Happy Small Business Saturday! The Saturday after Thanksgiving is National Small Business Saturday and it was created to promote consumers to shop small for their holiday needs. In 2020, there were reportedly 31.7 million small businesses in the US. According to a survey conducted by The Harris Poll, 37% of Americans shopped at small businesses to support them because of the pandemic.
So interested in starting your own online business?
How to Get Started:
Before you jump right into selling, there are a few steps to take first. While starting your own business is exciting, there’s a lot of information to consider. Taking time to analyze your ideas and plans can make all the difference when it comes to being successful.
1) Do Your Research
Find the Gap – Before you get started, it’s important to put a good amount of research into your idea. First, find your market. You can’t develop a successful brand without customers so it’s important to ask: who do you want this brand to be for?
You can determine your market by searching for keywords that are popular but don’t have too much competition, reading through reviews of similar brands/products to look for ways to make yours better, or learning from your own experiences with brands. For example, you might use a product that works okay, but you know it could be better. You’re experiencing a gap in the market that you can fill and be able to target consumers that are similar to you. Once you’ve decided on your target market, you can begin the next step.
2) Source Your Products
You might be a brand that sells homemade crafts or decorations, but you can still source your materials to lower your costs. If you’re starting a supplement or health and beauty brand, working with a private label manufacturer can help increase your profit margins, but also make you stand out from the competition.
3) Design the Brand
Color theory can help you pick the right colors for your logo. For example, if you’re in the health industry, try using blue or green color schemes because those colors are commonly associated with health and wellness.
Font choices might not seem like a big deal, but they can actually say a lot about your brand. Using a serif font says that your brand is respectable and leans more traditional. Handwriting fonts can mean that your brand is more playful and friendly which might work for homemade brands! Logos and brands that use script fonts are usually targeted towards women because these fonts are portrayed as feminine.
4) Create Your Online Presence
- Website – Creating a website now is pretty simple. Platforms like Shopify allow startups to easily design the pages they want and set up their store for a relatively low price. Remember that using similar design layouts for each page help consumers feel comfortable with your website and lowers the chance of them leaving before buying. Adding images or videos to your pages will help grab consumers’ attention but try to make sure they enhance the text too.
- Social Media – Small businesses thrive from a sense of community. They used to have to rely on their local community for their support, but now with so many small businesses being online, social media can help build and expand their brand outside of the local community. Business owners can use their pages as a way to be transparent and genuine and create conversations with their customers.
5) Partner with a Fulfillment Company
And lastly, don’t try to do it all yourself and end up being burnt out before you really grow the business. Working with a fulfillment company saves you time and energy that can be spent elsewhere. Working with Ship Central helps take the headaches out of small business logistics.
Ship Central offers businesses of all sizes an easy way to handle logistics. We integrate your online shopping carts into our system so we see orders as soon as you do. This means that our team can get orders out the door and to your customers as soon as possible. We use barcode scanners to ensure accuracy, but also help you track inventory so you know when it’s time to restock. It’s our goal to offer a customized experience that allows business owners to still be in control. We love partnering with small businesses and helping them grow over time.