7Aug
Integrating AI in Your Business: How to Do It Right in 2025

Artificial Intelligence is no longer optional. Whether you’re running a business or managing a fast-growing startup, integrating AI in your business can unlock serious advantages; from saving time and reducing costs to improving customer experience and making smarter decisions.

But here’s the truth: many companies rush into AI without a plan. The result? Wasted money, confusion, and tools that don’t actually solve problems.

This guide breaks down how to integrate AI into your business step-by-step, with a focus on real results, ethical practices, and long-term growth.

Step 1: Understand What AI Can Actually Do for You

Before diving in, it’s essential to get clear on what AI really means for your business. Artificial intelligence refers to intelligent systems designed to analyze data, automate routine processes, personalize user experiences, and generate content — all with speed and precision.

There are a few common types of AI used in business:

Predictive AI helps forecast demand, sales, or customer churn.

Generative AI can create marketing copy, emails, and product descriptions in seconds.

Automation tools powered by AI can sort customer service tickets, route emails, or scan resumes.

Step 2: Identify the Right Areas to Start

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is trying to AI everything at once. Instead, focus on a few areas where AI can have a real, immediate impact.

Ask yourself:

Where am I spending the most time on repetitive tasks?

What parts of my business generate a lot of data but no insights?

Where do small mistakes cost me the most?

For many buisnesses, these are best places to start:

Customer service (chatbots or AI-assisted ticketing)

Marketing (automated content, segmentation, email optimization)

Inventory and demand forecasting

Admin tasks like scheduling, document management, or bookkeeping

Step 3: Make Sure Your Data Is Ready

Here’s the hard truth: AI is only as good as the data you give it. If your business doesn’t have clean, structured, and accurate data, the AI won’t perform well — no matter how powerful it is.

Before launching any AI project, take time to:

Clean and organize your data (think customer info, sales history, inventory, etc.)

Ensure data is stored securely and in compliance with privacy laws

Put basic data protection policies in place

If you’re based in Quebec, be aware of Law 25, which sets strict rules around how businesses collect and store personal data. Ignoring these rules can cost you a lot financially and legally.

Step 4: Start Small and Measure Everything

One of the best ways to begin integrating AI into your business is with a low-risk pilot project. Don’t try to overhaul your entire operations. Instead, choose one task or process you can improve with AI in the next 30–90 days.

For example:

Automate customer follow-up emails after purchases

Create workflows that sort or respond to form submissions

Add a basic chatbot using Tidio or Intercom

Track clear key performance indicators (like time saved, customer satisfaction, or increase in conversions). If you can prove success on a small scale, you’ll have the data and confidence to scale up.

Step 5: Choose the Right Tools (or Build Your Own)

For most small to medium-sized organizations, ready-made AI software is the most efficient and affordable choice. These tools offer proven functionality with minimal setup.

Prebuilt AI tools are fast to deploy, user-friendly, and cost-effective — ideal for small teams or companies new to AI.

Custom AI solutions offer maximum control and can be tailored to unique data or workflows but require technical expertise and greater investment.

Hybrid approaches are also common — starting with off-the-shelf tools while gradually layering in custom components as needs evolve.

Step 6: Train Your Team and Manage the Change

AI doesn’t replace people — it helps them do more with less. But your team needs to feel confident using these tools.

Make time to:

Offer short workshops or training on using AI tools

Create clear guides or “prompt templates” for customer service, writing, etc.

Assign someone to own AI-related projects (they don’t need to be technical)

You’ll also want to communicate wins early. If AI saves a team 10 hours a week, celebrate it. When employees see the value, they’ll adopt the tools faster.

Step 7: Stay Compliant, Transparent, and Ethical

Using AI comes with responsibility. From biased data to hidden algorithms, the risks are real — but manageable.

Best practices include:

Using diverse, unbiased training data

Documenting how your AI tools make decisions

Logging AI actions (especially in hiring, finance, or legal workflows)

Reviewing and updating systems regularly to avoid derailing.

Final Thoughts: Start Small, Think Big

Integrating AI in your business doesn’t have to be intimidating or expensive. Start with one task, prove its value, and build from there. With the right tools, the right mindset, and support from Montreal’s ecosystem, you can turn AI from a buzzword into your business’s next competitive edge.

