coverage?

The difference between the two coverage options may not seem like much. If your property is significantly damaged, however, the difference can amount to thousands of dollars.

Replacement-value coverage will pay out the amount that your property would be worth today. Actual-cash value takes depreciation into account and will often pay out less. The premiums for replacement-value are more expensive than actual-cash. But if disaster ever strikes, you’ll receive a more substantial payout from the insurance company.

4. How Can I Lower My Premiums?

Similar to personal insurance, there are some steps that small business owners can take to reduce their premiums. It’s important to ask your insurance provider since they will know the exact discounts their company offers. Some common ways to lower monthly/yearly premiums include:

  • Installing a security system
  • Adding fire safety precautions
  • Employee training
  • Hiring a risk manager

Discounts are offered by insurers to businesses that are deemed less risky than others.   Adding safety precautions to your business will also help protect your business from any damage. That way, you won’t likely have to file a claim in the future.

Business owners can also lower premiums by selecting fewer coverage options, raising their deductibles, and signing up for package deals that combine multiple coverage options. Determine what coverage you need. Then determine how much you can afford to pay out-of-pocket for different scenarios. Once you’ve determined what you can afford, you’ll be able to make a more informed decision about the actual coverage you’ll pay for.

5. Will You Grow with My Company?

The goal for many small businesses is to expand and hopefully drop the “small” moniker. If expansion is on the horizon, ask your insurers about their expansion practices. This will ensure your relationship meets both of your goals.

Simple things that you can ask insurance agents include:

  • Where do they see their agency going in 1, 3, or 5 years?
  • Will they continue offering the same products in the future?
  • What is the average size of the businesses they represent?

Finding the answers to these questions provides insight into the insurance company’s plan to grow. You don’t want to build a relationship with them and find they can’t handle your claims once your business expands.

Conclusion

Determining the right insurer to protect your business is crucial. Knowing your coverage amounts and what is protected can save you surprises and expenses should disaster or the unexpected occur in the future. Do your research carefully, ask the questions we discussed, and you should be well on your way to finding the perfect insurance provider.

7 Ideas to Get ‘MO’ for Your Business by Celebrating Movember

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At Strategic Funding, we encourage small business owners to create opportunities to engage with their customers and employees.

One of the best ways to build engagement with both customers and employees is to support charitable causes. The month of November is a great time to do that by creating a Movember promotion to raise awareness about health problems that affect men specifically.

The Movember Foundation is dedicated to ending the early death of men from preventable conditions. The ‘Mo’ refers to mustaches, called ‘mo’ for short in Australia, where the idea originated. Every year in November, people (including women) wear mustaches to call attention to health problems, including prostate and testicular cancers and mental health conditions that can lead to suicide. Instead of wearing a colored ribbon to promote men’s health, the Movember Foundation uses the mustache.

Movember is an especially good project to take on if you own a restaurant, where employees are in close contact with customers in a relaxed, often festive atmosphere.

Here are seven ideas for creating a Movember promotion that can build relationships and deliver long-term benefits for your business.

1) Wait staff wear fun mustaches

Real or otherwise—and invite customers to sign up to grow or create their own “mos”. Employees will have fun coming up with humorous mo styles. A waitress might sport a painted-on Groucho, for instance, or a man could dye his ‘stache bright purple. These will elicit questions from customers and help get people on board.

2) Have a Mo Drink & Dish contest for employees

Have employees invent a special dish or a cocktail to mark Movember. Give the winner written credit for the invention on the menu.

3) Give customers a Movember Pledge card

This can be given along with their check. Ask them to commit to making a donation to one of the highly rated men’s health charities listed on the pledge card. (See the vetted charity list below.)

4) Sponsor a Mo’ Bro and Sistah Night

Give a free dessert or cocktail to every customer who comes in wearing a mustache and signs a pledge card.

5) Sponsor an athletic competition

This can be between your restaurant and several others in your community. Have players raise money for the Movember Foundation by getting family and friends to sponsor their team. Host a celebration party in honor of the winners.

6) Make your event social

Invite customers and their friends to upload photos of themselves and their mo’s to your restaurant’s Facebook page. Have page visitors vote on the best mo and give a prize to the winner. The prize could be something “healthy,” like a gift card for athletic gear, or it could be humorous, such as a can of shaving cream. Link to the page or website of the Movember Foundation and encourage people to make a donation directly on the foundation’s site. This relieves you of having to act as a middleman.

7) Sponsor a Thanksgiving Mo’ event

This can be a place where customers and employees give thanks for the special men in their lives. It can also be a happy hour event at the bar or it could take place as part of your regular Thanksgiving dinner service. Give customers paper mustache cards and ask them to write the names of the men they’re grateful for on the card. Post the cards on a wall of the restaurant where people can read the names. Alternately, collect the cards and then have drawings for door prizes.

Charities to Support

Not all charities are created equal. The organizations listed below have received top grades from the three main charity rating organizations—The Better Business Bureau, Charity Navigator, and Charity Watch.

Prostate Cancer Foundation

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Brain and Behavior Research Foundation

Cancer Research Institute

Trevor Project

With more than half of November left, there’s still time to support these great causes while becoming ‘mo engaged with your employees and customers.

4 Smart Strategies for Restaurant Partnerships

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How do you create a restaurant partnership?

People like to be social — and they like food even more. Consider the local buzz created around the opening of a new restaurant: features in the local paper, social media chatter and word-of- mouth from excited customers who all like to be the first to try the latest and greatest.

