Setting goals should be a priority of virtually any business owner. For a business to grow and thrive, it needs to grow in a particular direction. Establishing goals can ensure a business’s growth is consistent and leads toward a stronger version of the business for both customers and employees.

However, it’s important to set realistic goals. You’ll be more motivated to pursue goals if you believe you have a genuine chance of accomplishing them.

To ensure the goals you set for your business in 2025 are reasonable, keep the following tips in mind:

Get General

Normally, the advice is to get specific when setting business goals. That advice is absolutely valable. Often, achieving a goal is actually easier when you’re very specific about the details of what you want to accomplish.

That said, when you’re first setting goals for your business, it may help to decide what general areas of growth you want to focus on. Do you want to boost profits? Tap into an untapped market? Expand your customer base? Grow your workforce? 

You might not have the bandwidth to pursue a wide range of business goals within a single year. Thus, getting started by deciding what general categories of goals you want to focus on can help you feel that the more specific business goals you set align with your overall vision for your business.

Review Past Numbers

Ambition is an essential quality in a business owner. To survive in a competitive landscape, you need to set your sights high.

On the other hand, you shouldn’t merely assume your business will experience unparalleled growth within a year simply because you want it to happen. Once you’ve decided what general types of business goals you want to prioritize, review business records related to those goals.

For example, maybe you want to boost profits. Review your records to learn what types of growth you can expect when your profits are at their strongest. 

Doing so will help you better understand what types of profit boosts are realistic to aim for. In addition, looking back at records in this manner can help you identify steps you may have taken in the past to achieve your goals.

Write Out a Business Plan

Drafting a business plan isn’t just a step you should take when first starting your business. Some business experts recommend annual planning. The benefits of annual planning include:

• Finding opportunities to adjust or “tweak” your original plan as-needed
• Getting more specific about how you will allocate resources throughout the year
• Giving you the time to identify new areas of potential growth that you haven’t explored in the past
• Allowing you to reflect on the past year’s growth, which will hopefully provide lessons you can apply to this year

Creating an annual business plan also allows you to create a specific plan to work in conjunction with your larger plan. While the business plan you created when first starting your business can provide a general outline for how you want your business to grow over the years, an annual business plan can focus on the key details of achieving that year’s goals.

Don’t worry if you’ve never created a new business plan for the new year in the past. An annual business plan template can help you get started. Do some Googling to find one that serves your needs.

Seek Input

This tip won’t apply if you’re the only employee of your business. However, if you do have a workforce, consider polling them about their opinions on your various plans for the new year. How you do so may depend on the size of your workforce. 

If yours is a small company, you may be able to simply speak directly with your employees about this topic. For a medium-sized or large company, it may be necessary to distribute actual polls.

Regardless, there’s value in soliciting opinions from your employees when deciding what types of business goals are worth pursuing. First, your employees may offer helpful insights that can make your job easier. Second, soliciting the feedback of employees has been shown to boost employee engagement.

Prioritize

You don’t have to set just one goal for the year. However, you have to accept that you might not be able to achieve all the goals you wish to establish. 

Rank your business goals by priority once you’ve established them. If, midway through the year, you realize you won’t be able to achieve all your goals in 2025, prioritizing will help you focus on the goals that matter most.

Get Specific

Yes, this list started with the recommendation that you emphasize generalities. However, now that you’ve established exact goals, it’s helpful to break those goals down into the steps you may need to take to achieve them. 

You can modify these steps later if needed. The main point is to ensure you and your employees have clear ideas about what you need to do to achieve your goals.

A Last Point: The Importance of Communication

These tips will help you set genuinely achievable goals for your business. They apply not just in 2025, but in any year when you want to reach toward new growth.

Just remember, you need to communicate your goals effectively with your employees. They’ll be more likely to help your business achieve its goals if you can help them get as excited about these business goals as you are.

Special Hint: Use Powtoon to Communicate Business Goals Effectively

Video and similar visual content is highly engaging online. Video content is dynamic and captures an audience’s attention in ways other types of content can’t.

Consider this when planning how to communicate business goals with your employees. You may want to create a professional-quality video or slideshow focusing on your goals and how you’ll achieve them.
With templates and various other resources, Powtoon makes creating such a video easy and affordable, even if you don’t have video production experience. Sign up for free today to learn more!

The post How to Set Realistic Business Goals for 2025 appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Attracting investors may be among your most significant responsibilities as a business owner. Even if you’re dedicated to providing your customers with quality services and products, your business may be unable to thrive without funding from outside sources.

Knowing how to find investors for your business is critical. That said, once you’ve identified potential investors, you still need to convince them that investing in your business will yield a strong return on investment for them.

One way to improve your pitches to business investors is through dynamic video and multimedia presentations. The following guide will explain what you need to know about the topic, describing how visual communication improves your pitches and how you may tailor your videos and business presentations depending on your specific goals and audience.

