Building Brand Recognition: The Nuts and Bolts of Local Business Marketing

Branding is something we normally associate with large international businesses like Starbucks, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. But, on a local level, small businesses can benefit from introducing branding to their marketing efforts too, as it will help to boost their page rank and profile.

Online marketing for local business

The mistake that’s most commonly made by local businesses is trying to compete with national brands on their level. Trying to keep up with these brands when it comes to prices or selections will put a local business at an immediate disadvantage. Instead, as a local business, you should be playing to your strengths, which are trustworthiness, personalized services and the quality of your product / services.…

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How Companies Can Make Use Of CRM Systems

Customer relationship management systems, better known as CRMs, make running a business much simpler. Regardless of the industry you work in, it’s important to keep on top of your relationships with customers to improve trust, increase brand loyalty and deliver an excellent service. Below, we’ve put together just some of the ways in which companies can make the most out of CRMs.

Using CRM

To improve time management

Managing time can be difficult when running a business, but customer relationship managers can be used to follow up activities, automate alerts and give customers the levels of communication they deserve. If you work in hospitality, for example, you can rely on an online booking system like Eviivo to manage bookings, deal with clients and keep on top of customer invoices – saving you time, money and allowing you to deliver a professional, confident and streamlined service to your guests.…

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Making Your Market – How to Find Your Lead Generation Unicorn

Everybody wants something for nothing.

It’s human nature to want free stuff, but free doesn’t necessarily need to mean it’s ‘cheap and hasty’. In the world of lead generation, there are a variety of options for you to choose from when attempting to get ahead and build your business on the back of another company’s system. If you’re a company looking for those leads, it’s important for you to restrain your enthusiasm, and make a calculated decision on whom your partner in growth should be.

Lead generation

Too often, we get excited about finding a lead generation company who’ll say yes, that you forget what you’re looking for; the consumer.…

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12 Reasons You Will Thank Your VPN in 2017

Cookies.

Ads.

More ads.

And even more ads.

Publishers are getting smarter about finding ways to make money online, and that means you, the website user, is often the website victim.

But you don’t have to be a victim to the publishing companies. They want you information – your browsing habits, you’re buying habits, and your website usage. But you don’t have to give them that information. That’s what your VPN, or virtual privacy network, is for.  What you need to do is sign up with a VPN – don’t worry, there’s VPN with Free Trial programs so that you don’t have to invest in something you’re not sure about – and start browsing anonymously.…

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How To Make Sure Your Christmas Party Doesn’t Turn In To A Nightmare

It’s nearing the time of year when you get to have fun at the office Christmas party. These parties are often held as team-bonding activities that ingratiate employees to their employer. They can start off positively because they are intended to show them that they are valued by the company, but there is also the risk of these parties becoming nightmares for the small business that throws them.

There is no one who wishes to have their Christmas party become an awful affair. One of your coworkers could drink too much eggnog and give away an inappropriate gift for Secret Santa.…

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Why Small Business CEOs Need to Keep Learning

Do you allocate a certain amount of your time each week to learning something new about your industry or niche? If not, you may need to change this situation and consider spending more time educating yourself. The world’s leading business people are always inquisitive individuals and they want to continually keep learning for the following reasons.

Learning CEO

Learning Promotes New Ways of Thinking

The more you learn, the more dynamic you become as the leader of your business. If you don’t learn new business strategies or methods from experts like the business consultant Sam Ovens, there’s a good chance you and your business will be left behind.…

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How to Advertise on Facebook Profitably for Small Businesses? (Infographic)

As a small business, you want to generate leads and sales quickly but you don’t have a hefty marketing budget set aside every year to ‘build your brand’. Traditionally, advertising has been correlated with spending large amount of money for brand awareness, especially when TV and radio are the only broadcast mediums available. With the advent of social media, we have at our disposal, a direct marketing tool for growing our business predictably without exhausting huge budget. And that is Facebook.

Facebook app

Facebook is ideal for small businesses because its granular targeting options allows you to focus your limited budget on where it matters.…

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Studies Show Businesses with More Females in Management Do Better. Here’s Why.

Not to play the gender card, statistics actually show that companies with females on their board of directors do better than those with no women. A study of Fortune 500 companies demonstrated that those with the highest number of women in management, recorded higher financial performance on the average. The study was based on three financial measures: return on equity, return on sales and return on invested capital.

Female managers

There have been a number of other studies that show a link between a balanced gender distribution in a company’s management and its profitability. These studies have been carried out in different countries, at different times, and across a variety of sectors.…

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Why Email Marketing Tools Are Costing You More Than You Think

As technology and consumer expectations evolve at dizzying rates, now is the time to reboot (or at least re-think) the way you approach your marketing. The email marketing software that may have once worked for you has become yesterday’s legacy tool for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Today’s SMBs can no longer effectively and efficiently grow the way they once did.

Email marketing tool

Here’s why:

The Price of Limited Reach

Cheap and easy. That’s how email marketing tools promote their value. Dig deeper though, and you’ll quickly find that what you don’t get from them is costing you far more than the monthly subscription fee.…

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How to Spot a Truly Exceptional Employee

In a desperate attempt to occupy my exhausted mind with more or less entertaining content a few days ago, I stumbled over an article in the Inc. Magazine that was going on and on about how to spot an exceptional employee whenever you see one. The ultimately goal was, presumably, either to reward such people for their or to lure them into an employment contract (if we are talking about candidates).

Hardworking employee

As far as I can tell, the article is not spanking new and has been published on LinkedIn more than a year ago where it earned no less than 6,333 likes, 1,073 comments and 28 shares.…

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