Stony Creek Colors is a Springfield, TN-based developer of dyes technology designed to offer bio-based dyes for the textile industry. The company’s technology provides clean and safe natural dyes that replace the hazardous chemicals currently used in the supply chains, enabling the textile and fashion industries to give their consumers access to environmentally conscious premium products.
Stony Creek Colors was funded $4.8 million led by some strategic angel investors in Lewis & Clark AgriFood and Levi Strauss & Co. The company will use the capital further to grow its farming infrastructure and the dye extraction procedure to bring regenerative solutions to farmers and the textile industry.
Sarah Bellos, Founder and CEO of Stony Creek Colors. The company remains the only industrial-scale manufacturer globally of 100% bio-based indigo, as permitted by the USDA BioPreferred Program. Its vertically-integrated prototype allows full traceability-down to the farm level–that brands and consumers trust.
Since its inception, the company has grown, reaped, and processed its proprietary indigo sorts on over 500 acres of farmland via its repeatable and expandable farmer production model. The company’s natural indigo procedure fixes nitrogen and catches more carbon than it uses, boosting environmental progress for the farms where the crops are produced.
In complement to farming supply chain integrations, Stony Creek Colors is known for its innovations in current dye applications and customer point-of-use for this natural chemistry. Earlier this year, Stony Creek Colors publicly established IndiGold®, the first plant-derived, pre-reduced indigo for denim mills, with global metier chemicals leader Archroma.
Stony Creek Colors’ vertically-integrated technology eliminates the significant documented inefficiencies in plant-based indigo production. To authorize a high-purity dye appropriate for its industrial denim mill customers while showing a soil health-enriching and favorable climate chemical that fits well into farmers’ annual crop rotations. Stony Creek is increasing accessibility of renewable color chemistries as demand for plant-based innovations rises in the fashion and textile demands.
By: K. Tagura
Author statement:
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Entrepreneurs are not born; they learn things by experiencing ups and downs in a business. To make consistent improvement to improve your business status is critical to maintaining sustainability. Successful entrepreneurs perpetually monitor their business process in order to identify loopholes. Monitoring your business cash flow and identifying your strengths and weaknesses is a key process that helps you improve your business.
Apart from this, there are several things you can do to keep the risk minimum while enjoying a double-digit growth every year.
Here we have included an overview of some necessary means you can use to improve your business growth
Ways to Improve your Business
1. Assess Your Business Situation
As mentioned earlier, monitoring the progress of your business is a key to bring improvement. This is where you identify the areas that need change. However, before you make the changes, it is ideal to ensure that you are aware of the factors that are affecting the success of your business.
These factors may include emerging market trends, your current business strategies, weak market strategies or even lack of competent staff. Fortunately, there are a number of tools you can use to assess your business status. Following tools can help you:
SWOT Analysis:
It is an effective tool that is designed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business. Not only does it help you assess the strong areas of your business operations, but also threats and opportunities. You can work out all internal as well as external factors that keep your business from growing.
SWOT is one of the widely used analytical tools to help you in the decision-making process.
SWOT
Builds on strengths
Minimizes weaknesses
Seizes opportunities
Counteracts threats
Market research
It is another important tool to investigate the business market to help entrepreneurs identify emerging trends, new technologies, and customer demands
Trend Analysis
The tool uses your business data for the last five years to identify and assess consistent trends.
Benchmarking
It is a smart tool that is used to measure business performances with the same size of business being operated in the industry.
2. Business Goals
Whether it is business or your life, without goals it is completely directionless. Business goals keep you focused and energetic, which makes your business successful. You can use these objectives as a part of your ongoing business plan to make sure you keep moving forward.
However, there are certain criteria that need to be considered while setting these goals. Your goals have to be SMART- specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. That means they have to be practical to be achieved within a set timeline. It would be better to prioritize your business goals or to write them down on paper.
