As 2024 unfolds, small business owners are navigating a landscape filled with both challenges and opportunities. Economic uncertainties and rising costs loom large, yet there's an unmistakable trend towards greater community support for local businesses. This trend is more than just grassroots; it's also reflected in the Biden Administration's commitment to stimulating the economy through small business growth.
This supportive backdrop arrives at a crucial juncture, especially considering the economic challenges of 2023 that make starting or owning a business seem daunting. However, the increasing consumer inclination towards small, local businesses paints a promising picture for entrepreneurs in 2024. It's the perfect moment to embrace effective strategies and capitalize on these evolving trends.
Small Businesses Get Support in 2024
The Biden Administration has committed to providing nearly $22 billion to support small business growth and $12.8 billion for worker support through Treasury Department-led programs. The initiatives are meant to support record growth in small business creation, with more Americans applying to start 10.5 million new businesses over the last two years.
Over $8.5 billion will be invested in community development financial institutions and minority depository institutions. Various states, territories, and cities have budgeted 85% of total resources, with projects up by 18%, compared to the first quarter of 2023. With a special focus on “deep-impact-lending” for 2024, the government aims to level the playing field for borrowers with limited access to capital. Technical assistance programs are also being implemented to help small businesses in underserved communities and interagency efforts aim to maximize the impact and flow of capital into underserved communities.
With many initiatives in the pipeline and 64% of consumers have recently changed their buying habits to support local or small businesses, the forecast for 2024 looks promising. Taking this into consideration, let's explore ten of the top small business tips for 2024 we gathered to set you up for business success in the new year.
1. Get Your Finances in Order
Effective cash flow management is crucial for business sustainability. Look into optimizing your invoice collection and inventory management to ensure a steady flow of funds. In light of the increased government support for small businesses, exploring financing options like small business loans or credit lines could be a strategic move.
Another critical step is thoroughly analyzing your financial statements – your balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement. This step is vital to understanding your financial standing and identifying where the money is coming and going. Once you have a clear picture, create a realistic budget that mirrors your business goals and the prevailing economic conditions.
Lastly, tax planning shouldn't be an afterthought. Stay updated on tax regulations that may affect your business and plan accordingly. Seeking advice from a financial expert can be beneficial. They can offer insights and strategies to not only navigate the complexities of financial management but also position your business for growth and resilience in 2024.
2. Perform a SWOT Analysis on Your Business
A SWOT analysis is done to measure your businesses’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and potential threats of the market. By better understanding your business strengths, you’re also better prepared to optimize on those strengths, improve on where your business is weak, take advantage of opportunities presented, and pivot in the face of threats to avoid failure or business decline.
Conducting a SWOT analysis is a strategic move to position your business for success. It's about taking a comprehensive look at your company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—elements that are vital for strategic planning. For instance, a strong local reputation and good relationships with suppliers, as shown in the provided SWOT analysis sample, are solid strengths that can be leveraged for competitive advantage. On the flip side, weaknesses such as a limited online presence highlight areas for immediate improvement to keep up with digital trends. This is why performing a SWOT analysis on your business, or even your competitors, is one of our top small business tips for 2024.
3. Integrate Green Solutions in Your Business
A study by Nielsen found that 81% of global respondents felt strongly that companies should help improve the environment, and 73% said they would change their consumption habits to reduce their environmental impact. With this knowledge, going green with your business practices can have positive impacts to your bottom line. Consider using eco-friendly cleaning supplies in your day-to-day operations. They can be just as effective but less harmful to the environment.
Going paperless by using digital invoices, contracts, and internal documents to save paper is another opportunity to ensure your business is green-confirmed. The same goes for sourcing shipping to local suppliers to minimize your carbon footprint and switching to eco-friendly packaging. Some alternatives include biodegradable or recyclable materials.
4. Employee Training and Development
Having the most qualified individuals as part of your team could make the slightest of changes with the most return on your investments. Ongoing employee development is crucial for adapting to new technologies and methods in your industries. It could increase productivity, which in turn increases profitability.
Workshops, online courses, or bringing in experts in-house for training sessions are some ways to ensure your employees continue to learn and develop their skills. It also helps your employees feel like you are taking a genuine interest in their skills and job performance. Proper training could enhance their overall performance, employee morale, and efficiency. Consider these training and workshops for 2024.
Cross-Training: Train your team members to perform multiple roles. With a small team, flexibility is crucial. If one person is out, others can pick up the slack.
Lunch and Learns: Use lunch breaks as an opportunity for learning. Have someone give a short presentation on a relevant topic. It's informal and can fit into a busy day.
Employee Budget: Give your employees the chance to find training that would be most beneficial for them and reimburse
Vendor Training: Many suppliers offer free training on how to use their products effectively. Take advantage of it to get the most out of what you’re buying.
5. Boost Your Local Online Presence
Boosting your online presence through SEO (search engine optimization) is a non-negotiable. If you want your business to appear on the top pages of search result pages, especially within your local area, you’ll need to know about the latest trends in SEO and how to adapt to them. Fifty-eight percent of consumers use voice searches to find local establishments. Think about how people are likely to search online, via audio or text, for products and services that your business offers.
Using your content to optimize for those key terms and search queries could rank you high among the list of options for your customers to choose from.
Google provides tips and tricks for optimizing for search. You can go to Google's Helpful Content Update” webpage to learn more.