13Dec
Strategies for Working with Influencers

Working with an influencer is a good strategy to expose more people to your business. Utilizing their unique viewpoint, you may ask them to share with their audience their impressions on your product or service. Approaching an influencer about endorsing your good or service can be frightening if you don’t know where to start. Below we have outlined strategies that can help small and medium-sized businesses adopt the best methods for working with influencers.

Transmit a clear offer

To get things going, make a very specific offer so the influencer can decide whether it might be something that works for them and that they are willing to endorse. Make sure to specify the types of posts you want (Stories, TikTok, etc.), the payment amount, the time frame for posting, and the scope of work. Although it will undoubtedly change from there, having a solid starting point makes the process much simpler and will allow the influencer to quickly decide if this is something they are interested in.

Include influencers on your social media pages

On your Instagram and other social media, highlight the work of influencers in your industry. This fulfills a variety of functions. First, folks who follow the influencers may stumble upon you because you connect to their favorite individuals or companies. Then, it’s possible that those same followers will start following you too! Lastly, your support for their brands can even spur well-known influencers to reach out to you to discuss future collaborations.

Allow for creative freedom

Give the influencer you’ve chosen some creative flexibility to carry out your campaign. Since influencers have knowledge from prior experiences, it is generally preferable to have a two-way collaboration when working with them. Certainly, it’s important to offer them a thorough explanation of your ideas, but after that, give them some creative freedom. By doing this, the content you create is distinctive and simultaneously appealing to both of your audiences. Consider it in this manner. You selected this influencer because you enjoy the content they produced. Keep in mind that they are the ones that know their audience the best and what content will appeal to them. Let them provide artistic guidance and asset suggestions.

Set reasonable goals and help

One thing you should remember if you want to work with influencers is that they won’t be able to do everything. You also need to put in some work. Make sure that you’re setting the right expectations for the influencer you are working with. It is important that you supply the appropriate tools ( product samples, information, etc.) to ensure that your product or service is accurately portrayed.

Before approaching an influencer, do some homework. Research them, learn what they like, the people they follow, their areas of interest, and the reasons they enjoy those things. Then, ensure that your brand is appropriately represented in that environment, so that when the influencer posts about it on social media, customers will get an authentic portrayal of what your brand stands for.

Finally, create trust with your influencer from the start so that when they post about your company, it doesn’t feel like simply another paid post, it feels natural and true.

List your deliverables, campaign objectives, hashtags, and tags

Give the influencers you’re working with a one-pager that includes all the information they’ll need for the campaign, such as brand handles, campaign hashtags, the objectives to keep in mind, photo specifications, and brand story, to set them up for success. When shooting and producing the content, it makes their job seamless.

To save costs, collaborate with other brands

By splitting the cost of influencers with partner brands, small businesses can cut spending. When you cohost events, competitions, and influencer outings with other businesses, your company has exposure to even more extensive marketing opportunities than it would ordinarily have. By selecting non-competitor brands, you may still make use of all the collaboration’s advantages without giving up any potential market share.

If you can, pay immediately and on time

Influencers share terrifying tales about companies that are slow to pay or, worse yet, just disappear altogether. Although it’s not always simple to maintain control, it’s crucial to go above and above to ensure timely payment and clear communication about when it will be made. Pay earlier than anticipated as a bonus.

Collaborations with influencers can benefit your company greatly. You can increase brand awareness, foster brand trust, and increase sales by collaborating in meaningful ways.

Use the most effective influencer collaboration strategies now that you are aware of them.

22Jun
How to Reap Rewards with Instagram Captions

How to reap rewards with Instagram captions. One of the most crucial tools you have for boosting audience engagement on Instagram is the caption. Your followers may be drawn to your images and videos, but it’s the caption that persuades them to share, like, and comment on your post. Your Instagram captions can also boost sales, expand your social media reach, and help you gain more Instagram followers.

You might be wondering, how can you be certain that you’re utilizing the proper captions to foster accomplishment? Here are the tools you need to learn to reap rewards with your Instagram captions.

1. Grab their attention right away

Like most social media platforms, Instagram is all about quick exchanges of information.

On a regular basis, your customers scroll through dozens of images. Since Instagram condenses your description to just three or four lines, you must grab their attention quickly if you want them to stay on your page.

On the news stream, you have even less of a chance of grabbing your reader’s attention because only the first phrase of your caption will be visible. As such, your opening sentence should be written to instantly capture the reader’s attention by doing the following:

• Pose a question: your customer will want to know if you have addressed it.

• Include visuals: make your brand’s personality pop out by using emojis.

•Make a statement: say something that you know will catch the attention of your audience.