You can plan short or long -term strategies to accomplish them. It will help you determine the time, finances and resources.
3. Develop a Strategic Plan
There is no doubt that businesses whether small or big, take time to progress. That is why it is important to create a smart strategic plan that has an outlook of at least 3 to 4 years. The plan should be made keeping the business goals ahead.
Make sure each year defines your business goals plus how your team will achieve those goals over the estimated time. Besides this, it is important to prepare a financial plan to meet the growing needs of your business.
That means the business strategy will not only define how your business will make profits, but also where and how much you will invest.
According to expert entrepreneurs, it is always beneficial to review your business strategic plans. It helps you match the set goals with the profit your business has produced.
4. Be Passionate About Meeting the Goals
This might seem a no-brainer or something trivial, but it can make a huge difference when it comes to accomplishing your business goals. When you are passionate about your work, your colleagues and employees can feel this energy as well.
In other words, showing enthusiasm and excitement cannot be underestimated as it plays a critical role to make your team more hardworking, and focused toward their work productivity. The passion and enthusiasm translate to a better outcome.
Unhappy workers, on the other hand, pass through negative energy and make work more challenging.
5. Implement Strategies
You cannot achieve business goals unless you implement the changes. Once you have made the strategic plan and estimated finances, it is the time to implement strategies. The implementation process includes several tasks and actions.
It is always a good idea to device an action plan, divides the workload, and tasks accordingly. Following are some of the important points to help you implement the changes for business improvement.
Time Frame: Determine how long a specific task will take to complete. Set tentative dates for the task.
Actions: Divide the tasks among those employees that you think are the most appropriate to accomplish them. State actions to be taken precisely.
Responsibilities: Assign responsibilities; make sure your teams get the work done in time
Resources: Compile a list of supplies, budget, and other finances
Outcomes: State your desired outcomes and how the results will be evaluated
6. Evaluate Success
You need to establish some measures to evaluate whether you have achieved your business goal or not. These assessment measures depend on the type of tasks you are working on. If your business goals are significant, the measurement process will be more complex, such as measuring profits by a set percentage.
Along with these measures, you can set percentages for each task. It will help you evaluate the success statistically. Plus, you need to consider how frequently you wish to measure your business achievements. It is very helpful when it is about setting new goals.
Final Thoughts
Your business does not only need your time, but also smart strategies and an effective action plan to improve revenues and profits. The above-mentioned tips are necessary means all entrepreneurs must adopt to sustain a prosperous business.
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When you start a business, you have to be extra careful with how you spend your capital. There are many ways for small business owners to increase their profits. Reducing their costs is one of the simplest and most effective ones. A lot of the times, entrepreneurs would add costs to their budgets that they don’t necessarily have to make. It might appear to them that these are necessary expenses when that’s not the case. They can add many of these expenses once their business has established.
Expenses That Small Businesses Should Avoid
Excessive Advertising
Yes, advertising is quite important for businesses, but excessive advertisement is not. It still makes sense for large businesses to go full-on with advertising because they have the budget to do so. However, when it comes to small businesses, they must do intelligent and selective advertising only. Their first course of action should be to identify the advertising channels that work best for them. Just because you are a restaurant at the corner of a street does not mean you have to use awnings, vinyls, neon signs, and all other types of materials for advertising purposes. Pick the ones that work and skip what doesn’t.
Too Many Work Hours
You don’t necessarily have to follow the trends of your competitors to compete with them. It does not matter how good they are, even the best ones can make mistakes at times. Many business owners choose to keep their premises opened for customers for long hours. They will open the business early in the morning and close it late at night just so they can serve more customers. However, one must do cost calculation before taking such a step? What if you are getting only five customers in the first three hours of the business and five more at the last two hours?
Now imagine the cost of utility, wages of your employees, etc. Are you covering the costs of keeping your business opened for five additional hours with only 10 customers? Even if you want to continue this way, you better test it for a week only. If the response is cold, you should quit this practice as soon as possible.
