Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

A business plan is a written description of your business’s future, a document that tells what you plan to do and how you plan to do it. If you jot down a paragraph on the back of an envelope describing your business strategy, you’ve written a plan, or at least the germ of one.

Business plans are inherently strategic. You start here, today, with certain resources and abilities. And you want to get to there, a point in the future (usually three to five years out), at which time your business will have a different set of resources and abilities as well as greater profitability and increased assets. Your plan shows how you will get from here to there.

Related: 7 Steps to a Perfectly Written Business Plan

You can visit our small business encyclopedia to learn more about business plans or our FormNet area to get the necessary forms to get started.

Before writing your plan

Writing your business plan

Business Plan Tools

Business Planning Videos

Video: What Investors Really Think About Your Business Plan. At our Entrepreneur magazine Roundtable, financial pros offer tough talk about the business plans of first-time entrepreneurs:

Related: What Investors Really Think About Your Business Plan

Video: How Can I Hire Someone to Help Write My Business Plan? In the video below, Tim Berry, founder and president of Palo Alto Software Inc., responds to a reader seeking advice on finding a low-cost writer to help with a business plan:

Related: 25 Business Plan Tips From Professionals

February
13, 2019

3 min read

Search for “sugar” on Amazon and the top results will show cane sugar from 365, the in-house brand of the Amazon-owned Whole Foods, followed by a zero-calorie sweetener from Sugarly Sweet. Both are tagged “Our Brand,” but the latter is the product of Equal.

This new product is part of a push called Amazon Accelerator to have more brands that are sold exclusively on the ecommerce site.

“Amazon Accelerator creates new opportunities for suppliers and offers a way for them to launch brands directly to (and exclusively for) Amazon customers,” according to a statement from Amazon. “Participating suppliers develop and produce brands and products of their choice, and Amazon then makes those brands and products available to customers.”

Related: Amazon Will Let Entrepreneurs Start Their Own Delivery Business and Earn Up to $300,000 a Year

The advantages of partnering with Amazon are clear: top billing on the biggest store on the internet, as well as enhanced insights about the products. Meanwhile, Amazon outsources the costs of developing and manufacturing the products as well as shipping them, while holding exclusivity to sell them.

Amazon said that dozens of brands, ranging from health and personal care items to furniture to apparel, have created products for Accelerator. An Amazon spokesperson pointed to the Basic Care brand, as well as mattress brand Nod, from Tuft & Needle, as holding customer ratings above four stars.

For Merisant, makers of Equal, launching Sugarly Sweet was a way to expand its business.

“[Ecommerce is] an area that is ripe for significant growth and opportunity over time,” said Brian Huff, president of Merisant in North America. “For us, it was more of, what are the opportunities for us to be able to expand our portfolio and product line.”

Related: What Do the Major Changes at Whole Foods Mean for Food Entrepreneurs?

The new product line allowed Equal to expand into sweeteners made with sucralose, saccharin and stevia. Instead of taking up more pricey retail shelf space, the products occupy a digital space where companies have more room to explain the products’ benefits to customers, as opposed to fitting information on the back of a box that a customer never picks up.

“Online you have a lot better venue to be able to educate consumers than you do in brick and mortar,” Huff said. “People are looking for more customized and personalized offerings. Exclusive and unique offerings by retailers at least in the short term will continue to increase.”

An Amazon spokesperson would not say whether these exclusive brands will eventually be sold in Whole Foods.

February
11, 2019

3 min read

How far are you willing to go for your business? For Billy Bosch, the answer was across the country.

The founder of Iconic Protein, a maker of drinks and powders founded in 2013, had some good fortune at the early stages of his company when he was based in New Orleans, winning about $150,000 from pitch competitions. He then was able to secure a low interest loan of $250,000 through a local innovation fund, another $100,000 from a friends-and-family round, and finally a $1 million seed round from New Orleans investors. Still, Bosch needed constant capital to fund production runs, get into retailers and market his brand.

Image credit: Courtesy of Iconic Protein

“New Orleans is a fantastic place to start a business … but when it came to raising a series A, I just couldn’t find the investors there,” Bosch said. “The hunt for money led me out to the West Coast” in 2016.

