Small Archives - Page 4 of 8

Internet Marketing 101: Online Marketing for Small Business

Introduction

You own a small business. Do you need a website? An Internet presence can be a necessity or a resource-draining boondoggle, depending on your business and your target audience. You shouldn’t build or maintain a website simply because “everyone else has one.” However, even if you own a one-person services company and get all the business you can handle through word of mouth, you can still create an online presence with a minimum of time and expense.

If and when you do develop a business website, you’ll need to make some kind of investment in Internet-based marketing. Consumers increasingly and overwhelmingly use the Internet to research and buy goods and services. This means the competition is robust, and if your site doesn’t announce its presence it will simply sit and gather (virtual) dust in some computer’s memory.

If you’ve convinced yourself that you need to enter the web marketing arena, the following report provides a fundamental primer on the most widely used tactics for both paid and free Internet advertising. Just remember that each of the topics introduced here is complex enough that there are entire books written about them, so if something appeals to you do some additional research before jumping in.

Before You Start

There are two main questions you must ask yourself before starting any marketing efforts, whether on- or offline: “Who is my audience?” and “What are my objectives?”

Audience

The audience for most business marketing activities is obviously past, present, and future customers. However, as in traditional advertising and marketing, it helps to narrow down who you are trying to reach, segmenting your market by age, geography, gender, interests, occupation. Certain methods of Internet marketing, such as pay-per-click ads, allow you to target your customers based on this type of segmentation.

Objectives

We can assume that the overall objective of most marketing is to sell products and/or services, but you may have additional objectives for online marketing. These related objectives will hopefully end up driving increased sales, but they can be more subtle than simply asking customers to buy right now. For example, your online marketing plan might include goals such as these:

Support and increase visibility of your company’s brand.
Improve search engine rankings.
Offer reference information related to your business sector.
Increase number of registered users or newsletter subscribers.
Drive traffic to your company website.

After defining your audience and marketing goals, you can begin to formulate an Internet marketing strategy and tactics. When getting into online marketing, it is important that you maintain brand consistency. Build on the reputation that you have already established. Your on-line presence should mirror that of your “brick and mortar” presence. Use the same logo and tagline so that people will understand that you are the same company. Having an online presence is a way to build on what you have already accomplished.

In the remainder of this report we’ll look at the most common ways you can use the Internet to deliver your message and start increasing your sales.

Table of Contents

websites

E-Mail

Newsletters

Other Announcements

Search Engine Marketing and Display Advertising

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Pay-per-Click (PPC)

Display Advertising

Social Media and Networking

Decide: Who, What, Where, When, and Why?

YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Etc.

Twitter

Blogs

Forums & Discussion Groups

Article Placement / E-Zines

Other Internet Marketing Outlets

Wikipedia

Directories

websites

We won’t get into the vast topic of how to build and manage a website, but if you aim to use the techniques described below, it is nearly essential to have one. Most of your marketing efforts will have a “call to action” that involves your audience visiting your website to research products or services, find contact information, sign up for a newsletter, or place an online order. Whatever you are asking people to do in your online promotions, make sure the website allows them to easily complete that task. One other vital component of any business website is an analytics program (Google offers a fairly robust application free of charge), so you can track how well your marketing efforts are working and calculate the return on your advertising investment (ROI).

How can you develop an online presence at little or no cost? There are several companies that offer free site building tools and hosting services. If you go this route, select a company that has a proven track record, so your hard work isn’t wasted when the company goes out of business or suspends the service. A couple of reliable options are Google Sites and Yola. If you have any money in your budget at all, you should probably just spend the less than $100 per year it takes to buy a personalized domain name (for example, “mybusiness.com”) and a Web hosting service. Another potential option, depending on your business and marketing goals, is to create a free blog (see below for more details). The most popular free blogging services as of this writing are WordPress and Blogger.

E-Mail Newsletters

E-mail newsletters provide one of the most highly performing avenues for marketing. You can collect customer e-mail addresses by asking visitors that come to your website to subscribe, by requesting e-mail addresses from anyone who visits your physical location, or by purchasing an e-mail list. To generate a higher rate of readership, make sure the audience is narrowly targeted and has some vested interest in your product. By sending out your newsletter on a regular schedule (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) you can counteract the transient and temporary nature of Internet users by continually reminding them of your company’s existence. Affordable services like Constant Contact can be used to manage mailing lists, statistics, and opt-in/out functions.

