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Living in a small city has its pluses and minuses. Obviously, growing up with people and forming close friendships that stay with you for life is invaluable. It is hard to get lonely in a town or smaller-sized city because people tend to know all their neighbors.

 

Small communities can also be extremely competitive. Particularly if you want to go into business, there may be only a few people competing for the type of business you want to open. And there are fewer potential customers to target in your advertising. If you want to get savvier about the way you do business, you can check out an MyIQ online test. What is this, you might wonder? We’ll get to that in a minute. But first let’s look at some basic points.

 

 

What are the advantages of doing business in a small community?

 

There are, of course, some advantages to running a business in a smaller community. These include:

 

• Potential for loyalty. Again, everyone knows everyone in a smaller place. So if you can foster good relationships with people, you will likely gain their devotion (an actual loyalty program might help, too!).
• Reduced overhead. You generally pay less for things like rent and utilities in a small town because these costs tend to be lower in general. A lot of small businesses in places with higher costs of living end up getting pushed out by big chains.
• Easy advertising. Once you get the word out about your business in a small community, people will start telling their neighbors about you. So if you can provide great service and products to your customers, pretty soon the whole town will be talking about you.
• Less competition for rare items. If you manage to develop a product line that is both unique and in high demand among your local population, this is a golden combination. You won’t have competition from the guy next door, and you will be able to maintain business by meeting the demands of your population.

Challenges and how to meet them

For all the benefits that small-town businesses can have, there are also a fair number of challenges. Having a limited population to serve, facing the potential for competition among others with similar businesses, and dealing with seasonal volatility can be difficult.

 

Nonetheless, there are ways that you can meet these challenges and stay on top. These include:

 

• Staying in touch with your community and its needs. If you live in a place where everyone knows each other, you can use this to your advantage. Take the time to personalize your offerings based upon what you know about customer preferences. Make a concerted effort to advertise at community events, perhaps by partnering with a complementary business. Take part in charity events so that you gain respect from people.
• Advertise locally. One of the nice things about living in a small place is that you don’t have to get swallowed up by the digital world. This doesn’t mean that you should ignore the Internet entirely, but make an effort to combine your marketing efforts in a way that reaches people’s doorsteps as well as their smartphones. Billboards, flyers, print mail, as well as social media posts will be your best way to go.
• Make your place easy to find on the map. Even if you are in a centralized location, you should make your business as easy to find as possible. Be sure to create a Google My Business Profile, and make sure that your address is consistent across all your media, as well as Google Maps. People who can’t find a place tend to give up and go to the competition easily.
• Incorporate seasonal fluctuations into your plans. If you offer products that tend to only sell seasonally, try to incorporate this into your long-term planning. Figure out what your budget and projected revenue will be during the high season, and make sure it will result in a profit for you over the long-term. Have promotions during the off-season, and be sure your inventory matches when demand will be high.

Hone your skills

Beyond working on your business savvy in general, you can work on honing your intellectual skills overall. There is an amazing new online program that people all over the world are raving about. It consists of an online IQ test and special exercises that actually help you improve your mental acuity. It is called MYIQ, and people everywhere are using it to improve their cognitive skills so that they can perform better in life.

 

Once you take the test, you will be presented with a score and a percentile ranking. You can work on improving your score through exercises or courses so that you can eventually increase your overall score. And this, in turn, will help you understand how to succeed in business.

A combination of factors

There is no magic bullet to running a small-town business successfully. Like everyone else, you will be subject to the vagaries of circumstance, changing customer preferences, and having to deal with the growing competition of e-commerce. But, remember that there is a reason that the traditional bookstore and old-school malls are making a comeback. People like brick and mortar. So use this to your advantage, and create the best local business your community has ever seen.