Small Business | Small Biz Bee

Apr

5 Ways to Save Money on Your Small Business Website

If you have a website of your own, chance are you are paying fees out every month or year to have the site.

While conducting research recently for reseller hosting company 34SP.com, I discovered that website fees can force site owners to abandon their sites. Often, the burden of paying monthly fees takes a toll on the webmaster. Sometimes the webmaster simply closes down the site rather than sustain the loss of money every month.

If you have a website, and if you pay fees to maintain it – you may want to consider these 5 easy steps to save money on your website right now.

1. Pay less for your domain name – While you definitely need to have a distinctive domain name and brand, you don’t need to pay top dollar for the privilege. Here’s a good example – if you have your domain name registered with Register.com you’ll pay $35.00 per year for a .com domain name. That same domain name if registered at a discount registrar like GoDaddy.com will cost just $10.69. That’s a price reduction and savings of nearly 70 percent. Imagine the savings if you have multiple domain names for your websites.

2. Pay less for your website hosting – You will absolutely need great web hosting as well. However, why pay for what you don’t need? If you run a straightforward WordPress website, then you shouldn’t need a hosting plan that charges $89.95 per month (I found this plan doing a bit of research into pricing). Great web hosting is available for less than $15 per month. Shop around and start saving – especially if your paying anything over $50 per month for a basic hosting setup.

3. Get an advertiser (or two) – No matter what the topic or content on your website, it is very likely that there is an advertiser willing to pay real money to get in front of your audience. If you are sales-minded you can likely figure out which niche you serve and approach a few companies about becoming an advertiser. Don’t be discouraged by hearing the word ”no”. This is simply necessary to get to the ”yes” that the ideal advertiser will say. You could also consider getting paid by a third party to advertise on your website. For example both Pay per post and reviewme will pay anywhere from a few dollars up to hundreds for a site review or blog post on the subject of their paying advertisers. See their websites for details.

4. Put AdSense ads on your website – Another great option to get paid ads on your website is to use Google’s AdSense program for publishers. The system is ubiquitous around the Internet and requires no selling at all by the website owner. If fact, Google will even figure out which ads perform best on your site. You simply sign up for the program and then put some AdSense code on your website. The ads appear automatically. You can find all the details here: http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/index.html.

5. Ask for donations – Depending on your audience and site content, it may be appropriate for you to ask for donations to keep your website operating. Large scale sites like Wikipedia operate this way, as do smaller non-profit sites. PayPal has made the process very easy with their pre-configured donation buttons. Similar to AdWords, to get the donate button on your site you simply cut and paste html provided by PayPal into your website. Once set up, you can accept donations made with credit cards, debit cards, or PayPal. There are no set up fees with the donate button – but you will pay a transaction fee for each donation. See the PayPal website for details.

Good luck with your website, and don’t forget that a penny saved on your website is a penny earned.

About the Author:Derek Vaughan is a web hosting industry veteran, marketing consultant and writer. Mr. Vaughan has architected the marketing growth of several prominent web hosting success stories leading to acquisition including Affinity Internet, Inc., Aplus.Net and HostMySite.com. Prior to his entry into the web hosting industry, Mr. Vaughan was responsible for online marketing at The Walt Disney Company where he marketed ecommerce for the ESPN.com and NASCAR.com brands. Mr. Vaughan received his M.B.A. from Vanderbilt University and currently serves on the HostingCon Advisory Board.

Photo Credit:Alan Cleaver

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Mar

Never Underestimate the Power of Hype for Your New Business

These days the word ‘hype’ is frequently given negative connotations. It is true that one interpretation of the term is an excessive or exaggerated claim of a product or service’s importance, but originally the term was used to describe more cleverly worked promotion and fostering of positive word-of-mouth.

The TV Teaser

The latter definition can be seen working extremely well in modern television, where yet-to-be-aired TV shows will play very short adverts or give 5 second snippets of a show, just to get people talking about it.