• Introduce your call to action first: as soon as a customer views your material, what you want them to do should be clear. Keep in mind that concise lines will attract your audience’s attention more quickly than most wordy Instagram captions. Keep it straightforward and to the point to get your message across.

2. Be a call-to-action master

Your call-to-action (CTA) is the most crucial component of your Instagram caption. It’s how you encourage your followers to interact with your page by leaving a comment on your post or clicking the link in your bio.

However, it is important to refrain from including too many CTAs in a single post. Consequently, having too many CTAs can take away from the caption’s clear purpose. Instead, you should precisely highlight what you want your customer to do for each of your Instagram posts. Below are some examples of the intentions of Instagram posts. Do you want the reader to:

Visit your website?
Click the link in your bio?
Invite their friends to a post?
Shop for a sale?
Subscribe to your newsletter?
Participate in a giveaway or contest?
Save your post for later?
Find the link from your stories?
Send you a DM?
Chat in the comments?
Leave an (insert emoji) if they agree?
Tag someone?

Try a few different possibilities because it might be challenging to predict which CTA phrases will result in the greatest response from your audience. You can choose which call-to-action phrases are best to employ in the future by evaluating your call-to-action phrases’ by their levels of engagement.

3. Tell stories

Spice up your Instagram captions with some storytelling.

A compelling narrative will strengthen your customers’ emotional connection to your brand and help them understand the advantages of your product or service.

When incorporating a compelling narrative into your captions, you should:

Show emotion: grab the reader’s attention with well-written descriptive information that is intended to help them envision or better understand the products you are selling.

Use appropriate language: find, use, and maintain the voice tone that works with your audience. Your stories will be more relatable if you use the same language as your intended audience.

Try being authentic: make your brand look more genuine by discussing your personal experiences. By sharing your personal experiences, you can show your audience that you are more than just a nameless organization.

4. Use sensory language

Another way to reap the rewards of Instagram captions is to find ways to connect emotionally with your followers, such as using sensory language. An Instagram account must have the appearance and feel of a personal journal, with authentic, moving, and engaging content, in order to successfully appeal to its followers.

Thus, you should write Instagram captions that will enable users to thoroughly immerse themselves in the experience you’re sharing, whether you’re a large corporation or a little business. Using sensory words will allow your content to be experienced through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.

The types of senses you should consider and appeal to, include:

Visual: concerned with sight, colour, form, and appearance
Tactile: concerned with touch and abstract conceptions
Smell: concerned with smells and how they affect our emotions
Taste: concerned with the things we can taste and experience
Motion: concerned with movements and how readers experience words
Auditory: concerned with hearing, noises, and even music

5. Utilize hashtags

Lastly, without the appropriate hashtags, Instagram captions are worthless. Hashtags on Instagram, as on most social media platforms, make your content searchable and guarantee that the relevant customers can find you. The simple act of including hashtags in your captions can greatly increase your account reach.

You can add a lot of important Instagram hashtags at the end of your captions, but it’s also worthwhile to think about how you can weave them in naturally with @mentions of relevant people.

Keep in mind that the finest Instagram captions typically include a variety of hashtags. You must choose trending ones that are attractive to your intended audience, but it is also important to consider specialized and more focused hashtags.

By creating your own custom hashtags, you may even entice your followers to participate and post user-generated content in your Instagram comments. A strong brand hashtag will promote your business, especially if you utilize it in conjunction with a contest or giveaway. For instance, you could offer a prize to everyone who shares a photo of themselves using your product with the hashtag associated with your business.

Keep an eye on what’s popular in your market, as well as the hashtags your competitors and brand influencers are using. This can help you if you need more ideas for hashtags to employ.

Make changes to your Instagram captions

It’s simple to ignore captions on a visual social media platform like Instagram. However, if you’re not maximizing your Instagram captions, you can be passing up important opportunities to engage, connect with, and convert clients. Instagram captions can be an essential part of growing and maintaining a business.

28Jul
4 Steps to Starting a Referral Program

Whenever we need a product or service, we’ll turn to our family or friends for recommendations. For instance, studies shows that a buyer is 50 times more likely to purchase a product that is recommended by family or friends. Referral programs take advantage of this word of mouth marketing by using your already loyal customers to act as brand advocates. This is done by providing a referral code to your customers to share with their networks. When a friend uses the code to make their first purchase the referrer is compensated. This may be in the form of a discount, a freebie, or a monetary reward.