Caveat: Sending commercial e-mail messages to people who have not agreed to receive your mailings can result in severe fines and penalties from the federal government per terms of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Newsletter content should appeal to your defined audiences, with industry- or product-related news and events, company-specific news and events, practical reference information, and interesting statistical and demographic information. The newsletter copy should publicize links to appropriate pages within your website.

You will need to maintain one or more separate lists for the purpose of sending targeted messages to particular audiences (see Other Announcements below). You might combine all your lists to send a monthly newsletter, and send other bulletins to past or potential customers as appropriate.

Other Announcements

Other announcements are e-mailings that can consist of press releases, coupons, special notices, or anything you want to communicate specifically to members of one or more e-mail lists.

Search Engine Marketing, Pay-per-Click and Display Advertising

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization means constructing a website that is easily crawled by search engine spiders, and it encompasses a variety of techniques designed to improve your site’s (or page’s) ranking in the search engine results page. The goal is for your site to be found by searchers who are looking for sites related to a certain keyword or phrase, for example “little red wagon” if you are in the business of selling toy wagons. SEO can be divided into on-page activities (e.g., amount of content, metadata, links, programming methods and structural issues) and off-page activities (most importantly, obtaining links from other websites to your site).

Pay-per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click advertising refers to text ads displayed on search engine results pages (versus “organic” results achieved by SEO) and other sites, usually in the margins. In the case of Google AdWords and Microsoft’s adCenter, you can open an account and specify the keyword(s) that, when searched for, will generate an ad that links to your website. You pay only when a searcher clicks an ad and is directed to your site. In the example below, the key phrase is “little red wagon,” and pay-per-click ads are located at top (in yellow) and in the right-hand column (subtitled “Sponsored Links”). The first organic listing is “Little Red Wagon Foundation.”

A few of the benefits of PPC advertising are that you know exactly how many people view your ads, how many of those viewers click through to your website, and (if you are using a site analytics tool) what they do once they reach your site. You can also start and stop running ads at a moment’s notice, experiment with any number of ads you like, and fund your campaign with as little as $10 to start.

Display Advertising

Display advertising, also called banner advertising, means purchasing ad space on another website and placing a text and/or graphic ad with a link to your site. This technique is generally more complex and expensive than pay-per-click, but can be very powerful if the right message is shown to a tightly focused audience. To achieve optimal click-through rate (CTR), advertise on websites where you assume your target audience is visiting, rather than a general interest website. Most marketers don’t purchase ad space directly from another website, but use a banner ad network to automatically place ads on appropriate websites. A couple of the biggest names in display ad serving are DoubleClick and BurstMedia.

Social Media and Networking

Social networking is the latest buzz in the modern marketing arsenal. If you have any doubt about its impact, especially on the under-40 population, read this list. Small businesses with limited resources should weigh their time spent and the potential benefits carefully, however. It can also be difficult to measure the return on your investment for some of these tactics.

The general principle of “marketing” on social networking outlets is that people who have similar interests will virtually congregate around Web content that discusses that interest. They may be interested in product information in the form of reviews or personal opinion, but hard sale approaches are mostly discouraged and unproductive. Your goal is to become a trusted advisor-which usually means revealing your identity and at least some part of your personality. If that premise makes you uncomfortable, you might still find social networking sites valuable for market research purposes. Find out what people are buying and why, then use that information to help shape your other marketing activities.

The following section describes the more popular social media outlets and sites, but keep your eyes open for new virtual spaces where you might get more attention by getting in on the ground floor.

YouTube, Facebook, Etc.

YouTube allows you to post videos on your own “channel,” a distinct Web page that can be customized and allows for posting links back to your own website. A major positive aspect of this venue is that the number of views is posted and viewers can submit comments, so you know whether your videos are popular and why.

Facebook is considered the model for modern social networking sites. Facebook allows you (individual, corporate, non-profit, etc.) to create a page, attract “likes” and reviews, communicate with followers by posting status updates, photos and videos, and so on.

Although the previously named sites are the most popular in terms of visitors, there are a couple of business-oriented networking sites that may be more useful for making business connections. LinkedIn helps you develop a network of clients, service providers, and subject experts; find business opportunities and partners; post job openings; and more. More detailed advice on best practices for using LinkedIn can be found in many online articles and blogs.

Twitter

Think of Twitter as a mini-blog (see below) that allows you to broadcast messages of 140 characters or less. The messages appear to your “followers” on their phones or computers, as well as on Twitter.com. The biggest challenges are to gain a useful number of followers and to think of something engaging to write to them. If you are a speaker, writer, or performer Twitter can be used to let your fans know what you’re doing and when. If you have a retail store you might let your followers know that you’re offering a discounted item or running a special sale. You should post a Twitter sign-up link on your website, and within your signature line in outgoing e-mail messages. You can also gain followers by following people who work in or comment on your industry, as some Twitter users will follow those who follow them.