This type of buzz provides maximum impact during the launch of a business, but the local community can also sustain a business through its growth stages and attract enthusiastic investors. All it takes is establishing the right local partnerships.

For hospitality businesses, partnering with local suppliers yields huge benefits. The results of any marketing effect can be exponential because businesses can cross-promote. Also, a successful business that is deeply embedded in the local community is one that is sustainable.

With partners from local farmers to local banks, a well-established business is a beacon for investors. Here are some examples of partnerships in local communities that produce a win-win for all involved.

1. Team Up With Local Food Suppliers

Increasingly, eateries are partnering with local farms to promote the popular “Buy fresh, buy local” trend. For example, a restaurant might use grass-fed beef or locally raised chicken from farmers in the area, and they make sure to promote the supplier on the menu. In turn, the farmer promotes the local restaurants it supplies. All partners benefit from cross-marketing and increased visibility on partners’ websites and in local media.

Take Barrel 21, for example. This popular Pennsylvania distillery and restaurant features local suppliers on its website. The eatery relies on grass-fed beef, milk and corn from local farmers; bread from a local baker; and chocolate from a local chocolate maker. In fact, even “Dan the Fish Man” who line-catches the restaurant’s Alaskan and smoked salmon gets a mention on the site.

2. Partner With Craft Beer Brewers

Many restaurants boost brand visibility by teaming up with local craft beer brewers. There is great demand for new and unique products, and with creative names such as Dogfish Head Romantic Chemistry and Hoppy Ending Pale Ale, you may attract potential investors from around the country.

Often, a one-off beer gets pushed into the main restaurant so that customers can sample a new beer on a regular or rotational basis. Craft beer drinkers tend to spend more and become loyal customers who visit more frequently.

3. Collaborate With Food Cooperatives

In addition to local farms, local agricultural cooperatives can offer valuable relationships in terms of cost benefits and marketing opportunities. Fueled in part by the local food movement, cooperatives are on the rise.

These types of organizations host educational events, informal farm tours, annual meetings and social events for all members and the public. Partnering with a cooperative can also give a restaurant statewide reach that extends to supply chain stakeholders, not just patrons of local restaurants.

4. Get Involved in Community Events

Sponsoring popular local festivities such as holiday festivals, sporting events and cuisine- or culture-oriented markets can be ideal opportunities to increase visibility and goodwill towards and among the public and local businesses.

Restaurants can serve a sampling of their fare, sell products and have their name printed on merchandise for a more permanent reminder of their contribution to the social good. Consumers are demanding more responsibility by businesses, and Millennials in particular gravitate toward businesses that practice corporate social responsibility by giving back to the local community.

Food for Thought

The opportunities for partnerships go much deeper than simply promoting a beer or touting local grass-fed beef. In fact, the possibilities for partnership activities are limited only by the imagination.

Outreach to local communities and businesses is a smart growth strategy with a great deal of potential. Investors know that the restaurant business is a competitive industry with narrow margins. Pursuing ROI from local partnerships can benefit everyone involved.

Want some more advice on your restaurant? Check out “How to Hire and Retain the Best Staff.”

Employee Engagement Strategies for Your Small Business

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Employee engagement is more important to your business then you may realize. A recent Virgin Pulse State of the Industry Survey has found that 88% of businesses planned to improve employee engagement throughout 2017. Why is that? Because not only is employee engagement an important area of focus for the overall happiness of your employees, but improved employee engagement can also vastly improve retention and increase the productivity of your workforce.

Businesses that remain highly engaged with their staff have seen a 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 17% increase in productivity, according to a State of the American Workplace Report.

Richard Branson, Founder and Chairman of Virgin Atlantic said it best, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”

Have you begun tapping into the potential that employee engagement has for your business? If not, it’s time to get started! Here are a few ideas that are easy to implement.

Encourage personal projects

Giving your employees the freedom to connect and bounce ideas off of each other can help in gaining new perspectives. This can be something you put in place for just 30 minutes or even an hour. Even that short amount of time could have a profoundly positive effect on projects and initiatives. It will also build upon your employees’ creativity. Supporting the flow of ideas and the projects of your employees will not only show that you care and improve morale; but it will also help your business’s bottom line.

Support charity & volunteer work

Help to give your employees a day or two out of the month to volunteer for a cause they support. Or the entire company could choose one cause to support. Either way, this will help in keeping employees engaged and build camaraderie, thereby improving corporate culture and your reputation as an employer. Volunteer Match can help you get started.  This site matches individuals and businesses with non-profits that need volunteers.

Supply the right resources

Make sure that you are equipping your employees with the tools and systems they need to not just do their jobs, but to make it as easy as possible for them to complete their tasks. Having the right tools will help the members of your team to invest their energy into doing the best work they can. What is the best way to get started? All you need to do is ask your employees what they may need to get the job done! But, make sure that you have the basics covered before you move on to other, more abstract, ideas.

Go beyond the employee survey

The best way to know how to improve the work place environment is to get feedback directly from your employees. A simple way to collect this feedback is through mobile employee engagement surveys.  These tools can make recording feedback much easier for both you and the employee. They also create a more interactive experience by allowing you to attach media elements such as photos, videos and surveys. Check out this list of apps that can help you to drive employee engagement.

Now what are you waiting for? See if you can implement at least one of these strategies.  The results will not disappoint you!

Want to take your employee engagement a step further? Check out “”

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