Promoting Your Business through Smartphones and Social Media
Look at any advertisement for a successful company and you will see the familiar social media site icons posted on the bottom of the advertisement. The point of the advertisement is to direct customers and potential customers to their social media sites. The reason for this is Read more
3 Challenges Faced By Work-From-Home Entrepreneurs and How To Overcome Them
For those who wake up early every morning and commute to work, fulfill their work duties, and return to their humble abode the thought of working from home can present an appealing picture. But the lure of working from home, although attractive from the outside looking in, can present a greater challenge than following the conventional work routine.
The Devil is in the Details
How do you get and keep customers? The most important question in business and one that companies spend billions of dollars trying to figure out. I am going to put forth a strategy that works and has worked for centuries: Pay close attention to details. Read more
Tips for Small Construction Business Owners
If you are interested in construction, starting your own business may sound like a dream. However, running a construction company is not as easy as you may think. In order to create a successful business, it is essential you develop a strong business plan, secure financing and make sure that your company is properly licensed and insured. Luckily, you don’t need a construction management degree to accomplish these tasks. Simply follow the tips below, and you will have your construction company up and running in no time. Read more
Use the Internet to Bring More Phone Calls to Your Business
It might sound counter intuitive initially to run ads that encourage Internet searchers to call first before visiting your web site. After all – wasn’t that the purpose of your Website – to encourage traffic to the website and then to make a phone call? Well, it can depend on your business niche – and your targeted customer.
Encouraging calls can also bring in a stream of customers who are just reluctant to do any business through the Internet. They’ve heard too many horror stories about scam artists on the Internet. Or, they are reluctant to give out any personal information (like an email address or phone number) through a website and risk getting spammed or receiving annoying telephone calls.
More people are moving to getting all of their internet information through their iPads and smart phones that are enabled with full Internet browsers. These are customers who are more likely to hit a button on the cell phone to call a business than labor with an email message on a tiny cell phone pad. New click-to-call ad technology makes it even easier to send these callers directly to your business.
Some niches and businesses are just more suited toward generating sales through inbound phone calls – such as high-tech gadgets (like cell phones) and travel. Initial visitors to your website will have to call your business anyway to make the final sale – so why not just direct them immediately to your phone number through an ad?
The holidays is an excellent time to run Internet ads featuring a 1-800 number if you are selling gift items. In the holiday season rush, time-pressed customers are more likely to pick up a phone and order a present after seeing an ad with a 1-800 number on the Web, without taking the time to scroll through an elaborate website for the perfect gift.
Tracking Phone Calls
One of the biggest advantage of Internet advertising is the ability to track how ads are working – and how many sales are generated through each ad. Tracking phone calls is a harder venture, since most small businesses do not have access to elaborate technology and CRM systems that is required for tracking phone calls. Some ideas to get around that hurdle:
- Take advantage of that by offering sales ads on the Internet that highlight your phone number – and include an incentive to make the call.
- Track how many people take advantage of that incentive -and you’ll get an idea about the effectiveness of a campaign.
- Create a unique 1 -800 number and put it in an ad …and track to see how many actually calls and sales are generated with that unique 1-800 number.
Ideas For Getting More Calls
- Run a Google or Yahoo/Bing text or image ad, highlighting your 1-800 number with an incentive for callers, such as a $5 gift card. As mentioned earlier, this will also be a great way to track the usefulness of these ads.
- Run a Google AdWords campaign targeted only to mobile devices. Remember to turn off this setting in your other campaigns with the same keywords.
- Add phone extensions to your campaigns with call metrics. Right now, these features are free – so take advantage of this before Google begins to charge you for calls!
- Try other mobile phone ad networks with ads that feature your phone number and ad text inviting people to call you.
- Create an alternative mobile site to attract people cruising on their cell phones – and direct the ads to this site. The development of an alternative mobile site does not have to be extremely elaborate or expensive. Most mobile sites are very stripped down text only affairs – no images or elaborate flash and graphics are necessary.
