Denver Small Business Coaching

If you are not using guest blogging as a traffic and backlink method, I would highly recommend that you start using this strategy. Not only do you get to network with other blog owners, distribute your content to authority sites in your niche, generate free traffic over the long haul, but you also get to build valuable contextual backlinks from high page rank sites.
Being a guest blogger simply means writing articles for another website for free with the benefit of getting free backlinks to your own site. You may get an opportunity to place a contextual backlink within the main article or one in the author bio box at the end of the article.
The benefit of getting guest blogging articles is that they tend to be permanent because of your amicable relationship with the blog owner and the permission you got from them to be a guest blogger. This is unlike blog commenting backlinks that often get deleted because blog owners don’t want anything “spammy” on their sites.

How to find high traffic sites that will accept you as a guest blogger|Denver Small Business Coaching
1. You can use search operators in the Google Search box such as:
* “Keyword phrase”+ “become a contributor”
* “Keyword phrase”+ “guest article”
* “Keyword phrase”+ “guest blog”
* “Keyword phrase”+ “guest blogger”
* “Keyword phrase”+ “guest bloggers”
Once you have done this:
* Sort through the listings looking for sites with high page rank. You can use the SEO Quake Firefox plugin to do this as it will list the page rank under each listing.
* Browse each site looking for the guidelines on how to submit a guest post

2. You can also use offline methods to get guest blogging opportunities. These will probably be more effective methods as a small business owner since you normally network with others offline rather than online. You can use your offline business networks to propose writing guest articles for the following:
* Your local business network e.g. Local Chamber of Commerce
* Your Professional Association
* Your Local newspaper
* Your local community organizations such as schools, charities etc

Watch the video below!

Denver Small Business Coaching

Denver Small Business Marketing Consultant

Press releases are an often overlooked method to get backlinks because not many people have heard of them or understand how they work. Press release sites are news release sites that operate online and despite their traditional offline definition, you don’t necessarily have to submit any “news breaking content” all one needs to do is to write an article with an objective news style.

Here are a few ideas you can use to create press release articles:
* New products or services
* Industry developments
* Professional association news
* Corporate and Community Events
* Newsworthy stories from your local TV or newspaper that relates to your business

For many press release sites you can include what’s called a contextual backlink. Contextual backlinks are the best type of backlinks to get and are characterized by being surrounded by text content. Use your main keyword as the anchor text of your backlink and link it back to the URL of the homepage of your website. However, you need to make sure that the press release site allows contextual backlinks before using them.

Examples of Press Release Sites|Denver Small Business Marketing Consultant
* i-newswire.com
* prlog.org
* free-press-release.com
* pr.com/press-releases
* 1888pressrelease.com
* addpr.com
* ecommwire.com
* ecommwire.com
* theopenpress.com
* pressreleasepoint.com

An important thing to note is that you shouldn’t submit the same article to all the press release sites. Instead you should submit unique articles to each site. One of the ways you can speed up your press release submissions is to take one article and spin it into many different articles, and then submit each spun article to a separate press release site.

As you go about building press release backlinks make sure you keep a list of the URLs of all the press release pages where you submitted your press releases. This helps you to build a list of Press release sites you can use in the future and to also help you build backlinks to those articles since this will help get your content indexed faster.

Watch the Video below!

Denver Small Business Marketing Consultant

Small Business Marketing Consultant

All across the internet people flock to forums to share with people of like mind on various hobbies, careers, or other interests. As a business owner, joining a forum and contributing to it can generate more traffic to your website, improve your online reputation and also provide a steady source of high quality backlinks to your main business website.

Small Business Marketing Consultant|Types of forum backlinks
Forums provide three types of backlinks
1. Signature links –these are the links found at the bottom of each and every contribution you make, like a signature.
2. Contextual links- these links are embedded within the text of your contribution. These are not so common so you need to look for forums that allow this.
3. Profile links- once you open an account on a forum, you need to fill out your profile data and you can include a website address. This address then become your profile backlink

A major benefit of forum backlinks is that once you create them, they tend to get found quickly by Google and therefore have fast indexing rates. This is because forums are usually very active with lots of fresh content posted on a daily basis so the search engines regularly crawl them for this new content.

