Real-Time Personalized Marketing: Engaging Across Channels
Customers today no longer differentiate between online and offline channels. Many of today’s purchases cross multiple channels and the customer considers them all part of the same brand experience. The new differentiator is providing an omni-channel experience to your customers. Brands with the most solid omni-channel buyer engagement processes retain roughly 89% of their customers.…
Read MoreHow to Avoid Basic Small Biz Pitfalls
Opening a small business is an alluring enterprise for countless Americans with ambition and a dream. Successfully running your own startup, however, requires extensive research, adequate resources, and a combination of street smarts and business savvy. Nearly 50% of small business owners fail within the first five years, due to some avoidable mistakes. This infographic examines some…
Read MoreWhere Top Entrepreneurs Started and Where They’re Going
Starting a business can be stressful. There’s a lot to consider. What if someone comes up with the same idea and they beat you to the punch? What if you can’t find the right team to help you grow your business? It’s scary, and that’s probably why not everyone is doing it all the time.…
Read More3 Paths to Passive Income Through Affiliate Marketing
There’s never any shortage of people interested in finding the best ideas for passive income businesses, and successful affiliate marketing programs are certainly among the top candidates. But anyone who has made an attempt at establishing an affiliate marketing business that actually makes some money knows that it’s not easy to accomplish. You can work…
Read MoreIce Cream Entrepreneurs: Phin & Phebes
Crista Freeman, an entrepreneur with an art degree and background in e-commerce, started making ice cream with her partner Jess Eddy in their kitchen. Now, it’s sold across the country. The ice cream market is tougher than it seems. Making it and shipping it to suppliers requires a large-scale operation: the product demands unique industrial…
Read MoreHow I Became a Mompreneur and Made My Dreams a Reality
As cliché as it sounds, everything really does happen for reason. Thinking back to two years ago, I enjoyed my job but an unexpected divorce thrust me into being a single mom of three kids, and doing it on $34K a year just wasn’t enough to make ends meet. To put it simply, I found…
Read MoreWhy Trade Shows: The Relevance of Face-to-Face Marketing
As the owner or marketing director of a startup, you have to sift through countless marketing opportunities and determine which are the most effective for your business. Trade shows often seem out of place on a marketing to-do list, which is mostly focused on social media campaigns, email blasts and other digital efforts. But, these…
Read MoreA Simple Cash Flow Spreadsheet Anybody Can Use
If there’s just one formal business skill every business owner should have, it’s understanding and forecasting cash flow. It’s not intuitive because it’s not the same as profits; but it’s vital. We spend cash, not profits. It’s one of the most important pieces of every lean business plan. Here’s my recommendation for a relatively simple way…
Read More3 Steps to Stimulate Change and Establish a Clear Purpose
Organizations and people grow, evolve, and change. It’s what we do—and failure to do so over time will find us being followers rather than leaders. Change starts with having a clear purpose. Leaders need to have a clear purpose for change if they want their team to buy in. This is the first step in…
Read More5 Keys to Handling an Unexpected Social Media Disaster
PR isn’t quite as simple as it used to be. Thanks to the almost farcical activist nature and real time updating of social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and more, now everything is politicized in spontaneous hashtag campaigns. While this may be off-putting to many, the keyboard warriors of social media are simply gleeful…
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