If you think social media doesn’t affect your business, you might want to think again. According to the following video, it’s bigger than print media, radio and television. Check it out (more…)
Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category
Tip for Online Credibility: Add Your Address
Friday, July 24th, 2009Putting your address on your website tells visitors and search engines alike that you’re a legitimate company that isn’t going anywhere. It makes you more accessible and transparent which gives you an added boost of trustworthiness. (more…)
Optimizing Title Tags
Monday, July 20th, 2009Optimizing your website for search engines can be a little tricky. We’ve covered the basics in our Beyond the Buzzwords: SEO article about what’s important to search engines, but we didn’t really delve into any techniques. Here we’ll go over what’s important to have in your title tags for each page.
- Different Title Tags – you want each page to have a different title tag. Go to your website and flip through a few pages. If your site title is the same throughout (most likely your company name), you’re going to want to change that. (more…)
Is Haggling Worth it?
Friday, July 10th, 2009Over the past few years, we’ve noticed an upwards trend in clients and prospects trying to negotiate a better price. It’s probably related to the economy, or it could be related to the increase in inquiries we have, but either way, it’s high-time we cut out a lot of stress for small businesses and a lot of headaches for us and share some insights on negotiating with services-based industries.
When you haggle, you are hassling your future business partner. We work with customers everyday, many of which agreed to our pricing without a problem. So what is so valuable about your business that we should be willing to give you a discount? You’ve already proven that you’re not as easy to work with as the clients that didn’t try to negotiate. The bottom line here is that you want each business venture you enter to be a positive experience so unless you can bring something extra to the table, forget the price drop. (more…)
Dumbing Down is Just Stupid
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of my clients talk about dumbing down their message for an advertising campaign. They cite that newspapers are written for a 4th grade reading level and use that as proof that the public is not sophisticated enough to comprehend what their trying to say. My response: It’s extremely short-sighted to think your consumers are idiots.
Consumers are not stupid, but they are short on time and low on patience. Constant media exposure has forced consumers to tune out a lot of advertising and only focus on what is relevant or what catches their attention. This doesn’t mean that your advertising can’t be clever, but it does need to be quick. (more…)
Marketing For Rough Times
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009Marketing can often be a tricky and expensive venture for many small businesses. If you’re not careful, it can consume vast amounts of time and money without bring in the return on investment to make it worthwhile. The problem with most marketing attempts by small business is not in the actual marketing methods being employed, but rather the implementation of them. We’ve come up with a few steps to refocus your marketing efforts and help renew your lead-generation.
1. Identify Your Ideal Clients
Every small business has an idea of who their ideal clients would be. If you don’t, you should. This may include demographics, industry verticals, even company sizes. Do your company a huge favor and write down the characteristics that make up your ideal clients. Some market research might be helpful in this step.
Example: A Gym will have several types of ideal clients depending on the services they want to promote. If they want to push their personal trainer program, they’re ideal clients might be middle-aged men and women that are not currently in a fitness routine. (more…)