Related: How the Co-Founder of Noosa Went From Office Drone to $220 Million in Sales

“California is the market for health and wellness,” he added. “I was single. I didn’t have a lot of stuff. So I packed a bag and came out for the summer and crashed on a couch. I started seeing so much success getting into stores from San Diego to Los Angeles, that I’m like, ‘I’ve got to stay out here.'”

Bosch still had to hustle to get money, however. He said it took 250 to 300 meetings to convince 30 investors to fund an $8 million series A round in 2017. But his efforts paid off. Iconic’s ready-to-drink beverages and protein mixes can now be found in more than 6,500 stores. The company said it has averaged more than 150 percent year-over-year revenue growth for the past three years. Its best-selling products are its Chocolate Truffle, Cafe Latte and Vanilla Bean grass-fed dairy protein drinks. The company employs 16 people.

 

Image credit: Courtesy of Iconic Protein

What led Bosch to starting Iconic was his own unhealthy eating habits. Before becoming an entrepreneur, he was a traveling account manager for Shell, eating the “worst food that America has.” A doctor diagnosed him with high cholesterol, indigestion and heartburn, and questioned him about his diet, he said. But when the doctor prescribed him pills, Bosch said he knew he needed to change his diet. So he went to a nutritionist, Molly Kimball, who advised him to eat more protein in the form of a shake.

Related: How a Four Loko Co-Founder Became the Leader of a Plant-Based Protein Beverage Brand

“I went back to her and I brought every protein drink I could find, and piled them on her desk,” Bosch recalled. She said all of them were unhealthy. “So out of frustration, I said why don’t you help me create a drink?”

Bosch worked with Kimball on a formula, which led to the creation of Iconic. (She’s credited with creating the formula, but is not involved with the company.) It’s this development process that Bosch finds most satisfying about running his own company.

“The most satisfying part of this business is when you create a product and then you’re contacted by a customer who says it’s amazing and they drink it every day,” he said. “Most entrepreneurs describe [running a business] as getting kicked in the face every day. The little bit of gratitude that you get from people makes it totally worth it.”

February
7, 2019

4 min read

This story appears in the
January 2019
issue of
Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

Bumble’s got good buzz. The dating app — which gives women the power to make the first move — launched in 2014 and has since expanded to help users meet new friends and make professional connections, too. CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd originally worked at Tinder but left and alleged that its cofounders engaged in sexual harassment and discrimination. She in turn created Bumble, a company obsessively focused on its culture. Its Austin, Tex., headquarters is known as the Beehive and promotes a cheery sense of community, bolstered by sunshine-yellow walls, playful decor (signs that say bee kind), and plenty of happy hours, volunteer sessions, and even some parades. 

Related: Anheuser-Busch’s New York Office is Home to the Workplace Brewery of Your Dreams

Caitlin Sullivan / Senior manager, people and culture 

“For reviews, every employee comes up with a proposal for how their responsibilities, compensation, and title should change based on the impact they’ve made. This gives our female employees — who’ve been socialized to not speak about compensation and career growth — the tools to negotiate their salaries.”

Anh Dang / Senior merchandise manager 

“When the city of Austin was celebrating Pride, most of the office met up, fully decked out in Pride merch, and walked the parade. With other companies, it can be like pulling teeth to get your coworkers to go out together on the weekend, but we’re all for it here.”

Elizabeth Monteleone / Legal counsel

“[My colleague] Caitlin Sullivan and I actually met on Bumble BFF in May. We went on some friend hangouts, and she mentioned this role was available. She asked if I’d be interested, and I said, ‘Absolutely!’ We’re a real Bumble success story.”

Related: I Visited the Bumble Hive to See What All the Buzz Is About

Kyra Seay / Special projects coordinator 

“I had the pleasure of starting at Bumble about a week ago. ‘Beekeepers’ are employees who volunteer to welcome the new folks. A beekeeper is assigned to a new hire, gives them a personalized tour, gets to know them, and on the company’s dime, you can go get a smoothie or a coffee. I chose both.”

Courtney Moreau / Curator of vibes 

“When I saw the job listing for ‘curator of vibes,’ a little voice of intuition whispered to me, This is you. My job is to make sure everyone has what they need inside the office and to help celebrate special moments with our team, whether that’s a company Friendsgiving or planning for employee birthdays.” 