The Power of Visual Communication for Business Funding

Video content and multimedia presentations can help you make the right impression on potential business investors for a variety of reasons. Video may be effective because:

• Video content allows you to explain complex ideas in an easy-to-digest manner. Research shows that educators often find animated video content helps students learn complex subjects more easily and effectively than they might through lectures alone. Thus, video might help you attract investors to your business if the nature of your products or services is difficult to explain without a strong visual aid.
• Video content has been shown to drive high levels of engagement on social media when compared to other types of content. It may, therefore, also yield engagement during a pitch meeting with business investors.
• With video content, you can establish your brand (through color scheme, logos, etc.) and incorporate music and other such elements to generate an emotional reaction in your audience. 

Creating Compelling Business Videos

Not all video content is equally effective at attracting business investors. To optimize the chances that your videos will make the right impression on audience members, keep the following general tips in mind:

• Consider your audience when creating a video. You may want to create multiple business videos for different audiences. For example, you might focus on conveying the sense that your business is energetic and “hip” when presenting to younger investors. When presenting to more established business investors, you may show a video conveying a professional image and brand.
• Emphasize preparation and thorough pre-production, writing scripts, drafting storyboards, and taking all necessary steps to ensure the production and post-production run as smoothly as possible.
• Don’t forget to include practical information. Although you should leverage the full power of video by including music and various other elements that can enhance the quality of your presentation, you can’t forget the basics. Your video still needs to offer information about sales, profits, your budget, and other such details to convince others that investing in your business is a wise decision.

Presenting Your Company to Investors

Again, you need to know how to find investors before you can pitch to them. Tips for finding the right investors for your business include the following:

• Start with people you know. Friends, family members, and members of your professional network could be potential business investors. If they can’t invest in your business, they may know people who could.
• Research different types of investors, such as angel investors, private equity firms, etc. Understanding your options will help you narrow down your search.
• Participate in events and groups that are relevant to your industry. Be aware these don’t need to consist of in-person groups and events merely. You could also join groups on social media to find potential business investors.

Once you’ve found investors, along with pitching your business with a video, you could improve the quality of your pitches by:

• Focusing on concision, so that you don’t waste anyone’s time or run the risk of losing their attention.
• Leaving time for your audience members to answer questions. Prepare by thinking about the types of questions they might ask and how you may answer them.
• Adopting confident body language. Research shows that doing so can actually make you feel more confident.

Template Suggestions for Video Pitches

Powtoon is an online video maker designed to simplify the process of generating impressive video content even if you have minimal video production experience. This tool also offers video templates that may be ideal when creating a video to help pitch your company to business investors.

Templates to consider using include:

• Our Results: This video template allows you to highlight your past successes. Business investors may be more likely to offer funding if you can demonstrate how your business has succeeded at achieving key goals in the past.
• Company Profile: Consider using this template if you wish to offer a dynamic but general introduction to your business and its mission.
• Goals: Business investors may want to know that you’ve set clear goals for your business and have plans for achieving them. You may illustrate what your goals are with this template.

Templates merely offer you the foundation on which you can build a business presentation. They allow you to create a business pitch video more easily than you otherwise could, while also leaving you with the freedom to modify a template as you see fit.

Tailoring Videos for Loans and Grants

Small business loans and grants come in a range of forms. Examples include:

• SBA loans
• Equipment loans
• Term loans
• Business lines of credit
• Startup loans
• Short-term loans
• Microloans
• Merchant cash advances

Research the pros and cons of different types of loans to determine which may best serve your needs. Again, you may tailor your video content accordingly, modifying a video depending on the type of small business loan you’re seeking and the type of audience you’re presenting to. The more you focus on making improvements, the more successful your pitches will be over time.

Luckily, generating multiple videos is easy and budget-friendly with Powtoon. To learn more about how this online video maker can help you impress potential business investors, sign up today.

The post How To Craft Persuasive Business Videos and Presentations to Attract Investors  appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Statistics indicate that online shopping continues to grow in popularity across the world. That means you’re certainly not too late if you’re considering starting an ecommerce business of your own! Some might argue there’s never been a better time to start such a venture.

That said, having the desire to start an ecommerce business isn’t the same as knowing how to start an ecommerce business. If you’re not sure how to position your business for success in 2023, the following guide will help.

Want to know how to start an ecommerce business that succeeds? Keep these tips in mind:

Determine What Products You’re Going to Sell

This is a critical first step. Whether you’re selling items you’ve created yourself or selling someone else’s products, you need to identify a niche that appeals to you (and to your potential customers) strongly enough to help you stay motivated during the early stages of growth. 

Tips for choosing what types of products to sell when starting an ecommerce business include the following:

• Determine if there are any high-quality products you can make that would offer value to your customers
• Explore various niches instead of selling general items, as there may be less competition if you target a very specific set of customers
• Consider starting by identifying your target audience first, then work backward, determining what their needs are and what types of products you can offer to fulfill said needs
• Consider your budget, particularly if you’re planning on selling items that you will source from others

Consider Your Platform

You have an important decision to make relatively early on as you learn how to start an ecommerce business. You could host your business on an existing platform, like Shopify, or you could create your own website through which to sell your items.

The advantages of working through an existing platform are obvious. This method allows you to simplify many of the steps involved in getting your business up and running. However, starting your own site could give you more freedom to set your own policies, cultivate your own unique brand, etc.

Explore your options by learning how to start an ecommerce business both ways. Once you’ve done some research, you’ll better understand which option may best help you achieve your goals.