Pursuing the Best of Everything
The idea sounds great but is not the way to go about doing business when you are in your early stages. You should spend your money on things you need, not the things you want unless you have the budget to do so. If you are renting space for your office, you should look for a place that you can easily afford. Going for the best location in the most commercial area will cost you a lot of money. You can save your money even when it comes to internal equipment. Why buy new couches, seats and brand new computers when you can do with high-quality used equipment?
Why go for a printer with fancy looks and capacity to print hundreds of pages in a minute when you won’t ever need that many printouts at a time? Go with simple and beautiful when it comes to decorating your office. You don’t want to spend your budget on things that are not going to yield any benefits for your business.
Hiring IT Staff
IT is integral to any business today, tech or non-tech. However, it does not mean you have to have an IT team on board. One of the beauties of modern technology is that it allows you to outsource a lot of the business processes. The best thing about outsourcing business processes is that you can save a lot of money by doing so. Managed IT services are a perfect way for you to save IT costs while benefitting from expertise of the best professionals of the industry. Rather than paying thousands of dollars to three or four IT people, it makes more sense for small businesses to outsource their IT processes for a small monthly fee.
The good news is that you can outsource almost anything IT-related. From basic helpdesk to on-demand data officers, IT outsourcing can cover a lot of ground for you.
Unnecessary Debts
Taking loans when starting a business is imperative for your growth and to have enough cash in hand to support your operations. However, there are more ways to fund your business than you might realize. Many small business owners follow venture capitalists and conventional banks when it comes time to fund their businesses. However, crowdfunding has emerged as an amazing funding option for startups and small businesses. The good thing about crowdfunding is that you do not necessarily have to offer equity to the investors in your business. Sometimes, you can just reward them with a sample of your product.
Hiring Only Full-time Employees
If you own a small business, you might want to consider hiring interns. Interns can benefit your business in many ways. First, you do not have to pay them the salary of a full-time employee. Second, you can ask them to do a lot of the mundane tasks that otherwise affect the productivity of your full-time employees negatively. While it might not be the best practice, in some countries of the world they have free internships as well wherein you do not have to pay your interns. However, that’s not the right thing to do, and you should compensate their work to keep them motivated.
Conclusion
You should consider avoiding these expenses if you are a small business owner or about to be one. You can always take advice from those who have their own businesses to figure out what’s necessary and what’s not. Keep yourself up-to-date with new technological advancements. Taking advantage of modern software and hardware solutions can help you save a lot of money. Take the example of a printer with duplex printing option. You could cut your paper costs in half by printing on both sides of the paper. In the end, look into your current setup and operations to see what some expenses are that you can easily live without.
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Carv is a Los Angeles, CA-based developer of a gaming platform designed to provide all games in one place. The company’s services offer achievement display, friends, game discovery, and direct monetization, enabling gamers with data sovereignty and games with intelligence.
Carv was funded $4 million led by Vertex, Temasek Holding’s venture capital arm, with participation from EVOS, Infinity Ventures Crypto, YGG SEA, SNACKCLUB, UpHonest Capital, Lyrik Ventures, Lintentry Foundation, PAKADAO, 7UpDAO, Angel Investor Aliaksandr Hadzilin. The company intends to use the funds to onboard talent and continue building the interoperable credential infrastructure alongside ecosystem partners.
It uses blockchain-based technology to allow users to host their usernames and information and carry it between applications. This information can include data such as achievements users have earned in games, their reputation, connections to friends they have met along the way, and more. Decentralized identity acts as a single sign-in where the user generates a unique identity that the user control.
The company concentrated on Web3 gaming because of the considerable consumer-facing demand, and that’s where the most significant draw for decentralized identity opportunities currently exists. Web3 is the name given to the possible successive era of the web, learned as the decentralized web, where apps use peer-to-peer without centralized authority and run using crypto token economies.
