In my previous article, Making Money: The Economics of Email, I discussed the customer acquisition cycle and how email marketing fits nicely into that effort, acting as the grease to speed the process along. Email has direct financial benefits, but there are also a number of other benefits that are difficult to track. For example, if your logo appears in an email, you might not see sales from people who drove right over to your store to make a purchase, but it might make your website seem more familiar to a visitor who has seen the email, and that might make her more comfortable making a purchase at a later date.…
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Are You Ready For American Express OPEN’s Small Business Saturday?
Entrepreneurs are getting ready as everyone looks forward to the inception of a new shopping event: Small Business Saturday. The first-ever event will take place on November 27, as part of American Express Open’s plan to support the local economy.
America’s largest employers are still small businesses and it makes sense that the industry gets the attention it deserves by having a whole day dedicated to it. The national movement is getting more traction as the actual event draws near. Advocacy groups as well as the public and private sector unite to support this national campaign. This concerted effort to support small, independently-owned businesses would help to drive sales in the holiday weekend shopping traffic.…
Continue readingHow Creating an eBook Can Help Develop Your Online Presence
There are a number of reasons to create an eBook to help develop your online presence. Here are a just a few of them:
Build your email list
As many online entrepreneurs will tell you, building your email list is one of the most crucial things you must do in order to establish presence online regardless of whether or not you intend to make money. Certainly if you want to make money through your website and your presence online, an email list is even more vital.
But how to get people to hand over their email addresses to you – willingly – and with open ears to what you have to tell them?…
Continue readingMaking Money: The Economics of Email
I live close to a golf course, so my garage is always full of golf balls collected by my children. We literally have big plastic containers filled with golf balls sorted by type and condition. While I like to keep a container with the best of them in my trunk to restock my endless need, my children have other ideas.
Mitchell and Madeline, who seems to have the same entrepreneurial spirit I have, would rather sell these balls back to the golfers as they drive by our house on their way home.
The reality is, turning a profit on free golf balls might prove less profitable than they hope.…
Continue readingWhich Hat Is Your Site Wearing? Optimizing Your Website
If you are like most entrepreneurs, you would already have milked different social networking sites for all their worth. And why not? It sure would drive more traffic to your site. The higher traffic percentage your site gets, the higher chances of getting more sales.
There are many search engine optimization strategies which can help increase rankings. A successful internet marketing campaign needs to be well-thought of and well-planned. You should never lose sight of your goal instead; you need to be guided by it.
The article SEO- Are You Missing The Point? suggests that the more optimized your site is, the higher ranking it gets, therefore increasing site traffic and a possible increase in sales.…
Continue readingSocial Media: Is Visibility All There Is To It?
Gone are the days when businesses just relied on neon signs, tarpaulins and pamphlets. Since the inception of social networking sites, entrepreneurs harnessed it to maintain business relationships and attract new customers. Marketing has taken on a whole new meaning once social media became prevalent, especially for small businesses.
While it is true that the more people know your business exists, the higher chance you get of being considered to fit consumer’s needs, there is still the matter of being able to establish that you can deliver what you promised you would.
You may be sending hordes of email, tweeting left and right, posting new blogs daily all in the hopes of being noticed by more of your target market but have you measured how much of an improvement your business made since you started marketing online?…
Continue readingOptimize Your Marketing Efforts Without Hiring a Team of Know-It-Alls
One of the keys to success for every small business is a really smart marketing program that keeps existing customers in the fold and continually incites prospects to join. The program should include the most cost-effective ways to raise brand-awareness, leverage your expertise and share deals.
Although many are still hesitant to move away from snail-mail or the telephone, others are rapidly discovering that email marketing is one of the most effective means of generating sales. Research conducted in 2009 by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) found that email outperforms all other forms of direct marketing.
If you’re new to email marketing, or want to crank it up a notch, here are three tips to help you build and grow your email marketing list without having to look for additional budget.…
Continue readingGetting Into The Foursquare Frenzy
Many business owners are now relying heavily on social media to help market their products and services. You may already have a business account with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You may also see that with these sites, your sales went up higher than you expected. But you should not stop there. People regularly think of ways to let them connect with others who share the same interests and you have to be updated so that your business can thrive.
The latest addition to social networking media, which can help promote small businesses, is the Foursquare iPhone app. It is a well-known belief that the best marketing strategy is by word of mouth and Foursquare has it down pat.…
Continue readingBuilding a Perpetual Marketing Machine
When it comes to online marketing, small businesses are staring at a dilemma. Free online marketing tools like social networks have great potential for reaching new customers, but their actual impact on the bottom line is hard to measure. Meanwhile, established tools like email marketing provide valuable metrics on subscribers, and are more suited for retaining and engaging existing customers than acquiring new ones.
Thankfully, online marketing isn’t a zero-sum game – it’s an aggregate one! Positioning email marketing against social media leaves marketers at a loss because they fail to capitalize on the individual strengths of both these channels. Email marketing gives businesses the ability to build a deeper relationship with customers, while social media helps to reach a broader audience.…
Continue readingWhy Promoting Your Small Business Is So Important
If you think you have achieved success when you saw your business up and running, you are wrong. You are actually just starting. You are not really considered successful yet if you have just started your business. Your greatest challenge comes when you have to make your business available to the public. You still have to find who is going to buy your products.
This challenge could never be boring. You can be creative and organize fun stuff to promote your business to the public. Well that sounds easy and fun, but the truth is, you have to know something more about promotional campaigns before you can be successful on that end.…
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