Archive for February, 2017

The Importance of An Outdoor Marketing Calendar

Each year in the UK is full of various multicultural events from Chinese New Year to Palm Sunday, or Father’s Day. We all can name a few events (most of which are not even bank holidays anyway), but are you absolutely sure that you know all the dates that are important these days? A quick look at the Marketing calendar in the UK should reveal all the options.

As a business owner in the UK you need to make sure that you are aware of various traditions and dates that take place all year round in the country in which you live. The UK is a multicultural nation where many traditions cross and where each nation has a right to preserve their traditions. If you want to launch a marketing campaign, this might be just the right place to get started as you have a lot of traditions to work with here. Timing them and taking advantage of them is the key to success.

In the beginning of each year it definitely makes sense to make yourself familiar with all the traditions that take place withing the next 365 days. Nobody says that you need to tailor your marketing strategy to all of the events in the calendar. You might want to choose just a few events that fit with the theme of your product and them start from there.

Remember to be sensitive when it comes to various traditions and customs. Very often, researching thoroughly a tradition might be the best decision you will ever make and something that can affect your marketing campaign for a very long time. Choose your strategy carefully and you have everything set and ready to go for a really long time.

You might want to be flexibly as well. If you have proof that something has not worked out the way you wanted it be sure to adjust to the situation and make the necessary changes. And remember that there are many dates in the calendar each year you will want to take advantage of. Feel free to research even more traditions that not everybody knows about and who knows maybe you are going to reach a group of people with a product that nobody else has thought about reaching before.

Emergency Loans To Consider For Your Business

As a business owner, you strive to prepare for all of the difficulties your company may face. Even during periods of great success, we must all prepare for challenges lurking around the corner. Generally, most trials a business may face can be overcome with more money. Of course, these are also the times when cash flow can be at their lowest. The good news is that there are cash flow options. Just as you might use title loans to overcome personal finance troubles, you can access emergency loans for your business. With that in mind, let’s look at the emergency financing options you may have available.

Bank Loans, Credit Lines and Credit Increases

Bank loans can range from a few months to several years. They’re often the ideal way to borrow because of the favorable terms. If your business has developed a history with a particular bank, you may be able to get a loan on short notice. Another option is a credit line, which can be opened quickly with good credit. If you already have a line of credit, an extension to that line is another option.

SBA Loans

The Small Business Association doesn’t just help get new businesses off the ground. The SBA helps prepare and deal with emergencies. If you’re facing an emergency that threatens your business and cannot get a loan through a traditional lender, you may find the assistance you need via the SBA.

Disaster Assistance

If there are extenuating circumstances, such as a natural disaster, then you may be eligible for special assistance. Agencies like FEMA often help facilitate this kind of special assistance. Even the SBA has funds set aside and sometimes awards grants, which don’t have to be repaid.

Alternative Lenders

Alternative lenders are becoming more prevalent, and they offer a path for creditworthy businesses to traditional financial institutions that wouldn’t otherwise be there. If you face an emergency but can’t get a bank loan, these alternative lenders may be willing to take on that risk. An advantage this approach offers is being able spread the money you need across multiple entities willing to assume that risk.

Asset-Based Loans

If your business lacks the credit necessary for traditional forms of lending, borrowing with collateral may be an alternative. Businesses can often acquire short-term loans on short notice using assets the business holds or even personal assets held by the business owner. Common examples of this collateral include commercial real estate, privately held real estate, inventory and equipment.

Bridge Loans

Bridge financing is a type of financing that assists a business in meeting its financial obligations while it waits for other entities to meet theirs. For instance, a business may be waiting on a large payment from a client or may be waiting on a large financing deal to be completed by a bank. These bridges are usually for relatively small amounts over short periods and let a business bridge a financial gap.

Emergency Equipment Leasing

If the emergency your business faces is that you need equipment or similar assets that you cannot afford at the moment, emergency leasing may be available. These opportunities are generally offered directly through the vendor and may or may not be backed by a bank. This type of leasing usually works in one of two ways. It can let you lease the equipment you need until you’re in a position to purchase, or it can defer any lease payments owed to a future date.

Cash Advances

A final option is a cash advance. These are similar to bridge loans in some ways but involve the sale of future credit card deposits or similar transactions. In other words, you receive cash based on future sales at the cost of some percentage of those future sales. The cost of this option can be quite high compared to the other options presented here, but it’s sometimes the only option for a business owner in pinch.

Tips on Expanding Your Business to a New Location

When expanding your existing business to a new location, it can be stressful, especially if your previous venture was at a pre-existing location. If you’ve never built a new work space from the ground up before, then the prospect of doing so may seem daunting. In order to help alleviate some of those concerns, and make the entire process more enjoyable overall, this guide will offer up some simple tips to make the concept of business expansion much more straightforward.

Installation Specialists

Before you choose a plot of land to build your new business, you might want to invest in an installation specialist that can do most of the work for you. Surveyors can go out to the prospective area and determine whether or not the land is right for sustaining a business. If you’re someone who doesn’t really know much about surveying, or what is involved in installing a new business from the ground up, then it can be worth investing in these services. In fact, it’s recommended that you seek out a knowledgeable installation expert, even if you already know what you’re doing. It’s always a good idea to have two separate sets of eyes overlooking complex projects of this magnitude.

Invest in Peripherals

It’s not enough to simple put up some walls and call a new area your place of work. If you want to add legitimacy to your location, then you’ll want to invest in the associated additions. This means finding things that fit your company’s style, like turnkey digital signage. Companies like Casco Signs offer these types of LED digital signs, which allow businesses to easily put up messages on them for potential customers to then see.