Unfortunately forum backlinks can be easily get deleted by forum owners. The way around this problem is to just build a profile and make meaningful contributions. Then a week or two later, you can add a signature link. In this way, when the forum editors go through the new forum posts they will only see your contributions and will not delete them.

Small Business Marketing Consultant|How to find forums
1. Go to Google Groups and then type this search operator:
Your keyword inurl:forum
E.g. dentist inurl:forum
It’s best to use a general keyword that covers your niche. So if your website is about your hardware store in New Hampshire, use general keywords such as plumber, contractor, and house repair

2. Go to the main Google search box and type in your general keyword. Then click on the Discussions/Talk tab on the left. This will list groups and forums talking about your keyword. Try and find pages with high page rank.

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Small Business Marketing Consultant

Small Business Marketing Ideas

One of the ways to build backlinks to your small business website is to use social bookmarks. Let me use a real-world example to help you better understand the concept of social bookmarking. When you read a book and want to remember the last page you were on, you place a bookmark on that page. In the same way you can bookmark your website pages on social bookmarking sites.

Social bookmarking sites used to be valued by Google but due to their excessive use by internet marketers, their ranking power has significantly reduced. However they are still a good way to get a large number of backlinks and to improve your backlink diversity. But they are still considered great Small Business Marketing Ideas

Examples of social bookmarking sites include:
* Digg
* Del.icio.us
* Technorati
* Reddit
* Slashdot
* Tagza
* Newsvine
* Connotea
* Sphinn
* Fark
* Wsik
* LinksMarker
* Blinklist

You can create social bookmarks either:
* Manually- this is a time consuming process as you would have to go to each bookmarking site, register and fill in the backlinking information. If you want to understand who the whole social bookmarking concept works, I would recommend you use this initially before outsourcing.
* Using Automated Tools- this is a better option considering the relatively low value of social bookmarks and the large number of sites. Some free social bookmarking tools include Social Marker and Onlywire.

In either case, it’s best to outsource the process to someone who can create all your accounts for you and submit the links either manually or using the automated tools. You can use outsourcing sites like Odesk, Elance and Fiverr. Outsourcing is one of many great Small Business Marketing Ideas

To create a social bookmark backlink, remember to enter the URL of the page you are bookmarking and to use the keyword in the Title field as this will become the clickable hyperlink of the URL.

Watch the Video Below:

Small Business Marketing Ideas

Small Business Marketing Plan

Small Business Marketing Plan

Small Business Marketing Tip

Small Business Marketing Tip

Setting goals is simply the long-term version of keeping track of your time. Actually, a three-step process is involved:

1. Setting goals

2. Developing a plan to achieve those goals

3. Keeping track of your time to make sure your plan gets executed

Buy my Goal Setting book on Amazon: Believing Your Why

>Source

Social Media Consultant

Excellent post from the Brian Solis blog! I teach marketing at 4 Universities and the 4 P’s is a strategic marketing concept….the “5th P” being People is powerful! As a Social Media Consultant, I teach my clients the same concept

There are no stronger or truer words in the business world: your people are your product. It sounds so simple, yet time and time again, companies make decisions and take action without including the pieces that make them whole. You are the sum of your parts. With the support and influence of your people, you can accomplish anything at a company.

So at a large company like ARAMARK, we knew right away that the first step to successfully becoming a social business was through our people. We created a center-led Social Media team that, among other things, is responsible for developing tools, training, and resources to help our businesses accelerate their social media strategies. But above all else, they are tasked with championing the social media effort for the whole organization and leading a Center of Excellence that empowers our employees to leverage social media into the way they do business.

Unless our people integrate social media into their work lifestyle, we will never become a true social business. We had to work with others from around the company or socializing these concepts would be comparable to shouting in the Grand Canyon, an echo only heard by us.