This also builds data infrastructure and analytics to empower game studios to recognize gamer activities accurately, capture an insight-driven understanding of the user base, and effectively reach the desired group of users.
CARV is continuously building the gaming space with partners to kick off gaming tournaments and game night campaigns backed by talks, in-game hunts, and rewards to bring engagement to its product.
By: K. Tagura
Author statement:
Who we are: Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com
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Gravitics a Seattle, WA-based developer of aerospace stations designed to form the building blocks for human life in space. The company manufactures space station modules with interfacing options, space armor, and shipyard-style fabrication, enabling clients to execute their outer aerospace missions.
Gravitics was funded $20 million conducted by Type One Ventures, with other participants from Draper Associates, FJ Labs, The Venture Collective, Giant Step Capital, Helios Capital, angel investors in Gaingels, Spectre, Manhattan West, and Mana Ventures. The company plans to use funds to expand operations and its development efforts.
The company founded in 2021 and headed by CEO Colin Doughan. Gravitics is developing the StarMax™, a flexible-use aerospace station module. The StarMax module delivers up to 400 cubic meters of functional habitable volume – nearly half the significance of the International Space Station in one module. StarMax’s lineage of modules is consistent with launching on any of the following generation takeoff vehicles, including ULA’s Vulcan, and SpaceX’s Starship, Blue Origin’s New Glenn.
From an investor perspective, Tarek Waked, Type One founding partner and Gravitics board member, said his company noticed numerous underlying trends supporting the company’s future vision.
The exact margin that Gravitics is making is not as a space station operator. Rather than compete with other companies, Gravitics wants to be their core supplier. Gravitics is seeking to complete the ongoing needs of these stations once they are operational. Also, meeting organic demand that the company is betting on will emerge as costs for launching cargo and crew drop.
The company has already begun assembly of its first StarMax prototype. It is equipped to operate module pressure tests in early 2023, with projects for an upcoming orbital test mission to be announced soon.
By: K. Tagura
Author statement:
Who we are: Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com
You can review our featured partners to help your success with your business or project.
Irrespective of your business size, your business’ marketing budget is a precious resource. It is your investment, which can help you grow your company’s business and stock value. So you surely want it to give results for the growth of your business.
Large-scale businesses usually have high marketing budgets as compared to small-scale businesses. Small companies normally allocate a small budget for marketing due to their limited resources. It means that if you are a small business owner you do not have the finances to put to waste.
As a small business owner, you need to ask yourself these questions:
“Are you spending your budget on the right tactics?” “Are you making effective and optimal use of your budget?” “Is it working for your business?”
To put in simple words, are you wasting away your marketing budget?
Adobe researched how effectively companies spend their marketing budgets. It was not a surprise that most of those companies were not doing a good job.
Do you feel that you also fall in the category of these small businesses that are not spending their marketing budgets the right way?
Then you should continue reading to know the silly ways in which you might be wasting your marketing budget and how to fix them.
Use of social media for building following:
Undoubtedly, social media is a great tool for small businesses to use for their marketing. But most businesses start their marketing on social media without a proper strategy.
Gone are the times when Facebook marketing was free and reach was high. Now you need to invest money and efforts in Facebook marketing thanks to its evolving algorithm. Small businesses need to spend on the paid advertising to make their business ads visible and get their content seen by the target audience.
How to fix this?
The price of Facebook ads is not too high but due to increased competition, it is likely to get higher shortly. This means you may need to spend more money to make your content visible to your followers. Presently, what you can do is use your social media investment to build an email list of your followers. This will allow you to have direct communication with them. Give incentives to your followers for sharing their email addresses.
Expecting instant and high-end results:
Many small businesses begin with a strong ambition, but most of them fail within a few months. The problem lies in their unrealistically high expectations. They want to see results in just a few months following their launch. And when they fail in getting those results, they back out.
How to Fix this?