Prepare Financial Materials Beforehand

If your business expansion is reliant on outside investing, then you’ll want to make sure all of your paperwork is in order before you approach any would-be investors. During this process, it will also allow you to review your current financial situation, and better prepare you mentally for the costs associated with a typical business expansion project.

Expanding your business can be an exciting, and potentially lucrative, experience, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t without its fair share of difficulties. If you can rise to the challenge though, you’ll find it to ultimately be incredibly rewarding, on both a personal and a financial level.

GDPR and Brexit: How Will It Affect UK Businesses

The UK still remains under the authority of the European Union until it leaves at some point. This means that certain laws and regulations still apply for as long as the country remains under the jurisdiction of the EU and businesses in the UK need to comply with those standards in order to avoid paying various fines that can be sometimes very costly.

A good example is data protection. There are new regulations imposed by the EU that are going to come into effect in May 2018, which is not that far into the future. The fines for not complying with those regulations can easily reach up to millions of Euros. It is therefore of utmost importance for companies to learn the new laws quickly and understand them as much as possible even before they come into effect. When this is the case GDPR consultancy comes into play.

So what is all the fuss about GDPR anyway and why business owners should be so concerned about it? In a nutshell, GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. The law stipulates that EU citizens must give explicit consent for all sort of information about them (including personal information) and their data to be held in a company’s system. What is more, they have a right to delete, transfer, access and correct that personal information at any time without any restrictions.

So what does it mean for UK-based companies? They need still to comply. After the UK leaves the European Union, if a company does business with any of the member countries the law still applies.

If you are unsure how your company should comply with the regulation, you might want to ask somebody for help with it. I can completely understand why business compliance can be such a huge issue these days and why so many business owners choose to outsource that area of their businesses to somebody else. After all, they have some other, more important things to attend to and they might not have enough time to be able to take care of every aspect of running their business themselves.

Selecting a Good Courier Service

It is important that courier services are reliable. You need to be able to trust these services to deliver your package on time and intact. If you own a business, you might rely on a courier service to deliver your products to your customers. Obviously, you want your customers to receive their merchandise in a timely manner and in good condition. Otherwise, they might not want to do business with you any more. There are certainly many different courier services to choose from. All of them say they are better than their competitors. So how do you decide which one to use? Here is some advice regarding selecting a good courier service.

1. Dependability

You are placing a great deal of trust in a courier service when you decide to use them to send your packages. With this trust comes a certain level of expectation. Therefore, you need to be sure that a courier service is capable of meeting your expectations before you decide to use them. To determine this, you will need to find out the opinions of people who have used them in the past. It would be a good idea to read as many reviews as you can to really get a good sense of how a courier service does their business. Why do the people who write good reviews like the company so much. What are the things they do right? Alternately, what are the specific complaints in the negative reviews? You will need to weigh all of these things when you are making your final decision.

2. Saturday delivery

Some courier services do not deliver any packages on Saturday. This might matter to you if you run a business because your customers will not be able to get their products from you as quickly. Therefore, you might want to seek out a courier service that is actually in operation on Saturday. For some info on priority air freight, you can take a look at http://cnwglobal.com/.

3. Shipping rates

You might find a courier service with a great reputation for dependability and that delivers on Saturday. However, you still might now want to use them if their shipping rates are very high. The amount of money a courier service charges is especially important if you plan on using them on a regular basis. Therefore, it is in your best interests to shop around and compare prices.

How to Create a Home Office Space

Social workers tend to spend the majority of their time out of the office, especially if you plan on helping seniors as a social worker. Much of your day will be spent traveling from one appointment to another, compiling your notes as you go, and visiting clients in their home or senior residence. There is usually little time left to head into the office.
As you work to finish up your online masters in social work through Rutgers Online, you may want to take a look around your home and consider how you can create a home office space. This will allow you to be organized at the end of the day, and ensure that your notes are always in order and your appointments are set. Setting up a home office can be relatively simple as long as you keep the basics in mind.

Look for a Quiet Area

While it’s not necessary to dedicate a whole room to your home office, it is important to find a quiet space free of interruptions. Setting up shop in the living room where the TV is and the rest of the family enjoys socializing is not ideal. If you’re tight on space you may need to be a little creative and opt for something such as a floating shelf installed on the wall that can act as your desk. You can even install one that folds up so it’s not in the way.

Install Storage for Files/Resources

Storage will be another key factor in your home office space. A small filing cabinet that you can tuck under your desk will take up the least amount of space. If you want you can opt for something a little more creative and bulky, such as installed shelving, a larger drawer system, or whatever you like.

Find the Perfect Chair

One of the most important features of your home office will be your chair. Now it doesn’t have to be big and bulky. Instead, the emphasis instead should be on the height of the chair in relation to your desk, and that it forces you to sit in an ergonomic position.

Proper Lighting

Proper lighting is another must-have in your office space. While natural lighting is ideal, it’s not always possible. There’s also the fact you may be working late hours as a social worker, so by the time you get home it could be dark. Consider adding a desk lamp or task lamp to your desk area to ensure it is properly lit at all times and you aren’t straining your eyes.

Helping You Perform Your Job Better

Social work is a very demanding job both physically and mentally, especially in terms of geriatric social work. The best solution is to prepare yourself as best you can so that you can perform your job better. By creating a home office space for yourself you’ll have that chance at the end of the day to organize your work in peace, and ensure all your records are detailed.

 

I am discussing all kinds of business and finance topics on this blog and I hope that the information I provide will prove to be useful.