Referrals are a good way to get new clients because people are more likely to trust their friends and family. This is why one of the most effective communication strategies for organically scaling a company is word of mouth. Via in-person encounters or online social networking messages, we exchange positive user interactions. In a nutshell, referrals are more important and reliable than paid advertisements and other media platforms. Look no further ,this guide will teach you the fundamentals of referral marketing as well as how to run your own referral program.

Why Start a Referral Program?

If done properly, this marketing strategy can acquire a lot of new customers for your business at very low costs. By taking advantage of your current customers to spread the word, customer acquisition cost (CAC) is very low. The customers that you gain will also become of high value and are more likely to refer more people.

Referral programs have been proven to help business generate higher revenue. For example, Paypal is famous for using a referral program and helped the company achieve 7-10% daily growth and a user base of over 100 million people.

With the right software, referral programs are easy to track in sales and provide a business analytical tool to use.

How to Build a Referral Program?

1. Have Amazing Products

Before even considering starting a referral program, make sure you have exceptional products and services ready. If you don’t have any great products, nobody will want to refer your business to their network.

2. Designing your Perfect referral Program

Key things to remember when designing your referral program:

Choose the right software
Catchy headline
Referral messaging
Easy to refer

Many different software’s already exists that help you to create your referral program very easily, choose the right one for you and your business goals.

Next, you need to craft the program to get your customers attention if you want to get them to refer your business. Use catchy headliners that describe what the program is and what are the benefits in one sentence. For example, a good headliner would be “Refer a friend for 15$” or “Give 30$ get 30$”.

On top of sharing referral codes, you should consider crafting automated messages to make it easier for your customers to share with friends. The message should be kept straight and to the point but in a friendly manner. Make sure that sharing the referral code is as easy as a click of a share button either to social medias or emails. If your customer has to take extra steps, chances are they won’t refer. Most referral program software’s already give this option to link to social medias and other platforms.

3. Choose an Incentive

Two sided incentive
Type of reward

Based on your marketing goals, choose an incentive that will respond well with your customers. First, figure out who will benefit from the reward, either your customer, the referred or both parties. Rewarding both parties is the most effective method, customers will be more likely to refer people from their network.

Next, determine what kind of reward you want to give. Since every business is different, every reward will be different. Its important to know your customers and offer rewards that align with your brand. Don’t offer incentives that wont interest your customers. It can be in form of discounts, cash, coupons, points, company merchandise etc. Also choose something that wont cost you your profits.

4. Promote the Program

Promote the program through your website, social media & emails. Let your customers know! For instance, you can implement automated messages to appear as soon as customers enter your website to get their attention!

5. Track your Progress

It’s critical to set up an analytics and analysis framework for your referral service if you want to see results. Choose a referral program software that has built-in analytics like referral relation delivery, A/B checking, and referral monitoring. Use these analytics to help you determine what content is more efficient.

4Sep
How Etsy Can Help Your Small Business

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Etsy is an online buyer and seller community that focuses mainly on handcrafted and vintage goods. Etsy allows sellers to customize online shops with full e-commerce capabilities. This platform has allowed many people to turn their hobbies into full on businesses. If you are a small business or someone who simply wants to turn their hobby into a source of income, here are a few reasons why you should have an Etsy shop.

It’s user-friendly

You don’t need much technological knowledge to operate your Etsy shop. For your website you would have to do a lot of design and coding in order to get a layout as professional and clean as Etsy’s. To start your shop you simply need to follow a few easy steps that takes just a few minutes. The difficult part is the decision making with regards to pricing, when to offer promotions, how often to add new listings, etc. But these are difficult decisions you will have to make no matter the platform you choose to operate on. Etsy also has an iPhone app, which will help you manage your shop and stay organized. The app’s features will help you manage your orders, access shop statistics, communicate with other buyers, update listings, get alerts when making a sale, and much more.

It’s affordable

Starting a shop on Etsy is free. However there are three small selling fees. You have a listing fee, a transactional fee and a payment processing fee. It will cost you $0.20 to publish a listing. A listing lasts 4 months until the item is sold. Once you make sale there is a commission fee of 5% and a payment processing fee of 3% + CA$0.25 for Canada (domestic orders or orders from the US) and 4% +$0.25 for international orders.