As a small business owner, you should expect a ramp-up period of two years. If this looks impossible to you, smartly create a marketing strategy to keep your marketing engine fueling and running. Then, create as much influential and informative content as you can afford to create to promote your business.
Inability to understand your target audience:
To grab the attention of your audience, you must understand the behaviors and attitudes of your potential customers. Otherwise, you are just making your marketing budget go down the drain.
A Fix:
KNOW your target audience, their behaviors, and attitudes before you even create a content strategy. Then figure out ways to communicate with them effectively.
Not realizing how you succeeded in attracting your valuable customers:
You can refer to them as your loyal customers or valuable customers who come back to you again and again. You should know what marketing techniques and content brought those invaluable customers to your business. These top 20% of customers may give you nearly half of your business revenue.
Spending a significant portion of your advertising campaign: You can find lots of marketing tactics to give a try. Some of these may perform great, but in most cases, they may not work for you especially when you have a limited budget to give a one-time shot. Small businesses should avoid diving into big-time five-figure spending on marketing campaigns.
What is the Fix?
You need to adopt a test and trial method before investing big. First, invest in $1000 or less. If that particular marketing tactic does not work at an investment of $1000, it is highly likely that it will not work on $1500 or more.
You are not keeping proper track of your marketing investments and efforts:
Many small businesses set up a Google Analytics account, but don’t use it. In case, some are using it they don’t know how to make optimal use of it and get the benefit. Same is the case with Google AdWords for PPC. You may buy the space for ad campaigns, but end up wasting a lot of money without analyzing how those ads performed.
An Easy Fix!
You can easily learn Google Analytics tracking and AdWords through free online courses on Google. Setup conversion tracking for your advertising campaigns in Google analytics. This enables you to effectively see and analyze the activity of your potential customers on your website. If you haven’t done this yet, do it right away!
You are trying to be the jack of all trades:
Small business owners with limited resources often try to manage multiple things alone. You cannot afford to hire a complete marketing staff, but just one or two people for it. You cannot manage the entire marketing strategy all alone.
A simple solution!
Keep your focus on understanding your audience, on which platform you can mostly find them and which marketing tools and content they like.
You are following the same marketing strategy for years:
This is the biggest mistake because the marketing landscape is evolving at a rapid pace, nowadays. While focusing on the above-mentioned things, it is also recommended that you try a few new techniques every year.
The solution:
With the evolution of marketing tactics, you need to evolve as well! Always remain on the lookout for the latest marketing techniques that fit your low budget.
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If you think you cannot market a product with a small budget, then you are mistaken. To run a successful business, whether it is small or big, you need to implement top-notch marketing ideas strategies. So, it is essential to take the time and plan effective ways to market your product or service. Take note not that every marketing technique requires a hefty budget.
Therefore, you can find budget-friendly ways to target an audience. In the light of this, here are five outside of the box marketing ideas for your small business.
Develop a Loyalty Program
Loyalty program ideas are simple. They create interest based on top of a brand’s value. So, if you love buying a particular brand, and if you’re offered something extra, such as 30% on your next purchase, you will most likely take advantage of the opportunity. Hence, announcing 50% flat off, coupons or different consumer-friendly offers can provide the limelight to your business that it needs. Moreover, consumers love going to the same brand if it sells high-quality products. One of the best ways to develop a loyalty program is to provide better quality so that consumers come back for more. As a small business owner, you need to retain existing consumers along with attracting new customers. This step is crucial to growing your small business further. When you reward your existing consumers, they will likely return and purchase more.
Plus, if a customer returns to your store more often, it will increase sales, brand image, and brand loyalty at the same time. Therefore, opt for customer loyalty programs as they work as a marketing tool as well. If your existing and satisfied customers recommend your brand, it will help you reach a wide market, influence your customer base, and of course benefit your startup in an excellent way.
