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Learning how to market your business and close sales can be the toughest part of running a business. Most of us start a business because we happen to be good at “something.” We started a business because we were good at accounting, or landscaping, or building houses, or freelance writing, or software programming, or Web design.

But chances are, we are not that great at sales and marketing. Heck, you can’t be good at everything, right?

Unfortunately, no sale = no eat.

But if you want to boost your marketing by 100% and make it easier to get sales, try this one little technique that anyone can learn to do … Read entire article.

Posted in Sales & Marketing

Not so long ago I was a video naysayer.

Oh, online video sounded great if you had a “video-worthy” consumer product, such as T-shirts with funny logos. But not for the typical small business in the mainstream in the United States — the retail establishments, manufacturers, medical professionals, engineering firms, CPAs and others. The chances of those kinds of businesses getting any traffic or new customers with video seemed remote. Or so I thought.

But — I have changed my view. One reason is that Google has integrated YouTube videos aggressively into the regular search results. Now there’s identifiable value from videos. By creating a video and hosting it on YouTube, it gives your business an extra shot at getting listed on the first page of the Google search results. Your company’s Website AND its YouTube video could both appear high up in Google. Read entire article.

Posted in Sales & Marketing, Technology

The online marketing landscape has become so complex that cutting through the “noise” is now one of the biggest problems small businesses face. Sorting out WHERE and HOW to spend our limited time and resources is increasingly the challenge.

So Many New Choices

Part of the problem is that we are bombarded right and left with new choices.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has taken on a much higher profile as the number of indexed Web pages balloons and it gets harder to be found in search engines like Google. The search marketing industry is now in the multi-billion dollar range. Not only is search growing, but it is increasingly being broken down into distinct specialties, such as local search, paid search and mobile search marketing.

Affiliate marketing has become big business, too … a more-than $6 Billion a year industry.

Blogs, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and every manner of social media site are discussed ad nauseum. Yet, many businesspeople do not have the time it takes to investigate these social media sites. Most people have only the vaguest idea what these sites do or how to use them — perhaps just a nagging sense that the sites are somehow “hot.” ‘Better not be left behind,’ you think.

OK, It’s Complex. So What Do We Do? Read entire article.

Posted in Planning & Strategy, Sales & Marketing

If ever a technology had a public relations problem, RFID is it. Saddled with the moniker “spychips” and attracting conspiracy theorists in droves, it is dogged by an image problem.

And that’s a shame, because RFID is a marvelous technology.

As consumers, millions of us use RFID every day whether we realize it or not.

RFID saves lives when used in hospitals to keep track of infants, life-saving equipment and medical instruments. It can help us recover our pets if they are lost. Farmers use it to keep track of livestock.  And it makes our lives more convenient in many daily uses — everything from allowing us to use the fast lane on toll roads, to electronic security badges to enter and protect buildings.

Read entire article.

Posted in Inventory & Supplies, Technology