Blogs

The word blog originally came from the term “Web log.” There’s no real standard for what a blog is, but most commonly authors use them to comment on (and link to) other online news items, websites, or other Internet content. For the most part, direct selling on a blog is frowned upon and is probably a recipe for driving away potential readers. What do you write about, then? Well, if you run an Internet marketing firm you write about trends in Web marketing, what the search engines are up to, tips for do-it-yourselfers, or what you thought of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Seriously, read some blogs and you will find all sorts of personal opinion mixed in with professional advice and commentary. The goal of your blog, however, should most likely be to establish yourself as an expert and trusted advisor in your chosen field.

You might also pursue getting your products, services, or website mentioned in related blogs by other industry experts. When a high-visibility blogger mentions a website on his or her blog, the site is exposed to a potential audience of new viewers. Often, blog postings are simply press releases that are picked up by sites that discuss topics related to a particular product or industry. More opportunities (and traffic) in this arena can be realized by developing relationships with individual bloggers.

Additional Tips:

Post an article that was written by someone else, just be sure to provide a link to the original article and give credit to the person wrote it. You can then give your commentary on the topic of the article or find a way to relate the information to local trends or challenges.

Ask colleagues to be “guest bloggers” by writing articles for you to post, again giving them credit and adding their byline and a link to their website. Using links is a good way to drive additional traffic to their sites so it’s a good trade-off for both parties.

Nick Francesco of AskNick.com said, “A blog gets people’s attention and Twitter keeps it.” Consider using these two outlets together.

Forums & Discussion Groups

A forum (also known as discussion group, message board or bulletin board) is a component of a website where users can ask questions, offer advice, or share experiences with others about a certain topic or topics. Nearly every hobby on earth has a number of popular forums wherein members offer their thoughts and feelings on all aspects of their favorite pastime. Contributing a comment (with a link to your website) in discussion groups related to your products or services can create a small surge or spike in traffic, but usually has little long-lasting effect. To maximize effectiveness, target forums on high-traffic sites that have 1,000+ users, and reply to topics with larger numbers of views (relative to other posted topics).

You can easily build your own bulletin board/forum component on your site with free or low-cost software. User forums have the potential to greatly increase the “stickiness” of a site, given a critical mass of traffic required to generate new discussions and keep participants interested in returning. You can start by “seeding” topics on your own, but there won’t be any results until traffic is directed to the forums. The conundrum for small businesses may be the time required to moderate a forum once it becomes successful. One solution is to seek out a volunteer moderator who exhibits a keen interest in your field. A sample of a baseball trading card forum is shown in the screen shot below.

Article Placement / E-Zines

Another avenue for generating incoming links and traffic to your site is the free article market. Article submission (or e-zine) websites allow you to publish articles on a variety of topics. Examples include EzineArticles and ArticleCity.com.

Depending on terms of use, these articles may be used as content on other websites, or collected on the site where submitted. The main objective of most article contributors is to increase their search engine rankings with the placement of backlinks on other reputable sites. Providing reliable and accurate reference information is secondary, and the traffic potential from article readers is questionable.

Obtaining links from article submission sites isn’t likely to improve your site’s search engine rankings much. However, existing content from a print newsletter or other written material can be re-purposed with a relatively small time investment. Be aware that creating articles from your website’s content verbatim may cause search engines to penalize your site, as the search engines take a dim view of text that is republished multiple times (“duplicate content” in search engine optimization terms). Submitting articles to sites with the most traffic will give your site the best chance to be discovered by new readers.

Caveat: Once an article is submitted, you have little or no control over who uses your content and for what purpose, depending on the copyright policies of the site on which the article is posted.

Other Internet Marketing Outlets

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is, essentially, an online encyclopedia. The unique aspect of Wikipedia is that users generate the content, though content must be approved by volunteer editors. Traffic will grow if and when others link to the entry. If you add content, your time commitment will be relatively minor, and the benefits might include improved search engine ranking and a slight increase in traffic to your site. As with other forms of Internet communication, a Wikipedia entry that is essentially a commercial for a product, service, or company will not be viewed positively and is unlikely to be approved by editors.

