Grow Your Business Through Events

What is Wall Street Wednesday? The Wall Street Journal Digital Network has a section specifically for small businesses. They address business related topics such as Financing & Investing, Building your Business, Technology, Franchising and more. Every Wednesday we will share a relevant small business article from the Wall Street Journal and provide our take on what WSJ has to say.

When Business Owners Are Control Freaks – January 24, 2010

In the start-up years, the necessity of dictating how everything around you is done can serve you well. Hyperattention to detail, intimate knowledge of your company’s operations and the lessons you learn by doing it all yourself are invaluable.

Unfortunately, many business owners become control freaks. When the business finally grows enough to hire staff, these control-freak business owners aren’t willing to let workers do their jobs. Instead, they watch over employees’ shoulders, trying to make sure everything is done exactly the way they would do it themselves. They become maddening, arrogant and overbearing, and they pretty much refuse to leave the building. And they’re generally miserable.

What’s important to remember is that while you must be hands-on in the early days of running a company, you also must step back to allow it to grow.

Click here to read the full article.

As a small business owner, even the most uncontrolling person can become a control freak when it comes to their business. We all want our business to be successful and often have the mentality “no one can do things like we do”. However, there are several reasons why it is important for small business owners to try not to do it all. Here are three key reasons not to become a control freak in your business:

1. There are only so many hours in the day, time is one of our most precious resources and we all have the same 24-hours in each day. In order to grow your business your time should be spent on revenue generating tasks such as sales and marketing, product development, networking and relationship building to name a few. Tasks that are essential but not revenue generating need to be delegated to an employee or outsourced to a virtual assistant or other entity. Read the rest of this entry »

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Are you tracking your online statistics? Most businesses have discovered the benefit to online marketing opportunities. However, many neglect to evaluate the performance of their electronic efforts. Let’s think about it like this, you spend $500 to have your website professionally designed, invest an hour or more per day to social media initiatives, write tons of (key word rich) articles, blog posts, guest blog posts and at the end of the day no one sees or reads any of it. Problem right? YES!

If you aren’t tracking your online marketing efforts (and all of your other marketing tactics) your business is likely to miss its mark. There are simple (and free) ways to track the majority of your online marketing efforts. So where do you begin?

Website Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics solution that gives you insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

Google Analytic’s (in my opinion) is the most robust free web analytics tool currently available. Simply sign up for a Google Analytics account, follow the instructions to “Create a New Website Profile”, and Google Analytics will generate the needed tracking code and instructions on where to insert the code into your website or blog.

Twitter Statistics

Here is a list of 8 Twitter tools from Social Media Today that are great for tracking your twitter behavior and statistics. Some even allow you to look at some statistics for other users. http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/80437 My two favorites are TWITALYZER and TWITTERFRIENDS.

Facebook

Facebook provides “Insights” which offer Fan Page owners a post ranking, as well as some metrics regarding who your fans are. From the insights page you can see how engaging your posts are, the gender, location, and age bracket of your fans as well as subscribe and unsubscribe trends.

Some of the basic things you should be looking for are the demographics of the people you engage with, how people are finding you, the types of keywords they use to reach you, and what content is the most popular. Use this information to assess if you are reaching your idea target market and what types of content you should continue to publish.

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What is Wall Street Wednesday? The Wall Street Journal Digital Network has a section specifically for small businesses. They address business related topics such as Financing & Investing, Building your Business, Technology, Franchising and more. Every Wednesday we will share a relevant small business article from the Wall Street Journal and provide our take on what WSJ has to say.

Three Best Ways to Win a New Client, January 14, 2010

Many small businesses ring in the new year by taking a fresh approach to winning new clients. Whether you plan to reinvent your company or just attract an untapped demographic, there are a few ways to achieve your goals. After pinpointing your audience, reposition your message to gain those customers. Work your connections, but keep in mind, it’s tougher than ever to land deals. These days, your potential clients might be hurting or short of funding, says Mike Silverman, managing partner of engineering-services firm Ops A La Carte LLC in Santa Clara, Calif. “If you’re fairly new at this, you really have to not be afraid of rejection,” Mr. Silverman says. “You can’t give up. There is light at the end of the tunnel.” Here are three best ways to win new clients:

1. Go where the growth is.
2. Ally with other businesses.
3. Use online tools.

Click here to read the full article

Go Where The Growth Is: What Are Your Key Opportunities?

Every year (or quarter depending on the length of your sales cycle) you should be evaluating the viability of your primary target market. Outside factors influence every type of business and the target market that was once a gold mine may now be a dessert. Think about products and services that have been phased out based on external factors. For example, as technology developed some providers of dial-up internet services shifted their focus to cable and DSL services. More recent, as business travel has declined due to the economic downturn many airlines shifted their focus to selling upgrade services to individuals and families. In order to win more clients to need to target a viable market.