Tareen Alam / Creative content manager 

“A lot of my meetings are in response to current events. If something’s happening related to feminism, empowerment, or leadership — it’s been an interesting time with #MeToo and #BelieveWomen — the edit team will get on a call to talk about how we can speak to it.” 

Related: Snowboard Giant Burton’s Headquarters Are Big on Dogs, Gardening and Snow Days

Justin Balanon / Influencer marketing manager

“My job is to help negotiate contracts with talent from the influencer community. We want them to join our mission to make the world a kinder place. I used to sell influencer marketing, and it was about products. This is more about asking people, ‘Do you want to be a part of this movement to make gender equality a reality?’”

Click Image to Enlarge

Image Credit: Adam Friedberg

February
6, 2019

4 min read

This story appears in the
January 2019
issue of
Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

So you’ve got to hire a CFO. The traditional path would be to find someone who shows up early every day and cranks indefinitely. But what if your new CFO was a young mom who works remotely one or two days a week, or comes in from noon to 8 pm, or maybe even works part-time? She comes with the high-level experience you covet, but she wants flexibility — and to get it, she’s ready to deal.

That’s the idea championed by Manon DeFelice, founder of an executive search firm called Inkwell. After having her third child, DeFelice was struck by how hard it was to work a traditional job structure around family life, and saw she wasn’t alone: Research has shown that career women who leave the workforce for three years or more will lose up to 46 percent of their earning power. They’re full of ambition, but they can’t manage a 9-to-5. “I wanted to catch these women before they dropped out,” DeFelice says. 

Related: 3 Ways to Balance Your Business, Family and Everything Else

Inkwell has been placing these candidates in flexible roles for the past five years (the company takes 25 percent of the first-year salary), and though 80 percent of the company’s 4,000-candidate community is female, men are coming aboard, too. Not every company is immediately comfortable with the trade-off, though. Here are three case studies of startups that hired flexibly.

Benefit: Part-Time Execs

Case Study: WeTransfer

WeTransfer is a file-sharing service based in Amsterdam, where workplace flexibility is common practice. When president Damian Bradfield was hiring to staff the company’s tiny Los Angeles office, however, he didn’t think to offer much flexibility simply because it’s less common here. But there was a snag: WeTransfer wanted senior-level people part-time. “If I can hire a really good heavyweight executive a few days a week to make an impact on our business until we get to a place where we can afford them full-time,” says Bradfield, “that’s great for us, and even better if it works for both parties.” Through Inkwell, he found a mother with 12 years of experience to head up U.S. brand partnerships, and a man with a consulting firm who would double as VP of business development. Both started part-time and now work five days a week — with the option to do it remotely. 

Related: A Family-Friendly Work Environment Is a Powerful Recruiting and Retention Tool

Benefit: Affordable Salaries

Case Study: Paddle8

In its early days, the online auction platform Paddle8 had 25 employees and was looking to scale, but it didn’t have the budget for heavy hitters. Cofounder Osman Khan says he liked the idea of “finding talent that was willing to take a haircut to their market rate” — and decided to try Inkwell. The first person he hired was his head of HR. She was a former head of HR at Gucci, where she’d made $500,000. At Paddle8, she made $125,000 — but could work at home two days a week. “Once I saw the success of that [hire], I drank the Kool-Aid pretty hard,” Khan says. He then filled several other key positions through Inkwell — a CFO, controller, a general counsel, accounting and marketing roles. “There’s a lot of people who assume that flexible work equals less work,” says Khan. “But productivity was through the roof. You just have to create a company culture that embraces that model.”

Benefit: Diversification

Case Study: Crunchbase

In 2017, Crunchbase CEO Jager McConnell was at a conference speaking about diversifying executive teams. Afterward, Inkwell’s DeFelice came up to him to explain her platform. He was intrigued, although concerned about the impact it would have on company culture. “But I was also super excited because I was looking to make my own team more diverse,” he says. McConnell hired his new head of people through Inkwell as a test case. He found a young mother who’d run HR departments for nearly 10 years and was willing to take the job so long as she could work from home on Thursdays. That hire turned out so well that McConnell engaged Inkwell to search for a head of finance. As for the culture? “When Crunchbase acknowledges that family life is important, we not only get better output from employees, we retain them longer.”

