April 1, 2013

Most businesses are on a tight budget, especially when it comes to marketing. Many companies are finding that they don’t have a lot of money to invest on advertising and marketing. The irony is, not marketing your business will have a detrimental effect on your business. One local business owner called Tom, who owns a fireplace store, has just put a closing down sign in his store window because nobody is visiting his store and he says he can’t afford to advertise any more. This year alone he has spent over $6000 on advertising in his local newspaper with expensive…

February 20, 2013

Small businesses need to get the maximum out of their website.  These tips show how to increase the sales potential of business websites without incurring any cost. Every business could do with some extra sales. Here are 7 no cost conversion tips that quick and easy to implement but will significantly increase your profits week in, week out. Limit the Time and Offer You will sell a lot more products if you place a time or number limit on what you are offering. “This offer is good forever and just buy whenever you feel like it” does not convert very…

January 16, 2013

Claiming your Google+ Local page is essential for every business and this is the reason why: The way your customers look for information about the products and services they need has changed forever. A massive 82% of customers now look for a local business on the Internet instead of traditional means such as the phone book or newspapers. If you want your business to be an online giant, you need to ensure your business is one of the first results a potential customer sees when they are searching online. Having your business listed on Google Plus Local is a vital…

December 13, 2012

Your website has the potential to drive your customers away. Use these 6 tips to steer clear of some common website pitfalls. Attracting a potential customer to your website is hard enough but grabbing their interest and persuading them to buy or use your services is even more difficult. That is why it is so important to design your website so that you don’t frustrate or irritate your visitors, making them jump through hoops to find the information that they need.  Here are some examples of common website mistakes that make visitors leave a website within the first few minutes….

December 2, 2012

Long gone are the days of telemarketing, the yellow pages, newspaper ads, and direct mail. If you did all those things even a decade ago, you’re marketing strategy was probably fine and very successful. Nowadays, sticking solely with traditional marketing tactics doesn’t work like it used to, and businesses can no longer write off mobile marketing, social media and the Internet as a fad. Since that’s where potential customers are going (and staying), businesses need to find a way to go there, to stay there, and to connect with potential customers in ways that weren’t necessary or even possible in…

October 29, 2012

For any small business owner it is helpful to know what your immediate competition is up too. Don’t think of this as something that is dishonest or shady because I am sure that your competition is constantly thinking of ways to improve their sales and customers, even it means taking some our your sales and customers away. You work hard for the same customer base in cases and an app for your smartphone called Perch has made it easy to be notified of what your competitor is doing. The app collects data from Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and conveniently shows the…

June 27, 2012

There is no doubt that Groupon can drive hordes of new traffic to your small business. How much of that business turns in a long term repeat customer is up to you, not Groupon.

June 1, 2012

We have spoke extensively about the benefit of Google Places for your small business. Google has made a huge change this week in the way your local profile appears in local search terms and a few ways you used to manage the page. Google has made it clear that the changes are not complete and in some ways not ideal in they way they want them. While it does leave some wondering what is next, here are the changes that affect you right now and what can be done about it. 1) When a customer leaves a review, no longer…

February 26, 2012

Are Yellow Pages dead for the small business? If you have owned your small business for any amount of time, you have been face to face with a Yellow Page sales person. This is often a high pressured sale in which it can be hard to say no. Online marketing is cheaper, easier to measure and can produce amazing results. Should you still spend hundreds to thousands on a marketing medium that may be dead? Yellow Pages and similar phone directories used to be the set and go must-have marketing medium. Sign the contract, your ad runs in the new…

January 8, 2012

HubSpot has a suite of free tools you can use to measure the effectiveness and reach of your website, social media and marketing efforts. Each tool takes only seconds to input the required information and have relevant data provided to you on screen that you can use to increase and dial in your marketing campaigns. Their Twitter grades will tell you in seconds how you rank in key metrics such as power, reach and authority versus other businesses in your market.They also have a Facebook grader which works in a similar fashion. The Search grader is the best free tool…