Event Planning Tip: If you are shifting towards a new target market, now is the time to plan a growth event. This is a great way to gain exposure to a large number of potential clients in your new target.

Ally With Other Businesses: There is Strength in Numbers

Far too often small business owners try to do it all themselves. Being a successful soloprenuer or small business owner is all about leverage. You must leverage your money, time, talents, and other resources. Think about other business types that offer complimentary services, how could you collaborate with them to leverage their client lists or to co-market in order to reduce marketing expenses? These businesses also become key sources for referals making it easier to close new clients.

Event Planning Tip: If you aren’t already well connected in your industry try hosting a networking event and invite related businesses. By hosting the event yourself, you place your business at the center of the event and it can help to establish your business as an influential business in your industry.

Use Online Tools: Inexpensive Marketing That You Can’t Live Without

It is 2010 and we are in the heart of the information age, online marketing is a MANDATORY component to your marketing plan. No matter what product or service you are selling, you are hindering the growth of your small business if you do not have a solid online presence. At MINIMUM, you should have a website that provides the basic information about your business and its products or services. In addition, there are an abundance of other networking and social media tools at your disposal that will allow people to connect with your business. Facebook, Twitter, Ning, Squidoo, and YouTube are among my favorite online marketing tools. Using these tools individuals are able to find and learn about your business and through social media they are able to connect to your brand. When that connection exists sales will follow.

Event Planning Tip: Using online tools is an ongoing effort building a solid following will help when you get ready to market your small business event. The people you interact with online already have a connection to your business, even if they aren’t in your target market they are far more likely to recommend your event to a friend.

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What is a Target Market? A target market is the market segment to which you market your products and service. It is mainly defined by age, gender, geography, socio-economic grouping, technographic, or any other combination of demographics.

Key Points From The Video:

• Choose a specific (narrow) target market
• Don’t be afraid to narrow your target market too far
• It is your business, and therefore your choice in what types of clients you really want to work with
• A narrow and clearly defined target market helps others to refer business to you
• Once you have selected your target market align your marketing message and efforts with your target markets

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Anyone who has ever asked me for advice or tips on marketing their business has heard me discuss SEO (search engine optimization). I optimize every online interaction I have, for years I have optimized my name and had at one point dominated the top 30 results for my maiden name (Brandi Ewing). So it is my pleasure to offer this fab post by Vahe Arabian on Search Engine Optimization for your small business.

Vahe Arabian is a Search Engine Optimization/Google Optimization Specialist and Online Marketing Blogger. His focus is always upon discovering new ways to improve website usability and interactivity, and upon making use of emerging legitimate SEO methods.

Following the Ask Mrs. Starr: Where Do I Begin? Article, which spoke mainly about building client base using your blog to project your expertise is very true, but how are you going to be found and establish more clients if there is no indication or method of finding you?

Let’s establish right from the beginning that your website is your online real-estate. This website is representing you, your brand and everything for what it stands for. Let’s also mention the analogy that a search engine is a map, a directory and that your URL is the driveway to your real-estate. There are billions of webpage’s on the internet, some of which are writing the exact same content as you and is ever increasing. By following a few simple online marketing processes and having a unique differentiation strategy i.e. by providing unique context and tools, you are making sure that when someone is looking for a particular need or topic that you are an expert in, which it has a bright red x marked on the map directory for you to be found.

So how do you say we can do this? Maybe I can’t be found in search engines since there are bigger and better competitors than me. NOT TRUE!! Everyone is one the same playing field level, it’s all about small businesses being a bit tech savvy and planning a great strategy to ensure that your website appears on page one.

The deliberate online marketing process, to ensure that your website can be found is called search engine optimization or “SEO”. It involves the process of improving web pages so they rank high in search engines for a specific keyword phrase. How do search engines find your web page online? Here is a six-step process:

1. Spiders/ Robots: These automated programs scan websites by following links from any website, depending on several on-page seo factors.
2. Websites get recorded: So now it found your website, it would then retrieve that content from your webpage, URL and Title/ meta tags
3. Info added to search engines data base: This is called cache’
4. Indexing program Identifies words and data: Having completed relevant SEO as mentioned above, this would give you some control in where your website might appear, rather than none.
5. Search submitted: Search engine identifies word matches
6. Search results: Information presented in HTML interface; in simpler terms, results are shown on your web browser page.

Don’t worry now if you don’t currently understand terms such as Meta tags and on page seo (website factors), because in my next few posts I will be explaining how to target your keywords, using them in your content and determining these so called “on-page” seo factors to leverage your site in order to appear higher in search engine results page.