Directories

Online directories allow Internet users to browse through categories of topics to find websites related to a certain subject. There are directories for businesses, blogs, websites in general, and more. Many directories are free, and some only list you if you pay. The mother of free directories is the Open Directory Project, and by all accounts the best paid directory for business is the Yahoo! Directory ($299 annually). Be aware that you might wait a long time for some of the free directories to list your site, as they may rely on volunteer screeners. Directories not only allow consumers to find you in their listings, they also help get your site indexed in the major search engines. If you submit your site to a directory, make sure to read the submission guidelines and follow them exactly.

Expand Online Business : Major Chalange for Small, medium and Big Companies

Expand Online Business

Entrusting your online advertising and publicity requirements to a professionally managed agency that excels in the fields of Internet marketing solutions like search engine optimization search engine marketing like pay per click promotional campaigns is a crucial way to ensure you expand online business successfully.

Companies specializing in offering unique, creative solutions with the support of latest web technology software can help expand online business for all web-centric enterprises since they use their expertise in various internet marketing tools to provide clients with a website that draws highly targeted traffic. This helps not only to improve and expand their online business but since the online marketing strategies are remarkably different from conventional advertising, it also makes for unique consumer appeal.

A company that can successfully translate the requirement’s of a client’s website related needs into the actual delivery of completely customized Internet marketing/E-commerce solutions and tactics uses highly trained and experienced web professionals to ensure effective and real lead generation that will expand online business for the client. At the same time, it will also spell more publicity and a steady track record for the web advertising company as it takes web standards into account when designing a website and does everything possible to gain that extra edge to improve the client’s business, which also helps to increase revenues. Complying with the Web standards can help a business website to expand online business because a greater number of web users utilize the Internet for email, instant messaging or chat, but equally in majority are people watching online videos or DVDs, reading magazines online and playing online video games.

Thus, the real need for web-centric enterprises is to look for more video creative efforts to improve so the attempt to expand online business can be more advanced and therefore, more effective. Since most online video ads are merely repackaged television commercials, the need of the hour for people looking to expand online business is to have over the web creative efforts to be those that are well-researched and designed specifically for online campaigns. This will go a long way to ensure that the consumer response improves since these creative efforts by a professional advertising agency will have a decent (or even increased) budgeting for studio production and therefore these costs will necessarily create more appropriate online ads. Therefore, it is actually an investment for the website owners when they choose a proven professional advertising agency to take care of their online marketing and publicity campaign who will take it as a challenge to create video ads for the short-attention span of web surfers who demand high-quality content presented in compact viewing experience.

The main standards are the languages used when creating websites and this factor is best understood by professionally qualified individuals heading advertising agencies overseeing successful delineation of a client’s business policy online through commercials and videos. Among the languages used for creating websites, the most widespread ones are HTML, XHTML and CSS. HTML or XHTML are used to create the backbone of websites – the structure while CSS is used to style, format and position the structure and content.

Creating and Marketing Your Small Business Website in Cleveland, Ohio

Small businesses developing during the internet age are in their prime. They will be able to create a website for their business which will allow them to establish their online presence for years to come. There’s no telling the amount of sales, leads and inquiries that will come from one small business website, no matter the industry.

I often tell clients that the internet age that we are in allows small business owners to be in their prime. Even in the midst of a so-called recession, the internet allows those small businesses to have a level playing field with others in their industry who are succeeding in sales and gaining momentum in other places in the country. The internet creates a level playing field for small businesses in Cleveland, Ohio because even though the economy in downtown Cleveland is not-so-hot, the internet economy nationwide is booming.

Hire a Professional Firm

Hiring a professional web design and website development firm in Cleveland, Ohio should be your first step. Being the owner of MJM Design, I can say that there are really only three qualified firms located in downtown Cleveland that absolutely dominate the market. Mine being one of them, the others being Zorebo Interactive and… well who cares. When you are ready to buy a car, who is one of the first persons you talk to about your upcoming purchase? The “car guy” in the family, exactly. Cars are horrible investments which is completely different from your next small business website in Cleveland. Your small business website should offer a return on your investment whether it is producing sales, leads, inquiries or referrals. Finding the “web guys” in Cleveland, Ohio is not a hard thing to do and I highly suggest doing it before moving forward.

Search Engine Placement

Placement on search engines for small business websites in Cleveland, Ohio is paramount. This allows small businesses to showcase their website to potential customers not only in their local market, but also in the national and global market. Search Engine placement will usually require hiring a qualified web design and development company in Cleveland, Ohio. It is a good idea to get your site not only listed locally on Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines, but also for it to rank organically or also known as naturally in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). I recommend staying away from Google AdWords, unless you have the monthly budget. If you can afford spending $400 to $1,500 a month on Google PayPerClick advertising, then I say go for it. You can use Google Analytics to track and measure your conversions in dollar amounts.