ARAMARK’s multi-business structure makes for a natural hub-and-spoke model to spread the message and ideas of social media. We created a social delegate team, made up of individuals from each of our businesses and functional groups. Delegates were tabbed as the designated leader for social media in their business area, helping build the social media strategies and manage the communication and activity for the field. Early on in the build, we made sure the team had vertical depth by including functional area delegates, who brought perspectives from groups such as Legal, HR, and Communications.

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Social Media Consultant

Small Business Marketing Tips

So what lesson in marketing your small business can you learn from the NFL Draft?

First, this week I saw the behind-the-scenes tour on the news of John Elway showing their “war room” and all of the research they do on their prospects…..HMMMM….did I hear “research”??

Yep, research is not just for Small Business Marketing…it is critical in the NFL too!

Here’s some info I found:

Read more:Broncos’ pick QB Brock Osweiler says Denver’s a “perfect fit” – The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_20499801/broncos-pick-qb-brock-osweiler-says-hes-perfect#ixzz1tMl4pCmr

Just like the Broncos need valuable research data, and the knowledge on how to implement that knowledge….the small business marketing process is the same level of importance!

Small Business Marketing Tips

Marketing For Small Business

Are you a “Marketing Liar”??!!

I found this great article on marketing to women and it seems that there’s a bit of lying or half-truths involved….see what you think but be careful when marketing for your small business!

What I learned from Mary Lou is that women admit half-truths, but marketers really need to get at the whole-truths on how women think before buying to effectively engage. An example of this is when asking women about their looks and beauty (imperative in selling anything beauty related – clothing, lotions, makeup, vitamins), women will often spout a half-truth answer like ‘It is what is inside that counts.’ The whole-truth is really closer to ‘I would rather look better.’

The gap between the half-truths and whole-truths is important because it illustrates when marketing to women, companies need to be aware that they are dealing with 2 personalities in every woman. There is the woman you are actually physically looking at and there is the woman who she wants to think of herself as being. When I reflect on my own purchases and consumer mentality, I see this phenomenon loud and clear.

So what do you think? Comment below….I’ll bet we’ll see some interesting thoughts as they pertain to marketing for small business!

>Source

Marketing For Small Business

Denver Small Business Marketing Plan

Edu and .Gov backlinks are some of the most prized backlinks among internet marketers and also need to be part of your . These are backlinks from educational institutions such as universities and government bodies. These two entities have large authority sites , with high page ranks of above 5 and have lots of pages indexed since they have been online for over 10-20 years. Getting a backlink of any kind from these sites is therefore something to go after and help you with your off page SEO in a big way.

The different kind of backlinks you can get from .Edu and .gov sites to implement in your :
* Blog Comments – there is usually a comment area on blog posts where members of the public can post their views
* Guest Blogging- this is doable for smaller and more local sites such as your college or local government body
* Forum Profile and Signature Links- many university sites have forum sites too around a particular topic or field of study. You can join these forums, build a profile and contribute to forum discussions.

How to find .Edu and .Gov backlinks for your Denver Small Business Marketing Plan :

1. You can use certain search operators in the Google search box
* To find blogs to comment on, type :
Site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment”
Site:.gov inurl:blog “post a comment”
* To find forums, type:
Inurl:forum.edu
Inurl:forum.gov
* To find blogs, type
Inurl:blog.edu
Inurl:blog.gov
2. You can also use other people’s websites to find any .edu or .gov websites they are getting backlinks. By reverse engineering your competitors websites, you can uncover a list of sites. If your competitors website is “www.usa.com”, then enter the following search operator in the Google search box:
Linkdomain.usa.com site:.edu

This will list all the .Edu sites that the website has backlinks on. You can sort through the sites looking for high page rank and post your links there too.
The same applies for .Gov sites. Just use the following search operator:
Linkdomain.usa.com site:.gov

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Denver Small Business Marketing Plan

Small Business Marketing

If you are looking for a way to build lots of contextual backlinks from a wide variety of sources, you may want to consider using blog networks. Blog networks are basically a group of blogs owned by a single person or a group of blog owners.

How blog networks work in your small business marketing
Blog networks allow you to post articles containing your backlinks to their blogs in exchange for a fee. You can chose a monthly subscription based on the number of blogs you want to submit content to, so you can find something within your budget.