Optimize Your Ecommerce Business for Mobile

Just as statistics show that ecommerce in general, continues to remain popular, data also indicate that mobile browsing and mobile online shopping are growing more and more common. In fact, mobile browsing first overtook desktop browsing several years ago.

You need to ensure that customers can navigate and order from your ecommerce business just as easily from a phone or tablet as they could from a computer. If you choose to start your business on an existing platform, said platform might optimize your site for mobile automatically.

If you choose to create your own website, be sure to create a mobile-friendly version. Test both versions thoroughly to confirm they work reliably across all major devices customers may use.

Establish a Brand

Your brand is your ecommerce business’ unique identity. It’s one of the features that distinguishes your business from the competition. Steps to take when establishing your brand include:

• Determining the values and overall lifestyle, that you want your brand to represent
• Choosing a name that represents your brand and potentially gives customers a sense of what you offer
• Choosing a color scheme and up to three fonts that you will use in branded content
• Creating a logo
• Determining the “tone” of your brand’s voice that you will use through all marketing content

Set Up Behind-the-Scenes Systems

Your customer-facing processes aren’t the only elements of your business you may need to optimize when starting an ecommerce shop. You also need to address certain practical behind-the-scenes matters as:

• Organizing your bookkeeping so you consistently stay on top of tracking expenses and revenue
• Setting up processes to ensure reliable shipping and customer service
• Optimizing security 
• Setting up systems that allow you to accept multiple payment options
• Establishing a way to track and analyze customer data to help you make informed decisions

Generate Valuable Content for Marketing Purposes

You need to market your brand somewhat aggressively when starting a new ecommerce business in 2023. In a crowded marketplace, you may need to be a little loud to ensure people know your business exists.

However, you must also account for the fact that surveys indicate customers hate overt advertising. That means you have to find a way to promote your business without giving customers the wrong impression.

One tried and true way to achieve this goal is to generate content your customers would find valuable. For example, maybe you’re selling a line of cooking tools. Your target audience would likely engage with content teaching them cooking tips.

It’s also wise to generate the dynamic type of content that has been shown to yield high levels of engagement among today’s consumers. For example, video content boosts engagement and tends to be shared on social media more often than other types of content. Keep this in mind when working on your marketing plan.

How to Start an Ecommerce Business That Thrives: Constantly Learn

This is perhaps the most important piece of advice on this list. When running any type of business, from a small e-commerce operation to a major global enterprise, monitoring your progress and learning lessons from your victories and mistakes is essential. By applying these tips and consistently refining your strategy, your chances of succeeding as an ecommerce business owner will only increase.

Use Powtoon to Generate Video Content for Your Ecommerce Business

Even if you understand that video content can improve your marketing campaigns, you might be reluctant to even consider prioritizing it simply because you lack video production experience. You may also feel you don’t have the budget to create marketing videos.

Powtoon was designed specifically for people like you. It simplifies the video production process, allowing beginners to create video content easily and affordably. Sign up today to learn more!

The post How to Start A Successful Ecommerce Business in 2023  appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Running any business can be demanding. Even small business owners encounter unique challenges they must be prepared to navigate successfully if they are to succeed.

Luckily, anticipating said challenges can make overcoming them much easier. What are the problems that small businesses face?

The following are a few key examples. No matter what your industry may be, if you own a small business, there’s a chance you’ll come up against these difficulties at some point. Now is the best time to determine how you’ll address them.

Limited Capital

Running a business requires money. That said, if you’re a small business owner without a string of successes in the past, convincing others to invest in your business may not be easy.

One way to deal with this is to put together a strong investor presentation. Your presentation should offer practical information that demonstrates to a potential investor why your business idea is worth funding. Additionally, your presentation should be dynamic enough to capture and keep the attention of your audience.

Research creative presentation ideas to learn how to make the right impression on investors. Doing so could be key to your business’ growth.

Recruiting Issues

Talented and ambitious job-seekers want to work at companies where they will have the opportunity to grow. Research confirms that today’s top performers want to know jobs will provide them with the chance to build their careers.

One way to make the idea of working for you more appealing to potential employees is to focus on cultivating a strong culture. Engaging company culture can make up for the fact that your business is new and small.

Standing Out

The marketplace you’re entering may be crowded. You need to get noticed in an environment where many of your potential customers might already give their business to one of your competitors.

Ways you may address this issue include:

• Offering discounts at first to attract customers
• Offering a unique product or service your competitors don’t offer
• Investing in widespread marketing

Relying Too Much on the Same Customers

A loyal customer base can play a critical role in the success of any business. During times when you may be struggling to attract new customers, a loyal base of customers can help your business remain afloat.

However, if you rely too much on the same customers, your business could quickly go under if those customers were to ever stop paying for your products and services. For a small business, even a customer simply moving away can result in losses.

The best way to proactively guard against this is to consistently focus on attracting new business. While ensuring your loyal customers remain engaged should be a priority, you also need to constantly strive to bring in new customers.

Time Management Issues

Virtually all small business owners need to wear many hats when growing their companies. This can make it difficult for a business owner to prioritize tasks.

Unfortunately, your more established competitors may have larger workforces. Other business owners thus have the luxury of delegating work. You might not, at least for the time being.