Access to a large yet targeted customer base

>Etsy has approximately 54 million members all specifically looking for hand-made goods and more than 2 billion views every month. The average Etsy consumer is an adult woman between the ages of 18 and 34. She is a member of the working or middle class. Most of her yearly Etsy purchases include jewelry that cost between $21 and $40, often purchased as gifts. She values the variety offered by Etsy in terms of handmade and eco-friendly goods. If your product remotely caters to such a demographic, there is no other platform that will allow you to reach your clientele in such a targeted manner.

Test your new ideas

Being active on Etsy is a good way to see how receptive people are to your new ideas. You won’t feel as tied to keeping products that don’t sell as you won’t need to call up designers or web developers to make the necessary changes to your platform. If you have an existing business and website and are not sure whether or not a particular product or product line will sell, testing it on Etsy first and reading the reviews on the discussion boards can also help you make your decisions.

Can Be Used as a Cheap Marketing Tool

Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to use Etsy exclusively. Your website and your Etsy shop can work hand-in-hand. Once you’ve gained traction to your Etsy shop, you can redirect your visitors to your website. If you getting a decent amount of sales on Etsy, you can stay there but also consider working on your website behind the scenes. In order to lead your Etsy clients to your website offer incentive. This can potentially include offering lower priced goods on your website, including website promotion cards when you ship your orders to customers, or including your website URL to your product descriptions on Etsy.
If your target market consists of the people visiting Etsy on a regular basis, give the platform a try. Whether you are an artist, someone with a hobby, or already have an existing business, many advantages and learnings can come to you by operating an Etsy shop. The worst thing that can happen is that you don’t enjoy your experience. But even in this worst-case scenario you tried out a platform and you’ve learned what works and what doesn’t work for you.

18Apr
The Challenges of Being a Social Entrepreneur

Let’s start off by addressing that being an entrepreneur is difficult. However, being a social entrepreneur brings about its own set of challenges and obstacles. It combines social impact with sustainable business growth. Social entrepreneurs are faced with having to solve or alleviate a real-world issue while also maintaining positive financial performance. . Here are the two main challenges social entrepreneurs face. Though considered challenges, many have overcome them in the past.

1. Competing on prices while having enough money to make a social impact
In order to remain competitive, social enterprises need to take advantage of creative pricing strategies. Social entrepreneurs need to establish a pricing strategy that will consider price point, allowing for enough revenue to serve their chosen cause, without compromising their customers’ expectation of their product. Though social enterprises have to overcome additional challenges when pricing, they can use original pricing techniques that are not as readily available to other start-ups. Social entrepreneurs should strategically highlight their cause and mission. Socially conscious consumers who agree with this mission will be willing to purchase at a higher price point in order to support the cause. Furthermore, bundling will incentivize sales. Shoe company, Toms, has made great use of this. For every shoe sold, a pair is donated someone in need. In order to build and grow brand equity, social entrepreneurs should also look into certification. For instance, being certified as fair trade, or B Corp will help maintain a positive reputation and better positioning.

2. Quantifying your impact
Measuring impact for social entrepreneurs can be complex. Not only do you have to establish metrics for your business performance, you have to measure your social impact to prove credibility, as well as attract investors and potential business partners. Impact investments are investments that not only yield financial return, but social and environmental return as well. With the rise of the number of social enterprises, credible organizations have developed frameworks to standardize the calculation of social impact. The IRIS Framework consists of an organization’s description, product description, financial performance, operational impact, and product impact. If your mission is to have impact on a global scale, The Global Impact Investing Ratings System (GIIRS) gathers a range of information with regards to company’s work, size, sector, and region. These assessments are carried out annually and validated by the GIIRS.
Many resources are available to Montrealers looking to take a step into social enterprise. Luckily, numerous grants, and funding opportunities are available, that do not require giving away equity or paying back an investor. YES Montreal, Futurpreneur, Quartier de l’Innovation and PMEMTL all offer workshops and/or grant opportunities for social enterprises in the city, just to name a few.

With millennials harnessing the wave of activism and social awareness, social entrepreneurship has risen for the past decade. They are working towards incubating ground-breaking innovations, alleviating life-threatening issues, and pioneering some of the future’s most resourceful projects. While it is true that many obstacles can interfere with business operations, the key is taking advantage of the resources available your given city and finding creative ways of overcoming these challenges.