Advantages of blog networks for your small business marketing
Although this is a paid method of sourcing backlinks, it can save you a lot of time if you don’t want to do the tedious job of looking for high page rank blogs to comment on or that will accept you as a guest blogger. Plus the backlinks from blog networks are more permanent and from high page rank authority sites, so your money may be better spent than using just free methods.

Examples of blog networks
* Build my rank
* Authority link network
* Article marketing automation
* Article ranks
* Linkvana

Most of these blog networks require you to submit original or unique articles, though some allow content in the spun format. You can include between 1 to 3 contextual backlinks within your article, but each blog network has its own policies so make sure you read them before subscribing to their service.

Can you build your own blog network?
Building your own blog network is definitely an option though one must consider the costs and time it takes to build one. If you have sufficiently developed your SEO skills, you can easily buy high page rank blogs or expired domains on domain auctions, and build an arsenal of your own blogs where you can post your content for free and build backlinks in the process. You can even turn it into a side business and rent backlinks to other business owners.

Small Business Marketing

Small Business Consulting

Blog commenting is a pretty self explanatory way to get backlinks- you simple create a comment on someone else blog/website in  the comments area and as you provide your name and email address, you include your website URL too which becomes the backlink in the comment. In my small business consulting, I advise my clients to set up a consistent to-do strategy to track this.

Blog comments are not the most powerful type of backlinks but they have various advantages that make them worthwhile to pursue.
* There are millions of blogs online that you can comment on providing a never ending supply of backlinks
* Blog commenting backlinks provide good link diversity because the large numbers of blogs have many IP Addresses and this is good for your back linking. Having backlinks from a narrow range of IP addresses is not the best.
* You can find a number of good quality blogs in your niche that also have high page rank, meaning that your backlinks from these sites will be more valuable.

Tips to getting good blog commenting backlinks in small business consulting really is a valid tool to use in your business.
* Check if your backlink will be a follow or no follow backlink by looking at other people’s backlinks on the blog. If you activate the Mozilla Firefox No Follow Plugin, it will highlight no follow backlinks on the website. You want to look for blogs that allow do follow backlinks
* Check the page rank of the page you want to comment on, which may be different from the page rank of the website. Remember that search engine assign page rank to pages not websites so even though a website’s home page is a Page rank of 4, if the page you are posting a comment on is page rank of 1, your backlink will only draw value from the page rank of 1. You can use the Mozilla Firefox SEO Quake plugin to show you the page rank.
* Make meaningful comments so that your comment gets approved and has a higher chance of not being deleted. Read the article on the page, understand what it is about and using your knowledge/expertise on the subject make a valuable contribution.  This becomes much easier by finding blogs that relate to your business niche.

Small Business Consulting -How to find blogs to comment on
You can use the following search operators on the Google Blogs search box:
* “keyword” + “add comment” E.g. “real estate” + “add comment”
* “keyword” + “post comment” E.g. “foreclosures” + “post comment”

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Small Business Consulting

Small Business Marketing Ideas

One of the easiest and most commonly used small business marketing ideas is  to create backlinks to your business website is to submit articles to article directories. Although article directories took a strong hit after the Google Panda update and do not provide powerful backlinks, they are still a helpful source of contextual backlinks. Contextual backlinks are links that are embedded in the text of an article and have more editorial weight and power compared to backlinks located in other areas of a webpage such as the footer or on the sidebar.

Small Business Marketing Ideas-Examples of Article Directories:
* Ezinearticles
* ArticleBase
* Buzzle
* Goarticles
* Articlealley
* Articledashboard
* Isnare
* Helium

Each article directory has its own rules and regulations so check the directory rules as to where they allow you to place your backlinks. A majority of article directories only allow you to put a backlink the resource box or author bio area at the end of the article.

As a small business owner, these small business marketing ideas allow you to use your expertise and knowledge to create articles related to your keyword. For example, if you run a bakery and your Keyword is “bakery in Tulsa”, you can write an article about “The top 10 Sourdough Breads People Love” and then write your resource box as “Looking for a bakery in Tulsa? Susan Andrews runs the Bistro Bakery, an upscale bakery on 43rd Street. She is a graduate of Paloma Culinary School and has been baking since she was 16 years.” The keyword “bakery in Tulsa” will be hyperlinked to your main website.