Read more on Online Marketing Search Engine Optimization by Vahe Arabian

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You’ve guessed it, NONE! Not only is it an annoyance to your friends to see the same content repeated twice in their live feed which is already cluttered by Mafia Wars, Farmville, Café World, Sorority Life and the hundreds of other applications but you do your business a disservice by not encouraging your friends to become fans of your page.

When your friends become a fan of your page, they are indicating that they are interested in the type of information your business has to share. Essentially, they are opting into your content as opposed to having it forced on them. In addition, when they become a fan (and later comment) on your page it is displayed on their wall, which exposes your business fan page to their friend base.

So I’m issuing a cease and desist order for all of my small biz owners who are posting duplicate content on their personal and business fan pages. Simply go to your fan page, click “Suggest” to friends, and invite everyone you know. And as an added bonus ask your friends to suggest your page to their friends who might be a good fit for your target market.

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Social media is a marketing tactic that allows you to promote your business and allows your prospects and clients to connect with your business. Social media is all about interaction. Through social media, you are able to get people talking about your business. Visitors to any social media site are easily able to share your content with others they are connected to. In addition, people are able to share their opinions about your company and its products and services.

Although the cost of using most social media tools is free, a significant investment of time is required in order to effectively integrate social media into your marketing mix. Therefore, it is important to ensure that you are doing everything possible to encourage interaction thereby maximizing the benefits of social media.

I am a fan of a lot of other businesses fan pages, and one of the common mistakes I see many businesses make is discouraging interaction with their fans buy not showing posts from fans on their wall.

Wih the default settings your posts and your fans posts appear on seperate tabs.

When visitors to your fan page see others posting, commenting, and interacting with you and your business they are more likely to do the same (call it the monkey see, monkey do principle LOL). If this interaction is hidden you are less likely to have someone post on your wall. The image below shows were I posted a comment on the mainelement:love page, my post shows up along with her content on the main page.

This simple change to your settings will bring all of your content together on your wall. From your fan page click “Edit Page”, scroll down to the Wall Settings and change the default view for wall to “Posts by Page & Fans”. It’s that simple!

And if you haven’t already make sure you become a fan of Starr Studded Weddings & Events!

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Guest Post By Rudo Malequin

Rudo Malequin is working as Marketing Executive for Fortepromo which create high quality Promotional Products that help companies to promote their brands.

The Success of a Marketing Campaign mainly depends on how much research and hard work you have done while creating your marketing strategy. Having an effective marketing strategy not only helps you to run you’re marketing campaign in a successful and organized way, but it also helps you to measure your results in a more accurately, determine the methods that work best and where you should focus your efforts long term. In, this article I am going to share some basic tips, which will help you when creating a marketing strategy for your business

1. Set Objectives: What is the main purpose of your campaign? What goals do you want to achieve at the end? Each campaign has its own Purpose. For example, it could be to increase brand awareness, increase monthly revenues or just to improve the rankings of your website for a specific keyword. Since each objective requires a different strategy, it’s always good to decide the objective of your campaign before creating marketing strategy.
2. Describe USP: What is the USP (unique selling proposition) of your product? What makes you different from your competitors? What are those qualities that can help you to stand out easily from your competitors? Write down all the benefits of your product that you would like to focus during your campaign.
3. Research You Target Audience: Who is your target audience? To what demographic would you like to promote your product? Research the likes and dislikes of your target audience, what are their requirements, what kind of products and services are they looking for, what problems are they facing with the current products and services they are using. All of these things will help you to create highly customized and effective marketing strategies for your campaign.
4. Competition Analysis: Try to gather as much information as possible about your competitors and their marketing campaigns. Doing proper analysis of competitors will help you find out the most effective marketing methods in your niche and to create a reliable marketing strategy.
5. Set Budget: Do you have a fix marketing budget? How much are you willing to spend on marketing activities? Often marketing campaigns are unsuccessful due to lack of funds. Allocating a fix budget at beginning will help you to focus on strategies, which can be carried out successfully within that budget.
6. Set Benchmarks: Establish benchmarks that are achievable at each level of the marketing campaign. This will help you to analyze the progress of your marketing campaign better by giving you a deep insight about the performance at the various levels of your campaign. The other primary advantage of setting benchmark is that it will keep you motivated throughout the entire marketing campaign.

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Happy New Years from Starr Studded! Over the holiday break, I’ve been working on setting personal and business goals, evaluating the successes and obstacles of 2009 and getting ready for a fabulous year. Business branding is essential for every business large or small, it is essential that a business define its image, principles and values. Your brand identity is what your clients will identify with and is what will help to set you apart from your competition.