4Mar
Why Investors Like Startups Focused on Solving Social Problems

The social impact of businesses has been held to the highest of regards in the past decade. Part of the reason for that is millennials have grown up with a more socially responsible mindset than previous generations. Though this has now become today’s norm, many entrepreneurs have gone the extra mile by making solving social problems their main focus. Companies such as Thread International, TOMS, Belu Water, and CellInk are just a few example. With unfortunate social problems making news headlines, one thing is for certain, solving social problems has become what the corporate world would refer to as “good business”.

An uneasy relationship has always existed between investors and entrepreneurs when social problems were in question. If you planned on utilizing socially friendly practices the hope was that it did not excessively affect your profit margins, and if you’re main focus was solving a particular social problem the worry was that you wouldn’t be making enough revenue. All this to say that many investors were hesitant to put too much focus in such businesses. However, with changing societal climates, we are in the midst of a shift. What we see today is that investors no longer have to choose between money, and their values. Hence, the rise of sustainable investing. The reason for its rise in popularity amongst interested investors is simple. People want to make a difference, and figuring out which companies are truthful to their social initiatives has become easier to monitor.

Sustainable investing is a term for investment approaches that consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors and their impact. Point in fact, after the controversial era of banking secrecy, sustainable investing has come to the forefront and become one of the fastest growing segments in finance. It is an opportunity to make money and make a difference in the world. By acknowledging its importance and popularity, organizations have further facilitated and incentivized investments in companies focused on solving social problems. For instance, PME funded company Co-Power, identifies energy efficiency projects that generate, or are expected to generate steady, predictable revenue streams by either selling clean power or by reducing energy consumption.

With societal consciousness becoming of increased importance in today’s corporate culture, investors have begun to fish out companies promoting such agenda simply for positive PR. Genuine social impact companies integrate doing good into everything they do. Successful social impact ventures balance for-profit work with community-oriented resources. Failing to do so diminishes credibility and increases customer mistrust. Therefore, entrepreneurs should make a habit of working with institutions and platforms that help verify and certify social impact, examine their supply chain, look for like-minded investors, and build a team that understand the importance of its principles. Act on your beliefs instead of just talking about them.

Making the world a better place and making money can go together. Startups focused on solving social problems endure many challenges that other businesses might not. However, it is important to remember that this is a better time than ever before to appeal to investors. Assuming millennials continue to make social responsibility a priority when it comes to where they work, what they buy, and whom they support, it is safe to say that many investors out there are open and willing to contribute to a greater good.

9Feb
The Importance of Brand Building

As Jeff Bezos so eloquently said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” The statement seems straightforward. But the process of building your brand is the difficult part. As an entrepreneur, you should commit to building a brand identity that resonates with your target market. So many people forget that businesses, especially those that are B2C, must have and portray a brand identity that will be the foundation of all future marketing initiatives. There are essentially 3 ways to build a brand: creating brand elements, secondary associations and marketing programs. However, before you start pouring your heart into your marketing strategy, take a moment and devise a market research plan. Investing in thorough market research is the only way to brand successfully.

How does an entrepreneur build a brand that will resonate with my customers? Though large corporations have more resources to create and develop a brand identity and conduct appropriate research, the process is practically the same. There are 6 steps to the marketing research process (click on the hyperlink for more details). (1) Defining the objective and problem (2) Determining research design (3) Designing and preparing the research instruments (4) Sampling and collecting data (5) Analyzing data and (6) Visualizing and communicating results. Though this seems complex, the hassle is definitely worth the effort. Following these steps, by conducting quantitative and qualitative research, will let you get to know your customers and their expectations of you. This implies conducting surveys, looking into credible secondary data, running focus groups, conducting interviews, testing for brand recognition, testing for recall, and associations. The goal is to know your customer enough to develop a brand identity that will appeal to them, compared to that of the competition.

If you don’t present your brand identity to the right people in the right manner, you missed the opportunity to acquire them. This will be time consuming and costly to reverse the associations people have already made with your brand. This is not to say that you can’t change your brand identity in the future. To the contrary, many successful companies have had to make brand-related changes in order to remain relevant over time. For instance, Victoria’s Secret was rebranded countless times before their angel wings took over retail, Apple nearly went bankrupt before becoming a staple in tech, and UPS used to be big and boring before it became personal and innovative. But, changing your brand image is costly and takes time. Keep in mind that you are a start-up, and will likely have a limited budget. Doing it right early on, will save you money, time and stress.

Whether you are an established business or start-up, there really only is one way to start off the branding process, and that is through market research and knowing exactly who you are targeting. We can’t stress this enough. Get to really know your customer early on. Drafting a brand narrative is strongly recommended. The objective of marketing is to create a lasting relationship, called customer retention, with the customer after the actual transaction has been made . You will only be able to do this once you’ve identified your customer’s problem, their expectations, and built a brand identity that they value.