About the Author: Anne Barber is a Search Engine Management specialist who works for Site Pro Specialties . She manages Pay Per Click campaigns for small and large businesses — some of them who solely rely on phone calls for leads and sales. Founded in 2005, Site Pro Specialties relies on a team of industry leading pay per click managers and AdWords experts who understand exactly how to facilitate online advertising campaigns.
Photo Credit: nromagna
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Mobile Devices Offer New Tools for Success
Success in business is predicated on having the best information at the right time. There are many great tools in which you can use so that you will help you to easily enjoy the success that you are looking for. The great thing is that many of these devices are ones that you can take with you everywhere. Read more
Why You Can Make A Lot More Money When Using A “PowerTeam”
A common trait many entrepreneurs possess is the desire to work and pursue their business goals alone. People who have a strong desire to be independently employed generally possess a great deal of individuality and are self-determined independent people. Another common trait among entrepreneurs is that they possess the belief that in order to truly succeed in life, they must make it on their own without assistance from others. Men especially have a natural instinct to resist asking for help. When men get lost, for example, they strongly resist the urge to stop and ask for directions. Read more
5 Qualities of a Good Entrepreneur
Do you have what it takes to be a good entrepreneur? Is it something that you could learn or rather something that is innate?
Personally I think it is both. Read more
How to Make Your eShop More Attractive for Google?
Are you an eshop site owner or interested in owning one? Perhaps there are some factors you need to put in consideration. What type of goods or services you need to market online and the conditions of the purchase and delivery proceedings. You need to locate the best sites, rates to pay for and the binding terms between you and your online server. You also need to consider your target market. All this are achievable by doing a lot of research and consultations. I now and today pose you a better solution to your online product marketing requirements, Google!
Site Map
You need the use of a Google XML Sitemap that will enhance the faster locating of pages by the search engines. This quickening procedure and the time spent on redirecting into new pages and the loading time of a new page. It also helps in the process of adding new pages into the Google search engine. This will in the end make it easier for the clients to accessing your online marketing site. Thus, your product web page will be more open to online marketers and online shoppers.
Translate
Gain a wider market target by the inclusion of a Google translation feature. This is a mechanism that will translate the contents of your online page to be in another foreign language. This variability of languages will therefore impose to the product accessibility increment. It will retain your initial desired image but presented in another foreign language better understood by the online client. Anyone visiting your page for marketing reasons or product clarification will understand what you desired to make him get the need to get your product.
EAN Codes
Marketing sites are usually more reliable if they have attributes and EAN codes. Ensure that your eShop sites have the provisional carts and EAN codes to maximize the impact the customer gets by accessing your web page. The customer is offered a chance to make reviews and attributes. The carts will also allow you to preview and sort related products from the same page or online marketer. This poses as an advantage to both the online shopper and you the online marketer. You will get more of his products and services exposed while the shopper will get to view more links.
Wrap It
You can offer gift wrap packages. This is a service rendered by online marketers to dispatch products directly to the third party. You can send packages ordered by online shoppers without having to deliver the packages to them first. The customers pay for the services online thus makes it cheaper for the customer having to undergo double delivery expenses. You should get to encourage the customers to use the Google eShop online marketing services by creating a universal cross over logging criteria. This is the modified system where people from other servers are not limited to access your product page. This for instance means that customers must not necessarily be Google members to visit your page.
Wish List
You need to avail a wish list icon option to allow the online shoppers to propose the nature, variety and pricing preferences they would wish you imposed on your services. This helps you to get a base of improving your online products.
About Author: This guest article is written by Brian Chadwick, who also writes for Vista tweaks, a site featuring lots of Windows tweaks and Vista tweaks
Photo Credit: Robert Scoble
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5 Tips for Happy Home Working
Working from home can be the perfect option for many people. It can offer fewer travel expenses and a more flexible schedule. Working from home can also have its challenges and keeping focused and motivated can occasionally be tricky. Having worked from home myself for a number of years, I thought I’d put together a quick checklist for productive home working. Read more
Effective Greeting Card Marketing Techniques
You can be sure you’re reaching your target customers when you have effective greeting card marketing techniques in place.