Related: 9 Ways Successful Entrepreneurs Spend Their Weekends

February
1, 2019

7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Great! You’ve just spent months (or years) figuring out a fantastic product in a new category, but now comes your next big challenge: getting that product into the hands of users who don’t yet know it exists.

Related: What’s the Best Way to Monitor Your Distribution System?

In other words, you need to innovate in the distribution process the same way you innovated in the product-development stage.

Developing a winning product and creating a viable distribution framework are more ideologically similar than you’d think. When you develop a product, you look for gaps in the market and perform experiments to solve those problems. As you do that, you build confidence in your product, because your experiments are drawing feedback from early adopters.

Creating a distribution framework is no different: With marketing, you can’t rely just on existing techniques or assume you know the right niche for your product — unless you experiment. With product distribution, you’re again testing out-of-the-box ideas to find the the very best one.

Apply the lessons learned from your marketing strategy to your distribution strategy. 

If you relied on traditional channels to market a new invention, you most likely found them expensive and ineffective. Why? Because you were competing with established products that already had your customers’ attention. “Who is the person suffering from the problem that my product addresses?” you had to ask yourself.

Hopefully, you discovered who that person was, and the pain of the problem he or she was experiencing. What was the precise point where your product became a priority for this person? How were your would-be customers finding existing solutions? At least initially, you probably avoided the marketing channels that established products already used.

Related: 5 Steps for Getting Your Product into Stores

A case study: AirBnB

One of the hosting company’s most famous growth hacks was its controversial “integration” with Craigslist. Another AirbBnB strategy that I found interesting, and applicable for any startup, was that the company looked for untapped demand: For instance, it launched during the Democratic Convention of 2008, when its founders knew that hotels would sell out and their company could capture the excess demand.

Now, how about applying these same marketing lessons to finding the right distribution solution for your own product/service? Consider these steps:

1. Determine if your product is a primary or complementary product.

In order to hone in on an appropriate distribution plan, first determine if your product is a primary or complementary solution. Is it a primary thing people want? For instance, a movie ticket fulfills someone’s desire to see a film, while a steakhouse satisfies a person’s craving for a steak. So, both the movie ticket and the steak are primary products.

Complementary products, on the other hand, are those that a customer purchases only after signing on to the primary product. Nobody goes to a movie theater just to eat popcorn and drink soda, but plenty of people buy those snacks once they’ve purchased a movie ticket. You have to think about where your product fits in, because that affects your distribution. 

Case study: Zapier

Zapier is a great example of a complementary product for the modern era. It helps connect common business apps (i.e., Dropbox, Trello, Hubspot) to one other so that information can flow automatically between them. 

Zapier further automates and simplifies your workflow with no coding required. However, initially it was challenging to market because its service focused on other companies’ apps. In response, Zapier came up with a very powerful SEO strategy to raise awareness of its product.

It created content so that when potential customers Googled for ways to integrate two apps, a page explaining how to connect the two with Zapier appeared. The company created thousands of these pages. This distribution strategy helped it reach $35 million in ARR in 2017.

2. Determine your customer triggers: When do they need your product most?

With my own SEO software company, RankSense, our main triggers are big website changes that can result in the loss of SEO traffic. These are typically website migrations and redesigns.  

We research sites that recently migrated and lost traffic, and offer them free SEO monitoring and reports that can help them recover quickly. Curious that we have pinpointed their painful problem, these sites then often reach out to learn more about our product.

3. Determine if you’re in the (nonscalable) product-validation phase or (scalable) product- distribution phase.

A mistake many businesses make is assuming that they’re ready to scale their product when they are not. If you’re in this position, determine whether you’re still validating your product or if it’s ready for massive distribution.  

During the validation phase, it is unwise to scale because your product might not be the ideal solution for your customers.

Moreover, when you’re scaling, big distribution channels will want some evidence of success before they take your product on. You have to bring value to potential partners. If it is only your company that benefits from the partnership, you’ll find it harder to build lasting distribution opportunities.

4. Pinpoint the optimal SaaS and app partnerships in your marketplace.

If you are in the SaaS business, integrating with complementary apps can be an effective distribution strategy. Take the example of Paypal. Paypal owes most of its early growth to piggybacking off of eBay. In the early days of eBay, buyers had to mail a physical check to a seller. The seller would wait for the check to clear,  then ship the item.