Ways to improve your time management skills when running a small business include the following:

• Use everything from calendars to time management apps to maximize your productivity
• Look into tools and services that fit your budget and will allow you to automate various tasks
• Do your best not to multitask, as research indicates that the vast majority of people are actually unable to multitask successfully
• Take breaks to prevent burnout from sapping your energy

In addition, learning to say no is one of the most important skills a small business owner can develop and cultivate. If you always say yes to those who ask for your attention and energy, you may sometimes be unable to devote your time to tasks that are truly important.  

Poor Financial Management

Tracking expenses and revenue is a dreaded task for some business owners. Although those who enjoy working with numbers might actually take some pleasure in this aspect of running a small business, for many, it’s simply a chore.

That means, while it might not always be “fun,” like all chores, it does need to get done. If you’re not keeping an eye on how much money is coming in and how much is going out, you could find yourself without the funds necessary to stay in business.

As soon as you start your business, establish a formal and standardized approach to bookkeeping. Decide when you will complete bookkeeping tasks every week, choose which tools you will use to help you complete these tasks, and be sure to separate your business finances from your personal finances. Taking these steps early will make bookkeeping much more painless in the long run.

Limited Marketing Budgets

Getting the word out about your business can be challenging if you lack substantial funds to devote to marketing. The following are few ideas to consider if you need to market your small business on a tight budget:

• Use social media to cultivate a following
• Develop and release valuable content that your customers would find useful
• Attend networking events
• Ask your loyal customers to generate marketing content for you (such as by highlighting your products or services on their own social media pages)
• Ask happy customers to provide testimonials and reviews

Most importantly, keep in mind that none of the information here is meant to discourage you. Plenty of small business owners succeed in growing their operations into thriving enterprises. That said, knowing what are the problems that small businesses face and what you can do to prepare for them can have a major impact on your odds of achieving your entrepreneurial goals.

Create Strong Video Marketing Content With Powtoon

The video has been shown to deliver high levels of engagement. To market your business effectively, strongly consider developing video content.

No worries if you lack video production experience or a large video production budget. Powtoon makes producing live-action and animated video content easy, even if you’re a complete beginner. Sign up today to learn more!

The post 7 Key Issues Faced by Small Businesses and How to Overcome Them appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

In the world of business, losing leads can be a real stumbling block. Lead generation is crucial but only considered successful if they turn into paying customers.

The following are among the key reasons why small businesses lose leads. Familiarizing yourself with them can help you avoid certain common mistakes. Remember, knowing what you could do wrong as a small business owner is at least as important as knowing what to do right!

Inconsistent Branding and Messaging

Your brand is your company’s identity and set of unique values. If your branding and messaging do not remain consistent across all channels, your values will seem inconsistent. This could make it difficult for a business to cultivate a deeper and lasting connection with leads.

To ensure your brand messaging is consistent, keep the following tips in mind:

• Ensure certain visual elements of your brand (such as your branded color scheme and font choices) are generally the same across all branded materials
• Generate a thorough brand style guide and require all key members of your marketing team to familiarize themselves with it
• Develop a branded “voice” that may consist of language, vocabulary, tone, and other such qualities, and keep it consistent
• Consider using video to train employees who represent your brand
• Dedicate a single team to the process of content creation if doing so is feasible

Lack of Target Audience Clarity

This is among the key reasons why small businesses lose leads. You need to thoroughly and accurately define your target audience to know who your ideal leads actually are. If you fail to properly tailor your marketing content to the correct audience, you may only succeed in attracting leads who have little interest in your products and services.

Learn how to conduct market research and develop audience personas. The time you invest into this process will pay off substantially.

You Aren’t Using the Proper Channels

Knowing your audience doesn’t merely help you determine what types of content you should create. When you know who your audience is, you can also research which social media platforms and other such channels may be most effective for helping you reach them.

For example, perhaps yours is a B2B company. Your small business may lose leads if you’re trying to market it primarily on TikTok. Your company would likely have greater success if you were to market it through LinkedIn.

Poor Website Design and User Experience

It doesn’t matter if you provide quality products and services—if your digital experience isn’t user-friendly, your leads may be less likely to become devoted customers.

Tips for optimizing website design and the overall digital user experience your brand offers to customers include:

• Ensure your website looks attractive and performs well on mobile, as mobile browsing is now more common than desktop browsing
• Look for ways to simplify the navigation of your website, app, and other such digital representations of your brand
• Test various layouts and features to determine which yield the highest levels of engagement

Ignoring Data and Analytics

Trusting your gut isn’t always the best idea! Thanks to innovations like machine learning, analyzing data efficiently has never been easier. Take advantage of such innovations to learn more about your customers and to make data-driven lead-generation decisions.

Failing to perform data analytics is a common reason why small businesses lose leads. Unfortunately, some small business owners mistakenly assume that analyzing large quantities of data is only necessary for major enterprises.

That’s not the case! If you don’t leverage data to your advantage, you’re depriving yourself of the opportunity to perfect your lead generation strategy.

Lack of Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing plays a critical role in the lead generation strategy of virtually any business in the digital age. This is because content marketing allows a brand to attract leads without being excessively “salesy” or promotional. Instead, a brand can attract leads naturally by providing quality content.