Ensuring Your Greeting Cards are Reaching the Intended Audience
If you are a seller or developer of greeting cards you know it can be difficult to make sure that the cards you make reach their intended audience. There are so many different kinds of greeting cards out there and so many different companies manufacturing greeting cards that it can be difficult to be sure that your greeting cards are getting the recognition they deserve. How can you know whether or not you particular greeting cards are getting seen by the customers who are most likely to buy them? There is no one answer to this questions, but those who have been in the industry for years and those who have spent considerable time attempting to establish the connection between the greeting cards they manufacture and the consumers who most likely will purchase them, have found that the very best way to establish this relationship is to develop effective greeting card marketing techniques.
Match your Marketing Strategy with your Audience
There is no one “right way” to arrive at the effective greeting card marketing techniques that are going to work best for you and your employees. It is important to consider the different types of greeting cards that you manufacture. For one thing, if you are a particular company that creates and distributes a small array of cards with a small niche market, say, Christian inspirational cards, you will very likely focus your marketing on the already established Christian community. If, by contrast, your cards are humorous, irreverent and with an eye to young people, your strategy will be most successful if it targets this particular population by spending marketing dollars to increase visibility in the magazines, subway stations or other forums where young people are most likely to be. For cards with a wide range of consumers or a wide range of cards to choose from, they will most likely find that the best thing to do is to cast a wide net when attempting to determine a marketing strategy. Making yourself visible in a variety of areas including, a presence at major bookstores and gift shops, advertising in periodicals and online outlets strategies will yield growth by giving your products increased visibility.
Is an Outside Marketing Company Best for your Business?
It can seem overwhelming to consider all of the elements inherent in developing effective greeting card marketing techniques. Fortunately, this is not something that you will necessarily need to conquer alone. If your greeting card company is not large enough to retain a dedicated marketing department, it may make sense for your company to outsource some of the work involved with creating and developing these marketing techniques. For one thing, an external marketing agency has the advantage of years of experience where marketing is concerned, and can be supremely helpful in determining the exact route your company should take when attempting to differentiate itself from competitors, while still remaining an effective key player in the greeting card game. Most marketing agencies can come up with a plan of attack that can easily and effectively reach the right consumers, while remaining within the budgetary constraints you have laid out. This is a critical piece of the puzzle because in order to be effective, your strategy must be a cost-sustainable venture, as well as an innovative concept.
About the Author: Floras McLain is a freelance writer for assorted greeting cards. When she is not writing or blogging, she loves to dabble in marketing.
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How to Manage a Business Without Stepping Foot in an Office
The costs of managing a business from a traditional, physical office are numerous. Small business owners must factor in all of these business costs when calculating their bottom line:
Rent, insurance, utilities (including gas, electric, water and sewage), parking, Internet, phone, and cleaning
By choosing to manage your business from your own home, you can eliminate many of these costs and enjoy the freedom of setting your own hours and working in a familiar environment. Since you already rent or own a residence and pay for many of the aforementioned services, managing from home will allow you to free up more financial resources for your business, allowing you to purchase computers, project management software and wireless mobile devices.
Step 1: Prepare to Manage Multiple Work-From-Home Employees
Managing several employees without the luxury of a central office can be a difficult task for any beginning entrepreneur. For this reason, it’s important to ensure that your home office is technologically capable of handling managerial tasks. If you own an older laptop computer, or if you don’t own one at all, now is the time to buy a latest-generation laptop with plenty of hard drive space, RAM and a fast processor. Consider purchasing a large external monitor, which will give you additional screen real estate for multitasking. Solid-state drives, or SSDs, offer fewer moving parts, enhanced reliability and reduced access times when compared to traditional hard disk drives.
