Written on January 26, 2012 by admin
This is from my post on FutureSimple.
If you’re just starting your company in 2012, you may wonder how you possibly can get new customers and start to build relationships with them to grow your business. Unfortunately, there’s no secret to overnight sales. You’ll have to start at square one. However, these tips will help you move a little faster toward building trust with consumers.
Become a Resource
The sooner you start sharing advice and insight to potential customers, the quicker they’ll find you. Create a company blog and write about topics that your customers are concerned with. Share tips through social media. Provide valuable content in as many channels as you can manage, and people will begin to find you.
The beauty of this is that as they find you and like what you’re putting out there, they’ll share it. And the effect snowballs.
Important note: While you may be desperate for customers, remember that at this stage, it’s more about creating customer confidence. As they get to know your brand, the sales will come in.
Start Networking
The more people you meet, the better your brand will be known. Start locally at the Chamber of Commerce or business networking events, then branch out into industry trade shows and conferences nationwide.
Click here to read the entire post.
Posted in Customer Service and Loyalty | Comment Now!
Written on January 24, 2012 by admin
I was sent this infographic from SEO.com and thought it was worth sharing:
Posted in Marketing | Comment Now!
Written on January 19, 2012 by admin
Sometimes I think about what I’d do if I had unlimited funds and didn’t have to work. Would I be able to close down Egg and enjoy a life of leisure? I can’t see it, no matter how hard I try.
I love what I do. I love being a business owner, especially as my business has started doing better and better over the years. I love that each day brings possibility: a new client, a new partnership, new knowledge. I check my email incessantly simply because exciting things happen via email.
If I worked for someone else, naturally I’d want to quit if I were filthy rich. If I did something I didn’t enjoy, I would consider closing down shop. But the truth is, running my business is part of who I am. I identify with being an entrepreneur as much as I identify with being a mother and wife. So if I took that away…I would probably start another business.
What about you? Are you so passionate about what you do that you’d keep doing it even if you didn’t need money?
Photo credit: Thepinkpeppercorn on Flickr.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comment Now!
Written on January 17, 2012 by admin
This is a guest post from Scott Hersh of Business Cash Advance.
Clearly define the advantage of your business in a zesty way.
For a minute, I want you to just put aside all of your preconceived notions about business slogans. Not because your preconceived notions aren’t true, they probably are true for one niche or another, but because your preconceived notions are probably not always applicable and therefore seem contradictory.
First, please consider, what these two slogans have in common…
- Wikipedia- “The Free Encyclopedia”
- Nike- “Just Do It”
It would seem that the creators of each of these business slogans play by completely different marketing rules. “The Free Encyclopedia,” includes absolutely no hype, and is a concise explanation of what Wikipedia provides. “Just Do It,” on the other hand, is 100% hype, and not only doesn’t explain anything about what Nike provides, the slogan itself calls for some explanation. Yet both slogans are great, why?
The answer to how both slogans can be polar opposites, and yet be great, gets to the essence of the business slogan. Both Nike and Wikipedia’s slogans inspire a desired action from each of their respective ideal audiences. In other words, for a slogan to be great, it needs to inspire the desired action from your ideal audience or customer.
The ideal audience of Wikipedia is a person who is looking for free information on the internet. Wikipedia has established their brand as the premier source for free information by the use of the word, “The,” before, “Free Encyclopedia.” Such a slogan is enough to inspire trust in the brand and cause people to depend on Wikipedia as the world’s most accessible, and free, information authority.
Nike, on the other hand, has a completely different mission than Wikipedia. Nike is trying to remain the alpha of the athletic shoes market, and, likewise, sell a lot of shoes. Their ideal customers are those who are either athletic or want to feel athletic, and can be convinced to pay a premium for what they perceive they can accomplish by putting just the right product on their feet. By the way, my point is not to belittle Nike shoes in any way, but rather to define, from a marketing perspective, how their slogan is designed to sell products. The power of the marketing slogan, “Just Do It,” is not in the clarity, rather the open-endedness itself is designed to sell the shoes.