Keep Your Site Updated

Your new small business website design and development project is nearly completed. Why did I say nearly completed you say? Well, even though your site might have been designed and developed by MJM Design or another reputable web design and development firm in Cleveland, Ohio, you aren’t out of the woods yet. Creating useful content and updating it on a regular basis will allow you to reap the rewards and keep your customers returning for more. If you skip this crucial step, all of your previous efforts will go wasted leaving you with really pretty, professionally designed and developed HTML documents.

Do You Need a Content Management System?

Typically Content Management Systems also known as CMS are beneficial to larger companies who plan on updating their website content daily or even multiple times per day. This is useful for mortgage companies, companies whose products are changing rapidly and businesses who plan on reporting news in their industry on a daily basis. A Content Management System can be configured as a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor which can be accessed by your website administrators. This will allow them to update text, image and hyperlink content on your small business website without having to call your web development company for changes order request.

The four topics should have pointed you in the right direction for creating and marketing your small business website design and development project in Cleveland, Ohio. If you need more information, I suggest contacting a web design and development firm in downtown Cleveland, Ohio (we know what we are doing) to learn more about what a website for your small business can do for your bottom line.

8 Internet Tips for Small Business

Over the past 3 years we have seen incredible growth in the internet both in terms of users and uses. The internet enables many small business owners to obtain customers Nationally and even Internationally for small amounts of capital. Other internet technologies can increase business efficiency. Yet so many business are daunted by the prospect and many small business owners make little use of the internet. Here are 8 tips aimed to help small business owners:

Create a website. There are lots of free packages out there to help you develop your own website. However, for relatively small amounts of money it is well worth investing in the expertise of a web developer who can create a professional website to project the correct image for your company. Just as in all walks of life, there are good, bad and indifferent web developers. Carry out your own research looking of other small business sites, most such websites have the a link to the developer on the homepage with their contact details. As such you should be able to contact the company that has developed your favourite sites.
Update your website. You have invested in a website, keep it up to date. Make sure your products or services are current. Update with recent news.
Make sure that your website is being found in search engines. There is no point in having the best small business website in the world if no one knows about it! There are a group of IT professionals that specialise in this type of work. It is know as Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short. Consider recruiting such help.
Consider internet adverts. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have their own versions of internet advertising. This will push more customers to your website.
Use Social Media. Millions of people use social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These can be used to promote your business to a lot of people in little time.
Write a Blog about your business. Try to avoid writing sales articles, but offer people free helpful advice about services and products, build up a following who hopefully will then turn to you in the future.
Use an online bookkeeping program. Again, such programs save you time and allow you to access your businesses books and records wherever you are in the world that has an internet connection. It is advised to check with your accountant to see what they recommend. It may even save on your accountants charges at the end of the year.
Use online banking. This will help you save time and keep a close eye on your business finances.

Increasing Web Traffic Through SEO For Small Online Business

The minute you decipher the strategies of increasing web traffic, your online business will definitely move to the next level. The main target of all online business people is to attract visitors to their sites. With good traffic you are sure to make money online. This article will seek to share valuable content to assist your small business turn big.

The best strategy of increasing web traffic is through search engines. Though you can allocate some funds towards search engine optimization (SEO), you can succeed in the same without investing a single dime. Before, one needed to be an expert to succeed in SEO but today anyone keen to learn the tricks can easy rank high.

All you need to identify are the queries that people in your niche use to browse the internet. Engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing Crawl websites searching for relevant content to their internet users’ queries. Therefore, the content you generate for your seemingly small business should be optimized. With a few changes you too can rank high and thus increase web traffic to your website.

As you work on your visible content, make sure your hidden content is also optimized. By this I mean your HTML tags. Ensure your “META” elements content are well optimized with relevant keywords. Since search engines cannot read images, the images on your site should also be identified with alternate tags.

It is good at this point to remember that Google, Yahoo and Bing all use different tactics to rank sites. For example Google takes into account the use of keywords in your “description” META tags while other engines concentrate on “keywords” META tags or both. Therefore, when choosing keywords, ensure that they are common in your market niche and not so competitive. This will make it easy for your website to be found on engines first result pages thus increasing web traffic.

Important to note in addition to getting a high page ranking is the need to build rich content that ensure reader retention. Follow the links below to learn more on free online marketing ideas hence increase web traffic.

Small Business Web Design & SEO Tips to Boost Your Website Ranking

If you are an entrepreneur, then it is very important to understand the trends & challenges of the business market in today’s competitive world. As a startup, you must have to compete with the industry giants in your business.

