Discover the Power of Differentiating Potential From Viable Customers in Your Business Strategy. Learn How Targeted Partnerships and Insights Can Transform Your Approach to Customer Acquisition, Boosting Efficiency and Satisfaction.
How Can You Identify Viable Customers to Boost Your Business Growth? Read More »
Do You Offer Your Customers a Convenient Way to Purchase From You? Improve Sales by Allowing Customers Financing Options,
Unlock Sales Growth: How Customer Financing Can Boost Your Business Read More »
Discover the Untold Truth About Advertising for Small Businesses. Learn The Real Purpose and Power of Advertising and Why It Is Too Risky and Costly to Use Advertising to Introduce a New Company to The Market. Learn How Advertising Sustains Brand Visibility, Protects Market Leadership, And Creates Barriers to Entry. Unlock The Secrets of Advertising Success in Today’s Competitive Business Landscape.
Beyond The Hype: Uncovering the True Value of Advertising Read More »
Understanding Digital Traffic Numbers Requires You to Understand the Difference Between Automated Activity and Authentic Activity (I.E. Manually Done by Humans)
Automated Activity Versus Authentic Activity – Why You Should Care Read More »
Entrepreneurship has changed in recent years and why you may no longer need to write the classic version of a business plan.
Why Being Told You Need a Business Plan May Be Bad Advice Read More »
Whether you are writing copy for a landing page, developing a sales presentation, or creating an ad, the structure and techniques used in infomercials can help you achieve greater conversion rates. Included are several infomercial examples
Unlock The Secret Formula: How Infomercials Drive Sales Read More »
Ad Fraud Causes Many Businesses to Waste Much of Their Advertising Budget. Fake Websites and Bots That Imitate Humans Are Used to Drive Up Revenues of Ad Tech by Defrauding Businesses. Moreover, Ad Fraud Pollutes A Company’s Attribution Models That It Relies On to Conduct Campaign Optimization.
Ad Fraud – The Hidden Way Ad Tech Is Stealing Your Ad Dollars Read More »
The “Take One” box is essentially a brochure stand with the words “Take One” plastered on the front.
How to Improve Your Marketing with a “Take One” Box Read More »
When you target your niche very precisely and focus on activities your audience may actively participate in, you can engage in interruption marketing with little risk of turning your audience off, provided your ads target your viewer’s interests.
Effective Interruption Marketing Strategies Read More »
When it comes to defining your revenue streams, especially when you are developing a business model canvas, there are many factors that you need to consider that affect your potential income source. Will you use a fixed or dynamic pricing mechanism, and is your revenue based on transactional and reoccurring sources of revenue?
Revenue Streams and Your Business Model Read More »
Both Demographic and Psychographic information play an important role in market research. They both provide insights into the customer and are fundamental inputs to a business’s marketing strategy.
What is the Difference Between Demographics and Psychographics? Read More »
It is important for every business to benchmark their business against others in their industry and in their local area from time to time to see how they stack up. A free tool offered by the SBA called “Size Up” can help.
Powerful Free Tool to Benchmark Your Business And Make More Money Read More »
Some marketers and business owners believe that the strength of their product or service is what determines success. While this is no doubt true in a few rare cases, most often, even a great product or service has to be marketed properly to succeed. And the best marketing is centered around what we call a BIG IDEA.
Your Brand Promise – Why You Need a Big Idea! Read More »
When it comes to marketing channels there are 12 channels which can rent you access to their audience for a fee. These 12 marketing channels attract a particular demographic based on their content and will rent you access to their customers for a fee. Previously we discussed the first six channels.
6 More Powerful Marketing Channels That Rent You Access to Prospects Read More »
When it comes to marketing channels there are 12 channels which can rent you access to their audience for a fee. These 12 marketing channels attract a particular demographic based on their content and will rent you access to their customers for a fee.
6 Powerful Marketing Channels That Rent You Access to Prospects Read More »
No matter where you turn social media is making an impact on small business marketing. While social media is not the “be all end all” of marketing efforts it does have some significant advantages over more traditional marketing. This post looks at six reasons you need to consider social media marketing for your business.
6 Reasons Why You Need to Use Social Media Marketing Read More »
Conspicuous consumption is when someone spends money on goods or services in an effort to either convey a higher social status or invoke envy in others to gain their respect. Product badging is a way to draw attention to items that convey status. Yet, not all consumers want you to know the relative price of their products based on its badging.