Promote Customer Engagement
Sometimes a simple tactic like talking to your customer casually can feel engaging to them. You might ask; ‘would you like to see more items in this range?’ A positive response to this is an open invitation to talk to them, ask for their feedback, their thoughts, and how you could probably make things better for them. You can also use social media to boost your customer engagement. Social media profiles allow you to interact with a wider audience in a short time.
You can always use social media profiles to ask for suggestion and answer queries using direct messaging. Moreover, asking your customers to review your official page on Facebook is another quick way to give your small business a boost.
Moreover, when launching a product go live on your Instagram and Facebook profiles and keep your audience engaged. When you stay active and interactive on public profiles, it will let people know about your business ideas. Apart from this, using social media in the right way can benefit your business in numerous ways. For instance, you can engage the audience by starting a selfie campaign, which also encourages them to share or post more. You should customize hashtags and encourage the audience to use them in their post along with tagging. This is also an effective way to target a new audience.
Personalized Incentive
Customers love to be treated well, and this is for those customers that have value. For example, one valuable customer might be a regular one at your outlet, and another might buy bulk items from you periodically. Both types of customers could be justified recipients of personalized gifts from your brand. You can add complimentary items or products in their orders. It will show that you value and cherish your regular customers. Moreover, organizing a giveaway is another fun way to treat your consumers, especially if they are outside the country. You can arrange a giveaway in partnership with another small business to reach new people.
Host a Webinar
Hosting a webinar shows your expertise in your niche. Engaging experts in this webinar will show how connected you are. Also, the more people you successfully invite as participants will also demonstrate how much people already follow you and trust your expertise. Moreover, a webinar can do wonders for your business. According to a survey, 58% of marketers prefer to use webinars for promotion. Many successful marketing strategists even think that marketing on a webinar is great to reach a wider audience.
Data from different surveys have revealed that up to 40% people become qualified leads after attending a webinar as it provides the information they need. In fact, webinars retain 30-40% more attention so there is a chance that attendees will make a purchase.
Elevate content distribution
Content production and distribution go hand-in-hand, and your content is only as good as your distribution mechanism. Leveraging major social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube is crucial. This technique is ideal to share valuable, relevant, and constant content on your social media.
It helps in two ways that are significant for any small business. First, it helps attract or target your audience. Second, it will help them turn into potential leads. Make sure your content provides information and resonates with the audience.
You should use blogs and social media posts to distribute your message. Also, the content you share should not be the typical advertisement that forces people to make a purchase. It should speak to them on personal level so they trust you and your brand.
Concluding Lines
Marketing a small business may seem a hassle at the beginning. But, if you opt for outside the box marketing strategies, you will get the desired outcome even on a shoe-string budget. For marketing, you only need to develop and leverage top-notch social media platforms and keep them updated. Other strategies like casual interaction are a smart way to identify your shortcomings and work on them to take your small business a step ahead. If you or are planning to launch a small business, try these ideas and make a difference.
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You can review our featured partners to help your success with your business or project.
Starting up a business is an easy job to do, but making it successful is challenging, especially when you’re competing against several business rivals. In that case, targeting a niche market is perhaps the most successful idea you can work on.
To succeed in your business, you first need to determine the market and identify the customers you’re going to target. This is what all the businessmen do. Usually, they target a large group of people with various demographics.
However, a niche market is a defined group of people that have ‘particular’ needs. By keeping in view those specific needs, you operate your business to render the products or services that meet their demands. You deal in those special products or services which mainstream businesses have overlooked.
For instance, many shoe brands provide a vast variety of shoes. But, if your business deals in providing shoes for people with plantar fasciitis, you are targeting a niche; a specific segment of the market. This is what a niche market is.
Coming to the niche business marketing, it is specializing in one area of business while targeting a specific segment of the market.
You Must Know Your Target Niche Market Inside Out
Determining your niche market is crucial for operating your business. It not only helps you to set and expand your marketing budget but also give you a clear insight into where to advertise. Further, it makes you stand out above your competitors.