Online business is now overlapping the traditional way of business. Hence, it is very important to create a strong online presence for your business. No wonder you had to deal with those industry giants too.

The primary requirement for creating an online presence for your business is “A Website”. A website, that helps to establish a brand. A website, that helps to grow your online presence. A website, that helps to build trust in the market & brings you business.

In order to have such a website, you need to focus on two things.

Website Design(UI/UX)
SEO

There are two options to build a website. Either you hire a freelance web designer or an agency who can build you a website or you create a Job vacancy – pay salary to a web designer who can make your website in-house right in front of you.

If it is a small website that didn’t need frequent changes, then hiring a freelance web designer or web design agency is the best option. Simply, contact some of the website designers or website designing agency. Spend some time on their work portfolio. Analyze & evaluate their work. Talk with them about your business and then select the best you think for your business website.

If your website needs daily updation, then you can hire a web designer/developer to work in-house so that quick changes can be done according to your preference.

However, you can also hire an agency who can work for you on a routine basis or as website maintenance contract.

Whatever the way you choose, make sure to follow these Web Design Tips for Small Business Website

The second thing you need to focus on is its SEO.

It is highly advisable to hire an internet marketing agency who can handle your total internet marketing because such agencies have skilled experience experts along with the needful resource through which they can rank your website better in search engines.

You can also hire an SEO expert who can work for you in-house. Analyze your requirement. Depending on your business, you can choose either. Whatever you choose, make sure to follow this SEO checklist for your small business. It will help you to take care of your rankings in search engines and brings you a business and qualified leads.

New Small Business Ideas – 5 Methods For Guaranteed Explosive Growth

Today, we are going to discuss a few new business concepts that will grow your business massively. We will uncover why marketing, especially internet marketing, is the marketing method of choice for home based businesses. We will also unearth why off-line marketing alone takes too much effort, time and money. No doubt about it, off line marketing is expensive, E.g. leads, printed brochures, and telemarketing to name a few. All of that, only to have your customers end up down the street at Jo’s or even worst Wally-World.

However, There IS a better way. There is a new business system designed for the small business owner. The new system consist of incorporating an Email Marketing campaign to your advertising arsenal.

Did you know that email-marketing is one of the most cost effective and powerful tools at your disposal when it comes to profiting and promoting your new business? Its easier to start than you think, and will allow you to place the majority of your sales efforts on autopilot.

Success in any business, and especially a home business depends on a reliable marketing system. The old school way of running a business, using high- end advertising mediums, is a broken, incomplete system.

Just remember, everything you do off-line can be done on-line with email marketing. Not only that, but everything you do off-line over and over again can be automated .

Here is why we call email-marketing the most revolutionary small business marketing system of the 21st century: Email-marketing allows a business owner to:

Automatically educate potential customers about upgrades, commission structure and sales promotions
Easily educate potential customers about their order deliveries Build trust and credibility, with improved conversions over time.
Eliminates the sales pitch.
Effortlessly expands your business world wide.
Introduce new products and services to your existing list.

Bonus: Place your business on automatic via… an auto responder. What is an Auto Responder? It’s a service that automatically sends messages out to your email list. It is a software made for busy people, you can pre- schedule written messages to send to your data base years in advance. An auto responder is a critical component for those looking for new small business ideas to help advance their businesses.

Guerilla Marketing Tactics For Small Business – Marketing Ideas That Stick

Guerilla marketing means maximum impact for minimum expense, often on a Do-It-Yourself basis. And while this sort of thing has always been a priority for small business marketing, in today’s tough economy, innovative, low-cost guerrilla marketing strategies have the potential to be more important than ever.

This article focuses on custom stickers-one of the cheapest, most versatile marketing materials in existence, and one often overlooked by traditional marketing campaigns.

Let’s start with the basics:

1) Understand Your Customers

First of all, this may seem like commonsense in any marketing strategy, but commonsense is often not so common. If it were, more small business owners would understand that a simple logo sticker-however great that logo may be-is probably not going to go viral, except among folks who are already ravenously loyal to their cause.

However, a sticker that people actually identify with-because of the humor, the artwork, or some other element-does have the potential to go viral, for one very important reason: it says as much about your customers as it does about your business.

A great example of this is a pizza shop in my area called Bob’s Pizza. Their logo, appropriately enough, is their name, in a curlicue type font next to a drawing of a slice of pizza. The owner of this shop (Bob) could easily have made a custom sticker of this-instead, he chose to do something different.