This, often coupled with poster and viral campaigns promoting messages such as “its coming!”, help to get the rumour mill going into overdrive.

Play on Curiosity

Humans are the most curious animals on earth (perhaps second to cats) and not knowing what something means, especially when we seeing clues all over the place, drives us crazy. We start talking to friends about what it all means, start Googling clues that the ads have given us and even start writing blogs about what we think might be “coming”.

Your new business venture might not have the funds or the reach to carry out a ‘hype’ campaign to the same scale, but you can definitely adopt some of the principles to get your new business venture into people’s consciousness before you even launch.

Here is just one way that you can generate hype with a relatively low budget.

Create a mystery website, and then promote it.

Chances are you will at some stage have a full website built for you business that will outline all your products or services, as well as contact details and news etc. Before you set this live however, why not put a very simple, yet intriguing 1-page site live that just hints at what people can expect soon.

You might want to use interesting imagery, a tag line or even some poetry to get visitors wondering what exactly your business is all about. A great idea is to place 2-3 short video clips on the page that don’t give too much away, but just add to the intrigue.

Videos are a rich media that people like to analyse more than copy and are often distributed better. If you’re really clever you can include subtle messages or website addresses in your videos that will encourage people to dig deeper.

Take a look at this video for Derren Brown’s “The Events” which aired last year in the UK on Channel 4.

The program was all about trickery, illusion and subliminal mind control and the advert alone built up so much hype, Derren received record viewing figures for the show when it aired. Here is another video speculating what the advert’s hidden messages where:

Even if you don’t include video on your website, you can still get one produced pretty cheaply that you can use to create something of a viral campaign.

The video doesn’t need to be professional produced, as an amateurish feel often adds to its draw. Promote the video on YouTube, but also get your messages out on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit and as many other social sites as you can.

If you work the whole process correctly you can generate so much buzz surrounding your business that when it comes to launch time you will hit the ground running, and stand the best chance of making it through the most difficult early stages where most new companies struggle.

BIO: Duncan is an internet marketer and business consultant representing a London-based spa days company. He often blogs about top marketing techniques and getting the best ROI from promotional activities.

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Photo Credit: Alex Cameron

Feb

Outsourcing and the Small Business

In this guest post Brenda Harris shares her thoughts on the pros and cons of outsourcing for the small business owner.

It’s an issue that is kicking up a storm today because of the high rate of unemployment – President Obama has on his agenda the issue of moving jobs back to the USA from India, China and other countries where they’ve been outsourced to take advantage of low costs and a capable workforce.

It’s the larger corporations that are now in the line of fire – they’re being called tax evaders who have moved much of their operations overseas so that they’re able to make huge profits. But if you take a closer look at this phenomenon called outsourcing, you’ll find that almost all businesses are guilty of it at some time or the other.

Outsourcing is Out There

For example, banks outsource debt collection to private agencies or individuals who buy the loans from them at a slightly lower rate. Telecommunication and other service-oriented companies outsource their customer service and troubleshooting operations to smaller organizations. And even the U.S. Defense Department is guilty of outsourcing auxiliary military duties to contractors in Afghanistan so that US military personnel are free to take care of “core” tasks.

Outsource Something, Not Everything

So even if you’re a small company, there’s no guarantee that you’re never going to outsource any of your operations. In fact, if you’re a small business, it makes sense to outsource, especially those tasks that are routine and not tied explicitly to the operations of your company. Most small organizations outsource their annual audit and tax preparation or their technical programming/coding process. This is because they don’t have customized needs for these operations, so they’re bound to get them cheaper from companies who are dedicated to tax preparation and offering technological solutions for fields like customer service, business intelligence, data mining and so on.

Be Selective

One aspect that most companies forget to take into consideration when they outsource is to check the difficulty of the integrating the result of the task they are delegating to other organizations with the entirety of their own operations. The task itself may not be that hard, but when the finished product is in, it may have compatibility issues with the rest of the operations of the organization.

