How to Make Content Marketing Work for Your Small Business
Small business owners know they should be doing something to promote their business online, but what exactly that thing is sometimes seems vague and unclear. Or worse: arbitrary, a waste of time, lame. And it’s true, when you take a cursory look at the online marketing efforts of most small businesses, it’s not hard to…
Read MoreHow to Write a Growth-Centric Business Plan for Your Small Business
With the growing acceptance of “lean startups,” the “done is better than perfect” mentality, and accelerated launch approaches like those proposed by Startup Weekend, it’s safe to say that the traditional business plan has become something of an historical artifact. Rather than creating generic business plans that paint pretty pictures of where they want to be,…
Read More4 Ways Your Business is Wasting Money
To err is human. Many entrepreneurs make mistakes when starting a new company, and that can often result in the downfall of a company. It’s not because they pigheadedly or recklessly jump on a new business idea. Enthusiasm and passion are requirements to succeed. However, small business owners make errors without actually understanding or even…
Read MoreTurning Support into a Strategic Resource for Your Business
In traditional business, customer support teams focus solely on satisfying the customer. They enable a pain-free, enjoyable customer experience while sales and marketing teams drive home revenue and create new customers. Right? Not so fast. Modern businesses are starting to understand that support teams can be an incredibly powerful (and reliable) revenue channel, too. Happy…
Read MoreA Simple Test: Are We Managing Like Jerks?
Are we who issue orders to associates or employees ever acting as jerks? We’d never like to think so, or we wouldn’t do it in the first place. If someone is saying “This is confusing to me,” when you’ve given an instruction or order, there are a number of ways to respond. Of course it…
Read MoreWhy Your Retail Business Needs to Start Accepting Chip Cards Right Away
Your customers don’t really care if they have to swipe or dip their card. So why should you? While EMV (which stands for Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) is standard in Europe and elsewhere around the globe, American merchants have been slow to adopt this new industry standard—six months into the EMV Liability Shift, CardHub estimated that…
Read MoreAvoid These 3 Risks When Seeking Investors
Becoming a small business owner is a stressful prospect. Even the most experienced in their field struggle when they go from being under the safe gaze of a corporation to being completely on their own. Double that stress when it comes to financing their venture. Even bootstrap startups are going to struggle with funding after…
Read More7 Costly B2B Social Media Marketing Fails
Social media is better at one-on-one—B2C—marketing, right? Wrong. According to marketing gurus Kipp Bodnar and Jeffrey L. Cohen’s The B2B Social Media Book, Becoming a Marketing Superstar, B2B companies “are a better fit” for B2B for a variety of reasons. B2B companies tend to have a more focused understanding of their clients. Their depth of subject matter expertise and expert…
Read MoreSEO and SEM for Franchise Owners
While some of your franchise’s marketing will be dictated and provided by your franchisor, it’s a good idea to still educate yourself on aspects of digital marketing so that you can make sure that your location is found online. Two important facets of digital marketing are search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).…
Read MoreHow to Reduce Startup Risk Using Existing Technology
It may not be as sexy, but starting a new business which builds on an existing technology or business model is usually less risky than introducing that ultimate new disruptive technology. There are many levels of innovation that go beyond copying someone else’s idea, but stop short of pushing the leading edge (bleeding edge). Many…
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