Most business owners are familiar with the concept of business branding; but what often is overlooked is the importance of personal branding. Your personal brand is essentially how others perceive you. If you asked 10 people who know you to describe you, what adjectives would they use consistently? These descriptors are what make up your personal brand. Everyone has a personal brand, when you interact with someone they naturally develop perceptions about you as a person and they base their interactions with you based on those perceptions.

The act of personal branding is simply taking deliberate actions to define and project the image you want others to have of you. As a small business owner, it is important to effectively manage your personal brand. You are your business; people who choose to do business with your company are also choosing to do business with you as an individual. Your personal brand should be authentic but also needs to be consistent with the brand identity of your business. For example, if I was an accountant and my business brand is traditional, conservative, and one of trust, knowledge and respect and I was introduced to you at a networking event wearing a mini skirt, talking loudly, and gossiping about my clients your perception of my personal brand would not reflect the brand image I’m trying to sell for my company. This is what I’d call a BRAND FAIL!

So how do you build your personal brand?

1. Assess Current Perceptions: Start by learning how others perceive you. Download my personal branding worksheet. Print or email it to 8 to 12 people who know you well (it is a good idea to select both personal and professional contacts). Have them circle the words they feel strongly describe you as a person and draw a line through the descriptors that they feel are the opposite of who you are.
2. Define Your Desired Brandi Identity: Before reading the responses from step one identify the top ten words on the list that you WANT to be known as and add any additional adjectives that aren’t listed. Then jot down your objectives, what is your mission or purpose in life? What role would you like to play for your customers? Family? Friends?
3. Write Your Brand Statement: Based on the exercise in step two write out a summary of your personal brand. This statement should define your purpose/mission, the role you seek to play for your customers, and how you wish to be perceived.
4. Compare Present to Future: Now take a look at the responses from step one. Identify which keywords were most consistently used to describe you. Are these consistent with your brand statement? Look for any words you selected as a part of your brand identity, did anyone draw a line through these words? Spend some time really evaluating how others see you compared to how you see yourself. If the two are consistent, you have already established your brand identity and you can keep doing what you are doing. If incongruence’s exist, move on to step 5.
5. Take Deliberate Action: With a little effort and time you can proactively change your brand image in an organic and authentic way. Evaluate the areas of inconsistency and think through ways in which you can manage that perception. If you seek to be known as knowledgeable take action to establish yourself as an expert in your field and be a resource to others. If you seek to be dependable seek opportunities of influence where you can demonstrate how reliable and consistent you can be.

Remember your personal brand is influenced by your entire being, what you look like, the way you speak and write, the way you carry yourself, how you interact with others etc. So as you work on your brand consider each of these aspects individually. What business are you in? What is one thing you can change today that will help change or strengthen your personal brand?

P.S. Here’s a look at one of the changes I’ve made in regards to my own personal brand. For 2010 it was time for a new look, my image is very lively, fun, and outgoing. The long, dark, plain hairstyle I wore in 2009 contradicted this brand so I changed it.

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Shawn, Financial Freedom Tax Group asked the following:

Although the growth in my business can be looked at as a success, I have yet to word it that way. I have never met my numeric goals as far as how many clients I get in one season.

Every year the number increases, but I am still reaching to obtain 300 clients…and I’m still a ways off. I just seem to get mental blocks when I attempt to look at various ways to market myself and get the word out.

I just have no idea where to start (To view his full comment click here)

Shawn – One way to start building your client base is decreasing the seasonality of your marketing efforts. Tax season is January through April, but how much communication do you do in the remaining months? I noticed on your website that you now have a blog, which is a great way to reach out to existing and prospective clients. Offer tax tips throughout the year via your blog. People are always wondering what is tax deductible, how they should be preparing during the year to make tax time easier. When I talk to brides one of their tax related questions centers around how they file as a couple. Questions like is it better to file together or separate, do they have to be married a full year to file together etc. If you also open up your blog to people who want to ask questions, you create an ongoing dialogue. Your blog will also help you to drive more search engine traffic, which gives you exposure to prospects who otherwise may not have found you.

Also, because taxes are such a confusing subject for many you may want to consider doing a workshop or online teleseminar to help people through the process. This is another way to establish yourself as an expert and drive more business.

Finally, don’t discredit the success of your business. If you are growing at a steady pace and learning in the process, your business is successful. Having that goal of 300 clients is a great goal, but don’t feel you are failing because you haven’t reached it yet. Take a look at your annual growth percentage and set your goals on that. If in past years you grew by 10% each year set your goal to grow by 12 or 15%; you will hit that 300-client mark before you know it.

I hope this helps to give you a starting point in marketing your business. Also, I extend an invitation to your to write a guest post (or 2) related to small business taxes.

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