As a simple example, if you outsource your customer service and later find that the company who takes care of this aspect for you is at the receiving end of a host of negative criticism, it is your organization that loses face and repute, not the one that you outsourced your customer service operations to.

Final Word

In general, it is not wise to outsource critical or sensitive operations – those that are essential to the existence and survival of a company, and those that require the highest level of security. Also, if you don’t manage your outsourced operations and ensure that they are compatible with your in-house operations and that quality is at the highest level, all the cost benefits that you gain through outsourcing tend to be lost in the resultant confusion.

This guest post is contributed by Brenda Harris, who writes on the topic of executive mba programs . She can be reached at her email id: brenda.harris91@gmail.com .

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Photo Credit: foundphotoslj

Jan

10 New Year Revolutions

Below is a guest post from author, speaker, and business coach Andy Hanselman, who says forget New Year resolutions and start thinking New Year revolutions in 2010.

January is the time for New Year Resolutions. Well here are 10 ideas for ‘New Year Revolutions’.

Not a list of ‘do’s and don’ts, but some simple and practical things to consider that can help ‘Revolutionise’ your approach in 2010, which the evidence suggests is going to be a tough one for many of us. See it as a menu, not a recipe. Pick the stuff (or variations of it) that appeals and could work for you.

Here they are, in no particular order…

10 ‘Revolutions’ for 2010

1. Get That ‘Vision Thing’

The evidence suggests that in tougher times your people may well be looking to you for focus and drive. As well as the traditional 12 month ‘Vision Thing’, you may also need a short term one too. What are your key business priorities for the coming months? Does everyone know what they are and what they need to do to achieve them? Your job is to let them know, and get them on board.

2. Work On ‘Dialogue’, not Diatribes
Focus on creating ‘conversations’ with your people in 2010. Ask for their opinions, views and ideas. This is not just about memo’s and emails and meetings. Aim to ‘engage’ your people more this year. People are often looking for security and reassurance in tougher times. That means listening, and reacting and having ‘ongoing’ discussions on things they say are important.

3. Stand In Your Own Queues
Regularly spend time in 2010 ‘at the sharp end’. What are you like to do business with? Find out what’s stopping your people delivering what customers want. How can you make it easier?

4. Don’t Just ‘Think’ Out Of The Box – GET Out Of It
It’s easy to get drawn down into the ‘nitty gritty’ of daily business. Try to create time to make visits to companies, conferences, events and seminars (even some that have nothing to do with your industry). Read a magazine or journal, surf websites from sectors you know nothing about. The point? To get a different view and perspective. Who knows what you’ll learn?

5. Think In ‘3D’
That means being ‘Dramatically and Demonstrably Different’. What makes your business stand out? How do you demonstrate it? Remember, it’s not what you say, it’s what you do. Explore ways in 2010 to demonstrate your competitive edge in everything that you do, particularly to your existing customers who will no doubt be getting mailshots, calls and visits from your competitors desperately looking for business.

6. Value Your Values
Evidence suggests that customers are engaging more with businesses they believe in, they trust and respect. What does your business really ‘stand for’? Work on establishing, communicating and demonstrating your values. Not a list of weasly words and phrases, but a set of principles you believe in and that differentiate your business. Why not create a ‘manifesto’ that outlines what your business really is about?

7. Stand Out And Deliver
Actions speak louder than words. Concentrate on consistency. In 2010 focus everyone on creating a ‘great experience’. ‘Champion’ those in your team who ‘go the extra mile’ and deliver the goods. ‘Challenge’ those who don’t. There’s no room for ‘passengers’ in times like these.

8. Maximise Your Customer Relationships
When things slow down, it’s tempting to get out there knocking on doors and chasing ‘new’ business. Obviously, this can be very important, but I see too many businesses doing it at the expense of their existing customer relationships. Now is the time to get closer and focussed. Who are the key people you need to be getting closer to?