What does, “Just Do It,” mean anyway? It is an empowering message aimed to inspire the listener to believe that he or she can or should do that which he or she feels uncertain about doing, but probably, really wants to do. Nonetheless, as long as the phrase remains outside of some semblance of a context, it doesn’t actually mean anything. So the message in, “Just Do It,” is whatever you, the listener, wants it to be, and that’s why it’s so compelling.
As we see from the examples of Wikipedia and Nike, two slogans can do and say very different things, while still being very effective. But the secret commonality between all successful business slogans is the focus on prodding a desired audience to perform a certain action.
At the beginning of this article I requested that you put aside all of your preconceived notions about business slogans, and now, I want to explain what we should have gained by doing that. Now that we have clarified, that the aim of the slogan should be focused on a specific type of audience, and be aimed at eliciting a particular response from them, all of the rest of the business slogan advice, which you may have learned over the years, should fall neatly into place.
Scott Hersh is a business blogger for BCAblog.com the official blog of BCA: leaders in merchant cash advances.
Photo credit: Sarah G on Flickr.
Posted in Branding | Comment Now!
Written on January 16, 2012 by admin
I don’t know about you, but I read some fantastic small biz books in 2011. And while it’s one thing to tell my small but wonderful audience here how much I loved them, it’s another to nominate them as the best books of 2011 in the 4th annual Small Business Book Awards. Created by Small Business Trends, these awards highlight the best books on marketing, social media, economics, tech, management and startups from last year. (Disclaimer: I am working with Small Business Trends to promote the awards. The company is a client of Egg’s).
How Do I Get Involved?
If you’re an avid book reader like me, you probably already have some books in mind that you’d like to nominate. Go ahead. You can nominate as many business books as you’d like through January 31.
After that, voting begins. You can vote for each book you like daily. And you can vote for as many different books as you want each day. Voting ends February 16. After that, the top 10 books across all categories will be announced, as well as category winners.
What Other Goodies Are There?
But wait! There’s more! We’ve got a lot of events and book giveaways planned with the awards this year, so I’ll update you as those come up. We’ve got tons of amazing books to give away, and you can enter to win simply by nominating and voting.
What are you waiting for? Go nominate now!
Posted in Advertising, Book & Product Review | Comment Now!
Written on January 12, 2012 by admin
I’m amazed that so many brands still focus on what I’ve called “old school” marketing techniques. If you haven’t been convinced that “new school” marketing is cheaper and more effective, here’s an infographic from Phoenix Training & Development that illustrates the point well. Thanks to Phoenix for sharing this!
Posted in Marketing 2.0 | Comment Now!
Written on January 10, 2012 by admin
I just read a post on Naaree.com about raising your fees. Blogger Elizabeth Purvis briefly mentions “the Fraud Factor.” It’s something that I’ve identified with, and want to discuss.
As an entrepreneur, do you ever feel like a fraud? What I mean is: do you feel like people are paying you, but you’re completely unqualified to deserve that money? I felt like that a lot early in my career at Egg. I simply couldn’t believe that people put stock into what I said and thought I was worthy of paying.
But you know what? They were right.
I am really smart, especially when it comes to marketing. I’m passionate about it, and I love helping businesses.
It’s one of those “fake it ‘til you make it” scenarios. Now I don’t blink when people sign up to work with my company. Of course they do; we’re the best!
If you sometimes feel inadequate as a business owner, just pretend that you don’t. Eventually, the positive feeling will stick!
Photo: Flickr user IsaacMao. Creative Commons 2.0.
Posted in Entrepreneurship | Comment Now!
Written on January 5, 2012 by admin
This is from my post on Lead411.
If it’s been a while since you worked on your marketing plan, what better time to update it than before the fresh start of a new year? Because technology, tools and pricing for marketing services change, it’s important to keep your marketing strategy updated continually.
Before you start sweating, your marketing plan doesn’t have to be a novel-sized document. It’s simply a couple of pages that explain your goals and how you want to market to reach them this year. You can find dozens of free templates for marketing plans online, and many are different from one another. Find the one you’re comfortable working with. Once you have a plan in place, it’s easy enough to update it each year.
To read the entire post, click here.
Posted in Marketing | Comment Now!