25Jan
Comment Etsy peut aider votre petite entreprise

Etsy Pour ceux d’entre vous qui ne sont pas familiarisés avec Etsy, il s’agit d’une communauté d’acheteurs et de vendeurs en ligne qui se concentrent surtout sur des produits faits à la main et des articles millésimés. Etsy permet aux vendeurs de personnaliser des boutiques en ligne avec des solutions complètes de commerce électronique. Cette plateforme a permis à plusieurs personnes de transformer un passe-temps en une entreprise à plein régime. Si vous êtes une petite entreprise ou une personne qui veut tout simplement métamorphoser un passe-temps en une source de revenus, voici quelques raisons pour lesquelles vous devriez avoir une boutique Etsy.

C’est facile à utiliser

Il n’est pas nécessaire de posséder de grandes connaissances technologiques pour exploiter une boutique Etsy. Créer un site Internet avec une mise en page aussi claire et professionnelle que celle que vous offre Etsy nécessiterait beaucoup de travail de conception et de codage. Pour démarrer votre boutique, il vous suffit de suivre quelques étapes simples en quelques minutes. Le plus difficile est d’établir une gamme de prix, de décider quand offrir des promotions, à quelle fréquence ajouter de nouveaux produits, etc. Mais ce sont là des décisions difficiles que vous aurez à prendre, peu importe la plateforme que vous choisissez. Etsy offre également une application iPhone, Sell on Etsy, qui vous aide à gérer votre boutique et à rester organisé. Les caractéristiques de l’application vous permettent de gérer vos commandes, d’accéder à des données statistiques concernant votre boutique, de communiquer avec d’autres acheteurs, de gérer des listes, de recevoir des alertes lorsqu’il y a une vente, et bien plus encore.

C’est abordable

Démarrer une boutique sur Etsy est gratuit. Cependant, il y a trois frais minimaux reliés aux ventes. Vous avez des frais d’inscription d’un produit, des frais de transaction et des frais de traitement des paiements. Mettre un produit en vente vous coûtera 0,26 $. Pour chaque article mis en vente, la publication est valide pour 4 mois. Lorsque l’article est vendu, une commission de 3,5 %, des frais de traitement de paiements de 3,4 %, ainsi que 0,25 $ CA sont facturés.

Accès à une vaste clientèle ciblée

Etsy compte environ 54 millions de membres, tous spécifiquement à la recherche de produits faits à la main, et plus de 2 milliards de visites chaque mois. La consommatrice moyenne d’Etsy est une femme adulte âgée entre 18 et 34 ans. Elle est membre de la classe ouvrière ou classe moyenne. Annuellement, la plupart de ses achats sur Etsy comprennent des bijoux qui coûtent entre 21 $ et 40 $, et qui sont souvent achetés comme cadeaux. Elle aime la variété de produits faits à la main et respectueux de l’environnement. Si votre produit répond le moindrement à ces tendances démographiques, il n’y a pas de meilleure plateforme qui atteindra votre clientèle d’une manière mieux ciblée.

Testez vos nouvelles idées

Une présence sur Etsy est un bon moyen de voir comment les gens réagissent à vos nouvelles idées. Vous vous sentirez moins obligé de garder des produits qui ne se vendent pas puisque vous n’avez pas à contacter des concepteurs ou développeurs Web pour apporter les modifications nécessaires à votre plateforme. Par ailleurs, si vous avez une entreprise et un site Web existant et que vous êtes incertain au sujet d’une ligne de produits ou d’un produit particulier, effectuer des tests sur Etsy et lire les avis publiés dans les forums de discussion peut vous aider à prendre des décisions.

Etsy peut être utilisé comme un outil de commercialisation économique

Contrairement à la croyance populaire, vous n’êtes pas obligé d’utiliser Etsy exclusivement. Votre site Web et votre boutique Etsy peuvent fonctionner conjointement. Une fois que vous avez gagné du terrain avec votre boutique Etsy, vous pouvez réorienter vos visiteurs vers votre site. Si vous obtenez une quantité intéressante de vente sur Etsy, vous pouvez décider que cela vous convient parfaitement tout en choisissant de travailler aussi sur votre site Web en coulisses. Offrez un incitatif à vos clients pour les amener vers votre site Web – il peut s’agir d’articles à prix plus bas sur votre site, de cartes promotionnelles expédiées avec les commandes des clients provenant du site d’Etsy, ou d’inclure des URL de votre site dans les descriptions des produits que vous présentez sur Etsy.

