As a business owner, you’ve already had experience with taking risks. Starting a business is always a risk, because there’s no guarantee your business won’t fail. Even if you’ve been in business for awhile, you have to make an effort not to fall into the “play it safe” trap that we all get sucked into every now and then.
Playing it safe might seem like a good strategy, but if you really want your business to grow, you’ll have to learn to take calculated risks. There’s no need for you to have to shoot blindly in the dark, although for some, that’s their style, and that’s okay too. But if you learn to take calculated risks, you can minimize your chance of failing while still taking advantage of great opportunities.
So if presented with an opportunity, playing it totally safe might mean you’re missing a chance to achieve something really big. Evaluate your options and determine ways that you can still take advantage of an opportunity that has come your way while minimizing your risk. Analyze your worst-case scenario, and develop a plan to overcome that obstacle if the worst-case scenario were to become reality.
Sometimes the greatest opportunities come with the biggest amount of risk. While betting your last dollar might not be the best idea, there are smaller risks that you can take that will help your business grow. You’ll win some, and you’ll lose some, but you will most certainly achieve long-term growth. Best of all, you’ll become a stronger person for learning to overcome your fears and your obstacles.
Article marketing is still one of the best ways to improve your search engine rankings and drive traffic to your site. The key to effective article marketing is to write your articles with search engine optimization in mind. Create meaningful and informative content that uses your keywords naturally. You don’t want to turn your readers away by creating content that reads like an advertisement or sounds odd because of overuse of keywords.
Be sure to come up with a compelling title that will entice browsers to click on and read your article, and use keyword link anchors to help improve your search engine rankings for those keywords. Submit your article to as many article directories as you can, because the links back to your site will also help your rankings.
If you don’t have time to write or submit your own articles, it’s still very affordable to outsource those tasks to a freelance writer or marketing consultant. Visit http://www.stringfellowcreative.com/services/articles.htm for the updated description of available packages and pricing for your article marketing campaign. We’re happy to create custom packages that meet your needs, and we try to combine article marketing with other services at lower prices for longer-term, ongoing projects. Let us help you keep driving sales in this unsteady economy!
Is your business generating passive income, or is it strictly fee-for-service, or fee-for-sale? Many business owners are passing up the opportunity to create automated cash flow without much effort on their part. Passive income is income that you do the work for once, but get paid for over and over again. A great example is rental income. Rental income is passive, and it’s not subject to self-employment tax. Most of us aren’t in the real estate business, but we can still create passive income that helps us maintain a steady cash flow during the peaks and valleys of income that can come with business ownership.
There are a couple easy ways most business owners can generate some passive income. If you have a business website, is it making you money? I don’t mean by getting you new clients, although it should certainly be doing that. You business website can be making you money through advertising revenue, affiliate products, or sales of your own information products.
Your website doesn’t have to turn into one of those outrageous sales pages in order to make you money. A few strategically placed ads can earn you some extra cash each month without affecting the integrity of the other content on your site. You can also promote one or two relevant affiliate products without your site turning into a full-fledged internet marketer’s paradise. By keeping your ads and your affiliate products relevant to your target audience, they won’t be intrusive and can actually be more successful than some of the more blatant affiliate marketing sites.
The other simple thing you can do to generate some passive income through your business website is to create and sell your own information products relevant to your business activity. If you’re not skilled at writing, you can hire an outside consultant to write your material in your name, also known as a ghostwriter. The targeted audience that is visiting your website already has an interest in your product or service, or at least in your general industry, and generally won’t be offended or turned off by your offering an additional resource at a minimal cost.
Our current economic crisis has most of us afraid for the future. Small business owners seem to be in the most delicate balance of the whole situation, and political campaigning has small business at the forefront. What can you do as a small business owner to remain prosperous during these difficult economic times?
The mistake most businesses make during a slow economy is that they immediately cut back on marketing. Now is the time when you need to focus more on your marketing efforts, because other businesses will be cutting back on their marketing budgets, which leaves an open opportunity for your business to be top-of-mind.
There are ways to increase your marketing efforts without spending more money. The internet is rich with opportunities to advertise your business free or for a very minimal cost. There are free directories that you can submit your website to, free article directories that allow you to publish articles showcasing your knowledge to your potential customers, discussion forums for you to participate in, social networking opportunities, and much more.
If the web atmosphere is unfamiliar territory for you, seek the advice of an internet marketing expert. Many marketing consultants, such as Stringfellow Creative, can teach you how to use the internet to run a successful, low-cost internet marketing campaign that will drive sales even during periods of economic crisis.