Tips for creating valuable content for lead generation include the following:

• Consider offering video content, which has been shown to yield high levels of engagement
• Partner with influencers who may create content for your brand
• Through social media and other such channels, encourage existing customers to generate content
• Clearly identify the needs of your audience and provide them with access to very high-quality content that serves their needs

Ineffective Lead Capture and Conversion Techniques

Mistakes you could make when planning and implementing lead capture and conversion strategies include:

• Making promises during the lead capture phase but not clearly explaining how your business will follow through on those promises later
• Not developing a value proposition that highlights why a lead needs your products or services
• Making the lead capture process too complex (such as by requiring leads to provide too much information on lead capture forms)
• Not developing a lead nurturing strategy that effectively guides a lead through the conversion process

Avoid these mistakes by taking the time to plan your lead capture and conversion strategies thoroughly. This is another instance in which making decisions based on data analytics may be wise.

Operational Challenges Contributing to Lead Loss

Various types of operational challenges could theoretically influence your lead generation efforts in a negative manner. Examples include:

• The difficulty for leads to contact your business: If a lead has questions they need answered before a conversion occurs, said lead needs a reliable means of contacting your business. Thus, it’s important to establish means of addressing customer requests early. You must also clearly indicate how leads can contact your business on your website and social media pages.
• Employee-related issues resulting in lead loss: Lead loss may occur if employees have not been trained to guide a lead through every step of the nurturing process. Emphasize the importance of training and education to guard against this.
• Sales and marketing teams not aligned: Sales teams and marketing teams need to be trained on lead generation together. If they’re not, your small business could lose leads due to inconsistent messaging, poor lead handoff, and other such issues.

None of this is meant to worry you! Knowing why small businesses lose leads is simply very important. When you know what factors can prevent your leads from becoming customers, you’re better equipped to plan a strategy that yields results.

Skyrocket Your Lead Generation With Powtoon

Again, studies show that video content is more engaging than other types of online content. Video content can thus play a significant role in your lead generation and conversion strategies.

Powtoon’s video maker and animation maker allows you to create this type of content easily! Even someone with virtually no video production experience can use Powtoon to affordably generate video content that impresses leads. Sign up today to get started!

The post 8 Reasons Why Your Small Business is Losing Leads appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

A business proposal is an extremely important piece of content or document. With a strong business proposal, you can convince potential clients to sign up for a service or place an order for your products. A quality business proposal can also attract investors and partners.

Even if your products and services can genuinely deliver value, if your business proposal is lacking, your audience might not fully appreciate why your offerings are worth their money. Luckily, Powtoon offers features and tools that allow you to easily optimize the quality of your business proposal.

To make the right impression on your audience (while using Powtoon to create a business proposal that serves its intended purpose), keep the following tips in mind:

Understand Your Audience

Before you begin working on your business proposal, you need to know your audience. Ways you can better understand your audience include:

• Conduct general industry research
• Within a subset of your audience, identify who the major decision-makers are
• Review data from existing and past customers to identify traits members of your audience share
• Familiarize yourself with the jargon and overall language of your audience
• Most importantly, identify the needs of your audience and how you can serve them

Be aware that you may not have one single target audience. Depending on the nature of your business, odds are there are multiple audiences you might cater to.

Your chances of making the right impression on each audience will be much greater if you tailor your business proposals to individual audiences instead of sharing the same business proposal with everyone. Powtoon makes doing so easy with customizable templates. These templates don’t merely allow you to craft a visually-compelling proposal—they also allow you to modify and edit them with ease, helping you adjust your approach for different audiences.

Visual Storytelling

Your goal when submitting a business proposal to a potential client or partner is to essentially persuade them to buy your products, pay for your services, invest in your business, or otherwise work together with you towards mutually-beneficial goals.

Achieving such goals requires being persuasive. According to some business experts, being persuasive is much easier when you tell a story.

Your business proposal absolutely should include the types of practical facts and figures that speak to your business’ measurable value. However, by also adding an element of storytelling, you may connect with your audience on a deeper emotional level.

You could take this approach a step further by incorporating visual storytelling. With Powtoon’s video maker and presentation maker tools, you can easily add multimedia elements such as video clips, animations, motion graphics, and more.

These elements, when used in the service of telling a story, result in a more dynamic business proposal presentation. The more dynamic a presentation is, the more engaged the audience members will be.

For example, maybe you wish to demonstrate to potential customers how your services can solve a common problem for them. Instead of simply making your points in the form of a bullet list, you can play a short animated film depicting a character who represents your audience struggling with the relevant problem. Over the course of the short cartoon, you can show how this character overcomes the problem with the help of your business.

You’d still be making the same points you would make if your business proposal was merely a general description of the benefits you can offer. You’re simply making these points in a more interesting way.

Communicate Your Value Proposition

This may be the most critical purpose of a business proposal: explaining in clear terms to a potential client or partner how your offerings can yield significant value for them.

Again, storytelling helps you “hack” an audience’s emotions. When communicating your value proposition, you need to focus on their brains, sharing data points, graphs, and other such objective material to illustrate to your audience how you can provide a strong return on investment.

That doesn’t mean this element of a business proposal needs to be boring or dry. Whether you’re using Powtoon to create a live-action video, animated video, slideshow, or all three, with Powtoon’s various text and design features, you can draw attention to key points in your business proposal in a way that captures the attention of audience members.

