Startup Shortcuts: Smart and Cents-able Ways to Make Your Little Business Look Like a Big Player

Starting a new business takes a lot of time: you have to decide between forming a corporation or an LLC, you have to find the right people to employ, and you have to build a website and/or find a brick-and-mortar building to rent or buy. When you first start, it may seem like it’ll take years before you are noticed by anyone.

Appear bigger

Fortunately, there are things that you can do while you’re still growing to make your business look like a real player. If you do a few things correctly, people will start taking notice of you sooner rather than later and you can claim your market share sooner than you might think.…

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Why User Experience is So Important in Business

Some businesses that don’t fully recognize how critical the user experience is end up facing financial difficulties early on, and can even end up folding if they don’t implement critical changes quickly. Your business can offer consumers everything that they want tangibly, but if the user experience is lacking, they just won’t feel compelled to give you their business. Your customers may not tell you to your face that their experiences with your company isn’t up to par, but they generally give enough context clues for business owners to figure it all out.

Business website users

Sometimes it’s long lines that turn customers off, and in other cases it can be as simple as a clerk that fails to meet every customer with a smile.…

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A Business Case for Cashback Marketing

You can get cashback on pretty much everything these days, but what is cashback marketing and how does it work? Cashback marketing provides money back to customers when they make specific purchases. This might seem too good to be true for the customer, who would likely have made those purchases anyway. You might also question what benefit it has for the cashback website, or for the company selling the products. It works like a “revenue share model” for the providers, which benefits them, as well as the customer and the merchants who partner up.

Cashback marketing is increasing in popularity

The cashback model is becoming increasingly popular within this digital era, as it’s a powerful way for companies to reach a larger audience, increase their revenue and also reward their loyal customers.…

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Reach the Right Customers with These Search Marketing Tips

Through strategic outreach programmes and carefully tailored content, small businesses can begin to make their online presence felt and climb up the search engine rankings in a process known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Search engine marketing (SEM)

Search marketing enables you to optimise your website to attract the your target audience. As many as 59% of small businesses predict that over a quarter of their revenue will be generated online in the next five years, making search marketing is increasingly important.

But diving in at the deep end and expecting to float is never a good way to begin any venture. Digital marketing experts take years to master and perfect their craft, learning exactly which keywords to target and focus on at any given time.…

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Marketing Tips to Create Demand for Your Product

In the world of marketing, demand creation is the process of creating demand for specific products where none might currently exist. Sometimes called push marketing, creating demand is far more involved– and perforce, often more expensive– than traditional marketing and branding, which typically seeks to meet or satisfy existing needs.

Create demand and sell!

Often, business or startup owners realize they need to generate demand when their innovative and new service or product sits on the market with only a few, intermittent buyers. Even if it could be an industry game changer, it’s not uncommon that only early adopters will take a chance with an unfamiliar brand.…

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Print Marketing: Why it Matters and How to Use it

Large format printing

While champions of the digital era will have us believe print is dying out, you only need to look around you to see that print marketing is still very much alive and well. On any given day, we’re bombarded with billboards, magazines and posters – all pointing us towards a product, service or brand – and whether we realise it or not, these marketing materials influence our buying behaviour.

Today, we’re throwing the spotlight on the print industry. We’ll be looking at everything from high street flyers and business cards to retail window clings and magazines – exploring how and why print still works as an effective marketing strategy.…

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3 Tips for Including Links in Your Small Business Blogs

Blogging for business is a great way to bring more visitors to your website, build fodder for your social media posts, create a network with your customers, and ultimately get yourself a larger revenue stream. However, blogging is a lot more than typing words out on your keyboard. In order to create a blog that is actually beneficial to your business, you have to understand how business blogging works.

Blogging for business

One big area of business blogging revolves around links. The links you choose to include in your content can have a big impact on your overall blogging success, as well as how well your individual blogs perform.…

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Big Traffic Methods for a Small Business Website

As long as you have a fantastic product (or service), capable customer service, great positioning within your marketplace, and a price people are willing to pay for your offer, you shouldn’t have trouble becoming a profitable small business…

But even then it’s not always the case.

Stand out

Imagine you offer all these great features but no one knows where you’re located or how to differentiate you from the sea of competition? Imagine all the work you can place into every aspect of your business yet still fall flat because you’re not driving individuals to the offer.

Hundreds of websites are created every minute and although the chances of someone creating a competing business site would be somewhat low in the percentages – it’s still being done – and every day that passes is another chance for them to be the major brand in the marketplace.…

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Three Things to Do in Your Small Retail Business Before the Christmas Rush

It is already autumn, and this time of year can be one that can seem to fly by before you know it when you run a retail business. Almost all retail businesses see an increase in sales either before Christmas, if they sell things that people tend to buy as gifts or which people use in their homes over the festive season, or after Christmas, when traditionally there are the best offers and bargains to be had, and so this is really the time of year to make any changes to how you do things that can help you get more from this period.…

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How to Increase Exposure for Your Small Business

Are you looking to take your small business or start-up to the world? Here are a few expert tips on how to increase exposure for your business:

Optimise Your Website for Local Searches

Many small businesses rely on local customers for their initial success. There are a few exceptions when it comes to ecommerce, but the best clients and customers often end up being those that are based in the area. With that in mind, it’s important to optimise your business website so that it appears in local searches.

Here’s a quick guide to get you started with local SEO.…

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