With this system credit card companies had difficulty dealing with fraudulent orders. Paypal was able to streamline the process for payment and find ways to minimize the risk of fraud. This led to Paypal’s growth into the household name  it is today. 

Determining which app or SaaS is most complementary to your product allows you to scale quickly. Nevertheless, SaaS partnering in app distribution must solve real problems in order for it to work.

LeadsBridge is a SaaS startup that takes this tactic to the extreme with great success. LeadsBridge transfers leads from Facebook campaigns to hundreds of content-management systems. It even offers to build new custom integrations for free.

5. Nail the timing of distribution.

Timing is critical for distribution. Being among the first to discover a new distribution channel can improve your scalability. For instance, consider the value you would have realized had you been one of the first apps in the Apple Store after the iPhone came out: You would have been on the cutting edge of a new distribution channel!

For a more recent example, take Cloudflare. Cloudflare is a content delivery network which powers more than 12 million sites, speeding them up and making them more secure.

Cloudflare includes built-in apps to protect you from malicious attacks. The company recently announced an app marketplace that opens the doors to a new generation of third-party business apps that can add complementary value to the millions of domains in the platform. This provides an opportunity for third-party companies to get in on the ground floor and “piggyback” on Cloudflare’s distribution.

Related: Would a Promotional Product Be Effective at Helping You Market Your Startup?

With your own company, don’t assume that a distribution channel that worked in the past or worked for another company will be the best one for your product. You need to investigate and you especially need to innovate, to seize upon the optimal timing — and run with it.

February
1, 2019

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Have you landed on a website lately and been greeted by a little box popping up in the corner to say “Hello”? You probably have because that’s a chatbot — and they’re everywhere.

Related: 4 Uses for a Chatbot That Will Transform Your Business

Maybe you’ve never interacted with a chatbot before and don’t exactly understand the need for them. But the truth is that that helpful little box isn’t there only to welcome you to a website, it can actually be used to improve your customer experience and increase conversions.  

Increase conversions? Maybe that makes your ears perk up! Suddenly you’re interested in this chatbot trend.

And the good news is that adding a chatbot to your website that can communicate with and guide shoppers through the buyer’s journey in a personable, human-like way isn’t difficult, What’s more, there are a number of tools available that make it incredibly easy: You just plug in some information about your company and your customers, and your chatbot is all set to skyrocket your conversions.

If you’re ready to start making sales day and night, here are the leading ways to integrate chatbots into your conversion strategy.

Improve customer service.

Even if you don’t implement chatbots for any other reason, you need to implement them for customer service. Consumers these days are used to instant gratification; with the advanced technology that’s available to them 24/7, they’re accustomed to getting what they want, when they want it.

So, your customer service needs to be available  at all times. Furthermore, according to research in the Harvard Business Review, people are willing to pay higher prices for faster customer service. In the study, customers who received customer service in five minutes or less were willing to pay almost $20 more for the same service.,

To underestand this motivation, imagine this scenario: Consumers interested in your software product, for example, typically have many questions about the product before being ready to buy.

They might want to know if your software is the right solution for their business, if it has certain features, if it will work with the current software they’re using, etc. With a chatbot, consumers can get all those questions answered immediately, eliminating their hesitations regarding taking the plunge and making a purchase.

And that’s the advantage: Customer-service chatbots aren’t just for keeping your current customers happy; they can be used to boost your conversions too.

Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business

Give product recommendations.

Instead of having users search through your online store trying to find the perfect item, you can bring those coveted items straight to them, using chatbots. Bots can speak to customers to find out exactly what they’re looking for and provide them with options that meet their needs; it’s like giving them their very own personal shopper.

As the example below from MVMT illustrates, a user can tell the chatbot that he or she is looking for a men’s watch and can even provide the style preferred, like a leather band. The chatbot will then curate the best products, along with a link to purchase. The company doesn’t have to stop there either; it can also easily upsell and cross-sell items with a chatbot.

Chatbot example

Image credit: Shopify

Using chatbots to give product recommendations is like placing your hottest products in the hands of online shoppers and virtually walking them to the checkout.

Qualify leads.

