Small Business Bonfire

So your small business is thriving. You’ve doubled your number of employees in one year, you’ve opened up three new brick-and-mortar locations and your online store is doing better than ever. You’re ready to take things to the next level, and now you find yourself asking that all-important question – to incorporate or not to incorporate?

Incorporating a business can be a good idea for some entrepreneurs, but it certainly has its drawbacks as well. Consequently, it’s important that every business owner weigh the pros and cons of creating a corporation before they decide to take the plunge. To help you out, here’s a rundown of the advantages and consequences of incorporating your small business.

The Pros

• Incorporating protects owners from liability. When you incorporate a business, it creates a legal entity that is separate from the owners of the corporation. As a result, owners…

One day a gentleman visited his good friend who owned a busy advertising company. It had been months since he visited his friend's office.

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For any location-based business, such as a restaurant or retail store, the key is foot traffic. You need to get people in the door to make sales.

But how do you reach customers? Who are they? And where are they located?

Technology has made the process of researching local restaurants or retail stores easier than ever for your potential customers. Building a customer profile is no longer something only major national brands can afford. Any business – whether a regional chain, a franchise of a national chain, or a single location – can take advantage of data to develop a more specific, more cost effective, and better targeted local marketing strategy.

Local marketing consistently outperforms national campaigns for driving traffic and coupon redemption. It can be more relevant and timely at the moment when consumers are making purchase decisions.

Local Retail Marketing…

There is this misconception floating around that marketing a business online is hard- hard to figure out, hard to do, and hard to maintain. If the business involves off-line services or is a brick and mortar entity, then these misconceptions may be magnified by the power of ten. It's a fact that many small businesses seem to be avoiding Internet marketing, and even of the ones who are online, many just aren't seeing the kind of payback they were looking for.

The truth is that successfully marketing a business online is not just about working hard, it's about working smart. Often, it's the seemingly inconsequential steps that can make the biggest impact. For example, here are five things that just about any business…