These features can also help you establish your brand. With custom fonts and colors, you may express your business’ branded identity, potentially fostering brand loyalty from the start.

Emphasize Benefits and Solutions

To some extent, you need to address your audience’s pain points when drafting a business proposal. Identifying the problem you can solve for your audience is key to showing why they should partner with you or buy your products/services.

However, it’s best to emphasize the positive, focusing most of your energy on highlighting the solutions and advantages your business offers. 

You want to ensure your audience associates your brand with positive emotions by the time you’re done sharing your business proposal with them. Powtoon can help in this capacity by allowing you to customize colors, animated characters, logos, and more, ensuring the visual content of your proposal serves to trigger optimistic feelings. Additionally, Powtoon lets you easily add music and other such audio elements, enhancing the positive emotional content of your proposal.

Call-to-Action and Follow-Up

You don’t want your audience to receive your business proposal passively. When your presentation is through, you want audience members to take some sort of desired action, such as signing up for a service, buying a product, etc.

Your business proposal needs a strong call to action that captures the attention of audience members. Once more, thanks to custom text features, animation tools, and other such features, Powtoon helps you design a CTA that genuinely stands out.

Powtoon Boosts Your Business Proposals and Fuels Your Success

Creating a strong business proposal doesn’t need to be a challenging task. With Powtoon, creating effective business videos and slideshows is easy and affordable. Learn more about what Powtoon can do for your business by signing up today!

The post Crafting Compelling Business Proposals: 5 Effective Strategies With Powtoon appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Artificial intelligence has become such a buzzword in recent months that it’s sometimes difficult to know precisely what AI tech consists of. Often, AI refers to:

• Machine learning: This form of AI involves algorithms, as the name implies, learning to perform specific tasks on their own without being prompted to. A basic example of machine learning is an algorithm for a popular e-commerce site recommending products to users based on their purchase histories.
• Natural language processing: NLP is a subset of AI involving computers essentially learning how to understand human language and communicate with humans accordingly. This technology drives sophisticated chatbots.
• Automation: Various types of AI tools can automate tasks that a human worker would otherwise need to complete. For example, it’s becoming increasingly common for medical professionals to use AI to complete paperwork for them, allowing them to focus on other priorities.

AI technologies are transforming businesses across a range of industries and niches. Be aware small businesses aren’t exempt from these developments.

Do you own a small business? If so, familiarizing yourself with the way AI is changing how others do business could help you better understand how you might take advantage of this technology yourself.

3 Ways AI is Transforming Small Business: What You Need to Know

This isn’t an exhaustive list. Because AI tech is developing rapidly, the way it influences how entrepreneurs do business is constantly expanding. That said, three ways AI is transforming a small business that you should be aware of include the following:

Data Analysis

Analyzing various types of data can help a small business owner make informed decisions. Consider the following examples:

• Analyzing social media follower data can provide a business owner with more information about their customer base
• Analyzing sales data allows a business owner to identify seasonal trends
• Analyzing financial data allows for more accurate budgeting and forecasting

Those are merely a few examples. Unfortunately, the task of data analysis is often time-consuming and complex.

That’s no longer necessarily the case. AI programs can perform accurate data analysis virtually nonstop. Small business owners are leveraging the technology for this purpose, helping them strategize more effectively than ever before while also saving time.

Boosting Security

Guarding against data leaks and breaches plays a key role in a small business’ reputation. Customers are less likely to trust a business in the future if, due to a lack of proper security measures, their data gets out or someone hacks their accounts.

This is another problem AI may offer a solution to. AI algorithms can boost security by identifying the signs of suspicious behavior and putting a stop to it or alerting the necessary parties promptly.

Regardless of the type of business you run, in the digital age, there’s a good chance your business handles customer data to at least some extent. AI-based security measures can allow you to do so responsibly. 

Improving Customer Service

As a small business owner, you likely understand that providing strong and reliable customer service contributes to your success. However, you might also be a very busy person who must handle a wide range of responsibilities and tasks every day. If so, there’s a good chance you’re unable to promptly address all customer service requests on your own.

Thanks to AI, you don’t have to. AI-based chatbots can handle many customer requests without requiring any additional human involvement. If a customer has a request or an issue that AI can’t help them with, the AI chatbot can still assist them in contacting a human customer service representative for more help.

Using AI in this capacity will improve your customer service, thereby boosting your business’ reputation.

It may also save you time and money. If a chatbot can handle many customer service requests on your behalf, you won’t need to devote time to handling these requests on your own, nor will you need to hire a human employee to address them. 

This highlights a critical point. Even if you appreciate the potential value of investing in AI solutions for your small business, you might nevertheless still be reluctant to do so because you believe embracing AI is too cost-prohibitive right now. However, by taking advantage of AI sooner rather than later, you stand to actually save (and earn) a lot of money in the long run.

The Importance of Embracing AI as a Small Business Owner

Again, these are just three ways AI is transforming small businesses. They by no means represent all the ways small business owners are applying AI technology to improve their products, services, internal processes, and more.