As the owner of an affordable downtown pizza joint, Bob understands that his target market in this area is composed primarily of families and students. So he not only provides crayons and paper for young artists and late-night doodlers, he posts these masterworks on the walls of his shop. One of these artworks happened to be by a seven-year old boy; it was a happy, blob-like person with a piece of pizza, accompanied by the words, in a childish scrawl, “I like Bob’s Pizza.”

This is the image that Bob chose to turn into an eye-catching, die-cut sticker-an image that seemed to strike a chord with both families and students, who appreciated the style and the humor. I’ve seen this sticker everywhere imaginable. I’ve also noticed a lot of people in Bob’s Pizza.

The moral of the story being: create a sticker that shows you understand your customers, and they will advertise your business far and wide-at virtually no expense to you.

2) Be Useful

Nearly everyone knows the old trick about putting a tip-calculator chart on the back of your business card, to encourage people to keep your cards in their wallets.

Depending on your business, however, there may be a better way to “stick around” in your customers’ lives-and in a way that helps to establish authority in your area of expertise. By printing a custom sticker with useful information related to your business, designed for semi-permanent mounting in important, everyday places, you can keep your name and number in front of your former and potential clients for an almost indefinite period of time.

Fix computers for a living? Design a sticker with quick-reference trouble-shooting for common computer problems, designed for mounting on a computer monitor or laptop. Yoga studio? Create a daily ‘mindfulness meditation’ designed to mount on the dashboard of a car. Heating and cooling business? Print a sticker designed for thermostats, featuring energy-saving tips.

The trick here is to be innovative, useful, and to stick around long enough so that when people need your services, you’ll be the one they call.

3) Be Outrageous

If you truly want to create some buzz in your area, you can put the “gorilla” in guerrilla marketing with some over-the-top, in-your-face marketing-that-does-not-resemble-marketing.

Case in point-a website called SprayGraphic. This online artists’ community wanted to create some buzz in different places across the US. First, they recruited creative artists to feature their graphic design work on their website. Next, they sent out eye-catching posters and custom stickers to these artists, in order to help them promote their work.

The result? Intriguing posters began to appear in coffeeshops and on community boards all over the country, accompanied by their characteristic, funny moustache, nose and eye-glasses logo, explaining who they were, what they did, and why people should join. Then a series of die-cut stickers featuring their logo started showing up everywhere, accompanied by their URL. You can rest assured this simple, affordable guerrilla marketing tactic created a huge amount of traffic for this site, almost overnight.

The trick with using custom stickers this way is not to give too much away-and to use them to create a kind of mystery, which your customers will then be compelled to solve.

The Business Plan Is Essential To Finding Financing And Success Of A Small Business

A recent article from the NY Times reported that undercapitalization or the lack of cash is one of the main reasons that most small businesses fail in the first five (5) years so financing should be one of the main considerations the entrepreneur needs to address when entering the business world.

The report makes a depressing statement but you shouldn’t allow that deter you from starting your business if that is what you truly want to do.

One of the companies that we work with has recently been able to obtain a total of over three hundred thousand dollars by hustling and not getting discouraged. Yeah; even in this economy they were able to procure financing!

What are their secrets?

A good business plan and sound business practices are two of the things that have been essential in obtaining their financing. Using a good plan and sound business practices can catapult your business into the big league!

Please understand that my statement is not all hype and don’t think that they were able to waltz into one bank and get an approval for the financing they were trying to obtain. The truth is they made many visits to a lot of banks and received countless rejections.

The fact remains that banks are not gambling institutions and they will not gamble on a shaky business. You just need to convince them that you are not shaky and your business has a good future.

Bank financing for businesses has not completely disappeared! You can find and obtain financing if you are willing to persevere, have good business practices and are willing to deal with the necessary paperwork.

The first and most important step is to develop a good business plan. Don’t worry; there are many resources that are available to help in developing a sound business plan!

You should start by researching the information available at the Small Business Administration. They are a great resource for all businesses and you should use the information they offer.

They even have an online outline that you can follow to develop your plan. I believe that it takes about fifteen to twenty minutes to complete. You should take whatever time is necessary to get your plan established. The dividends are well worth whatever time it takes!

I recommend that you take the business planning process very seriously. The business plan is one of the most important assets you can have for your business. It gives you a blue-print that you can use to focus your efforts to achieve your goals and make your company successful.

The thing to remember when you establish your business plan is that you need to make it flexible. Times will change and opportunities will become available so you should make a date with yourself or your partners to periodically review and update your plan.