You can write your own articles or outsource to a writer. You can also use your original articles that appear on your main website as content for article directory submission. However make sure that the articles are first published on your site and indexed before using them as article directory material. If you don’t do this, Google will see the articles on your website as duplicate content and penalize your SEO efforts. Another way to get content for your article directory submission is to spin your articles either manually or using an article spinning software. Spinning simply means rewriting your article using different words.

Watch the video below!

Small Business Marketing Ideas

Small Business Marketing

After doing your keyword research to find the best keywords to use on your   business website, a very critical step is to analyze your competition for each of those keywords on the first page of Google. The true litmus test of a good keyword is whether you will be able to rank for it easily in about 1 to 3 months. If a keyword is very competitive it could take 6 months to 1 year to see your effect your website to get  on Page 1 of Google for that keyword. Therefore analyzing your competition will help you choose the best keywords that match your financial and time resources.

Here are some Small Business Marketing tips on how to analyze your competition for each keyword in your :

1. First of all install SEO Quake on your Firefox browser. This tool will give you important statistics on the each and every search engine result.
2. Enter your keyword term in the search engine. It’s best to use Google since it has the lion’s share of search engine users. Just type in the keyword in plain text and do not use any quotation marks.
3. Focus on analyzing the first page results and particularly the top 3 results since these get 80% of the clicks. After all this is where you want to see your website ranking.
4. First check the page rank of the sites that are currently ranking on page 1 using the SEO Quake tool. If a majority of the sites, especially the top 3 have page rank of 4 or under, that is a green light. However if you see page ranks of 5 and above, then that term is very competitive and will take your 6 months plus to get decent rankings for your .
5. Next check the number of backlinks that each site has. If the sites have 100 or less backlinks that is a good sign but if the backlinks are over 500 or several thousand, then we may want to drop that keyword. Remember we are looking at backlinks to the page/article and not the website. A website can have many backlinks pointing to its domain or homepage, but not to the page that is currently ranking.
6. Next we want to analyze these backlinks to see if they are from sites with high page rank. If you click on the backlinks link under the result, a new window will open that lists the backlink sources. Look through the list and take note of the page rank of each result. If these are from low page ranks such as 0 to 2, then that shows these are of lower quality and will be easy to outrank if you use better quality backlinks.

These tips for your will help you immensely!

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Small Business Marketing

Small Business Marketing Online

Internet marketer cannot emphasize enough how critical it is to build backlinks to your small business website to help improve its search engine rankings. However it is equally important to know what is a good quality backlink so that you maximize the time and energy it takes to create one.

A good backlink should have the following features for Small Business Marketing Online :

1.  It should be from a page or site with a high page rank. If you can get backlinks from a PR4 Site and above, that is an excellent backlink. Page rank 2 and 3 sites are more common on the internet so a backlink from these sites is not bad either. Page rank 0 and 1 sites have less valuable backlinks but including them in your backlink campaign is better than having no backlinks at all. Remember than one Page rank 1 backlink is better than two Page rank 0 backlinks so always aim for backlinks from higher Page rank sites.
2. It should have the correct anchor text based on proper keyword research. For example if you operate a golf shop in Maine and are targeting the following keyword –“ golf shop in Maine”, then use that Keyword as the anchor text for a majority of your backlinks. The anchor text is that clickable text that contains a hyper link to your URL.
3. It should be a long term stable link meaning that the chances of the backlink being deleted should be slim to none. Try to focus on building backlinks for Small Business Marketing Online that will not be easily removed by blog owners/editors such as those obtained from Web 2.0 sites, article directories, blog networks, guest blogging and profile links. The riskier type of backlinks such as blog commenting and signature links should be approached with more caution and tact as these are the most vulnerable to get deleted.
4. A good backlinks should be a contextual backlink. This is the type of backlink that is surrounded by text content such as in the middle of an article. This type of backlink for  is more powerful than those that appear on the side bar or footer, so try to use back linking methods that capitalize on this.
5. A good backlink should be on an ethical website rather than a dubious one that has gambling, pornographic, or other illegal or spammy sites. The search engines do pay attention to the sources of your backlinks for Small Business Marketing Online and will either penalize or reward you depending on the quality of the source website.
6. Finally a good quality backlink for should be from an actively used site that has fresh content added on a weekly basis as opposed to a dormant site. Having your backlinks on active sites means the search engines will quickly find those backlinks because those sites regularly get crawled and indexed by the search engines.