It doesn’t matter what type of small business you own—odds are good that various AI solutions that could benefit you are already currently available. Trends indicate your competitors are likely using these technologies already. You should do the same to maintain your competitive edge.

Getting Started With AI for Your Small Business

Embracing AI as a small business owner doesn’t need to be a challenge. Remember that you can use AI for script writing, narration, and various other purposes. With that in mind, knowing how to use AI to write a script or make voiceovers can go a long way. Keep the following tips in mind as you explore various AI tools and services for your business:

• List the various ways you might consider using AI
• Search for products and services that align with your needs
• Research which tools competitors in your industry might already be using
• Test out different AI tools (you can usually do so with a free trial) to identify those you feel most comfortable with
• If necessary, train your employees to use these tools as well

As you grow increasingly comfortable with using a few AI solutions to streamline your operations as a small business owner, you may decide to experiment with additional tools. Once more, because AI develops rapidly, new AI solutions tend to hit the market fairly often.

Make use of them accordingly. The sooner you begin working with an AI solution, the sooner you’ll begin seeing a strong return-on-investment.

Bonus Tip: Use AI to Generate Content (and Use Powtoon to Animate it)

Some small business owners are also using AI for more creative tasks, such as generating scripts for short animated promotional videos. If you also use AI for this purpose, Powtoon is a beginner-friendly animation maker that can allow you to create animated videos easily and affordably. The platform also offers one of the best AI script generators. And did we mention you can use the AI video generator—one of the best AI video editors—to streamline your whole video content creation process? Sign up today to get started!

The post How AI Technology is Transforming Small Businesses appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Staying abreast of small business trends should be among the top priorities of any small business owner. Regardless of your industry or niche, if you understand how these trends affect you, you can plan to take advantage of them proactively.

Consider the following small business trends for 2023. If you run a small business, think about how you may account for the following:

Increased Social Media Marketing Spending

Some small business trends of 2023 are unsurprising. Essentially, they may be continuations of trends that have been developing for several years.

For example, an emphasis on social media marketing isn’t anything new. While experts point out that ad spending, in general, may slow or even decrease to some extent throughout 2023, research also indicates that brands will increasingly prioritize social media when determining precisely how to allocate advertising funds.

This is likely because social media marketing campaigns tend to deliver a strong return on investment. If marketers need to be cautious about how they spend their budgets in 2023, they’ll prioritize efforts that consistently tend to be effective.

Consider this as you plan your marketing campaigns. Odds are your competitors will leverage social media to an even greater degree than they already are going forward. To remain competitive, you must generate social media marketing content that stands out.

Greater Desire for Remote or Hybrid Work Options

The COVID-19 pandemic changed how we work in many ways. Most significantly, it ushered in an era of remote work.

Surveys now indicate most job-seekers want the option to work remotely at least some of the time. If you run a small business, offering hybrid or remote work options could help you boost satisfaction and retention among your existing workforce while attracting ambitious job-seekers.

Plan accordingly by considering how you can modify your processes so that working remotely is feasible for employees. Additionally, it would be best if you took the time to experiment with various collaboration tools and solutions.

For example, although employees, if given the option, generally prefer to work remotely, many also report experiencing “Zoom meeting fatigue.” One way to potentially guard against this is to record your screen when completing specific tasks or processes and share the recordings with team members instead of requiring everyone to participate in a meeting.

A Focus on Entertaining Customers

The rise of e-commerce has been disrupting brick-and-mortar businesses for years now. The pandemic has hastened this trend.

Waning interest in brick-and-mortar shopping may have a minimal (negative!) impact on your business if you don’t have any physical locations. However, if you do, marketing experts recommend striving to offer entertaining in-person experiences to your customers in 2023.

How you may do so will depend on the nature of your products and services and the resources available to you. For example, a retailer with a reasonably high budget could use hologram technology to offer dynamic visual displays in their stores.

You might not be able to afford such a high-tech approach. However, you could host small-scale parties, concerts, and other such events at your business. Offer customers an entertaining reason to visit, and you’ll be more likely to make sales at your brick-and-mortar locations.

(Tip: Striving to entertain your audience is a good idea. Consider this small business trend for 2023 when developing marketing content. For instance, with an amusing animated video, you could demonstrate to customers why your products and services are worth their money.)

Greater Personalization

Offering customers personalized experiences is more important than ever. According to McKinsey, 71% of customers expect brands to offer personalized experiences. Perhaps more importantly, about 76% of customers become frustrated when brands don’t personalize content, interactions, etc.

These expectations might not be unreasonable. Thanks to AI, gathering customer information is much easier than in the past. Thus, customers expect marketers and business owners to leverage this information accordingly.

There are various ways you can fulfill this expectation as a small business owner without breaking the bank. Examples include:

• Segmenting your audience into multiple groups and generating marketing content tailored to each group
• Offering products and services to customers based on their past purchases
• Engaging with customers directly on social media

That said, you need to avoid overextending yourself when offering customers personalized experiences with your brand. If you’re a small business owner, you almost certainly don’t have the time or resources to offer personalized experiences to every individual customer. Instead, by segmenting your audience, you can tailor your offerings to suit the needs and preferences of the different types of customers you serve.

