When Do You Need Marketing?

I often notice that many small business owners treat marketing like something that can be turned on and off. I see this happen especially when the economy is soft. The key indicator is that I get unbelievably busy because businesses decide they probably should market to try and find new customers.

Visibility + Credibility = Profitability

Works both Offline and Online

For many thinking of starting their own businesses, the fear of finding clients can paralyze them enough to sabotage their efforts. Cold calling prospects can make some of us break out in a cold sweat. One of the things that I learned early on in my business start-up days is that there are other ways to find clients. When you have worked in corporate America for your entire career, one of the skills you didn’t learn was how to network. As a business owner, networking is one of the best ways to get clients and today, adding social networking to the mix makes your ability to find business that much easier.

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Personal Brand and Passion

I had the opportunity to be a guest on the morning show at WCRN 830 True Talk Radio hosted by Maurice Lewis who was in for Peter Blute. Joining me was Jack Cutone. The discussion centered around the presentation I did last week on the value of personal branding at Jack’s class at Quinsigamond College called “Business Administration Capstone”. The goal of this course is to prepare these business students for making the transition from school to work.

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Personal Brand

At a recent presentation I gave to college students about ”Marketing Yourself”, we talked about what it takes to create your personal brand and how social media marketing plays a very strong role. Everyone needs to think about how they are perceived in the market, both from an offline and online perspective. In competing in the job market or for new clients, it is to your advantage to have a professional image developed online so that people can easily find out more about you.

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Protect Your WordPress Site

As one of your major marketing tools and in many cases, the only thing your prospect sees of your business before deciding to call you, your web site and/or blog is a valuable property that needs to be protected. Having had a client that built security software to help companies prevent malicious attacks on their systems and networks, I am sensitive to these issues. So the two posts from Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends caught my attention.

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Use Article Marketing to Build Your Expert Reputation

One of the best ways to gain exposure for you and your business and influence your ideal client is to use article marketing. Article marketing is a very cost-effective promotional strategy where you write articles and publish them online via content sites with permission for others to republish your work on their blog, website or in their email newsletter. In return, you get to include a short bio and links back to your site at the end of your article.

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Embracing Change to Grow Your Business

My business is in transition. And as I contemplate this transition, I realized that this evolution is the catalyst for growth.

The evolution will involve change. In a recent post, John Jantsch identifies change as the ultimate secret to business growth. And I couldn’t agree more. He provides five ways to intentionally get change into your business which include some great ideas. But before jumping into some of his tactics, I would do a simple exercise:

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Technology Solutions to Help Market Your Small Business

I read an article in Business Week called “Tech ‘Solutions’ Your Small Biz Can’t Use” written by Gene Marks, an author who writes about penny-pinching advice for small businesses. This column certainly caused quite a stir based on some of the comments posted.

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