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Small Business Marketing Online

Small Business Branding

Small Business Marketing Ideas

Your local business domain name or website address is one of the key components in any SEO strategy. If you haven’t registered a domain name, here are a few tips to guide you in choosing one:

1. Whatever domain name you choose, make sure it ends in .com. However if that is not possible you can also use .org and .net extensions. These three extensions are the best ones to use for the US online market.
2. Avoid using hyphenated domain names. For example, just because you the domain name www.doctorsinnewyork.com is already taken, don’t register a hyphenated version like www.doctors-innewyork or www.doctors-in-newyork. Hyphenated domains don’t give the impression of being authority domain and have a low grade image in SEO. Instead try adding a prefix or suffix such as www.doctorsinnewyorkonline.com or www.emergencydoctorsinnewyork.com. Needless to say if you really want to hyphenate, use no more than 1-2 hyphens.
3. Keep your domain names short and don’t elongate them to longer than 3 or 4 words. For example if you run a hardware shop called “Anthony Bradley and Sons Hardware & Electricals”, you may want to use www.abradleyandsons.com or www.bradleyhardware.com. You definitely don’t want to register www.anthonybradleyandsonshardwareandelectricals.com!
4. Even if you operate as franchise or dealership for a major company, avoid using branded company names in your domain as this is illegal and you could get sued. If you want to use brand names in your domain always get written permission from the brand owners.
5. It’s wise to build a site using your keywords in the domain for additional SEO leverage. Let’s say you run a pizza joint called Papa Pedro’s Pizza and your keywords “pizza in nyc”, it would make sense to register both www.papapedrospizza.com and www.pizzainnyc.com.

These  can have multiple website rankings from one keyword using the two sites. Just imagine if you registered all your keywords as domains- you could easily own the first page of Google for those keywords with proper SEO!

Small Business Marketing Ideas- watch the video below!

Small Business Marketing Ideas

Small Business Marketing

Business owners often wonder how  their small business marketing needs to include how many backlinks they ought to build and how fast they should build them. Since search engines use backlinks as one method to determine a websites ranking, it is often tempting to rush out and get as many backlinks as possible for your business website. However this mistake of building too many backlinks and building them too quickly can result in Google disregarding those links and even deranking your site.

Here are a few small business marketing tips to use in your backlinking campaign:

1. Generally it is best to start building backlinks slowly and build them up gradually over time. This is especially true if your website is brand new because building 1000 backlinks to a brand new site sends warning signals to Google and your small business marketing will not be as effective as it should be

2. Your link velocity or the rate at which you build your backlinks, is dependant on how competitive your keyword is. For example, local businesses operating out of large cities like Dallas, New York, Florida or Chicago definitely have more online competition than businesses located in smaller towns. However since most local search terms as not as competitive as other internet marketing keywords, 50 or so backlinks per week are adequate. You can then build up to a maximum of 500 backlinks per month for about 1-3 months until your website achieving Page 1 ranking on Google, then you can slow down your campaign to a maintenance mode.
3. When building your backlinks for small business marketing, the anchor text should be a combination of your keyword and the URL of your website. The split should be about 70-80%your keyword and 20-30% your URL. If your site has say 2 keywords, then split the anchor text across those keywords, so that your anchor text is 40% keyword 1,  40 % keyword 2 and 20% your website URL.

4. Keep track of your backlinks by keeping a list of all the URLS of the website pages you have created a link on. This will help you in a number of ways:
* You will know which sites you have already used as a source of backlinks so you don’t duplicate the backlinks
* You will have a list of backlink sources you can use on another project
* You can use the list to create a second layer of backlinks. These are other backlinks that point to the first backlinks – this helps the first backlinks get indexed faster.

