Every year, the holiday season seems to sneak up on consumers everywhere (and it often does so earlier and earlier, as we're all eerily familiar with.) However, for businesses of all kinds, lacking preparedness for the holidays is simply not an option. For many small businesses in particular, the end of the calendar year can be a make or break period. Orders may jump in volume - or they may drop off and signal that now is the right time to look inward and plan for the busy season to come. Owners and their employees will look to balance their work obligations with their personal time. Customer service becomes the factor that will push you above and beyond your competitors. Finally, marketing and outreach strategies, both in brick and mortar and e-commerce, will take on renewed importance for this specific time frame.
Don't let the holidays stress you out. Here are our top pieces of advice for small businesses whose wishlist includes a profitable, manageable holiday season.

• Look Back

The ideal place to start with any plan for the upcoming holidays is, of course, your data from the previous year. What were your biggest successes? Did any products or packages sell particularly well, or did any underperform? Do you recall thinking "I wish I could have thought of that?" What lessons from ongoing trends in your market can you apply to your approach this year, and how has everyday life changed over the past year for your core audience? Take the time to review, and apply the lessons that may have gone unpracticed since you last focused on your seasonal marketing.

• Make a Calendar

Many households are decorated with advent calendars, counting down the days to the 25th of December. While one of these might be visually appealing for your small business to display, a different type of calendar might be more valuable than even the delicious chocolates hidden inside the more common variety. By this, we mean a promotional calendar of course! You need to consider supply chain and manufacturing schedules as well as your business' available working capital—alongside your marketing plan—to take anticipated changes in order volume into account. Include important milestones such as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and others relevant to your market. If you operate on social media, build the content release schedule into your calendar as key customer deadlines, such as those for shipping, draw near.

• Innovate More Than You Discount

It's easy to offer steep discounts on your products or services in the hopes of attracting more customers. However, this strategy generally works better for larger businesses. As a small business, taking this approach can quickly make profits plummet. The best way to compete against larger-scale competition is by building relationships with your audience, creating opportunities to partner with other local businesses, hosting events, or creating value-add incentives that will entice consumers in ways that go beyond pricing.
 
 

The Merchant Advance Rainy Day Giveaway has been a huge success: we want to first and foremost thank all of our many entrants for the creatively engaging and thoughtful proposals they put forth about the most innovative ways they could grow and evolve their small businesses. But in the end, we had to pick only one of these - who themselves could pick from our pair of prizes, either $5,000 cash or $15,000 in creative services from Bowery Creative, Yulu and Skyrocket.

 
We're happy to announce that Victoria, B.C.-based Content4good are the winners! They'll be using the opportunity to further their business developing educational video games that help children become socially and economically conscious through managing a virtual social enterprise, such as their forthcoming iSaveTheWorld. We're tremendously happy to be able to support a business whose goals include the foresight needed to engage and inspire the next generation of dynamic creators and entrepreneurs. Their business model is part of a growing trend that is moving gaming from the living room to the mobile space and the classroom, using the power of visual and interactive media to stimulate new and exciting conversations. 
 
 
 

It was Daniel Defoe who first wrote:

"Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed."

Fortunately, this week's Loans 101 video, featuring Head of Underwriting Dominik St-Denis, shows that the arrival of tax time, or the collection of back taxes owed by businesses, need not be a crippling blow to your day-to-day cash flow. Merchant Advance funding works well in the short term to buffer against the repayment of owed taxes, no matter when or how much you find yourself needing to pay back.

Here are some of our favourite small business tax tips as the end of 2015 approaches:

• If your business is set up as a sole proprietorship or partnership and is making a solid income RRSPs are an excellent way to reduce your taxes and save for your retirement. In any given year, you can contribute up to 18 percent of your earned income
• Any income your business receives in January rather than December will reduce your business income for this year – thereby reducing the tax on your income. Delaying or deferring income makes especially sound tax sense when your business income is higher than usual, or when the tax rates in the coming year are going to be lower.
• Rather than scrambling to find missing receipts at the last minute, consider using financial management software that lives in the cloud or on a digital platform. This will make filing easier and more centralized when it comes time to find last-minute deductions.

• Small businesses should also be alert to special research and development tax credits that might apply to their line of work. For instance, businesses involved in the manufacturing, food or high-tech industries, among others, might be entitled to scientific research and experimental development (SR&ED) tax credits available federally, and also in some provinces or territories

 

As Canadians take time today to recognize the contributions of our military service members past and present, many small businesses are faced with a decision: open for business as usual, or close their doors in respect for the occasion and all that it symbolizes? There are certainly reasons to advocate for both courses of action: however, consider that remaining active can, in and of itself, be a form of support and respect. Increasing numbers of businesses are themselves being run by the current generation of veterans. Their continued growth and operation shows how the value of service can extend into civilian life. According to the Canada Small Business Administration, nine per cent of small businesses, or 2.45 million, are owned by veterans.