9. Be Visible
What are you like as role model when it comes to your key priorities? In 2010, ensure that you live your values, demonstrate your commitment to those key priorities and make sure that your actions reinforce this. That might mean taking ‘symbolic’ actions for emphasis. Not PR stunts, but genuine activities that ensure that your people know what’s high on the agenda. Ensure that in these tougher conditions no one is under any doubt about what you see as important.

10. ‘Just Do It’
When it comes to thriving or surviving, don’t just talk about it, just do it. It’s as simple as that. Commit to making 2010 your year for action, and…..’Do Something’!

Best wishes for this New Year and have a great and successful 2010!

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Andy has developed a reputation for his innovative, inspirational and stimulating approach. This is reflected in his training and motivational seminars, and is in demand as a speaker at team building events, seminars and conferences up and down the country. Having presented to over twenty thousand business leaders and decision makers Andy is recognised for his engaging, humorous, and down to earth approach. He has been recognised by Enterprise Magazine as a Future Top 100 Entrepreneur. You can reach him at AndyHanselman.com

Photo Credit: Sukanto Debnath

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Dec

Managing Your Cash

Below is the final article in our $150 competition sponsored by BizSugar.com. It’s submitted by Cathy Iconis, who provides Virtual CFO & Consulting services. Good luck to everyone who contributed an article!

We all know that cash is critical to running a business, no matter the size. But as small businesses, we generally have less cash than the big guys, so we need to know how best to manage it. The first step is to better understand how much cash you have and how you are using it.

First, I want you to know that just because you have profit at the end of the day/month/year, that doesn’t mean you have more cash. The Income Statement (or Profit & Loss) is a tricky thing. It shows you how much revenue you have for the period and the costs related to just those revenues. It might not include cash spent on a large investment, money you received from an investor, or even disbursements you’ve made to yourself as the owner.

The best way to understand how much cash you have and how you are using it is to look at your Cash Flow Statement. It is a simple report giving a ton of information in these four parts:

Operating Activities: How much cash you have at the end of the period from your daily operations
Investing Activities: Cash outflows from purchasing a new asset or making loans to vendors or customers
Financing Activities: Includes cash you have received from banks or owners or cash you’ve taken out of the business
Cash at End of Period: How much money you have at the end of the day, net of the above

The Cash Flow Statement is fairly easy to get your hands on. Even businesses running on QuickBooks can run a quick Cash Flow Statement from their Reports menu. You can also ask your accountant to supply you with one when they review your books.

Now that you know how much cash you have and where it is going, spend some time thinking about the best uses for your cash. If you are eating up all of your cash from daily operations, then you aren’t able to invest in assets that could potentially help grow your business, like an additional server to give you added capacity so you can have more customers. Here are some ways to manage your cash:

Budgets: Budgets can save you money and time! In a few hours, you can create a simple budget. Just look at what you spent last year and adjust any items that you don’t expect in the future. Enter your budget in your accounting system. Then run a report to see if you are on track. Easy as pie!

Dashboards: These are just graphs, charts, or some other visual representation of your financial data. We all know it is far easier to “see” your company when you are looking at a picture. You can visually compare your data: you can see how you are doing versus last month, see what you are spending the most on, or even see which customer is giving you the most money.

All in all, it is important for you to manage your cash. This means understanding how much you have, where you are using it, and how to track it. I challenge you to move past going from hand to mouth and start managing your cash so you can grow your business!

If you have any questions or want to learn more about how you can better manage your cash, visit my website, www.CathyIconis.com.

Oct

A Simple Three Step Method to Dominate Online

I’m happy to have David Gurevich back with another guest post today. David wrote the wildly popular article 9 Powerful SEO Tips for your Small Business Website, for us a couple months ago, and today is back to thoroughly expand on his thoughts regarding SEO and what it takes to dominate online.