Small Business Marketing works! You just need to know how to do it properly and consistently. Let us know if you need a “Virtual Marketing Department”!

Small Business Marketing

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Small Business Marketing Tips

Small Business Marketing Tips

Marketing touchpoints are events in your business that are “hidden” from sight in the sense that you tend to let them slip through the cracks and NOT capitalize on them. When you think about your business, can you agree with me that you do NOT email a nice intro after their initial call to your business? Why not? It takes about 2 seconds to ask the caller for their email so you can send them your recent article you wrote on their topic of interest.
(You DO publish articles on your blog and online sites don’t you??!!)

Small Business Marketing Tip…take the few seconds to ask for the caller’s email address and then take 5 more seconds to open your email account and paste in the intro email and article you wrote to send them. Even if you do not do anything more than that, this Small Business Marketing Tip will transform your contact-to-close ratio!

You don’t even need to get frustrated looking at this graphic of just a FEW of the Small Business Marketing Tips you could be implementing….just start with one thing and do it consistently!

Small Business Marketing Tips

Social Media Marketing

Have you considered social media marketing for your business? Face it…you need social media and you probably do not have the time or expertise to consistently implement a social strategy on your own. I received one of the highest scores on the Final Exam for the FB Success Summit for Small Business! If you’d like to tap into the Social Media Marketing strategies I learned for your business, just cick the contact tab above to schedule a free consulting session to see how I can help your business.

Denver Social Media Marketing will help you tap into your market in strong and powerful ways!

Social Media Marketing

Small Business Marketing

NEW PAGE on our site: Small Business Marketing Fusion-Training Center www.smallbusinessmarketingfusion.com  

 Here you will find a growing library of workshops that you may view completely free of charge which will provide valuable information that you will need as you prepare for small business marketing.
Presented my Marketing Consultant Mike Saunders, MBA you will learn crucial marketing concepts to help small business marketing in today’s ever-changing world of technology. You will learn how to infuse new media strategies into traditional marketing methods and bring powerful results into your business.
Each month there will be new training content added, so make sure you request to receive the alerts by email because you will want to take advantage of this small business marketing training.

Small Business Marketing

Small Business Marketing

One of my all time favorite marketing “rules” and one that’s gained in popularity in recent years thanks to books like “The Four Hour Work Week” is simply known as the 80/20 Rule (aka the “Pareto Principle” in honor of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto).

A quick Google search will get you all the details about the rule and its history, but I’m going to give you the basics here and show you how applying it to your Small Business Marketing can make or save you a small fortune.

At its most basic, the 80/20 rule says that with just about anything you do, approximately 80% of the results you get will come from 20% of your efforts. Of course the numbers you see may vary and you’ll find this to be true with many things in your personal life, but as it applies to your business, this means that you’ll typically find the following to be true in Small Business Marketing…

• 80% of your business will come from just 20% of your customers
• 80% of your sales will result from just 20% of your sales force or your marketing and advertising efforts
• 80% of your customer service or support issues will come from just 20% of your customers
• 80% of the work that your employees perform

Take just a moment and think about your own business and how you can apply this rule to your benefit.

A good place to start is by identifying your ideal client or customer, those special 20% that provide you with most of your business, and thinking of ways to get more new clients like them. Can you be more selective with your advertising efforts, or ask your best customers for referrals to people like themselves?

There’s also nothing wrong with turning down new clients who come to you but don’t fit the mold of the ideal client you’re looking for. You don’t have to turn them away empty handed though – take some time to research some of your competitors and if a prospect contacts you that’s not a great match, refer them to another company. An even better option is to develop a formal Small Business Marketing referral agreement with your competitors to pay you when you send them clients who are a better fit for their business than for yours, and you can also pay them for prospects they send to you.

Now, depending on just how aggressive you want to get with the 80/20 rule, you might also consider “firing” the 80% of your clients that don’t contribute much to your business, so you’ll have more time to deal with the ideal, profitable clients that you wish to attract.