Since some of your site visitors may not be the right fit for your product or services, especially in B2B industries, you need to qualify your leads in order to determine if you should be spending your valuable time trying to convert them, or if you should move on to a visitor who’s more likely to buy. Luckily, you can use chatbots to qualify leads for you.

Chatbots can be set up to automatically interact with visitors to your site, welcome those visitors,  then ask them lead-qualifying questions that you’ve pre-determined, such as:

• What brought you to our website today/What problems are you looking to solve?

• What is your budget for this project?

• Who is the decision-maker at your company?

• What other solutions are you evaluating?

Having your chatbot qualify leads for you will weed out those visitors who aren’t worth your time, so you can focus on the ones who do. You’ll also have gotten all the information you need to help you make the sale.

Engage users on social media.

What if users didn’t even have to visit your website to make a purchase? That’s a reality with chatbots.

A lot of people prefer to interact on social media — they’re already there most of the day anyway and might not want to take the extra step of finding their way over to your website. In fact, according to studies from Michigan State University featured by the American Marketing Association, chatbots provide a better mobile experience for users.

In the MSU experiment, only 35 percent of respondents completed a web-based survey on their smartphones, while 76 percent completed the same survey via a Facebook messenger chatbot. This indicates that you can capture more customers on social media using chatbots.

Many companies are already taking advantage: For instance, Domino’s Pizza launched its own Facebook Messenger chatbot whereby customers can order a pizza straight from the social media platform:

Domino’s Facebook Messenger

Image credit: IPG Media Lab 

With chatbots, you can add an even more convenient way for consumers to make a purchase from your business. Users can bust out their credit cards and place an order right from their favorite social media app.

Over to you

Welcome to the new world of online shopping. There’s no need to miss out on sales during after-hours because your chatbot can convert shoppers into customers any day, any time, and guide visitors from their initial interaction or welcome all the way through becoming a repeat, loyal customer.

Related: The Definitive Guide to Chatbots: These Bots Are Here to Serve.

So, clearly, integrating chatbots into you conversion strategy is something to consider very, very carefully.

January
30, 2019

3 min read

Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.

A successful business is sort of like a Big Mac in that it relies on a secret sauce to pull all the fixins together. In this case, that “secret sauce” comes in the form of effective, teamwide collaboration and communication.

Teams can take all sorts of approaches to concocting the metaphorical sauce recipe that works best for them. As a manager, maybe you organize bi-weekly check-in meetings, send out teamwide progress emails every morning, organize daily scrums and communications training sessions, or abide by an open-door policy to encourage transparency. And to be sure, all of these approaches can improve collaboration so that you make deadlines and centralize workplace processes. But are they really unlocking your team’s true potential for productivity in the most intuitive, convenient sense?

Say hello to monday.com, the team management tool that can help you do just that. The platform was launched in 2014 with the intention of fostering a culture where team members aren’t just productive, but feel like they’re part of something bigger than their job description. This sense of ownership and empowerment cultivates a productive environment where individuals stay engaged and on top of their work, all while using a product they love.

To see its vision through, monday.com places both teamwide projects and individual duties on a simple (but not simplified) task board that serves as a beautiful, centralized space for managing and streamlining different workflows. Tasks’ progress are visualized as colorful columns, which can be tagged to monitor progress and inscribed with notes for additional context. You’re also given the option of integrating other productivity services like Dropbox, Slack, Google Calendar, and Trello within monday.com to further streamline your workflow and organize your files. (Custom integrations can be set up, too — just reach out to one of monday.com’s certified partners for more information and a quote.)

Image Credit: monday.com

monday.com’s format is unique in that everyone gets the same view, which increases transparency for employees, allows managers to easily distribute resources, and — perhaps most importantly — breaks down silos between different departments. With monday.com, you’re not just collaborating on initiatives, but fostering a culture where everyone feels invested in them.

So go ahead — scrap those clunky Excel files, put the whiteboard in storage, and cancel tedious team meetings that no one actually finds useful. Whether you’re a team of two freelancers or a global institution of more than 2,000 individuals, tech-savvy or otherwise, you’ll be able to see the big picture on monday.com’s beautiful, flexible, and scalable dashboard.

By signing up for monday.com, you’ll join a community of more than 35,000 paying teams, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, that includes the likes of NBC, WeWork, and Uber. Don’t misconstrue those big names for a hefty price tag, though, because you can start using monday.com today for free.