Small Business Trends for 2023: The Importance of Updating Your Strategy

Business owners who thrive have always been business owners who make a point of understanding the latest trends and how they may influence their business decisions. This is as true for entrepreneurs running major enterprises as it is for small business owners.

These are merely some of the more noteworthy small business trends for 2023. Think about what they mean for your business and what you should do to ensure they fuel your growth instead of hindering it.

Use Powtoon to Create Marketing Content Easily and Affordably

Creating entertaining marketing videos that are tailored to specific segments of your customer base might seem prohibitively costly both in terms of money and time. That doesn’t need to be the case!

Powtoon is an online video-making tool designed to help users of any experience level (and virtually any budget!) easily create impressive video content. Thanks to Powtoon’s templates and similar resources, you can efficiently generate video content to promote your small business growth, even if you’ve never produced a single video before. Sign up today to learn more!

The post Latest Small Business Trends to Look Out for in 2023 appeared first on Powtoon Blog.

Video continues to play an increasingly important role in the marketing campaigns of businesses and brands across a range of niches and industries. Whether promoting a small business or managing marketing at a significant enterprise, you should prioritize generating and distributing quality video content to your clients.

However, the video content that delivers value to one type of customer might not have the same effect on another. You need to ask, “What type of video do clients need?” to determine how you should spend your video marketing budget. The following suggestions will help.

Purposeful Marketing Videos

Video content effectively engages an audience and establishes a brand identity through visuals and sound. However, for video marketing to deliver the most substantial return on investment, you need to create videos based on the goals and needs of your clients. Taking a strategic approach will ensure your videos resonate with your target audience.

Types of Marketing Videos

When asking yourself, “What kind of video do clients need?” it’s essential to remember that marketing videos can take many forms. Examples include (but certainly aren’t limited to) the following:

• Product demonstration videos: A product demonstration video can show potential customers how your product and service can benefit them. Generating this type of marketing video may be particularly wise if the nature of your products and services makes it difficult for a lead to understand precisely what value they offer immediately. A video may clarify why your products or services are worth a lead’s money.
• Brand storytelling videos: A brand is essentially a business’ “personality.” As marketing experts love to point out, by telling a story about your brand, you can foster greater brand engagement among your audience. Doing so will yield greater loyalty. Although various types of marketing content can help you achieve this goal, video naturally facilitates storytelling and brand engagement.
• Testimonial videos: Written testimonials on your website may provide leads with some sense of the way previous clients and customers have been satisfied with your products and services. However, video testimonials allow past clients to express themselves with more emotion. This can enhance the effectiveness of a testimonial.
• Explainer videos: Like product demonstration videos, as the name implies, explainer videos give you the opportunity to explain the value of your products and services to your leads.
• Social media videos: Social media marketing videos are useful because they allow you to reach your leads on platforms you may be fairly confident they already use. Additionally, social media platforms typically provide marketers with analytics tools they can use to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Just be aware that social media videos should be fairly short. Regardless of the platform you post a video to, a social media video typically shouldn’t be over a minute in length.

This is not an exhaustive list. As you experiment with video marketing, you may become increasingly familiar with the types of marketing videos that resonate most effectively with your clients.

Aligning Video Types With Client Objectives

Experimenting with different types of marketing videos is wise. That said, video production costs time and money (although it can be more affordable than many realize if you use the right tools). You can’t afford to generate every potential type of marketing video to see which yields the strongest results.

One way to determine which types of videos you should prioritize is to identify the goals of your clients. When you know what your client’s goals are, you may more easily determine what types of videos align with those goals.

For example, maybe you sell a line of kitchen tools. If so, the ideal customer is someone who wants to cook delicious and nutritious meals at home. You could thus focus on creating videos that show them how to do so while also showcasing the value of your products.

On the other hand, perhaps you’re handling marketing for a law firm. Odds are your clients are people who have questions about the law. In this scenario, you might focus on creating educational video content that answers common legal questions clients may have.

Be aware that you don’t need to play a guessing game when trying to determine your client’s goals. You could easily learn more about your client’s wants and needs by distributing surveys via social media, your email list, etc. While you shouldn’t rely solely on the results of these surveys to guide your decision-making process, they could offer genuinely valuable insights.

Customizing Templates for Unique Video Needs

Once you know what types of videos best serve your client’s needs, you can create these types of videos using premade templates. Doing so will significantly reduce the amount of time and money it takes to generate a professional-quality marketing video.

You may also modify and personalize these templates to better reflect your brand. Tips for doing so include:

• If yours is a B2B company, understand the tone of your client’s content and modify your templates so it matches their tone and brand
• Stick to a branded color scheme and font selection
• Don’t be afraid to use industry-specific jargon
• Include animated characters that represent the demographics of your clients

It’s also smart to A/B test different video templates. Testing multiple versions of the same template is an easy way to learn more about what clients are looking for.

Final Word

What kind of video do clients need? It’s a question you probably should be asking as you plan your video marketing strategy. 

Luckily, determining what types of video content your clients engage with doesn’t need to be a challenge. The insights this process yields can help you strengthen your marketing efforts in general!

Create Marketing Videos With Powtoon

Offering templates, animation tools, and numerous other resources, Powtoon allows you to easily and affordably create video marketing content even if you have little to no video production experience. Sign up today to learn more about what this tool can do for you!

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