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Media Auditing – can your small business benefit from it?

Media generally takes up most of the marketing budget for a company, as they pay to have their adverts on the TV, radio, internet ads, as well as sponsored posts on social media. In some cases, this is one of the biggest spending areas a company will make. Apple, for example, increased its ad spend by a massive 50 per cent in 2015, to a record breaking $1.8 billion.

A media audit allows companies to check the adverts and media they’ve paid for have appeared in the right places, at a competitive price. For example, it’s not worth having an advert for dentures play in the middle of a children’s TV programme, regardless of how cheap the airtime is.…

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The Top 3 Mistakes to Avoid When Establishing Your Business’ Online Presence

Having a strong online presence is good for business. Over 70% of today’s customers search for the information they need online, including information about products, services, and brands. In the previous article, we talked about some of the reasons why your business absolutely needs a strong and positive online presence.

Establishing online presence

The next step to take is actually establishing your online presence. There are plenty of strategies to incorporate and ways to do it, but in this article we are going to focus more on the top three mistakes you need to avoid when trying to establish your online presence.

Not Having a Target Audience

Internet marketing is rather different to conventional advertising.…

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5 Tips to Reduce Your Costs on Web Development

Guess what is the first concern a client has when it comes to a new web development project? Right, cost.

To get good quality services for a low price is not that easy, basically, you receive what you paid for. However, some extra costs can be reduced, if companies strive to invest smartly into their web projects.

Web development

Read these 5 tips and discover how to optimize your web development process and benefit from lower cost.

1. Make up a brief

What is brief? In terms of web development process, it’s a short summary of an overall project management plan. Make everything as clear as possible before you start any development – gather the requirements and write them down.…

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4 GPS Tracking Devices that Will Keep Tabs on Your Company Vehicles

When you own a fleet of vehicles, you understand the importance of keeping operating costs low and productivity rates high. GPS tracking devices can help you reach that goal by providing a link between you and your vehicles, so you can keep tabs on fuel costs, driver behavior, idle times and route efficiency.

GPS tracking

With GPS tracking, you can:

  • Track and manage your vehicles at all times.
  • Keep tabs on driving speeds to prevent speeding tickets and reduce legal costs. The true cost of a speeding ticket in some states can be over $1,000.
  • Keep track of cargo to prevent employee theft and ensure deliveries get where they need to go.
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Commercial Auto Insurance: What Business Owners Need to Know Before an Accident Happens

If you run a business that has even just one vehicle, then you should look into getting commercial auto insurance. This will help you avoid large payments when an accident occurs and can give you peace of mind every time the vehicle is on the road.

Classic company van

Chances are that you were already required to purchase coverage for bodily harm and property damage when you purchased the vehicle for your business, but policies like that do not cover damage to the vehicle itself. This can leave you high and dry after an accident in the company van, car or truck, even if it wasn’t your employee’s fault.…

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Defined Direction – What Skills You Should Look to Develop When Entering the Business Landscape

When you started university, you didn’t necessarily know what exactly you wanted to accomplish. With so many roads from which to choose, a clear path is not necessarily visible right away. After a time, however, you concluded that you wanted to get into business after uni. Now that you’re closing in on a graduate diploma of applied finance, or a master’s degree in marketing, or whichever business path you’ve chosen, it’s time to consider the outside world a little more.

Happy businessman

If you do plan on owning and operating your own business after you leave our institution, there are a few different skills that you should look to develop.…

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Small Businesses Need an Online Presence, Too!

When you think of company websites, you may think of online retailers: Amazon, for instance. These giant companies live online – that’s where their customers are, where their products are sold, and where their money comes in. So it’s no surprise that they need websites. But what about a small business? What about your local plumbing company, or a small shop you run with your family? Do you really need a website if you run a business like that?

Online business

Yes, you absolutely do – because in this day and age, even business done in person often starts online.

Small businesses do need websites

When a customer walks through the doors of a local shop and buys something they need, it’s easy to imagine that the entire transaction took place the way it would have forty or fifty years ago.…

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Dream Big: How Small Businesses Become Global Players

In today’s vast world, small businesses are a bridge between the local and the global. They may employ far less employees than multinational corporations but that doesn’t mean that they don’t dream big – or that their potential and activities do not have equal reach.

Dream big

There is no escaping the reality that small businesses are nowadays global players: in June 2015, the US Small Business Administration reported that while US exports’ known value grew by 1.4% from 2012 to 2013, small business export value improved by 4.5%, led by firms with an employee base between 250 and 499 people. This means increased profit and opportunities, but also increased responsibilities for smaller scale enterprises.…

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3 Times When an SMB Needs a Lawyer

Small business owners should build a relationship with a local attorney and have someone they can call if a legal problem arises. The problem that a lot of small businesses face is that they don’t have the finances to hire a lawyer for all of their needs.

Meeting with a business lawyer

A lot of businesses need to pick and choose when it’s appropriate to hire a lawyer.

1. Large-Dollar Contracts

If you’re making a deal of a lifetime, you’ll need a lawyer to make sure that the contract you provide or must sign is legally sound. At the very least, you’ll want a lawyer to read through the contract for you.…

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When Your Business Should Consider Switching to a VPS

There comes a time when a successful small business must look honestly and objectively at whether certain aspects of their infrastructure are indeed helping them to grow. This extends to the activities that occur on the web because a strong online presence is key to maintaining business relationships and a satisfied base of customers, especially for companies selling products through their website.

What is VPS hosting?

E-commerce is more normalized now than ever before, it’s therefore important for companies to ask themselves how they can make the purchasing of their products efficient. One consideration expanding enterprises need to take into account is when to switch from a shared server to a virtual private server, or VPS.…

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