Bizsuccess

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

By: Susannah Morgan

Inbound phone calls are a great opportunity to market to existing customers and prospects of your small business. Building customer relationships is essential to the success of any company, but more often than not, hang-ups and no shows can plague your business. Minimize these frustrations. Keep customers happy with the following tips:

1. Develop an on-hold messaging system.

Set up a personalized marketing message that plays when your customers are put on hold. Keep the hold time short, and inform your prospects of current specials they may be unaware of.

2. Send text message alerts to your customers.

A recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project shows that almost one-third of adults in the U.S. prefer to be reached by text message rather than a phone call on their cell phone. After setting an appointment, set up an automatic confirmation to send to your customer’s cell phone after the call is completed. You may also send reminders to your customers’ via SMS text messaging if you require your customer to be at home during your service visit. More »

Friday, December 30, 2011

By: Susan Gunelius

Trade show marketing is an often overlooked marketing tactic by short-staffed and budget-minded small business owners. However, with strategic planning, trade show marketing can be affordable, and it can deliver great results.

When it comes to trade show marketing, a huge expense is often trade show booth graphics. A booth with no name, no color, and no messaging isn’t likely to get much attention from busy trade show attendees. You can’t speak directly with every person who walks by your trade show booth, so your booth graphics have to do part of the job for you. They need to capture the attention of passersby and communicate the appropriate messages to motivate people to stop and speak with you.

Your trade show booth graphics are not something you want to cut corners on. However, there are ways to create affordable booth graphics that still look great. Following are some tips for creating trade show booth graphics that look amazing but don’t break the budget.

1. Choose the Best Provider for Booth Graphics Design and Production

Don’t let the company that provides your trade show booth to design and produce your booth graphics, too. These companies typically charge a lot more than graphic designers and printing companies do. Shop around for the best design and printing prices.

2. Keep It Simple

Don’t try to fill every part of your booth with graphics. Less is always more when it comes to design. Passersby can only digest so many messages at once. More »

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

By: Susan Gunelius

Trade show marketing can be expensive for small businesses with limited budgets, but targeted events offer excellent opportunities to build relationships with potential customers and business partners. Instead of reducing the number of trade shows or events your small business participates in, there are other cost-savings measures you can take to reduce your trade show budget without missing key sales opportunities.

Several cost-savings suggestions are listed below. You can implement all or some of these initiatives, but remember, the image and message you communicate at events that you attend must accurately reflect your brand promise. Don’t cut costs so much that your booth doesn’t match your brand.

1. Partner with Another Business

Look for complementary local businesses that want to attend a trade show with you and split costs on booth space and equipment rentals. There might even be some travel and shipping costs that you can share. This type of partnership can work for local events or events outside of your local area. Many small businesses think that trade shows are out of their budgets, so don’t be afraid to approach other businesses and ask if they’re interested in splitting costs with you. The response you get is likely to be very positive.

2. Consider Renting Instead of Buying

There are many items that businesses use at trade shows that you don’t have to buy. If you only attend a couple of trade shows each year, it might be more economical for you to rent a booth and exhibit equipment rather than buying. Shop around before you buy! More »

Monday, December 26, 2011

By: Susan Gunelius

Mobile marketing is the hot sales and marketing topic right now, and every business wants to jump on the opportunity that mobile marketing offers. However, it’s easy to fall into some mobile marketing traps that can reduce response rates and return on investment. These are mistakes that small businesses can’t afford to make. There simply isn’t enough money in the marketing budget to launch a mobile marketing campaign that isn’t developed as well as possible to deliver the highest return possible.

Whether your mobile marketing goal for an individual campaign is to generate sales or boost brand awareness, you need to avoid the mistakes listed below at all costs. In other words, run each campaign against this list to make sure you haven’t fallen into any of these tempting but fatal mobile marketing traps.

1. Forgetting to Prepare Your Website for the Mobile Audience

Whether your mobile marketing campaign is a text message ad, a QR code in a display ad, or another form of mobile marketing, it’s important to remember two things: people access content on their mobile devices in a variety of ways and people expect to be able to access your content in a variety of ways, too.

