Locally owned business is on the come up in South Bend.
And that's great news. It's fantastic to see people not only starting businesses, but those businesses succeeding. However, please don't sabotage yourselves, business owners.
You're going to have to take part in advertising and marketing. It's just the nature of the beast. And to use another cliche, it's a chicken and the egg situation. "I'll spend money on advertising when money comes in."
Well, what if you don't make it there?
Online advertising drives nearly all of your business. Our world is mobile, our world is immediate and our world makes decisions quickly. You have to stand out. You have to have a working, modern website. Your website is your front door, what do you want people to think when they see it? Or worse, what if you don't even have a front door?
Your social media has to be timely and relevant. You have to work on SEO, you really do. You have to guard your reputation and take steps to ensure it starts out, and stays, pristine.
I'm begging you, please make sure you do everything you can to put yourself in a situation to succeed. You have no idea how many times I've seen a business open, done some snapshot research on them and thought to myself, "they have zero chance of making it if they don't start doing the things they need to do."
And you know how that story ends. The building is empty within a year.
This isn't even a sales pitch. There are a handful of great agencies in the area, choose any of them. Choose the one that specializes in what you want to do, what you want to be. If you want to lean on video marketing, we are not the agency for you!
You don't even need to spend money! If you have the time, or want to take the time, to learn the craft - you can do most of it yourself. Yes, it'll take time. Yes, you'll have to make sure you have everything down cold, things can go south quickly if you try to take a shortcut or game the system. You really don't want that.
So make sure you're giving it everything you have. You are already taking the risk to start your own business and be an entrepreneur, why not do it all the right way?