Be sure to check out David’s free 44 page special report detailing his core rules for business, available for download at the end of this article. Enjoy!

The Gurevich MCA Model

MCA is a simple, three step method to come up with products and content that will help you dominate online. It is the most basic concept of business distilled into three words, so it doesn’t necessarily seem useful – until you try applying it.

It’s based on competencies. The theory of competencies is basically that firms and people aren’t competitive because of what they produce. Rather it’s their unique combination of skills, knowledge and capability that lead to outperforming the competition. Ask yourself, what are my competencies? Taking the time to answer that question will help you think on a strategic level, not a tactical one.

Instead of thinking, how can I make my widget cost less, you’ll start to think, am I using my skills to compete in the right arena?

The MCA approach encourages you to take a step back, see what the market already wants, then use your competencies to respond appropriately. It’s proactive. When you come up with an idea, you have to find a market for it, which is a pain. When, instead, you listen first to the market then create your idea, success is that much easier.

MCA: Market, Content, Advertising

Market: Before there can be any product, there needs to be a need.

What do people want?

For most of history, figuring out what people wanted was extremely hard and one of the biggest limitations to starting a business. Most small business owners had to rely either on their gut instinct, limited market research, or what info they could get from larger sources, like magazines.

The internet, however, makes figuring out potential markets so easy. Here’s how.

Imagine that your small business is dedicated to providing dog toys. You know how to get high quality dog toys, but you’re having real trouble figuring out what lines would be profitable, and how to develop an appropriate portfolio.

Head over to the Google keyword tool, and plug in “dog toys.” And voila, you discover an amazing variety of market opportunities: Christmas dog toys, indestructible dog toys, latex dog toys, and more.

With increased sophistication and research, you can soon develop a list of product ideas that there is an existing need for. When you pay for the most detailed keyword data, and it’s not that expensive, it’s almost like getting a report detailing exactly how many people are interested in just what. Market research becomes super easy.

Keyword tools also work for creating great content pages. They fundamentally tell you what people want, which is always useful.

Content: Talk to me about what I’m interested in – I’ll listen.

People want “indestructible dog toys.” Now you create content centered around that idea and phrase. Content doesn’t just mean a page dedicated to selling indestructible dog toys, however. It also means developing useful resources and material for readers. You’ve targeted a niche, now you want to dominate it by being the best there is on the web in that area.

If that sounds hard, well, yes, it isn’t easy. But you’ll find that niches are specific and small enough that being one of the best in that area is not particularly hard either.

The search engine optimization section of the free guide discusses more about this and why it’s so important, but building great content does three extremely important things.

First, it helps your reader learn more about the subject, about who you are, and what you think. This builds trust, a connection, and makes you stand out. Second, it builds presence in search engine results. This means more traffic, more customers, more money. And third, it is the only way to generate links to your website, which are essential for the long term health and growth of your site.

Advertising: How come I’ve never heard of you before?

You’ve successfully found out what people want, indestructible dog toys, and have created a product that meets their need. Not only that, you also wrote/obtained some great articles about what makes a dog toy safe and why it’s important to have indestructible dog toys. Success is imminent.

You open a deluxe bank account to hold all the moola you’re going to be getting.

Then you realize that no one cares. You’ve done everything you’re supposed to, but no one is coming to your website! And without appropriate advertising no one will.

Advertising your content means getting it to the people who care about it. Once you do that, and if the content is as high quality as it should be, you’ll generate links and traffic. The traffic will stop when you stop paying to get the word out, but the links stay. And that’s a huge win.

The fundamental goal of advertising online is to get people to link to your site. The links do not go away and will generate good search engine results, meaning free traffic.

Why the Internet Means Almost Infinite Markets

“The firm is constrained by the size of the market,” – Adam Smith

The great economist Adam Smith wrote this hundreds of years ago, and it’s still true today.