For selecting a niche, you need to think about what you are best at. So, you will have enough knowledge regarding the product or service you will be dealing in. To make it clearer, let’s take some ideas you can work on to run your niche business.
Today, many people demand diet foods such as gluten-free, low-calorie, organic or vegans. However, they rarely find it in eateries. If they find their diet food online, they prefer to buy it online rather than preparing it at home. This is because it is more convenient for them.
Similarly, certain people hardly get their size in apparel stores. Therefore, offering plus-sized and petite clothing to these potential customers will not be a bad idea for your niche business.
Niche Marketing
Before getting down to the nitty-gritty of niche marketing, let’s talk about some businesses dealing in niche markets. Lefty’s, based in San Francisco, is a store that sells school stationery, gardening tools, kitchen goods and a lot more. What’s the best part? All their products are specialized for left-handers! Furthermore, they also offer customized gifts for the lefties in your life.
Furthermore, Vermont Wooden Toys are known to offer their specialty; handcrafted toys. Based in the Green Mountain State, the business is owned by a proprietor Ron Voake. People buy his products because of certain values- dedication, love, and craftsmanship. They place their orders on the website or over phone calls.
In the same way, you need to practice several marketing strategies to make the best use of your business. Take a look for a few niche business marketing tips here.
User-Generated Content
The era when company ads would persuade people to buy a product is long gone. Today, they usually look for experiences. They go online and search for user-generated content before purchasing a particular product.
User-generated content works in two ways; advertises your brand for free, and increases your credibility. And what’s more? It brings new customers to you. To have a better understanding, you can study previous success stories of other brands that implemented the UGC strategy.
Advertising Platforms You Need To Leverage
As niche marketing isn’t regular marketing, you need to pinpoint specific platforms for advertising your product. Promoting your niche business on social platforms such as Facebook or Twitter isn’t a bad idea. However, the thing is these platforms are already over-populated with other business rivals hence leading to high-competition.
In that case, you can limit your promotion and brand visibility to specific demographics on these platforms to reach out to your targeted customers. No matter what tactic you choose, make sure to reach your niche market cost-effectively.
Partnering With Other Services
To reach out your business goals, develop a kind of service that not only offers a great product to your customers but also give them a fantastic experience. You can do this by providing additional services such as product delivery.
However, niche businesses are small, and therefore it can be costly for you to offer extra services to your customers. For this, you can team up with other service providers to cater to your customers in a better way.
Marketing Offline
It is crucial to determine your customers’ preferences and priorities to run your business. Well, you are required to market your product offline for two reasons. First, your targeted segment may not be tech-savvy enough to leverage internet access. Second, your customers might want to make their orders offline, depending on your product nature.
Furthermore, there are many ideas to market your product offline while adopting cost-effective methods. For instance, you can distribute your brand’s promotional materials such as business cards, coupons or pamphlets in any local events. This will boost the physical connection between potential customers and your brand.
Leveraging Influencers
To operate a niche business, you must first figure out your customers’ niche interests. Once you are done with it, look for the Instagram influencers who appeal your target segment and have a large number of followers. Approach them. Send a few of your products for free and ask for a shoutout in return. This won’t only help you in increasing your audience but also builds trust about your brand.
Segmented Marketing
Well, targeting a specific segment of the market for your niche business isn’t enough. You’ll have to gather and evaluate data on their demographics, values, and interests. Then, you further segment it and approach each group within your targeted niche. In this way, you’re able to engage with your niche market. Doing so will help you to maximize your business.
Conclusion
As compared to other businesses that target a wide audience with unspecific interests, a niche business focuses on the particular needs of a determined group of people. However, if you want your business to be flourished, you need to identify your niche market first.
While focusing on your specific customers, there are plenty of strategies you can adopt to achieve your business goals. By implementing the tactics mentioned above, you’ll be able to maintain your budgets and maximize your business.
