Small Business Blog

Back in Feb., SmallBusinessNewz published a short article entitled “Consider These 8 Sources of Web Traffic.” To quote the article, the 8 sources mentioned are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• StumbleUpon
• MapQuest
• QR Codes
• Blogs
• Pictures

You could also add YouTube, Squidoo, HubPages, Yahoo! Questions (don’t tell Yahoo! I said it though) and others to the list. While it’s great to have a list of resources, it doesn’t get an entrepreneur/small business owner any closer to strengthening sales or profits. Small business owners have the problem of having too many options available; there isn’t enough time or money to participate in every strategy that presents itself.

So how can an entrepreneur efficiently make decisions about where to spend scarce marketing dollars? The process begins with developing a detailed understanding of where the business is currently. By this, I mean knowing things like:

• Your average ticket 
• Traffic to your store (if applicable) and your website (if applicable)
• If you have an office or store, what percentage of your customers have seen your website 
• Your close rate (once you get them in the store, in the office, on the phone, etc., how many buy from you?) 
• Amount and frequency of repeat sales from existing customers 
• Demographics of your average customer

Getting a handle on your average ticket along with the close rate can infuse your marketing decisions with a small bit of certainty. For example, say 5 percent of the people who visit your Web site end up buying from you. If you also know those eventual customers will spend an average of $350 (for example) with you over the next year, you can then estimate what each Web visitor is worth to you. (continue reading…)

Small business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly attracted to Web marketing and, in particular, social media marketing. The appeal of online media is their low respective costs. When you own and operate a small, brick-and-mortar business, you face the marketing dilemma constantly: affordable options often lack scale. But the options with sizeable reach aren’t affordable and may be touching consumers who aren’t even viable targets. On top of that, successful ad campaigns these days often take repetition to make an impact. And repetition is expensive.

As an entrepreneur, you may weigh the costs of running print ads in your local newspaper and decide you’d rather take your chances with Twitter and Facebook–options which are free as long you have the available manpower. This decision may make sense from a financial perspective, but don’t make it lightly. Shifting all of your ad dollars to one medium is a mistake, unless you know for certain that that medium can reach all of your existing and target customers. Here’s some food for thought: in 2009, a poll on CNN.com indicated that 94 percent of CNN’s audience wasn’t using Twitter.

Now I know what you’re thinking…if you’ve read some of my previous posts, you know I’m a proponent of Twitter. But I’m not a proponent of putting all your eggs in the Twitter basket, the Facebook basket, or any other ad basket. Even if it may seem like all the world’s gone a-Twitter, there’s still a place for print, for cable, for radio. And actually, one of the most effective ways to use repetition in your advertising is by reaching the same customers through different media.

Of course, these days, you have to be creative with the dollars you direct towards traditional media. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Direct Mail: Find a vendor that does postcard printing and mailing. Print up some loyalty postcards to encourage repeat purchases and send them out. Consider putting a time limit on the card, such as, “make X number of purchases within X number of weeks” or something like that. Use what you know about your customers to set the number and time limit. For example, if you know that your typical customer makes three purchases from you every eight weeks, offer a discount or reward to those who make four purchases within eight weeks. (continue reading…)

When you establish a service business, you generally start out by taking whatever work you can get. That can mean working for less than you’re worth, or accepting projects that are excessively risky–such as those for clients who won’t sign a contract or who refuse to give you a deposit for the work. If you must choose between sitting in your office idle or working under less-than-desirable conditions, the latter option sometimes has more upside.

But there will come a time when you have to stop taking those projects. And it will be hard to do. The entrepreneurial spirit often drives us to take on everything and anything, for fear that all work will dry up tomorrow. Resist that urge. The future of your business depends on it. (continue reading…)

SmallBusinessNewz published an article today defining the five steps you need to take to make an effective television commercial. The article is accompanied by a video hosted by Jon Bond, Co-Chairman of creative agency Kirshenbaum, Bond, Senecal and Partners. In the video, Bond explains the five steps of commercial-making, four of which are really just questions you need to ask yourself. The answers to those questions will shape the creation and production of your commercial. I would add that small business owners and entrepreneurs should be asking these five questions before producing any kind of advertising.

Who are you talking to?

Who are you?

What is your brand’s personality?

What is the offer?

Make your commercial.

See the full article here.

How To Post Automatic Updates to LinkedIn From Your Joomla Site

Small business owners and entrepreneurs often don’t have the time to delve into establishing themselves in the social media realm. Some have ignored Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn altogether, while others have lonely profile pages that are starved for content and followers. Are you feeling that dilemma? If you are, and you have a Joomla-based Web site, we have a solution. (continue reading…)

All marketing activities, including free tactics, come at a cost.

This cost may be measured in terms of money, time or even missed opportunities. That’s why it’s so important that you understand who your most profitable customers are, and focus your energy on finding and keeping them.

To do this, you’ll first need to define your ideal customer profile. This will help you focus your efforts like a laser, enabling you to get the best ROI for your lead generation efforts. (continue reading…)

This article is the first of a series on working with freelancers and independent contractors. Because giving up control is extraordinarily difficult for any entrepreneur or small business owner, our first conversation in this discussion will cover the advantages that come from working with a freelance professional.

Think about the progression of a regular work day in your life. You rise early, work long and hard throughout the day, have a few hurried meals, put out a few fires, and then go to bed thinking about all the things you didn’t get done. Am I close? You have too many tasks to accomplish in any given day. And you have trouble delegating, probably because you’ve learned the hard way that no one does things the way that you’d do them. You don’t feel great about paying an employee to do a shoddy job, when you can do a better job yourself. Trust me, I understand your perspective completely. (continue reading…)

According to SmallBusinessNewz in the recently published article entited “The Dangers of Misinterpreting Marketing,” small business owners tend to define marketing in terms of promotional activities. When you think of marketing, do you think of ads and seasonal sales? Or do you think of the quality of your customer service, the impact of your logo and brand image, the suitability of your location, the optimization of your product/service set? The first, more narrow interpretation of marketing can lead you to overlook some of the most powerful and important ways that you can make a lasting impression on your customers.

The next time you visit your marketing plan, think beyond your advertising and promotional efforts. Think of marketing as the set of activities that you use, company-wide, to differentiate your business in the minds of consumers.

Read the full article from SmallBusinessNewz here.