OREANDA-NEWS. April 18, 2016. Getting a nice tax refund back is one of the best feelings in the world for small business owners. The big question is: how to spend that dough? We have a couple of suggestions on how to spend that money so that you can rejuvenate your business in the process.

Spend it on marketing (in the right places).

According to Cyber Alert, non-software companies with revenues less than \\$100 million spend between 3 percent and 10 percent of revenues on marketing. That’s a pretty decent amount of money to put towards marketing. That’s because, for small businesses, marketing efforts are hugely important when trying to grow their brands and gain new customers. This year, put some of your tax refund towards marketing your business, but don’t just throw money blindly at your same old marketing tactics. Take this as an opportunity to try something new and really track your ROI. How much did you put in, how many clicks back did it earn? How many new or return customers did it bring in? What was the viewership like? Put some of your refund into trying new efforts and tracking their progress meticulously. Once you’ve tested a couple new options, you should know what’s most worth your business’s money in the future. Some areas you could spend this money on: boosting different types of posts on Facebook and Twitter, creating advertisements for different social sites, and trying out different press release publication sites.

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Add a pop of color to your office and team-build at the same time.

A couple years ago, we had a paint night at the office after hours. We enjoyed some wine and cheese while an instructor walked us through how to paint a beautiful landscape filled with brightly colored trees. It was such a fun team-building activity, and we ended up with lots of great paintings! We liked them so much, we ended up painting our entire office based on the colors used in the paintings, and then we hung everyone’s painting above his/her desk. Using some of your tax refund on an activity like this is a great way to change up the look of your office and it’s a lot of fun, too.

Replace old equipment.

It’s always good to take inventory of the equipment your business uses on a regular basis. Just as you couldn’t run your business without your employees, you couldn’t run your business without the equipment you use. Though it can be pricey to replace something, it’ll more than make up for it in the long run by ensuring you keep on providing your customers with the best possible products or service, plus, it’ll eliminate the stress of having to worry about whether your equipment will break down on you or not. It’s important to take care of what takes care of you.

Deborah Sweeney is the CEO of MyCorporation.com. MyCorporation is a leader in online legal filing services for entrepreneurs and businesses, providing start-up bundles that include corporation and LLC formation, registered agent, DBA, and trademark & copyright filing services. MyCorporation does all the work, making the business formation and maintenance quick and painless, so business owners can focus on what they do best. Follow her on Google+ and on Twitter @mycorporation.