The Secret to Product Badging Read More »
Naively many entrepreneurs think all traffic is the same. They use advertising to get in front of a prospect and then ask for the sale before they have even had the opportunity to build a rapport. It is important to understand that not all traffic is created equal and that the goal should not be to get the sale up front but to convert all traffic to owned traffic where you can control when and what message they see.
How to Drive Growth by Correctly Targeting Web Traffic Read More »
In a quest to discover what contributes to product attractiveness, I uncovered the power of belonging vs. standing out. What I discovered was that more affluent people like to buy products that help them stand out in a crowd. By contrast, the working class tends to prefer mass-produced products that are associated with an in-crowd they aspire to be like.
A Revealing Behind-the-Scenes Look at Product Attractiveness Read More »
A franchise investment isn’t as high as most people think, especially when you put the investment cost into context and compare it with starting a business from scratch. There are eight factors that determine a franchise’s investment costs.
So Why Does a Franchise Cost So Much Anyway? Read More »
Some recent research has caused me to completely rethink my marketing strategy. For years, I have heard that email marketing has a greater Return On Investment (ROI) than social media marketing. However, with my social media fans measured in the thousands and my email subscribers measured in the hundreds, I was sure that trying to
Is Social Media Really a Better Marketing Strategy than Email Marketing? Read More »
When it comes to marketing and sales, the internet changed everything. The changes caused by the internet, and its offspring social media, have not caused an evolutionary step in the way businesses go about marketing and sales but caused a revolutionary step. The internet and social media have caused businesses to re-think their old marketing
New Rules of Marketing and Sales Read More »
Discover 3 Free Internet Enabled Word-Of-Mouth Tactics That Allow You To Control The Dissemination Of The Information Shared By Your Clients.
3 Free Ways to Boost Your Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Read More »
When it comes to marketing, small businesses should understand that psychology and sales are two parts of the same coin. From the world of psychology, one cognitive bias that a small business owner should embrace when it comes to marketing is known as “the halo effect.” Technically speaking, the halo effect is a cognitive bias
How to Harness the Halo Effect to Boost Profits Read More »
What I find interesting is that most first time entrepreneurs do not want to offend anyone with their viewpoint. They think that they are avoiding creating enemies by not having a polarizing opinion. In their mind, they think this somehow gives them a better chance at success. Furthermore, they consider people with strong opinions and
Be Controversial to Spread Your Message Read More »
When it comes to growing your business, there are three essential engines of growth: 1. Paid Engine of Growth: Most entrepreneurs consider this the only engine of growth. Often this takes the form of paid ads on websites or advertising on T.V. to attract lots of eyeballs to your product or service. The more targeted
Mastering the Three Engines of Growth Read More »
The easy part is building the actual product or delivering the service. If you are not convinced, just consider this – Imagine a substance that falls from the sky and springs up from the earth for free. Yet, we are willing to pay more for it than we do for gasoline. Yep, I’m talking about
Is It Time to Create Your Own Channel? Read More »
While the underlining ability to write content that people want to buy is the same for both the magazine and the book publisher, the design considerations mirror many of the same issues entrepreneurs go through when they try to define their business and economic models.
4 Super Valuable Business ROI Lessons From Publishing Read More »
In the old days, companies would do extensive research to try to predict what the market would buy. Once they felt that they had a good idea about what would sell and how much of it they would need, they would build a product line to produce it and develop a strategy to deliver it.
Why Advertising Is Dying In the Long Tail Marketplace Read More »
A 2013 survey by Neilson.com looked at the trust factor in advertising. They based the trust factor on where the consumer saw the ad. While none was considered 100% trustworthy, word-of-mouth recommendations from a friend, which is considered earned advertising, was by far the most influential and effective form of advertising. Here is how they
Where Do You Rank in Trust in Advertising? Read More »
When it comes to selecting a location for a retail business, there’s a variety of criteria you should use, including: Many entrepreneurs have become bankrupt because they invested too heavily in a location that fell flat. Often, the location failed because other aspects of marketing were not properly attended to. If your location is hard
Choosing the Right Location for Your Retail Business Read More »
Whether you are using a business broker or attempting to sell your business yourself, you will need to start with a solid business plan. Using the business plan as your base, you will need to edit it to create a confidential business review document (CBR). The CBR is the main document buyers will use to
So, You Decided To Sell – The Documentation Read More »
Between the time when a business owner puts his company on the market and the closing date, there are two events that can occur which either kill the deal outright or negatively affect the final sale – the inadvertent disclosure of the sale and the accidental disclosure of proprietary information to competitors and customers. The
Process Mistakes that Reduce a Business’s Value During a Sale Read More »
In permission marketing, you can either use bait or something of value that you give away in exchange for permission to market to them or you build a reputation that breeds trust so that a prospect will buy what you recommend.