Look at small cities. In them, you tend to get fairly boring and basic products and services. But in larger cities, like New York, some pretty cool stuff happens. You can, for instance, find a store dedicated to ceramic dolls made in the Ukraine next to a Macy’s. What makes things so different?

It’s All About the Size of the Market

Let’s say 1 out of 1,000 people are interested in ceramic dolls, a number which I’m making up, and which I hope doesn’t offend any readers. With that rate of interest, in a city of 100,000 people you have about 100 ceramic fans. But in New York City with its 8,000,000+ people, you have 8,000 ceramic fans.

The more people there are, the cooler and more precise products can be. That is one of the main reasons people flock to big cities, despite high rent and congestion.

What would you get in a city that is more than a hundred times bigger than New York?

Pretty much anything. Take a product so bizarre that only 10,000 people a month in the entire world search for it online monthly. If you target it properly, it’s not too hard to dominate that market, and if you, say, just get 10% of that market, you have 1,000 new customers. (This type of analysis, despite its allure is highly flawed, but the general idea is true).

No matter what it is that you care about, no matter how strange your combination of skills and interests is, there’s a market for it. If that doesn’t inspire you, then it’s hard to imagine what will.

Get David’s Free Report Now: The King’s Rose: How to Compete Online & Win (.pdf – 44 pages – instant download)

About:

David Gurevich has gotten on the first page of Google for multiple brand name drugs. It’s easy if you follow the core rules of business online, which you can read for free in The King’s Rose: How to Compete Online & Win.

David also blogs at Health and Life, a Medical Blog. If you have any questions, he’d be glad to help – if he can – and you can email him here.

Photo Credit: visualpanic

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Aug

Using Email Effectively to Grow Your Small Business

Welcome to day two of Email Marketing Summer School, where the goal of our class is to have you using email effectively to market and promote your business.

We’ve already covered why many email marketers are not effective, and given you the Top 10 Benefits of using email as part of your marketing campaign.

Today You’ll Learn

Today we’ll look at some of the numbers behind email marketing that validate it as a powerhouse in the world of marketing.

We’ll look at the factors that make email marketing so effective. And lastly go over a couple tips you can start using in your emails today to make them resonate with your list.

It Works!

Email marketing has the potential to convert readers into customers as well as any other form of marketing. The main benefits come from the ability to reach a much larger audience (who have asked you to send them information), in less time, for less money, and have instant feedback on the results. Pretty sweet huh?

I think there is a misconception that email marketing isn’t very effective because of all the spam email we receive. We think that spam = email marketing. It’s not, it’s spam, and you won’t be doing it.

When done correctly, with a proper plan and intentions email really does work, consider this:

A Look at the Numbers

According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated an ROI of $48.34 for every dollar spent on it in 2007. The expected figure for 2008 is $45.06, and the prediction for 2009 is $43.52. As such, it outperforms all the other direct marketing channels examined, such as print catalogs.

The Ad Effectiveness Survey commissioned by Forbes Media in Feb/March 2009 revealed that email and e-newsletter marketing are considered the second-most effective tool for generating conversions, just behind SEO

Shop.org’s State of Retailing Online 2009 survey of retailers found that "E-mail is the most mentioned successful tactic overall".

In Datran Media’s 2009 Annual Marketing & Media Survey, 80.4% of industry executives said the email channel performed strongly for their company. This was the top result.

A February/March 2008 retailer survey by shop.org revealed that email marketing has the second lowest cost per order (CPO) of any online marketing tactic. The CPO of $6.85 compares favorably with, for example, paid search’s CPO of $19.33.

To me those numbers seem pretty impressive.

Why Is Email So Effective?

By nature we are social creatures. Just look at the explosion of social networking sites over the past couple years. However, one of the most social things we still do on the internet is email.

We love getting and sending email to friends and family. Sharing information, forwarding jokes, and checking in with people we care about. We look forward to emails from people we know, we like the connection.

