You know you need to market your business to become or remain visible to your target audience. But like most small businesses, there are more pressing priorities of operating a business that demand your attention. Your time will be spent on operational issues and you will struggle to find the time to do any marketing at all, until you realize that sales are dependent on creating visibility and generating demand for your product or services.
You’ve worked hard on your unique brand identity. You have a great name for your business or service offering. Had the perfect logo designed that is unique and memorable. Your brand is now a valuable asset for your business. Many businesses don’t understand the value of registering a trademark for your identifiable assets, but doing so allows you to protect your brand in the event someone infringes on your mark.
As the hub of your online marketing, your website is the most important component of your web presence. The primary goal of your inbound marketing activities should be online lead generation – driving more traffic to your website and then converting the traffic into leads.
Are you starting a business and are stressing over what to name it? Or do you have a business but the name just isn’t working and you are wondering if you should change it? Choosing the right business name is important because it can have a tremendous impact on whether your customers take your business seriously, view it as a successful entity or shy away from your brand entirely.
Marketing is an investment in your business. Creating an inbound marketing plan and implementing the plan consistently can increase your visibility and strengthen your expert reputation. The following marketing mistakes can cause potential customers to question your expertise and move on to evaluating your competitor, hurting your small business and having a negative impact on your success.
Developing your positioning statement and key marketing messages is essential to establishing your market perception. It is important that your marketing efforts establish value in the minds of your customers. To do an effective job of developing your messages and positioning, you need to understand the difference between these two types of messages. A positioning …
How do you view marketing when it comes to your business – an investment or an expense? If you pick investment, then spending money on creating a powerful web presence is something you will do willingly because you know it will help your business grow and succeed. If you pick expense, then you will cut marketing when things get a bit tight (if you spend on marketing at all) and make irrational decisions when it comes to your web presence.
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Susanne Morreale Leeber, the president of the Marlborough Regional Chamber of Commerce for their ongoing cable TV series called Biz Snips where we discussed Internet marketing tips for small businesses.
Having a marketing general contractor (or marketing consultant, coach, advisor or mentor as we are commonly known) to help you develop a plan, choose the right activities and work with the various niche specialists ensures that your web presence is consistently projected to your target market.
Focus, focus, focus It’s the mantra of many involved in small business marketing and is important to those of us who need to deliver client projects while continuing to market our businesses. What marketing should your small business consistently execute that will deliver proven results? Here are my recommendations for where you should focus over …
Marketing people love to write about marketing blunders and mistakes and we all have our opinion on what should be included in the top mistakes every small business must avoid. However, even though we continue to make these blunders visible, I still see these mistakes made, costing small businesses dearly in terms of dollars and …
Read more10 Marketing Blunders Many Small Businesses Still Make!
The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute published a report in June 2010 called Six Dimensions That Characterize Success-Oriented Small Business Owners. The survey is based on analysis of a survey of 1,100 small businesses with between 2 and 99 employees. These 6 dimensions include collaborative, self-fulfilled, future focused, curious, tech savvy and action oriented. …
Read more5 Personality Traits of Successful Small Business Owners
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