If you’re like me, you frequently have tons of ideas running through your mind, different ways that you’d like to try marketing your business. My problem is, I never have nearly enough time to implement them all. That’s why it’s important to have a plan. By having a plan, you can be sure to devote the proper amount of time to all the various marketing strategies that you want to try. Giving each idea the time and effort it deserves will really give you an idea of whether a particular method has been effective.
The good news is, you don’t have to try all your ideas at once. Without a dedicated marketing team, it would be difficult to implement too many marketing methods at one time, and even more difficult to determine which ones were working and which ones weren’t. Creating a strategic plan will allow you to clear all those great ideas out of your head and put them on paper. One good way is to try one or two new techniques each quarter. Three months is usually enough time to get an idea of the effectiveness of a marketing technique. If one method is showing signs of promise, you can continue it.
When you come up with new ideas, write them down and add them to your plan. That way you’ll have a few months to prepare in advance, and you can continue your proven marketing efforts while trying one or two new techniques at a time. This will help you eliminate the confusion of trying to try out all the new and exciting marketing ideas at one time, and over time you’ll develop a base of marketing strategies that are successful in building your business.
Well here we are at the end of September and I haven’t posted to the “new” blog since March. I’m ignoring my own best advice that I always give to clients: Be consistent with your marketing efforts! Many marketing strategies don’t produce immediate results, and a lot of businesses miss the boat by giving things a try for a very short period of time and then giving up on them too soon because they didn’t receive this amazing response after very little effort. If you are continuous and consistent with your marketing strategies and your message, you will see results over time. Unfortunately, there’s no magic pill in the world of marketing, and it often takes a combination of strategies over a period of time for a marketing campaign to achieve its full potential. In some cases, it may be possible to acheive a tremendous response from a single message, such as sending a hot new offer to a huge list of email subscribers, but that kind of response requires a lot of back-end planning and building. It takes time to build a subscriber list, to build a brand, and to gain name recognition among your clients. Be consistent with your efforts and your message, and one day you’ll reach a point at which you can boost your sales by sending a single email!
Too many businesses fall into the trap of thinking they don’t need to advertise because business is booming. Any business will experience periods of feast or famine, and maintaining a consistent marketing campaign throughout both busy and slow times can make your income stream a little more consistent. Marketing only when times are tough will only exacerbate the feast or famine syndrome we all hate. You can certainly ramp up your marketing efforts a little when you have extra time between clients or when business is slow, but you should have a plan that you stick to regardless of the amount of business you have coming in at any given time.
My commitment now is to follow my own best advice and start maintaining this blog to provide my clients and visitors with the advice that I’ve promised. During times of feast and times of famine, you’ll now see regular blog posts from me!
Attention business owners everywhere – small, large, international, Fortune 500 – take note: It will not kill your business or significantly decrease your profits for you to offer your customers a coupon, a periodic discount, a reward or a special offer! In fact, you will more than likely see an increase in your profits!
I just cannot believe the number of business owners I come across who are stingy with their coupons. They don’t want to give any coupons to any non-profit organizations for any promotions or fund-raising efforts. They’re afraid to offer a sale or discount on any of their products or services, until they’re so desperate for business that they have to in order to move anything.
The number one reason I get from people who balk at the idea of offering a promotion of some sort is that they simply can’t afford to take that cut into their profit margin. I guess it never occurs to them that by offering even a small snivel of a dicount, they would probably move a lot more product or sell more services during that time frame, because bargains attract buyers! And even if your profit margin is a little bit less on those few items or for that short amount of time, if you bring in twice your normal number of customers due to the offer, you would more than make up for the difference in your profits.
Hmmm…do I really want to be sure I’m making no less than $5.00 profit on each and every item I sell, or would I rather sell more items and probably double my normal profits for the month?
In the new online media landscape, new strategies have emerged that allow businesses to create viral marketing through what is essentially “word-of-mouth” advertising via the web. It’s a highly effective way to create buzz about your business without placing direct advertisements that could be ignored by your potential customers. It also enhances your web presence by providing backlinks to your website, which will generate higher page rankings in the search engines.
Web marketing consultants, like Stringfellow Creative, offer web publicity services that will generate interest in your business through forum postings, discussion groups, blogging and the use of social media and social networking. It’s not the right solution for every type of business, but for some it’s an incredibly effective strategy.
To do it right requires a lot of time and dedication, and some specialized knowledge and researching skills. It makes sense to hire an expert who knows where to find your target customers and how to communicate with them, saving you the time and energy it takes to launch an effective campaign. If you’re looking to increase your web traffic and generate more business, and your market is not geographically restricted, this strategy may be right for you. Send an email to info@stringfellowcreative.com for more information.
