Heart Of Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce

In a recent survey by Daysmart Software, 54% of small business owners admitted to being worried about making enough money. Making money is a common concern because not only does it factor in bringing in enough clients or customers but also ensuring your products or services are priced right and negotiating any cash flow problems.
Small business owners have lots of stressors as they follow their dreams. It might surprise you just how much the chamber can help with these concerns.
According to the study, small business owners the report they are most concerned about
●Making enough money ●Controlling costs ●Finding new customers ●Marketing to prospective an/or current customers ●Managing time
The chamber and chamber membership can help address all of these common concerns and challenges.
Put the Chamber to Work for Your BusinessIf you’re like most small business owners, you can likely identify with these common business concerns but what you may not realize is how effectively a chamber membersh…

The internet is a bonus and a bane to most people. You can research anything, get your message out inexpensively, connect with people around the globe, and entertain yourself for hours. But it also has created a need for itself. It has a constant hunger for content. It provides a large bullhorn for people to pronounce their views and others are listening. That’s why influencer marketing has become so hot.

What Is Influencer Marketing? Influencer marketing is a type of word of mouth marketing. Just like big brands may use a celebrity endorsement such as an athlete who wears the brand’s sneakers, influencer marketing uses well-known (or well-followed) internet personalities to talk about their product, service, event, etc. Just like in celebrity endorsements, this influencer has a fan base and is likely considered a pro in a given area. There are people who will buy your product/service or look into your organization just because the influencer talked about you.

Where you find an influ…

As a small business owner, your reputation is everything. It will make or break your business. Warren Buffet understood the value of a good business reputation when he said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.”
But protecting your reputation in the days of social media is hard. According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, an unhappy customer will tell between nine to 15 people about the incident.This number gets amplified when they choose to do it in a social stream. Sometimes it’s not even anything your business did wrong. 
How about this TripAdvisor review? 


Can someone please get on that?
Sure, we may snicker about some of those bad reviews but when they happen to your business, they’re not funny. So what do you do if your reputation is in need of a little help?
Don’t worry. We have a list of things that can help those minor blips in the road. However, please note these won’t solve m…

Content is essential to your business becoming (or remaining) an industry leader. It’s fast becoming a differentiator as more and more customers do their research online and make purchasing decisions long before they speak with one of your salespeople. If you hate to write, but don’t want to pay someone else to do it for you, you don’t have to give up on content. You shouldn’t. There are other forms of content production that are as effective in helping you become a resource for your customers as the written word is. If you’re not a great writer, chances are these other forms of media will also be a lot more compelling and engaging for your audience. 
VideoThere are a lot of options in this category from webcam or cellphone production to slick agency creations. What you use depends on what you sell and who you’re selling it to. But even a high-end luxury brand can create a campy, low-budget production hit if it resonates with the target audience. Generally, you’ll want to keep all video…

People buy from people they know, like, and trust. While you might be in the right place at the right time when someone is up against it, and they may buy from you once without knowing, liking, or trusting you, for them to return, you’ll need more than luck.
Know and trust generally come along when you establish yourself as a likable business with a human behind it. It’s difficult for people to like you if they don’t trust you, unless you’re a villain and then being untrustworthy is your business. For most of us, that is not the case. You can’t like someone you don’t remember, so let’s get to work on establishing the like part of the sales equation.  Share Your ReasonThink of how filmmakers or storytellers get us to like the main character. One of the ways is that they place him on a quest, or up against a challenge, that we want him to succeed in. Often it’s one we identify with. Share your reason for doing what you do. There’s probably someone in your audience or potential audience wh…