3 Tips for Updating Your Marketing Plan for the Coming Year

If you’re looking to grow your business into new areas and demographics this year, or even if you’re just wanting to get a greater slice of your market share—and who isn’t?—then you’re going to want to take a hard look at your marketing efforts. The time and energy you put into marketing, whether it’s traditional marketing or online marketing, is going to be what gets you cresting over the hill into new markets.

Creating marketing plan that works

So to help you make that trek a little easier on yourself, here are three tips for recalculating your marketing plan for the coming year.

Recap How Last Year’s Marketing Went

You can’t very well know where you need to go unless you know where you’ve been.…

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How to Use Psychology to Prevent Theft at Work

CEOs – whenever you hear the word “thief” you may think of someone who is outside your company. Unfortunately, there’s a worrying trend that theft is likely to be done by your very own employees.

Office worker is stealing toilet paper from employer

It’s often difficult to understand why your staffs would do that, but some surveys reveal the trend. Here’s one: Data Label, a company that produces data labels like asset tags and security labels, released a study that reveals the current state of theft at work. The survey is on adults aged over 18, asked this very basic but important question: “Have you ever stolen something from your place of work?”…

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5 Tips for Converting a Skill Into a Small Business Practice

There are billions of people in the world who feel like they are cogs in someone else’s wheel. And then there are those who do something about it. These are people who somehow attempt the small business angle. And, if you already have a skill, there’s no time like the present to see how well that would convert into something profitable.

Businesswoman achieving success

If you are thinking about converting a particular skill of yours into a small business practice, consider the following five tips to help you organize your mind – think about the health care route possibilities, learn to create an online craft business, trying virtual work like editing from a small office, making sure you understand tax differences, and looking for stories from people who have made similar decisions.…

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5 Little-Noticed but Important Ways Business Owners Can Keep Employees Happy

Running a small business can provide a lot of joy to the one running it, but that doesn’t mean doing so is a cakewalk. The struggles of improving cash flow, growing a client base, planning and waging effective marketing campaigns, and maintaining a happy and healthy workforce takes continual effort, and it can be exhausting. For many small business owners, the punch list is truly never fully punched, which means some aspects of the list must take precedence over others.

Happy employees high-five

Believe it or not, tending to how your employees feel is one of the most vital parts of running a successful business.…

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How Coupons Work for Small Businesses

Whether you are a small business that is just getting started, or you’ve been around the community for a little while, getting people in the door to buy your product or service can be a tricky thing. It’s important to spend money to make money, but when you have tight finances and your product is already costing you a good chunk of your budget, how to you make money?

Using coupons for shopping

You’ve tried to run specials before as well as get coupons out, but your success rates have been low and not many people even knew you were running a special. You not only wasted valuable advertising money, you also wasted time and effort, and the people who did take advantage of your coupons or specials didn’t make up for the cost of putting those specials on.…

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3 Marketing Areas to Think About When you’re Doing a Store Remodel

If you’re thinking about remodeling the storefront of your business, there has likely been some kind of event that has pushed you to making this decision. Whether you need more space, want to make better use of the space you have, have gotten negative customer feedback or anything else, choosing to remodel your business space can be hugely beneficial or a huge setback depending on how well you execute your plan.

Store remodel and redesign

One area that many businesses neglect to think about when beginning a remodel is how to spin this news from a marketing perspective. If your customers are going to be affected by this decision—which they will be—you have to think about how to make this remodel still work for your business, your customers, and your bottom line.…

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Understanding a Direct Mail List

A direct mail list is a great opportunity for a business to get, retain and create new customer. However, there is not a lot of clarity in terms of which lists work best, or how to actually find good lists. Another element of mystery is how you can find out whether or not your mailing list investment has paid off.

Direct e-mail list

Unfortunately, entire books could be, and have been, written on these different subjects so it would be impossible to cover all that ground. For now, therefore, let’s just take a look at the main types of mailing lists. And, for information, you can buy mailing lists here.…

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Looking for the Best Commercial and Personal Storage Solutions?

Today, storage is a vital part of business and domestic life. The private and public sectors alike are regularly looking for storage facilities. As a result, there are now plenty of personal and commercial storage options that you can choose from. Let’s take a look at some things you need to know about.

Portable storage for personal and commercial uses

About Storage Solutions

First of all, if you are looking for commercial self-storage, there are a number of options out there for you to use. The most important thing is that you can find a spot in which all your excess inventory can be stored safely and securely.…

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How your Organization Can Benefit from Hosted PBX and VoIP

Almost every realm of operations today, be it storage or connectivity, finds a virtual extension thanks to the advent to remote storage spaces available in the form of Cloud. This has brought to users the option of hosted PBX and VoIP services. Choosing a hosted PBX and VoIP for your organization has numerous benefits for your business operations, especially in case of small and medium businesses. Compared to the cumbersome paraphernalia brought in by traditional PBX set up that consumes a massive portion of an organization’s IT resources in terms of upkeep, operations and maintenance, the hosted version presents itself an a viable alternative.…

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How to Make Negotiation your Super Power

Negotiation is a tool we all need at every turn. Business, better salary, leave permission, angry spouse, rebellious kid, street vendor; you name it. Mastering the art of negotiation can make your life much easy.

Businesswoman with negotiation super power

Especially in business negotiations, there is a lot at stake and you simply cannot afford to lose.

With so much pressure riding, it is important go in prepared and use some tips and tricks to ease your way into the talk.

Here are some lessons I learnt from my personal experience and research on how to nail a negotiation.

1. Give succinct anecdotes to prove your point

People like stories from the past to relate to.…

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