I hope this may have given you some food for thought and will help if you are trying to get some financial help with your business. There are sources that are available that can help you.

Plan your work and work your plan!

Signs of a Successful Small Business Owner

When starting a new business, there are numerous signs that can indicate whether you’re succeeding as an entrepreneur or aren’t. A small business can be risky. This is particularly true if you specialize in a niche that bigger companies already excel in. However, if you display some particular qualities, it’s a sign that you’re doing a good job to stay afloat.

That’s because small business owner who have a positive attitude towards success are the most likely to get a taste of it than his counterparts. Their counterparts focus only on stability and nothing more. While business success has a lot to do with your initial idea and how you build upon that idea, it still depends on your personality and capabilities. Here are the few signs of a successful small business owner that you should develop as part of your personality.

You Like To Form Collaborations

Most successful entrepreneurs display this common trait. They understand the importance of having a well-connected network in the business world. Nevertheless, just like in every other change, collaboration needs to start from within your business. This means you’ll need to start delegating tasks effectively. Another crucial part of this is building good relationships with everyone on your team. This includes your employees and suppliers.

Of course, you also need to establish a position in the network of small businesses. It’s unwise to act alone without any partners. You needn’t form friendly relationships with your competitors. However, at the least, you should be on good terms with other small businesses that complement yours. By obtaining a position in the community of other businesses, you’ll be able to create new opportunities that can benefit others. Moreover, others can do the same for you. What results is a beneficial support system that allows all members to rely on one another.

You Have Your Eyes Set on the Future

You never know what the future holds, especially if it’s for something as volatile as a new startup business. That’s why successful entrepreneurs share a common characteristic of looking towards long-term future goals.

Some struggle to stay afloat amidst a rocky economic climate, and such desperate conditions can lead to business owners not looking farther than the near future. Such thoughts are understandable, but think of it this way; acting upon well-structured long-term goals at the same time as day-to-day tasks can ensure far more than financial stability and simple peace of mind.

Your Leverage the Benefit of Technology

Nowadays, when it comes to operating a small business, it all comes down to incorporating the use of technology, whether in marketing, management, or everything else. Technology and software have made it easier for entrepreneurs and small business owner to meet their goals, and now with services like Google AdWords and personal assistants, functions have become much more streamlined than ever before.

Take websites, for instance, they’re a business’ online identity and that’s where most potential customers will go to check whether your brand is legitimate or not. Then comes social media, which is a useful marketing tactic that produces results without requiring you to spend too much of your ad revenue. Then there are other business-related applications like customer support live chat software, fixed responses for keywords and budgeting tools that boost your productivity so you can focus on product quality.

You Love to Learn

You’re never ready to run a business until you’re prepared to improve yourself by learning from others. You may be determined to make it through with a method involving trial and error, but that costs precious resources; you need to start learning from others’ success and failures. Data is the most powerful weapon that a business can possess because it helps you discover trends and important details.

If you aim to learn about what strategies lead to profitable ideas and which ones are just downright terrible, you’ll be able to devise a solution of your own. The best way to fulfill your curiosity is to read and look into insights regarding management, marketing, customer satisfaction, and product quality. Archives can provide you with numerous researches and surveys conducted by different companies. While it isn’t necessary that the results apply to your business, you’re still bound to learn something.

You Don’t Just Think; You Act

While we’re at it, we might as well establish that being a smart business owner doesn’t mean that you’ll never have to take risks; it’s merely the ability to take risks with confidence. One sign that your business will soon see the light of success is that you don’t just think, you also act when the time is right. This sign is associated with the confident ability to make good decisions, even if they’re risky.

It’s true that before you put any plan into action, you need to examine it carefully all the way through. However, if you become stuck on the evaluating stage, you’ll miss your chance to implement your idea. That’s why you should have some faith in yourself and build confidence in your abilities to make a good decision.

You Seek Fulfillment

There are many small businesses operating in the market, but very few businesses owner seek fulfillment. The rest of them, however, only look at it as a means to make ends meet. Success-oriented entrepreneurs always chase after their goal of doing something fulfilling for a living. Your ability to see value in everything you create is contributory to success because you’ll want to build upon ideas to increase that value.

If you realize these traits in yourself, then congratulations; you have what it takes to turn your small business into a success! However, even if you don’t, do not fear! Owning a small business can change you as a person. But, it depends on you whether you take something positive from the experience. All these above-mentioned aspects will greatly improve not just the quality of business, but your life as well. If you can learn to find a hint of success-oriented personality within yourself, then you’ve hit the jackpot.