That means your website and branded online destinations must be mobile-friendly. Don’t launch a mobile marketing campaign that leads consumers to your website but your website doesn’t work well on mobile devices. Even if your campaign doesn’t link directly to your website, many consumers will take the time to find and visit your website if they’re truly interested in your offer.

Remember, it takes just a few seconds to visit your website from a smartphone or tablet device. Therefore, don’t assume consumers won’t head to your website for more information just because your mobile marketing campaign doesn’t lead them directly to it. The most interested consumers will visit your website, and your website needs to be ready for that traffic! More »

Friday, December 23, 2011

By: Susan Gunelius

Small business content marketing and social media marketing are powerful tools to grow your brand and business. However, both content marketing and social media marketing take time. That’s something many small business owners don’t have. Fortunately, many social media marketing and content marketing activities can be automated to save some time.

It’s important to understand that the vast majority of the content you publish to your social media profiles should not be automated. That’s because the power of social media marketing comes from the two-way conversation it offers and the opportunity to build relationships with a broad and engaged audience. However, not everyone likes to consume content in the same ways. For example, some people like to watch videos rather than read lengthy blog posts while others prefer the speed of Twitter updates.

Following are a number of tools you can use to automatically feed your content from one social media profile to another as listed in Content Marketing for Dummies (Wiley, 2011).

1. Twitterfeed

I use Twitterfeed and it’s a free and easy-to-use tool that enables you to feed your blog posts directly to your Twitter profile. You can also use it to feed your Twitter updates to your Facebook profile. All you need is your blog RSS feed URL and your Twitter profile URL to set it up.

2. RSS Graffiti

RSS Graffiti is a popular Facebook app that makes it easy to feed your blog posts directly to your Facebook profile, Facebook page, Facebook groups, Facebook events, and more. It works with both RSS and Atom feeds.

3. NetworkedBlogs

NetworkedBlogs is another tool that enables you to automatically publish your blog posts to your Facebook profile. If you don’t like RSS Graffiti, give NetworkedBlogs a try. It works with both RSS and Atom feeds, too. More »

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

By: Susan Gunelius

The baby boomer generation is large and represents a significant customer audience. Many of these consumers are financially secure and in the position to buy. However, few brands and businesses effectively target and communicate with the baby boomer audience. This may be an aging audience, but these aren’t the stereotypical seniors. Instead, they’re active, technologically-savvy, and highly educated. They’re far from being “seniors,” and marketing to them as such would be a big mistake.

Bottom-line, baby boomers represent an audience that small businesses are flexible enough to understand, target, and communicate effectively with. In other words, they represent a big opportunity to build your business.

Following are 10 ways to market your small business to the baby boomer demographic. Keep in mind, baby boomers were born between 1946-1964. Today, they’re between the ages of 47-65, and that’s still very young!

1. Focus Online.

The baby boomer audience spends a lot of time online, including social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Therefore, online marketing should be a priority for your small business as should social media marketing and content marketing. Connect with the baby boomer audience where they already spend time — online. More »

Monday, December 19, 2011

By: Susan Gunelius

Having a small business website is just one step in attracting business and making sales. If your website isn’t viewed as trustworthy by visitors, they’ll click away and never return. Not only does your small business website need to look trustworthy, but it also needs to work well.

In simplest terms, the perception of trust is critical to whether or not consumers click the “Buy” button. If yours is a retail website, you’ll have trouble getting people to put anything in their online shopping carts let alone actually to make a purchase if your site isn’t trustworthy.

Following are five tips to help you make changes that will turn your small business website from questionable to trustworthy. The sooner you implement these changes, the better for your bottom-line!

1. Provide All Contact Information.

It’s very important that you offer all details about your business that you can. For example, include an About page that explains who you are, and provide a Contact page with your name, address, phone number, email address, fax number, social media profiles, and so on. The more information you can provide, the better in terms of establishing trust with visitors. Get tips for creating a contact form here.

2. Get Your Own Domain.

Don’t use a domain provided by another company. Your website URL should be unique and branded for your business. This creates a perception that your business isn’t going anywhere because it shows that you invested in securing your own space online for the long-term. Learn more about domain names here.