Today’s business world is managed on-the-go. To keep pace, it’s important to invest in mobile devices such as a smartphone or an iPad. These devices, when paired with wi-fi coverage and the 4g network, allow you to manage your business regardless of your current location.
The 4g network, which serves as the successor to the slower 3g network, is becoming more widely available in many areas of the country. 4g coverage, which offers speeds comparable to those of cable and DSL, can be used to provide Internet connectivity for your computer, mobile phone, or other devices such as the iPad. For a variety of different options, 4g reviews will help narrow down your choices, and supply you with a good place to start.
Step 2: Invest in Online Project Management Software
You can choose between two popular online project management programs which facilitate the management of your company’s workload. These programs include Central Desktop and BaseCamp.
Basecamp is a project collaboration tool that allows you to manage your projects and employees from your home computer or mobile phone. Basecamp emphasizes ease of use at a low cost, with packages starting at $49 per month including a free 30 day trial. The most basic Basecamp package, entitled Basecamp Plus, allows you to simultaneously manage 35 projects with 15 GB of storage and unlimited users. According to surveys conducted by Basecamp, over 98% of Basecamp users said that they would recommend the program to others. Basecamp is available in multiple languages, making it perfect for those managing international businesses from home.
In comparison to Basecamp, Central Desktop offers enhanced functionality at the cost of potentially higher monthly fees. The most fully-featured version of Central Desktop, entitled Enterprise, is ideal for companies with 20 or more online employees, includes over 100 GB of storage space, and allows for unlimited workspaces. Enterprise, which costs $299 per month, includes state-of-the-art security features such as TLS encryption, off-site data backups and the ability to manage IP restrictions. More basic features such as file sharing, online spreadsheets, discussion forums, online calendars, online diagrams and MS Office integration are included in each edition of Central Desktop, including the free Basic package.
Step 3: Obtain Free Business Software
Next, you’ll need to obtain free business software programs such as Skype, Gmail and Dropbox. These programs are designed to facilitate business management communications and file transfers.
Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. When you register for a Gmail account, you’ll receive an email address and approximately 7.5 GB of online storage space.
Skype is a popular communications tool used for text-based chat, video chat, voice chat and screen sharing. Skype, which can be downloaded from www.Skype.com, is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac OS. You can call other Skype users for free, or make calls to land lines and mobile phones for as low as 1.2 cents/minute with a monthly subscription.
Dropbox is a free program designed to facilitate file sharing. When you and your employees install Dropbox on your business computers, you’ll have access to 2 GB of shared storage space. The Dropbox folder will appear as any other folder on your hard drive, except that anyone with the proper administration privileges will be able to access its contents. Additional storage space is available for a fee.
Step 4: Find Employees and Consider Outsourcing
At this point, all of the technical aspects of managing your business from home should be in place. From here, you’ll need to find employees to staff your business. You can accomplish this by using job posting sites such as Indeed.com and elance.com.
First, direct your browser to www.Indeed.com and click the Employers link. From here, you may click on “Advertise a job” or “Advertise many jobs.” You can then create a job posting, including the job title, name and location of your company, and a job description. You must also enter your job budget, which represents the maximum amount of money you’re willing to spend on advertising for the job through Indeed. After completing this process, Indeed will highlight your job posting as a sponsored link in their search results. This will make the job more visible to job searchers. This service follows a pay-per-click advertising model. You’ll only be required to pay when someone actually views your job posting.
Consider using a site such as Elance.com, a productivity hub that allows you to outsource your work to freelance workers around the world. The workers registered at Elance.com specialize in a variety of areas, including web design, programming, content writing, administrative support, finance, engineering and legal administration. Simply post a description of the work you need completed, as well as your budget. You’ll then receive bids from potential employees, along with their payment requirements, experience and references.