Si votre marché cible est constitué de personnes qui visitent Etsy régulièrement, faites-en l’essai. Que vous soyez artiste, une personne avec un passe-temps, ou que vous exploitiez déjà une entreprise, vous pouvez profiter des nombreux avantages et beaucoup apprendre en administrant une boutique Etsy. Le pire qui puisse arriver serait que vous n’aimiez pas l’expérience. Mais même dans ce cas, vous aurez essayé une plateforme et vous aurez appris ce qui fonctionne et ce qui ne fonctionne pas pour vous.

10Jan
4 raisons pour lesquelles les petites entreprises doivent avoir un blogue

blogue Si en tant que propriétaire de petite entreprise, vous envisagez de commencer un blogue, arrêtez de considérer la question et commencez à écrire. Plus d’excuses! «Je ne suis pas un bon écrivain» «Je n’ai pas d’idées originales» ou «Je n’ai pas le temps» ne sont pas de bonnes raisons; d’autant plus que les avantages d’un blogue dépassent de loin les inconvénients. Si l’on considère que d’ici 2020, les clients gèreront 85 % de leurs relations sans parler à un être humain, et que les blogues sont classés comme la 5e des sources les plus fiables d’informations en ligne. Ce que coûte vraiment un blogue vous est le temps.

Si vous faites partie de la minorité qui n’a pas encore joint le mouvement, voici 4 raisons pour lesquelles nous croyons que vous ne devriez pas attendre plus longtemps :

C’est économique

Il est généralement très peu coûteux de créer un blogue et de le tenir à jour. Les blogues peuvent être intégrés à votre site Web déjà existant, ou être créés indépendamment. Peu importe, c’est un mode de commercialisation parmi les moins coûteux pour les entrepreneurs. Il y a aussi de nombreux hébergements WordPress bon marché et fiables parmi lesquels vous pouvez choisir.

Génère du trafic vers votre site

L’ajout d’un blogue à votre site Web peut considérablement augmenter la circulation très ciblée de votre site. Les recherches démontrent que les entreprises qui bloguent reçoivent 97 % plus de liens vers leur site Web. Afficher des nouvelles convaincantes et perspicaces dans votre blogue, tout en utilisant stratégiquement des mots clés pour optimiser les moteurs de recherche, grâce à des publications en temps opportun, vous aidera à construire un public fidèle.

Positionnez votre marque en tant que chef de file éclairé

Les blogueurs accomplis sont des experts en stratégie de marque. Les blogues offrent aux entreprises l’occasion de discuter de questions importantes dans le secteur de leur industrie. Par ailleurs, les blogues permettent aux entreprises de montrer à leurs consommateurs qu’ils font plus que simplement vendre des produits ou offrir un service. L’utilisation de cette sorte de plateforme vise à attirer les lecteurs qui ne cherchent pas nécessairement à acheter quelque chose. Il y a de fortes chances que ces lecteurs reviennent dans le futur, quand ils seront effectivement à la recherche d’un produit. De nos jours, les consommateurs ne font pas qu’investir dans des produits, ils investissent dans tout ce qu’une entreprise représente. Les blogues constituent la meilleure façon de manifester que vous représentez le style de vie que vos consommateurs souhaitent connaître.

Établir des relations avec vos clients

Les blogues permettent d’offrir une touche personnelle. Cet aspect informel vous permet de créer une relation amicale de confiance avec votre public. L’ajout d’une section pour les commentaires, ou d’option de répondre à vos messages peut contribuer à susciter un dialogue intéressant. Idéalement, ces relations publiques positives permettront d’enrichir votre image de marque en vous présentant comme une entreprise qui se soucie de ses clients. Si vous créez régulièrement du contenu perspicace pour votre marché cible, vous pourrez vous établir comme source d’information importante.

Maintenir un blogue a aidé de nombreux entrepreneurs à faire passer leurs activités de la misère à la richesse. Dooce et Shoemoney en sont d’excellents exemples. Si ces raisons ne suffisent pas à vous convaincre qu’écrire un blogue est essentiel, posez-vous une question simple : Qu’ai-je à perdre en démarrant un blogue? Exactement. Rien que du temps bien dépensé. Essayez!