3. Invest in a Professional Design.

Don’t use a cookie cutter template or an out-of-the-box storefront. Instead, invest in a design that makes your site and your company look professional and trustworthy. If your site looks terrible, visitors will assume that your business, products, service, online security, and so on are terrible, too. More »

Friday, December 16, 2011

By: Susan Gunelius

Many small businesses don’t have the budget to hire a search engine optimization (SEO) expert to ensure their websites are built and designed in the best way possible to drive the maximum amount of search engine traffic. If you do nothing else to optimize your small business website for search engines, do the five things listed below. These SEO tricks are the ones that every small business website should use regardless of its size, location, industry, or any other factor.

1. Delete Splash Pages.

Splash pages are those entry pages that some websites show to visitors before they visit the actual site. Splash pages a’re usually pretty, but lack depth of content which reduces the amount of text search engines can crawl. Furthermore, splash pages can cause what search engine optimization experts refer to as splint link popularity where instead of having just one page for other websites to link to, they now have two pages. By splitting incoming links between two pages, each individual page appears to be less popular and less authoritative than a single page with all of those links leading to it would be in terms of how Google ranks pages in its search algorithm.

2. Reduce or Eliminate Flash Elements.

Search engine optimization experts typically agree that optimizing web pages that are made up primarily of flash elements is challenging. The process of optimizing flash pages for search engines is vastly different from optimizing traditional text and image pages. Flash might look pretty, but it’s not good for attracting search traffic.

3. Buy Your Own Domain.

Don’t host your small business website on a platform that requires you to use a domain which you don’t own. If your business is successful (even slightly successful), the day will come when you need to make your website better, and that typically requires getting your own domain. When that happens and you have to change your small business website URL, all of the previous links, bookmarks, etc. to your site will be lost. You’ll need to start over again with building links and increasing your search results rankings. That’s a position you don’t want to find yourself in, so get your own domain and start using it as soon as possible. More »

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

By: Susan Gunelius

Online advertising is a great way to drive traffic to your small business website and boost sales. However, all the ads in the world won’t help you reach your goals if the landing page that consumers arrive on after clicking your ad isn’t just right.

There are several things you need to know and should keep in mind as you develop a landing page for your online ad. Each is described below, so you can increase your chances of success and guarantee a positive return on your advertising investment.

1. Know Your Audience.

Who are you targeting with your ad? Make sure that the page the audience lands on after clicking your ad delivers the information and experience they expect. For example, if you own a restaurant, and you’re advertising free kids meals, don’t send visitors to your website home page when they click on your ad. Instead, send them directly to the kids’ menu.

2. Know Your Goal.

Do you want people to make a purchase after they click on your ad? Do you want them to submit an inquiry form? Do you want them to like your Facebook Page? You should always have a primary goal for every ad that you pay for, so take the time to clearly define that goal before you do anything else.

Based on that goal, create a landing page that makes it incredibly easy for people to do exactly what you want them to do. For example, if you own a sporting goods store, and you want to reduce your inventory of a specific brand of tennis rackets, don’t send consumers to a landing page that’s filled with dozens of rackets and equipment to choose from. Instead, send them directly to a landing page that hypes the specific racket and related offer with an easy to see and use “Buy” button. More »

Monday, December 12, 2011

By: Susan Gunelius

It’s safe to say that just about every business person has sat through a boring PowerPoint presentation at least once. You know how it feels to watch the clock and hope that next slide is the last one, and you definitely don’t want potential clients, business partners, or investors to feel that way when you deliver a sales presentation for your small business.

To avoid falling into the boring PowerPoint presentation trap, follow the 5 tips below to give your sales presentations a boost that will keep your audience engaged and drive positive results.

1. Tell Stories.

Instead of simply reciting a list of statistics, sales volumes, and so on, tell stories that make all of those numbers more interesting and more meaningful to your audience. Look for any opportunity during your presentation to incorporate a relevant story that adds another dimension to your pitch, making it more personable and real.

2. Less is More.

Less is more in every aspect of your sales presentations. Keep the text on each slide to a minimum, and make sure your entire presentation stays focused on no more than three main points. If you try to communicate too much information, your audience won’t remember any of it. More »