If done right, your email marketing will be one of the emails people on your list look forward too.

As far to the other end of the spectrum you can get from spam is where you’ll be operating. You’ll be making your email personal, and compelling. Informational, and looked forward too.

You’ll be building a relationship with those on your list, and that is the essence of why email marketing is so effective. As we discussed in the last class, you’ll be gaining their trust, building authority, and become a part of their inner circle.

Tips to Build the Relationship Through Email

When you email your customers and potential customers, those people who have signed up for your list to get more information from you, keep these tips in mind to build the relationship from day one:

You Don’t Sell – The Relationship Sells

Don’t treat your email list like a cash cow out there to do nothing but buy from you. Sure you can send a "BUY MY STUFF" email to 10,000 people and if 1% buy you just made 100 sales. But wouldn’t you rather build a relationship with your audience such that your list of 500 people buy from you every time?

80/20 Information to Selling

80% of your emails to your list should be informational, helpful, or authority building. The other 20% you can directly sell. Remember point number 1, you’re building trust and relationships…if every email is a sales pitch, that doesn’t seem very friendly!

Make Your Emails Personal

Write for an audience of one. Keep your emails sounding informal, and personal, much like you’d write to a friend. Everything should be spelled correctly, and keep in mind you are representing your business, but you don’t need to use the queens English.

Which sounds better?

You could do this:

    "Matthew-

If I could have a moment of your time I think I’ve found a widget that will revolutionize the widget as we know it. I feel this widget will provide you with immense value, and suggest you consider purchasing this widget immediately as part of our special offer. Act fast, this offer will not last long, and you don’t want to miss this opportunity. Please come by our store for an instant 20% off!

    Sincerely,

    Widget Guy

    Your Widget Specialist for Life"

Or you could try:

"Hey Matt

Thought I’d pass this along since I know it’s something you’re interested in. I just found a pretty cool widget – does all the stuff those other widgets do, but a whole bunch more too.

Anyway, if you get a chance stop by the store and check it out, I’ll be around to answer any questions. If you decide you can’t live without it I’ll throw in 20% off so your wife doesn’t kill you for buying another one of these things!

See you soon."

See the difference? One is "selling you", the other is "helping you" by passing along some cool information. Keep it personal, you’ll be way ahead of the game.

Email Marketing is Not Drive-By Selling

This isn’t a quick hit kind of proposition. You’re emails are not intended to produce one major rush of sales.

To fully leverage email, you should be building something over time with your list.

You should get more “in house” traffic to your physical locations, some sales via the emails themselves, referrals, and much repeat business if you are approaching this from the right perspective – long term outlook.

In Summary

If you’re still with us I think you’re convinced that there may be something to this email marketing thing, and that it bears no resemblance to spam. The numbers are there to make it worth your while to explore as a marketing option, and if you keep our four tips in mind when you are sending out your emails – you’ll be building the foundation to an email marketing campaign that pays big dividends.

Homework

Brainstorm 10 topics you could email to your list that would be:

Informational
Helpful
Trust building
Authority building

No selling, no exceptions.

If you don’t have a list yet to email, don’t worry – you will by the time this course is over.

In Upcoming Sessions

In upcoming classes we’ll discuss how you can get your email campaign set up, get to building your email list, and then put it all together in a way that you can get out there and start using email to grow your business.

I know it sounds like a lot, but don’t worry – it’s summer school – and we’ll be going through all this at a nice leisurely pace.

Class dismissed…

Photo Credit: Mzelle Biscotte

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Jul

Five Reasons Small Businesses Should Make the Switch to VoIP

I don’t know about you, but I’m not real savvy when it comes to VoIP. Luckily for me (and anyone else confused by VoIP) Brent Thomson, CEO of Jive Communications, offered to write a guest post for us explaining the top 5 reasons businesses should consider VoIP.

Let’s see what we can learn…

What is VoIP Anyway?

