POST CATEGORY : Marketing

What Is Great Customer Service and How Can It Help Your Small Business?

What Is Great Customer Service and How Can It Help Your Small Business?

By definition, customer service is what you offer an individual before, during and after a transaction. While this concept seems simple enough, truly exceptional customer service is getting harder to find. Why? Perhaps it’s because stellar customer service is an experience that not only gets customers from point A to point B, but enhances the overall level of customer satisfaction – an idea that can seem mind-boggling to some.

If you ask any virtual receptionist, however, she’ll tell you that offering quality customer service is no harder or more time-consuming than what you already do. The difference is that the personal connection you make with prospective customers adds value to your brand.…

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How SMBs Can Profile Their Typical Customer

How SMBs Can Profile Their Typical Customer

Many marketing plans fail because they try to attract everyone and don’t focus on anyone. These faulty plans result in companies selling products that customers don’t want. Thing is, most customers aren’t even at the center of the feedback loop. Even worse, most customers will tell you what they want, if you would just ask.

Making the sketch

Start by surveying your existing client base (no matter how small) to understand future buyers better. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t have to be a costly process. There are free tools such as Google Docs and MailChimp that let you create a survey and distribute it easily and affordably.…

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How Small Businesses Should Make The Most Of Their Social Media Presence

There is no doubt that social media is an integral part of online marketing for small businesses. Unfortunately the social media landscape is very fragmented and it is difficult to know what conversations to join and more importantly how to explore these opportunities in the best way. There are many opportunities for small businesses to really get the best out of their social media campaigns simply by looking how the big brands use social media.

How Small Businesses Should Make The Most Of Their Social Media Presence

Find The Most Suitable Social Media Platforms

It can be quite easy to set up social media profiles on many different platforms. The problem is that each account needs a lot of time and effort to be really successful.…

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Top 5 Online Marketing Techniques For Small Business Growth

For small businesses, deciding which online marketing techniques to use is a daunting task. With many online tools at your disposal, which ones really perform? To find out, we took a look at 15 online marketing tools and their performance rankings by 500 CEOs and other executives in professional services.

Here are the top 5 most effective online marketing techniques:

the top 5 most effective online marketing techniques

  1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – While “tagging” a website with the right keywords so that it appears in top Google spots is the broad goal, the key is to focus on crafting informative content.Including keywords in the title of your page and two to three times in the page’s text will help your page rank in Google – but it just doesn’t work unless your content is also useful to your audience.
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Small Business Owners Charge Full Steam Ahead

Small business owners are feeling good about 2013 so far and even more optimistic about the year ahead, according to Manta’s Q1 2013 SMB Wellness Index. The survey of over 1,100 small business owners found more than half (56 percent) think the first quarter of 2013 was successful and 79 percent believe the second quarter will be positive for their companies.

While only 17 percent hired new employees in the first quarter of this year, almost one-third (31 percent) plan to do so in Q2. But that’s not where they’re putting most of their money. Thirty-one percent say they plan to invest most of their money on referrals and finding new customers; 26 percent on online advertising and social media; 24 percent on creating new products and services; and 12 percent on traditional advertising and marketing.…

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The Importance Of Building Global Relationships To The Small Business Owner

The Internet has opened more doors for growth than business owners may realize. Global trade was once thought of as an exotic or inefficient way to do business, but in today’s tech-savvy world, communication with someone on the other side of the planet is as simple as turning on a computer. As the nation’s economic recovery slowly gains momentum, small business owners are finding that working with international partners can help their enterprises stay strong during tough times.

With the new opportunities global markets provide, small businesses often see job growth and productivity increase by up to 20 percent. And it’s not just the company that benefits, but the whole community – working with an offshore manufacturing partner can actually create more jobs at home.…

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5 Reasons Why Your Landing Page is Doomed to Fail

5 Reasons Your Landing Page is Doomed to Fail

The landing page is the critical point in lead conversion; often the deciding factor on whether a visitor turns into a lead or walks away. Therefore, don’t let your entire marketing campaign fail as a result of a single landing page. While evaluating your landing pages, keep an eye out for the following warning signs:

1.   Unclear Call-to-Action

Is your call-to-action clear, compelling, and enticing to the eye? A great call-to-action evokes an emotion in the view, a sense of urgency or reason to click on further. But if visitors are having a difficult time finding the CTA, your landing page is setting itself up for failure.…

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9 Useful Tools for a Small Business to Manage Work Better

A small business requires a lot of work in order to prove successful. You can use all the help you can get in order to manage the work and the employees better. Luckily for you, there are many useful tools available that will make your job much easier.

PandaForm

PandaForm is a great tool which can help you centralize all of your business data into one single database. You can also use it to create many different kinds of forms such as for orders, meetings and customer surveys. The program is also able to export and import the data it gathers and even share it with clients.…

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How to Get Paid What You’re Worth

getting paid what your services are worthFew moments are as energizing in your business as sitting across from a potential client in a meeting that is going well. Your presentation came across smoothly, the client is engaged, they’re ready to buy”¦the only thing left is the price.

You quickly calculate a reasonable price in your head. You know that your competition couldn’t come close to your level of quality – and still you keep your prices in par with theirs.

You tell your prospect your price”¦and the conversation chills. They tell you that they were expecting to pay half of that. What should you do?

Discuss your competition

If what you are offering is genuinely better than the competition, don’t be afraid to highlight your competitors’ weaknesses.…

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11 Steps To Give New Angle To Your Old Content

tips for engaging online readers

When you’re an online marketer, it becomes a necessity to keep adding new angles when it comes to engaging your readers with content. This keeps your readers happy and looking forward to more. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel – just a few imaginative twists and angles now and then are enough to keep the blood flowing.

1. Highlight Words And Phrases

When you want your readers to pay special attention to funny bits, informative bits and quotes, make sure you highlight them. If possible, use a different font for quotes – perhaps even a slightly larger font size. Try to present your top keywords in italics or in bold, to let your reader know that the content is relevant to their search.…

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