About the Author: Michael Cash is a twenty something freelance writer and internet consultant residing in western Michigan. When he’s not coaching people out of 1990s era web practices, amateur astronomy and hiking take up his time. A completely random fact about Michael is that he used to “ghost hunt” as a youngster.
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Built to Last – How to Grow Your Business by Hiring Leaders
All businesses need leaders on their staff, but small businesses need leaders even more. Why? If you are the entrepreneur who started the business, imagine yourself as the go-to person for all questions.
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Imagine yourself having to be the person who develops new procedures. Imagine yourself as the person who answers all the difficult, thorny questions that may come up.
If you have to provide all the leadership in the organization yourself, when will you have time to run your business – much less expand it? I suspect that you have other responsibilities on your plate besides supervising employees. What you need is a self-supervising employee who can discern when something needs to be done, and take the initiative to do it. Moreover, that person needs to care about the business and have the judgment, background, and intelligence to be able to make good decisions based on the information that is available – even if a question comes up that was not covered during employee training. What you need is a leader.
How can you find a leader if you are currently going through the hiring process? Look for the following signs of leadership:
Signs of Leadership in Lower Level Positions:
Continuing one’s own education. Not all industries require their leaders to have advanced degrees or certifications in order to advance, but many do. When you meet a job candidate who is attending school or pursuing a professional certification, or who has recently finished a degree program, take note of it. By continuing his or her education so aggressively, such a job candidate is showing not only that he or she can handle the stress and pressure of working and attending school simultaneously, but is planning to advance in their career by pursuing additional credentials. In other words, this person is ambitious and determined to take the initiative, rather than wait for promotions to be handed out at regular intervals.
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Working off the clock. The hallmark of an employee who lacks ambition is working straight nine to five hours, arriving right on time and leaving right on time, and taking no interest in the industry outside of work. Someone who aspires to be a leader in the industry, however, will go out and find activities to participate in that are related to it. You might find a job candidate who also does volunteer work for a community organization, for example. Or you might find an employee who likes to come to work early in order to have time to read the newspaper and browse through business websites.
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Positive energy. I find that leaders tend to be very energetic people with their fingers in lots of pies (figuratively speaking). They take a keen interest in many different areas, not all of which will be work-related. Leaders often, but not always, like to make time to exercise. It seems as though they have an inherent need to be constantly busy doing something. If you come across a job candidate who does a lot of volunteer work, or runs marathons, or who spends a lot of time on a time-consuming hobby, consider that person a potential leader – even if none of those activities are connected with the job in question. They are all signs of energy, and energetic employees are employees who help businesses to expand.
Signs of Leadership in Upper Level Positions:
Publications, conferences, trade shows, and public talks. Leaders in an industry will take a keen interest in the industry, taking the time to educate themselves further about special topics. Eventually, continuing education plus ongoing experience makes an interested party into something more – an expert. An expert without any leadership potential or ambition might stop there, but an expert who really wants to make a difference in the industry will take the initiative to help to develop the industry further, by sharing knowledge and engaging in a collective discussion of topics that are of interest. There are several ways to do this. For example, one might share knowledge by writing articles and submitting them to industry publications, or by participating in public talks, panels, and workshops at conferences and trade shows.
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Mentoring. A true leader does not climb the ladder of success alone, but reaches out a hand to help others to ascend as well. Try to find out if the job candidates you are considering have ever mentored their coworkers or supervisees. Mentoring could mean giving regular advice and encouragement, or helping a coworker to find ways to network in the industry by introducing them to others in the industry, or by inviting them to join professional groups. A mentor might also take time to help a supervisee develop new skills, either by teaching those skills directly or by providing a supervisee with the chance to work on promising projects. Ask about mentoring in your interview. Leaders don’t mentor accidentally – they know they are doing it and are often quite proud of their mentees.