Many veterans of the Canadian Forces are themselves able to make the transition back to civilian life as entrepreneurs and the owners of small businesses. In addition to nonprofit and mentorship-focused organizations for veterans, private sector and financial companies have a major role to play in this transition. As identified in a 2012 study by Athabasca University graduate student Todd Somerville, an increasing amount of resources are available for aspiring entrepreneurs and potential small business owners; however, none were identified that specifically cater to the military community and transitioning veterans. Somerville cites an example wherein it is supported that "properly framing [military] skill sets upon transition to civilian life can lead to tremendous success in the business world."
Civilian and veteran-owned small businesses face similar requirements in the long run: the need for mentorship, access to capital, networking and partnership with functional specialists such as accountants, legal professionals, etc. However, unique considerations must also be made, such as the continued commitment of resources to formalized courses and avenues of skills conversion from service to civilian life.
Take the time today to show your respect to our country's servicemen and women, but realize also their continued relevance, value and the importance of their contributions to the Canadian small business workplace.

The blog welcomes you to your Monday morning this week with another instalment of the Merchant Advance Loans 101 video series, this week featuring VP Marketing, Alex Chisholm.

Seasonality is a topic that this blog has discussed often in the past. Especially in the Canadian business environment, where seasonal changes can create drastic effects on the market viability of small businesses and enforce a dedicated "slow" period based on something as immutable as weather, it's important to be able to plan, predict and reinforce your cash flow to make the best of the off season as a period for restructuring, replenishing, and preparation for the next "boom" phase of the cycle. This model is exactly why we developed our Merchant Advance products to be flexible, allowing any seasonal business to get the benefit of extra money without having to pay a big up-front monthly cost in the slower sections of your year.
For businesses with a steady, predictable flow of customers throughout the year, business loans are the other side of the funding equation. With rates that work for you all year round, a business loan is the product that will benefit your business' longer term financial plan. No matter which of these two solutions will work best for your small business, your unique seasonal financial requirements can be solved! Give us a call at 1 (877) 370-8850 to find out more.

With the Merchant Advance Rainy Day Giveaway in full swing (with only six days remaining to enter!) you may be wondering: what would I do with $15k worth of creative services from Skyrocket, Yulu and Bowery Creative? The possibilities are practically endless! Small business marketing often rewards bold, captivating and dynamic campaigns with one eye fixed on the perfect audience, and the other focused on the important data and information that you can glean from your customers. In case you're starved for ideas, here are six creative ways to raise your small business marketing plans to new heights!

1. Host an Event: Hosting an event is a powerful way to get known by a lot of people at once. Why? Everybody comes over to thank the host. Hold the event at your place of business if you have a physical store, so people learn where you are.
2. Chart New Frontiers: Recently, a local maker of healthy sports energy bars has taken to regularly pop-up-shopping their products and giving out samples right along the most popular Saturday-morning bike routes. Getting out into the world and situating your business in a new, unexpected context or location could attract a whole new customer profile.
3. Upgrade your Email Marketing: Despite the recent anti-spam legislation changes, a vibrant email campaign is still an excellent way to reach, inform and incentivize your customers. Make emails or newsletters pop with enticing graphical elements, create calls to action and track your results with popular campaign management tools such as MailChimp and ConstantContact.
4. Design It, Dream It: Can your brand reach consumers across a range of devices and platforms? Does your website look fantastic, no matter what screen size, orientation, or browser someone might view it on? Perhaps your customers want the full integration and immersion provided by a mobile app? User experience design should be on every small business marketing list of desirables.
5. Tweet it Loud: Your small business marketing plan may already include social media, but are you getting the most out of it? Setting up promotional campaigns through social will increase your viewership, and the potential for user engagement outside of your existing follower base, by orders of magnitude.
6. Get Ready For Your Close-Up: Video marketing has moved from the TV screen to the Youtube channel to the fifteen-second bite-size clip with enough flair and personality to capture your audience's attention. No matter the channel type, professional quality in production is worth its weight in gold. Video production can showcase the best of your small business, deliver authentic testimonials, show off new products, inform your customers, and do it all with style.

