More and more companies are turning to web 2.0 technologies such as blogging to communicate with their customers, build their brand, and increase their sales. If you have yet to implement a blog for your company, your company is not tapping one of the most effective ways to market itself. It's time for your small business to add this increasingly crucial component to your marketing strategy.
Read More
Countless companies spend unnecessary and incredible amounts of money on marketing consultants, advertising and strategies. When it comes to small business marketing, forget fancy graphic designs and high cost marketing strategies. Focus on the simple approach of telling your customers a story. Read the rest of this entry »
Email marketing has been a part of business for some time now. Companies and small businesses use email to distribute newsletters to past clients and to send promotions to potential customers. There are pros and cons to the standard email marketing campaign. Most email marketing solutions are relatively cheap and easy to implement. The effectiveness of your email marketing campaign when it comes to an increase in business, however, is debatable.
Due to the mass amount of junk email distributed daily, email users have developed an internal filter to filter out advertisements, promotions and junk email from their inbox. How sure are you that your customers are actually reading your email marketing pieces?
Thankfully, there are more effective ways to manage and implement your email marketing. Let’s have a look. Read the rest of this entry »
In order to effectively examine the best marketing strategy for your small business, it is important to look back and see the evolution of different styles of small business marketing.
Print Marketing
Before the internet and ubiquitousness of email, companies relied heavily on print marketing. Print marketing is a very costly approach since the company pays for each piece of material. Many companies send out massive amounts of promotional materials to their list of potential customers. Many of the printed materials are simply thrown out.
While print marketing has and still has its place in a company’s overall marketing strategy, does your print marketing approach set you apart from your competitors? The problem is your competitors are putting the same sales-type-rhetoric on their materials like you are. They are telling the same customers that they are have the same commitment to excellence and are focused on quality and so forth. You may be better than they are, but they are going to convey the same message either way. Read the rest of this entry »
Many people have assumptions and preconceived notions regarding blogs and blogging. Many business folks totally dismiss the idea of combining business and blogging. Well, they are going to miss out. Today, I want to take a look at the most common reasons why the business organization or individual is against using a blog when it comes to business. I’ll also explain why these reasons are invalid. Read the rest of this entry »
This article is the second part in a two-article series on how to make more money at your current job. Click here to read the Part 1.
In the first part, we described the scenario of my friend establishing a sales channel for the law firm at which he worked. He negotiated with the firm to receive a cut of any business he referred to the firm through his web channel. The more his website performed, the more money his company made and also the more money he made. A perfect scenario.
In this part, we will address how my friend could enhance the performance of his website to make it attract more customers and send more business to his law firm; thus, helping both parties make more money. Read the rest of this entry »
Your goal is simple. Create blog content that will attract new customers to your brand and your company. As you pursue this goal, you probably have many questions regarding the actual content of your blog. Consider the following:
What content is the best content that will attract new customers to my website? How frequent do I need to post content? Is there content I should avoid? Is it bad to repeat content over time? How personal should the content be? How does my content drive potential customers to my website? How does my content help potential customers buy into my brand and decide to buy from me?
We will answer all of these questions as we dive into the best kind of content that leads to more sales for your business. Read the rest of this entry »
At first glance, this blog would indicate that the content is targeted towards small businesses, the same discussions and strategies on this blog are applicable to individuals in sales. This blog tends to focus on encouraging small businesses to produce corporate blogs to gain more customers and increase sales, but what about an individual in a large company’s sales force? If your company allows you, you can accomplish the same thing by creating your own blog to attract new leads for you and thus, also your company. Read the rest of this entry »
My company I work for has had a static website for years. Sure, we had some improvements adding some more excitement with a new layout and larger images, but still the website did not serve a purpose much more than providing basic information about our company along with some contact information.
After doing some analysis using Google Analytics, I learned that our traffic was minimal and just about all of the visitors using our site already knew who we were. If they already knew who we were, then the information on the website did not provide much value for them because it pretty much told them information that they already had. Maybe they jumped to our site to pull a phone number off quickly because they forgot it.
Our goal is to accomplish two things. One, we want to increase our traffic and bring in potential customers who do not know us, our brand, and maybe even our services. Second, we want to provide useful information for these visitors above and beyond the basic company and contact information. This information should immediately create a level of trust with a potential customers. You could say that our goal was to increase the effectiveness of our website to bring us business. Our best bet for that is to transition from a static website to a dynamic blog. Read the rest of this entry »
If you are like most small businesses, you operate in rather competitive markets or industries. Differentiating your company from your competitors is getting tougher. You provide similar services or products, similar pricing, and have similar marketing strategies. How then, do you differentiate your company, and take your business to the next level? The way is to become a leader in your market.
The Benefits Of Being A Leader
Your company needs to be known as a thought leader and an expert in your industry. Such a reputation will create a higher level of respect and will lead to a differentiation between you and your competitors. When a company is a thought leader and expert in a certain field, customers want to do business with that company. It becomes easier for the company to break away from price wars with competitors. If you’re a thought leader/expert, people will want to buy from you.
Also, other companies will want to partner with you because of your reputation. The bottom line is your customer base and partnerships will increase in quality and quantity as your company gains the reputation of being at the forefront of your industry. These are great things that will help you take your business to the next level. So then, the question remains, what is the best way to gain the status of a thought leader or an expert in your industry? Read the rest of this entry »