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A history of changing one’s work environment, as opposed to being changed by it. Employees with a lot of initiative and drive will often shape their own job responsibilities. During their tenure in their current positions, their job responsibilities will expand in many areas. These employees have an eye for efficiency and are open to trying new ways of doing things. Often they will find that they have more hours in their work day than their predecessors did, even though they are working the same hours, because they have found shortcuts and economies of scale to make the work go faster. Needless to say, people who have the ability to do this make very valuable members of your team, because they can literally increase the number of products or services that your business can offer in the same amount of time, without increasing the number of employees on your payroll.
Conclusion
You might not be enthusiastic about the idea of an employee changing the work environment or the job responsibilities for a position. After all, if you are an entrepreneur who started your own small business, you very likely have strong ideas about how the business should be run. I have to tell you that a leader
is someone who may challenge a few of your ideas. You may even have conflicts with this person from time to time. But that’s okay. In fact, you should welcome challenges and new ideas with open arms. Businesses are living, organic entities that have to continue to grow and change – or they will die. Hiring someone who pushes you to try something new may be the impetus your business needs in order to expand, grow, and thrive.
About the Author: Brendan Cruickshank (Vice President of Client Services) – Brendan is a veteran of the online job search and recruiting industry, having spent the past 8 years in senior client services roles with major sites like Juju.com and JobsInTheMoney.com. He is quoted regularly as an expert in employment and jobs trends in major media outlets like the Washington Post, US News & World Report, and Forbes and has spoken at recruiting industry events such as Onrec and Kennedy Information’s Corporate Recruiting Conference.
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4 Tips to Ease Cashflow for SMEs
For any SME having a healthy cash flow is vital for growth. But even if your business has a sales’ ledger to be proud of it doesn’t always follow that you’ve got cash to hand. And this can quickly cause your SME to grind to a halt. So here are four simple tips that can help you ease cash flow and allow your business to continue to grow to its full potential.
1: Invoice Financing
This is a great way to access credit against the value of your sales’ ledger. If you are short on cash because stock is going out but you’re waiting for payments to come in then it’s a viable solution for you.
Financing comes in two forms – invoice factoring and invoice discounting. Factoring allows you to sell your invoices onto a third party (for up to 90%) of their value. You can then draw credit on these invoices and leave the debt collection to someone else. Invoice discounting allows you to take out loans on your sales’ ledger, while you still keep control of the invoices and debt collection.
Both invoice factoring and invoice discounting save money on overdraft or loan interest. Factoring also saves money on wages as you don’t have to employ someone to chase debts. However, discounting is an option for companies who don’t want a third party to collect for them because they wish to maintain a personal touch in their customer relationships.
Invoice financing is also a good alternative if you struggle to secure a bank loan at a fair interest rate. It allows you more control over your cash and this provides opportunity to grow as a business.
2: Invoice Correctly
A healthy cash flow can dry up due to mistakes in invoicing. One small error and at the end of the payment period a customer may demand a new invoice. And so you have to wait another 30 days for the cash. It is vital to have a system that ensures all invoices are correct the first time they go out. Secondary to this you should always have a good follow-up process in place. If the cost of setting up and manning this is a strain on your business then using an invoice factoring firm could be the next step to take.
3: Negotiate Your Payments
Just as late payments can cause you cash flow problems, delaying your own payment of invoices can ease cash flow. So always wait as long as possible to pay any invoices due. And try to negotiate with your seller. A standard 30 day payment term can often be extended to 60 days. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
4: Cash Flow Projections
Always carry out a cash flow projections at least two quarters in advance. This means you should be able to foresee any shortfalls on the horizon. This is particularly relevant if your business has a seasonal ebb and flow. Banks are wary of businesses that need cash in a hurry so good projections allow you to plan loans in advance. You can often get a better deal if you are in a strong cash position but if you are finding it hard to negotiate a bank loan then invoice financing is often a more financially viable alternative.
About the Author: David Summers is the Invoice Finance Product Manager for SimplyBusiness.co.uk who offer a range of finance and insurance products for UK SMEs.
Photo Credit: AJU_photography
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