If that sounds a bit too drastic, start with just those customers that cause you the most pain and trouble, and suggest they work with another company who might be a better fit for them. Work out some kind of joint venture deal as mentioned above, and not only will you save and make more money by dealing with just the right customers, you can also profit by sending your non-ideal clients to someone else!

Finally, you should also look at the internal processes within your business and see where the 80/20 rule applies and where it can save or make you money.

Take a good look at the work your employees perform and see if you can identify the tasks that produce the most results so you can eliminate the ones that don’t impact your bottom line. This could be anything from how your phones are answered to how paperwork is filled out and filed, and just a few small changes to identify and eliminate the least productive things done in your office can have a huge impact in your business.

Small Business Marketing

You can Write a Column – Writing a regular column, whether in a newspaper, magazine, ezine, or offline newsletter, is a great way to become known as an expert in your field. Once published, you can also send reprints to your clients and prospects to add proof to your sales letters and promotional materials.

Write an Article – Articles can be anything from a short essay on a topic to a feature article in a magazine, newspaper, ezine, newsletter, you name it, and being published just once can lend a lot of credibility to your business.

You can also write articles and publish them on popular websites like www.ezinearticles.com or visit forums where that your prospects frequent and post your informative/educational articles there.

Write a Press Release – Press releases have been used to promote companies and products for years and while they’ve been around forever, they can be tremendously effective. The trick with press releases is to make sure your release is a newsworthy event. If you need help with Press Releas Marketing we can help: http://marketinghuddle.com/press-release-marketing-package/

Try to put yourself in your newspaper editor’s shoes and ask yourself “Would my readers be interested in this?” No editor is going to run a story just because you now carry extra large widgets in your store, but if your extra large widgets now make life pain free for 90% of the population”, then you might have a chance at getting published.

A lot depends on your target audience and the publications you want to be published in. Editors will only consider press releases if they think their readers will appreciate the story. It’s nothing personal, but they really don’t care about you or your company. Your press release must effectively answer the “What’s in it for me” question for them.

Create a Newsworthy Event – While you can often tie in things your business is doing with current events that are published in the news, there’s no reason you can’t create your own event worthy of making the daily paper or the evening news.

Here’s an idea that you can use to promote your business while supporting a good local cause. How about designating a day as a local “fire company appreciation day” or “adopt a pet day” and donating all or a portion of your proceeds from your sales that day to that local charity? You could issue a press release a week or so before your special event and invite the local media to spread the news or join you when you present a contribution check to your chosen charity.

Attend Special Local Events – Keep an eye on your local news for events in your area where you can increase your visibility. Maybe another local business is holding a special event like the one mentioned above and you can partner with them and contribute to their cause and share in the publicity?

For more info on getting great free publicity and writing a great press release, one of the best resources around can be found at www.publicityinsider.com  and be sure to check out their excellent press release template at www.publicityinsider.com/release.asp

Small Business Growth

Many businesses have figured out that placing videos on their website is a good move for small business growth

Video for Small Business Growth

Why?  Because it builds the brand name, showcases them as an expert, puts real people behind the name, speaks to new customers, gives important information, offers real live customer testimonials, brings in new traffic, and increases sales. 

Here are some types of videos YOU could use to grow your business:

* Customer testimonial videos with real people giving their honest feedback.  This is the social proof that will help you sell more products or services.

* A brief video introduction into what you do. This is like a video version of your elevator speech.

* A brief walkthrough of your website video.  Show them the page tabs and the search function so they can find what they are looking for on your site. Also show them the contact page so they can ask questions or leave feedback.

* How To videos. Perhaps you can show potential customers how to use the product or you can explain how to purchase the best product based on their needs.

* Question and Answer videos. Take the typical questions you get and make a video answering them. This shows the customer you care, and also cuts down on your time having to repeatedly answer the same questions via email.

Video on your website can have a tremendous influence on your business, but there are some details you should know regarding how to get the maximum impact from your media efforts.

Please give me a call if you realize the potential of using video and would like to discuss it further.
Small Business Growth can be fun!

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