Despite the fact that small businesses are uniquely positioned to pivot in the face of changes in their market, it's a fact of life that unexpected events may cause your cash flow to be temporarily altered, suspended or limited. Whether these occurrences are due to mismanagement, natural forces, supplier conflicts or the impact of broader economic trends, it's incredibly important for businesses to have a "rainy day fund" or other type of business emergency fund available to get through the worst of it and maintain operations.

Much like the types of emergency funds that individuals are encouraged to put money aside to develop, business emergency funds are designed to protect your small business by diverting an amount of cash from your earnings into a secondary account or location, so as to be accessible if problems arise. They require discipline to set up and manage, but once you fall into the pattern of saving just a bit of extra business income, they are effectively able to be automated through your banking services.
The big question for most small business owners is: "how much do I put aside?" How much you put in your business emergency fund will determine if your company has the wherewithal to respond to bumps in the economy—or big, unexpected expenses—without falling behind on bills or resorting to measures such as discounting to generate cash or employee layoffs to slash expenses. Personal finance experts advise that individuals keep anywhere from three to six months' worth of their fixed expenses saved in an emergency fund, and the same rule roughly applies to most small businesses, though depending on the obligations your business may need to cover, some analysts suggest that up to one year's worth of savings is recommended.
Other tips for emergency fund preparation include:

• Keeping a secondary account, separate from your main expense account
• Starting with small contributions so as not to negatively impact your cash flow
• Potential investment in low-risk bonds to grow your money
• Setting positive goals for your retained earnings that will allow you to look ahead to emerging opportunities as well as being prepared for unforeseen challenges.

From a business perspective, it can also be ideal to have a credit line that can be tapped for emergencies and to help level out cash flow over time. Many business will look to solutions such as merchant advances to help them out in times of volatility, seasonality or expansion into new markets with potential risk. A merchant advance will give your business the option to have extra cash on hand without putting a drain on your day-to-day operational cash flow.

If you've looked out the window in Vancouver recently, you may wonder where the sun has gone... the weather's not looking the greatest. Case in point:

But fear not! Though the winter weather may be dampening your spirits, Merchant Advance Capital is teaming up with Yulu PR, Skyrocket and Bowery Creative to launch the Rainy Day Giveaway Contest. Every business should try its best to save for a rainy day: we're making it easier with a shower of cash and awesome creative assistance from some of Canada's brightest minds.

Your small business could win its choice of one of two amazing prize packages: $5,000 in cash, or $15,000 worth of creative services from Yulu, Skyrocket and Bowery Creative. All you have to do is tell us what you'd do with the winnings in 150 words or less! Want to set fire to your brand image? Pour some extra money into expansion, renovation or promotional efforts? Order up a deluge of new inventory? If you can imagine it, we want to hear about it.  Simply visit the contest page between now and November 6th, tell us your rainy day dream, and you will be entered to win.

Get out your umbrellas, pull on your rubber boots, look out the window and celebrate. The rain is here! And with it, the opportunity to help your small business thrive and expand, no matter what the weather or the challenges of the entrepreneurial world can throw at it. Any registered Canadian small business can soak up this opportunity: follow us on Twitter with the hashtag #rainydaycapital to learn more and even discover some of the submissions posted by our amazing crop of entrants so far. The Rainy Day Giveaway runs until November 6, 8:59pm PST/11:59pm EST. There's no drought about it: submit your entry today! 

Small businesses here in Merchant Advance's home province of British Columbia work tirelessly to build recognition and trust within their communities, and it goes without saying that they should be lauded for those efforts! Whether your business is a cutting-edge innovator, a community partner, an online marketing wizard, a valuable mentor for young workers, or even simply a local icon, you can enter into the Small Business BC Awards from now until November 30th.
The Awards are organized by Small Business BC, and are free to enter. You can even nominate yourself! All nominees receive valuable business education and support throughout the competition. Winners receive $1,500 cash, a one-year All-Access Pass to Small Business BC education and experts,  business mentorship from the award sponsor and the honour of being named a top BC small business.
Entering into contests such as these may also prove to be a valuable source of exposure for your small business. Test your ability to rally your customers and community behind your campaign for recognition, create buzz and get people voting! Contests are also a prime chance to leverage the ad hoc power of social media, building conversations while creating marketing potential and sharing your business' campaign online.
Of course, we would be remiss not to mention that Merchant Advance has been nominated this year in the category of Best Company! Just like all our clients, we're a small business too, and we are dedicated to helping further the goals of our industry brethren across Canada. Don't forget to vote, and spread the word on social media! We'd be glad to have your support.