budget

3 Smart and Strategic Ways to Make Your Business Stand Out on a Budget

Angela Manning Business, Finance , , , , , ,
3 Smart and Strategic Ways to Make Your Business Stand Out on a Budget

As you know, at nonsociety.com the vision is to help people like you march to the beat of your own drum, and avoid living, working and being stuck in other people’s boxes. After all, life is short, and you won’t find many people — or probably any people — in their final moments regretting that they “spent too much time conforming to the wishes of others”. On the contrary, you’ll typically hear them lament about doing far too much for people they don’t even like, and not enough for themselves and those they truly care about.

Now, what does this have to do with your business? It’s this: just as you want your life to stand out from the ordinary, you also want — and frankly need — your business to stand out from your competitors. Otherwise, you’ll end up being the best kept secret in your marketplace, which is the worst thing that can happen; because it means you’ll be out of business sooner or later.

To avoid that fate — and to help you make a lasting positive impact on current and future customers — here are three smart and strategic ways to make your business stand out, but without exceeding your budget or forcing you deep into debt:

1. Hold a Contest

Contests are exciting and memorable ways to make a splash, generate publicity, and increase brand visibility that translates into more sales and profits. Just remember to think outside of the box and do something that truly grabs attention. For example, instead of giving away a gift certificate (yawn…), you can offer the lucky winner a cruise on a luxurious party bus. You can even take photos and post them on your social media pages, which adds to the fun.

2. Cross-Promote

Instead of doing all of the promotional heavy lifting on your own, why not find a strategic partner and create a win-win alliance? For example, if you build custom business signs, then sending and receiving referrals with a business lawyer who specializes in working with clients starting a new business (and therefore need signs for their store, trade show booth, etc.) could be a positive relationship for all involved, including your mutual customers/clients.

3. Create an app

Who says you need to be a Fortune 500 enterprise to have an app? That may have been the case a couple of decades ago, but these days many small businesses — including home-based businesses on a tight budget — are staying connected with current and future customers through a mobile app. You can build something impressive and functional for less than you think, and the ROI can be enormous.

The Bottom Line

Standing out in a competitive, crowded marketplace isn’t just a good idea: it’s necessary for your business to survive. The above suggestions can help you make a lasting impact with your target market, and surge ahead of your competitors.

Garden Renovation on a Budget, How to Make it Happen

Angela Manning Uncategorized , , , ,
Garden Renovation on a Budget, How to Make it Happen

If you own a property with a garden then you will understand just how much of a pain this part of your home can be. The thing is that we all want to look out of our window and see a pretty garden or have a beautiful place t relax in when the sun starts shining. In spite of this, when it comes to spending money on the house, we all know that the living room, kitchen, bathrooms and bedrooms will always take precedent over an outside space.

With that being said, none of us want to ignore the garden completely and if you want to give yours a make over, without spending crazy sums of cash, then here are some tips to give your garden a sexy budget makeover.

Pallets

Adding decking to your garden looks awesome but sadly those lush wooden panels come with a hefty price tag. However, you can make your own decking area on the cheap by using some warehouse pallets. These pallets are easy to come by and often either very cheap or free from local factories and warehouses. Once you get the pallets you should sand them down, give them a coat of protection and then paint the the color of your choice before laying them down and creating your very own DIY decking area.

Old Chic

If you want to add a touch of style to your garden then you should look at buying or obtaining some old pieces of metal equipment to place around the garden. When you get things like old watering cans, pots and pans or rusty old bikes in the garden, the distressed look of the metal works perfectly with the freshness and colors of grass and flowers. You can pick things like this up in a scrap yard or thrift shop and they won’t take much time to install.

Mirror, Mirror

Mirrors are another great addition to your garden, they can give the appearance of a larger space and they can also add great patterns when the sun bounces off the glass. Even broken pieces of mirror can look good if you add  a mosaic style design and you can get mirrors for very low prices.

Interesting Pots

If you want to add some potted plants to your garden then you need to start getting creative with the pots you use for a truly unique and exciting look to the garden. You can use any type of container to place the plants in and to make it look cool you should think about using things like old wellington boots or even old pieces of clothing like jeans which you can hang off a wall and place the plants inside.

The key to giving your garden a budget make over is to get creative and understand that you do not need to pay the crazy prices which many garden centers would have you believe that you need to.