Five Things To Know This Week:
1) Annoying Buzzwords (Did we miss any?)
2) BOPIS is real!
3) The Future of Work
4) Top States for Black-Owned Businesses
5) Whitney Johnson’s new book!
Marketing’s 10 Most Annoying Buzzwords
We are all guilty of incorporating the latest buzzwords into our vocabularies and marketing efforts. But many consumers are turned off by the use—really overuse—of these words. This blog on the Marketing Manager site calls out the most annoying marketing words and phrases, including pivot, optimize, funnel, and bandwidth.
Read more to see all 10 of the most annoying buzzwords and what you should say instead.
Click and Collect
BOPIS (Buy Online, Pickup in Store) is one aspect of click and collect. This feature allows customers to pay for items online and then pick them up in your store, restaurant, or curbside. Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, usage of click and collect has grown astronomically.
According to eMarketer, the first big leap came in 2020 when Americans spent $72.5 billion via click and collect, a 107% growth rate over 2019, leaping to more than a 9% share of all retail e-commerce sales. Total buyers jumped from 127 million consumers to 144 million people, a 12.9% growth rate.
This year, eMarketer reports, click-and-collect sales will likely increase about 21% to $101 billion and grow nearly 20% in 2023 to an estimated $120.15 billion. And according to invesp, about 67% of U.S. shoppers have used BOPIS in the past six months, and 10% of all sales will be fulfilled by Click and Collect by 2025. Plus, 50% of shoppers say they’ve decided what online stores to shop at based on whether they offer click and collect options.
Read more about why your business should invest in click and collect options.
Future of Work
Sage just released its HR in 2030 report featuring expert insights from HR leaders, analysts, academics, authors, and global experts. While most small businesses don’t have HR personnel on board, there were some interesting perspectives in the report, including adopting flexible and hybrid work practices (perhaps a four-day workweek?) and broadening the definition of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
Going beyond the current DEI inclusions, such as gender identity, ethnicity, and people with disabilities, it would also include “diversity of personality, emotional intelligence, wider experiences, more appetite for risk, the ability to adapt, as well as thinking differently and neurodiversity.”
Read more about the future of work and HR.
Top States for Black-Owned Businesses
As we start Black History Month, Merchant Maverick released its report on the best states for Black-owned businesses.
Black-owned startups are booming. According to the report, between February 2020 and August 2021, the number of Black-owned businesses increased by nearly 40%.
The top 10 states for Black entrepreneurs are:
- Virginia
- Maryland
- Texas
- Nevada
- Delaware
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- New Mexico
- Georgia
- Alabama
Read more to find out where your state ranks and get details about the best states for Black-owned businesses.
Small Business Resource of the Week
Whitney Johnson is an author, speaker, podcaster, lecturer at Harvard Business School, and author of Disrupt Yourself, one of my all-time favorite books.
Her new book just came out, explaining how you can gain a competitive advantage in business by having the best team in place at your company.
I recommend you buy Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company today!
Bonus: Brian’s Quote of the Week – “If you want something bad enough, you will find a way; if you don’t, you will find an excuse