In addition to that, you can also employ other strategies or new ways to promote your business. No matter what strategies you’re working in with, the main thing you have to keep in focus is your customers’ interests. It will surely help you adopt the right tactics for your business, increase profits and raise brand awareness.
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Yes Hearing is an NYC-based hearing aid device provider intended to improve access to hearing aids for the elderly. The company’s platform offers a wide range of hearing aid products for hearing problems, enabling users to access healthcare and hearing technologies through home visit treatment and home care.
Yes Hearing was funded $10 million led by Blue Heron Capital, and other participants in the round include Ensemble Innovation Ventures, Primetime Partners, Maccabee Ventures, and angel investors of Gaingels. The new investment round will help the company scale its direct-to-consumer operations, speed up the development of its home care platform, and strengthen its market, service, and product offerings.
The company was founded in 2019 by CEO Sam Shear. The company’s patient-centered delivery model has combined audiologist-led telehealth with hands-on professional hearing care at home to increase the adoption, usage, and ongoing care for individuals with hearing loss. As a result, the company provides prescription hearing aids at upwards of 40% less than the cost in a typical clinic setting.
Gordon Crenshaw, Principal at Blue Heron Capital, said, Yes Hearing is solving the nearly $20B annual hearing loss market with a novel and disruptive platform, meeting consumers and patients with hearing loss where they want to be met: in the home. In addition, the company’s expansive network of audiologists gives Yes Hearing unparalleled reach to meet the demands of the millions of individuals in the country who are suffering from hearing loss.
Yes Hearing’s solution has a meaningful, positive impact on the grade of life for older adults. Hearing loss can be managed and treated, but millions of people don’t receive the care they often need because of the stigma and cost associated with maintenance.
The FDA’s recent decision to allow over-the-counter sales is excellent for hearing aid awareness and access. They are very excited for more people to get the hearing aids they need, but hearing care is so much more than that. Yes Hearing offers an in-home service that provides the knowledge and counseling required to increase the actual usage of hearing aids. In addition, it leads to long-term health benefits beyond listening, including communication, mobility, dementia prevention, and more.
By: K. Tagura
Author statement:
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Cruz Foam is a Santa Cruz, CA-based developer of foam plastic materials designed to power up the packaging industry to be a catalyst for a cleaner environment. The company’s materials are produced by transforming chitin. A biopolymer found in shrimp shells, into structural foams to replace petroleum-based foams with an environmentally friendly process, enabling companies to tackle the problem of the plastic pollution epidemic by creating a biodegradable packaging replacement for single-use plastics.
Cruz Foam was funded $18 million led by Helena, with support from One Small Planet, Regeneration.VC, At One Ventures, SoundWaves, and strategic angel investors. The company plans to use the new budget to accelerate and scale the commercialization of its circular materials to respond to market demand.
The company was established in 2017 by John Felts, CEO, and Marco Rolandi, CSO, mission to replace single-use, petroleum-based plastics. It is forming substitutes for EPS and EPE and driving into new spaces such as cold chains and plain packaging for consumer-packaged goods. Cruz Foam is a proactive solution that answers that call and accelerates the pace of change by preventing new plastic from entering the waste stream by design. Derived from all naturally occurring food waste materials, Cruz Foam was developed to provide protection and performance without adverse environmental impacts.
The necessity to prototype and test these possibilities is one reason the company is growing such a considerably sized round. In addition, they just purchased a new extruder (foam like this is essentially printed using specialized equipment) and have been testing with all kinds of new form factors caused by partners and potential partners across many industries.
Felts said that Helena is highly aligned with their mission and values. They are excited to collaborate with their team and other partners to deliver proactive solutions to address the preventable environmental crisis of plastic pollution. Further, their conversion to a Benefit Corporation underscores their core values and commitment to this mission.
By: K. Tagura
Author statement:
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