Think monday.com is the right team management tool for you? Create your account to begin your free two-week trial.

January
28, 2019

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Is your small business struggling to get reviews online? It’s hard to compete with the big guys who have hundreds, even thousands, of amazing online reviews about their products and/or services. And that fact is made all the more important because these days, almost nobody buys something without first checking out the online reviews.

Related: Online Reviews Are the New Social Proof

In fact, according to a survey conducted by Bright Local, 86 percent of consumers polled said they read reviews for local businesses.

So, if your potential customers are coming across your small business online and running away in the opposite direction once they see your lack of endorsements, what can you do to turn that around?

If your online business profile is still looking lonely, with only one or two reviews, check out these five tips to get more online reviews for your small business.

1. Create an email campaign.

One way to encourage more online reviews for your small business is to create an email campaign. If you already have an active email list, you’re off to a great start. Your email subscribers are your biggest fans, so chances are, if you send them an email asking them to leave your business an online review, they’ll do it.

If you haven’t built an email list yet, get started by signing up with an email marketing software and adding a popup on your website to encourage people to join your list. Plus, if visitors can place an order from your website, you should already have their email addresses to add to your email list.

Related: 5 Surefire Ways to Improve Your Site’s Online Reviews

To get the most responses, send a triggered email campaign. This means your online review email will send automatically any time a customer places an order, like what happens in the example below from Everyday Art.

Online review email example.

Image credit: Fresh Relevance com 

Sending an email right after consumers’ purchases, while the positive experience is still fresh in their mind, will get you the most online reviews.

2. “Ask” them in person.

Now, by in person, I don’t mean asking every single person who walks through your doors to leave a good review for your business online; that would be time-consuming and exhausting. Instead, gently encourage your customers to leave an online review in various places around your physical location. There are a number of ways to make the most of your space to generate more online reviews including:

Your regular customers who walk through your doors might not have checked you out online beforehand, but by advertising offline that you want more online reviews, you’ll be able to reach all of your customers — new and old.

3. Reply to every online review.

When asking people to review you online, you open yourself up to bad reviews, too — and that’s okay. Just remember to respond to every review, in a calm, helpful fashion and seek to turn any poor review into a positive experience. What’s important is that you shouldn’t respond just to negative reviews; you should respond to positive reviews, as well. Replying to your reviews will show other future customers that you’re active in your online communications.  

In fact, according to a study in the Harvard Business Review, replying to customer reviews results in better ratings overall. Through their studies, the researchers found that users exposed to management responses — for example,users who read your response to a negative comment from another user — left ratings 0.1 “stars” higher than those who had not.

This finding applied in the same way to responses to positive reviews. Additionally, customers who read management responses were also less likely to leave a trivial or unsubstantiated negative review.

4. Share glowing reviews.

Another way to get more online reviews is to share the glowing reviews you’ve already received. When others see that people are leaving you great reviews, they’ll be more inclined to do so themselves. In fact, according to Psychology Today, people look at what others are doing to learn what’s correct. That’s social proof in action.

So, share your best reviews on social media, as in this restaurant example:

Social media review example. 

Image credit: Instagram 

Not only does this tactic work to generate more online reviews for your business, it also helps to advertise your business and get more customers through your doors.

5. Go above and beyond in customer service.

You can use all the tips and tricks in the world, but if your business is giving poor customer service, you’ll never get online reviews — or else you’ll get a ton of scathing ones. The easiest way to get more online reviews for your small business is to go above and beyond for your customers. Most people don’t leave a review for a pleasant but mundane experience, but people will be more likely to leave a great review for your business if you’ve provided them with an amazing experience.

So, try to make your customers’ day by saying “please” and “thank you,” sending a personalized thank you note in their online order, giving a small discount to apologize for a customer service issue and so on. Customers will remember your kindness and return the favor by leaving you a five-star review.

Related: How Online Customer Reviews Help SEO and Drive Sales Growth

Over to you

With these tips for getting more online reviews, your small business will stand out from the crowd online. Patrons will be lining up at your business because they’ve heard nothing but good things about you. Customers will be happy. And you’ll have just one more task for immediate future: thanking your customers for their kind words and the extra sales their favorable reviews will prompt,