6. Prepare Yourself for the US Corporate Transparency ACT (CTA)
With the U.S. Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) launching on January 1, 2024, it's a key small business tip for 2024 to ensure your business stays compliant. This new regulation mandates companies to disclose their beneficial owners - those who ultimately own or control the business - to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). To ensure you're ready, begin by determining if your business falls under the Act's purview. Then, collect the necessary details of the owners, such as names, addresses, and dates of birth.
Registration with FinCEN is the next step, and it's imperative to meet the deadlines to avoid any penalties. After submitting the ownership information to FinCEN, maintain a meticulous record of this data and any subsequent changes. You're required to securely store this information for a minimum of five years. Getting ahead in this process will not only help you comply with the new law but also position your company to navigate future regulatory requirements confidently.
7. Partner with Nearby Business
Scaling your business is synonymous with building meaningful relationships, and co-branding with local businesses is a strategic move to do just that. Such partnerships extend your reach, increase brand awareness, and open doors to a new customer base. Co-branding not only strengthens your marketing efforts but also fosters trust within the community, leading to potentially more profitable joint ventures and a cycle of mutual growth and continued collaboration.
By co-branding you tap into a larger audience and connect with people who may not have heard of your establishment before. Your partners, especially those already established, can transfer some brand trust and loyalty from their customers. They’re also likely to have more lucrative opportunities if the joint venture/s is successful. Seeing a return on your investment only encourages fellow businesses to want to continue the engagement and make way for other brands to express their own interests in a partnership.
Utilizing the local community is also essential for small businesses, particularly in outmaneuvering the limitations faced against larger competitors. Networking within the community is more than just survival; it's a strategic step towards thriving. Leveraging word-of-mouth marketing and building genuine local business relationships can be instrumental in expanding reach, customer acquisition, and enhancing brand equity. These connections often evolve into strategic partnerships, amplifying community reach and heightening awareness about your initiatives and projects.
8. Start a Customer Loyalty Program
Kicking off a loyalty program isn't just about keeping customers; it's about creating a community, a must-do small business tip for 2024. Eighty-four percent of consumers are more likely to continue doing business with a company that offers a loyalty program. Figure out what rewards your customers will value, decide on the rules and how points are earned, use software to track points and rewards, and promote your program to your customers.
There are different types of reward programs you can implement. You can opt for a points system, where your customers earn points for every dollar they spend. A referral program encourages existing customers to earn rewards for a product or service they love and will likely continue to use. If they’re already spreading the word and talking about your products and services to their friends, why not encourage them to benefit from each purchase? Better yet, if they are loyal customers, encourage them to buy in bulk with a ‘Buy X, Get One Free’ approach to save on their purchases over time.
Take advantage of knowing and predicting your customers’ buyer behavior. Providing them with perks and benefits will ultimately benefit your business in the end.
9. Create More Video Content
Video content has been a preferred format for content consumption for some time. Creating more video content can have many positive outcomes. In fact, people tend to retain up to 95% of what they see in a video compared to just 10% with text. In 2023 video consumption skyrocketed, and we don’t expect that to change going into 2024. Some 2024 trends predict that video will not only be the preferred method for content consumption but that incorporating more video will allow your brand to remain relevant and visually appealing to customers. Video drives more engagement, boosts SEO, encourages user conversions, builds brand authority and can support your other marketing initiatives.
Start small if you have to, one video at a time, until you have a content bank full of video you can rotate across all your marketing channels. Just make sure not to miss out on this opportunity to adapt and capture more of your customers in the way they prefer.
10. Take a Vacation
For small business owners, taking some time off for a vacation might seem impossible. Planning ahead, however, can make it feasible. Schedule your vacation during slower business periods, delegate tasks to trusted team members, and set up an emergency contact method. Your business and, more importantly, you will be better for it.
You come back with a new perspective, new attitude, and potentially with better problem-solving skills when you’ve allowed yourself and mind to rest. Managing your work/life balance is just as important for being successful in other areas of your life, including your business. Continuous work can lead to burnout and burning out leads to poor quality of work, productivity and ultimately negatively impacting your ability to remain profitable. Vacations can also offer you the chance to spend time with loved ones, and strengthen personal relationships. Take them!
Key Takeaway
As business owners prepare to hit their 2024 goals, consider the potential challenges ahead and how you can pivot. With 2023’s economic setbacks and the Biden Administration committed to supporting small businesses, now, more than ever, is the best time to take advantage of all assistance and support you can garner. Staying financially ready is key. Being financially prepared not only helps in your day-to-day operations but also sets the stage for long-term growth and sustainability. Conducting a SWOT analysis to see where your business is strong, where it’s weak, your opportunities and potential threats can help you to differentiate and better prepare you for success in 2024.
Customers want to support small businesses, but you have to make the extra effort. It's easy to order something on Amazon and other retailers so creating a community around your brand with loyalty programs, green packaging, etc. can help your local community find more value in your business. Investing in your team and tools will allow for remaining competitive, increasing productivity, and profitability. Partnering with fellow and local businesses to co-brand can alleviate the burden of figuring things out alone. You’re better able to reach a broader and larger audience, build trust, marketability, and open the doors for more lucrative opportunities.
But remember, you won’t be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor without proper rest and relaxation. Taking time away from your business can seem impossible, but it will do more harm in the long run if you do not invest in your health and wellness.