Voice over Internet Protocol, more commonly known as VoIP, might seem revolutionary, but it’s really just the natural evolution of communication. Most businesses can already support VoIP thanks to their high-quality and robust broadband Internet connection. These connections are typically capable of transmitting more data than the users really need—much the same way that most personal computers are far more powerful than most users really require.

The bandwidth that has become available in the last few years has enabled small businesses to ditch the traditional telephone provider in favor of one that transmits their voice communication over their existing network infrastructure instead of over a separate set of dedicated telephone wires.

Get More for Less With VoIP

But why make the switch if you’re already getting the services you need? The answer is simple: Get more, for less. Since you’re already paying for the high-speed Internet connection, making the switch to VoIP has never been easier, or been more cost-effective.

Surprisingly for me, selecting VoIP as my first company’s telephone service did not come so easy. In 2005, at my first startup, our 16 employees survived on just two lines connected to a couple of cordless phones. As you can imagine, we got a lot of complaints from our customers that they couldn’t get through to us on the phone since the line was always busy. We realized we needed a real phone system that would give us voicemail, call waiting, transferring between extensions, etc.

Five Reasons You Should Switch

However, to get a system with the number of handsets we needed and the features we wanted was going to carry a one-time cost around $30,000, with ongoing fees added in as well. The solution we found was much different then we imagined: We built our own VoIP system, and included all the features we needed. Along the way, I’ve learned a few things about VoIP that I’d like to share with you now as the top five reasons you should make the switch:

1. SCALABILITY

Adding new lines to your VoIP phone system is as easy as buying a new telephone and telling your provider you have it. Depending on your carrier, there may not even be any additional hardware or “connection” charges. This way, you pay only for capacity you need.

2. FUNCTIONALITY

Many small business VoIP systems are based on software, rather than physical telephony equipment. The advantage of being software-based is that the provider can extend the capabilities of their system without purchasing new hardware. Their reduced cost per feature carries through to the end user and gives the customer some pretty high-end functionality at a fraction of what it used to cost. Some of these features include call queues, conference calling, transfers and forwarding, ring groups, etc.

3. PROFESSIONALISM

When a customer calls your office, you can’t afford to look unprofessional. The right system will help you portray to your clients the professional image you deserve. Using an auto-attendant feature can give callers options (like pressing 1 for sales or two for support) and route calls directly where they need to go. Two people working out of their garage can offer the same level of professionalism and sophistication as a large company with several departments.

4. PORTABILITY

What makes VoIP portable is that your phones will behave identically whether it’s in your office, home, or at a hotel in Tokyo—anywhere you have a high-speed Internet connection. With traditional phone service, your number is tied to a single physical location and moving to another city or state means it’s time to get a new number. However, with VoIP it’s as easy as plugging in your phone wherever you are and the same number will still reach you.

5. PRICE

There are two reasons VoIP is cheaper: First, there’s a healthy level of competition among VoIP carriers. There are no natural monopolies like there are with traditional telephone service. Second, VoIP utilizes your existing Internet connection, which means you no longer pay for access and usage fees on two separate sets of wires.

Once you make the switch and see all of the options available to you with VoIP, rest assured that you would be glad you did it.

ABOUT BRENT THOMSON

Brent Thomson is the CEO of Jive Communications, an enterprise-quality VoIP company that specializes in serving small businesses. Thomson helped develop Jive’s VoIP platform to offer a wide range of features including music on hold, extension dialing, unified messaging and online account management to its customers throughout the United States.

As the chief engineer, he created Jive’s purpose-engineered communications platform from the ground up to be fault-tolerant and extremely scalable without the enormous cost of other telephone switching platforms.

Photo Credit: Seattle Municipal Archives

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What is VoIP Anyway?

Get More for Less With VoIP

Five Reasons You Should Switch

ABOUT BRENT THOMSON

Photo Credit: Seattle Municipal Archives

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