What Is Permission Marketing And Why You Should Care Read More »
When you have a free product or service with high amounts of traffic, platform advertisers become interested in subsidizing your free product or service by paying you a fee to share their advertisements. Free products generate high platform traffic and increase the attractiveness of your platform to advertisers. Freemium users get basic functionality for free.
Free as a Business Model Read More »
When it comes revenue streams, they are generally either “transactional,” resulting from a one-time payment, or “recurring,” resulting from ongoing payments that deliver value or provide post-sales support. When it comes to defining a business’s revenue streams, I find it helpful to consider a list of different types of revenue streams to guide me and
Choosing a Revenue Stream Read More »
The next environmental forces block is related to key trends. The “Key Trends” block is used to evaluate if your Business Model Canvas takes advantage of emerging market trends. Are there any new technologies on the horizon that may undercut your business model? Don’t just look at the advances in your industry that may affect
Key Trends and the Business Model Canvas Read More »
When we refer to channels in the Business Model Canvas, we are speaking about marketing channels or distribution channels. Here are 5 you should address: 1, Awareness 2, Evaluate 3, Purchase 4, Deliver 5, Customer Support
Channels and Your Business Model Read More »
Robert Woodruff turned a pharmacy elixir into one of America’s best-known consumer brands. Discover several business lessons from Coca-Cola.
Business Lessons from Robert Woodruff – Have a Coke and a Smile Read More »
John Johnson grew up in a small shack with a tin roof in rural Arkansas. In an effort to give John more opportunities, his family moved to Chicago when he was 15 years old.However, coming from a poor area in Arkansas, his new classmates made fun of his accent and handmade clothes. To deal with
A Lesson in Perseverance Read More »
URINAL AD – Public restrooms for men have urinals affixed to the wall. When in use the man is forced to look straight ahead at a blank wall. With a captive audience for a minute or so, some establishments display advertisements positioned at eye level. PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION – Many buses, light rail, and taxi companies
3 Uncommon Advertising Locations Read More »
WALL PAINTING – Contact the owner of an old barn or blank-walled building to see if you can hang or paint your message. Or use a variant of wall painting, and utilize a projector to display your lighted message on a blank wall for even greater impact at night. AIR DANCER – You have seen
5 Miscellaneous Low Cost Marketing Ideas to Create Brand Awareness Read More »
Brand awareness often is not directly responsible for making sales, but aids in the conversion rates of more direct marketing and sales efforts. The brand’s message has to be constantly repeated to cross the divide from the unconscious mind to the conscious mind before it becomes effective. Therefore, brand awareness is a constant effort. It
5 Free Marketing Ideas to Create Brand Awareness Read More »
Growing up in Boston, on the way to the airport you would pass a series of very simple signs on the side of the road. They encouraged you to relocate to Boston and read: “If You”, “Lived Here”, “You Would”, “Be Home Now”. Burma-Shave became an outdoor advertising icon by delivering a catchy message with
The Sequence Signs Read More »
Some businesses have made their mark using outdoor or billboard advertising. Anyone traveling across the country on I-80 will remember passing billboards promoting Little America’s “50 Cent Cones – 15 Miles”, or billboards promoting Wall Drug on I-90: “Free Ice Water, Wall Drug”. Billboards can be a very effective way to build brand awareness or
Make The Most Of Outdoor Advertising Read More »
It is important to periodically benchmark your business against others in your industry and/or in your local area. A free tool that is offered by the SBA called “Size Up” can help. Once you select your industry and location, you can enter data about your company and compare it with your peers to see how
Free SBA Tool to See How your Business Stacks Up Read More »
Pepsi recently employed an innovative idea to get noticed in a sea of street-level billboards. The company shot a video from the point of view of a person on the street and displayed it on an outdoor LCD flat screen bus shelter. Then they added a bizarre event, like a giant tentacle popping up a
