Low-Cost Ways to Promote Your Business

What's the best way to promote your business? How can you advertise your business and get your name in front of potential prospects when money is tight or you're just starting up? How can you get the word out about your business in the most affordable way?

Promoting a business is an ongoing challenge for small businesses. Whether you're just starting out or have been in business for years, these proven advertising and marketing strategies will help your business find new customers without spending a fortune.

1. Plan your attack . Define who your best prospects are, and then determine the best way to reach them. Be as specific as possible. Is the decision maker the CTO of the company, the director of human resources, or a 37-year-old working mom? Will you find them on Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube or Instagram? What about in-person
networking at local business meetings ? Will you find people at those meeting who are likely prospects or who know and could recommend you to likely prospects? What about
advertising ? Will customers be searching for your type of product on Google or Bing? Do they look for coupons in newspapers? Do you want to start promoting your business to them at the start of their buying cycle, or when they're about ready to pull out their credit card and make the purchase. Write your answers down, and refer to them before you start any new marketing tactic. Use this marketing plan worksheet to gather your information.

2. If you don't have a website, get one set up. If you can't afford to have someone custom-design your website, put your site up using one of the companies like Wix, SquareSpace or Godaddy that provide templates and tools that make it easy to create a basic website.

3. Set up a listing for your business in search engine local directories. Google and Bing both offer a free listing for local businesses. To get listed on Google, go to Google My Business .  To get listed on Bing, go to Bing Places for Business. Yahoo charges for local listings, but you get listed on a lot more than Yahoo if you buy their service. The service, called Yahoo Localworks, costs $29.99 a month and lists you in 50 directories including Yahoo Local, Yelp, WhitePages, Bing, Mapquest and more. The benefit of paying: You have a single location to enter your data to make it consistent and available on multiple online directories that your customers might search to find what you sell.

4. Set up your business profile or page on social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus,Twitter and Pinterest . Be sure your business profile includes a good description, keywords and a link to your website. Look for groups or conversations that talk about your type of products or services and participate in the conversations, but don't spam them with constant promos for what you sell.

5. If you're just starting out and don't have a business card and business stationery, have them made up -- immediately. Your business card , letterhead and envelope tell prospective customers you are a professional who takes your business seriously. Be sure to list your website address on your business card, letterhead and any handouts you create. Include your main social media profile link, too, if possible.

6. Sign up for an email service , and send an email newsletter and/or promotional offers to customers and prospects for your business. Be sure you ask for permission to send email before putting any person's email name on your list. One good way to build a permission-based email list of people who want your mailings is to give something away. It could be a free ebook, or even a free tip-sheet on how to do something related to your business. If you're a health coach, for instance, you might offer people who sign up for your free newsletter a tip sheet with "10 Easy Ways To Lose Weight Without Going on a Diet." If you don't have anything to give away, try offering a signup discount on products or services as an incentive. An email service like Constant Contact* makes it easy to manage your list and send professional-looking mailings.

7. Get your business cards into the hand of anyone who can help you in your search for new clients. Call your friends and relatives and tell them you have started a business. Visit them and leave a small stack of business cards to hand out to their friends.

8. Give several business cards to your customers if you are a service provider. That way, when their friends and neighbors ask them for a recommendation, they have an easy way to pass on your business name and contact information.

9. Talk to all the vendors from whom you buy products or services. Give them your business card, and ask if they can use your products or service, or if they know anyone who can. If they have bulletin boards where business cards are displayed (printers often do, and so do some supermarkets, hairdressers, etc.), ask if yours can be added to the board.

10. Attend meetings of professional groups, and groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, other local business groups, local chapters of national groups, or civic associations. Have business cards in a pocket where they are easily reachable. Don't forget to ask what the people you speak with do, and to really listen to them. They'll be flattered by your interest, and better remember you because of it.

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Credit: Business Know-How

WAYS TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS ONLINE FOR FREE

You may not have wads of cash to spend on marketing in the early stages of your startup, but that doesn't mean that there aren't effective ways to get your brand out there.
Before the Internet, small businesses only had a few ways to market their products cheaply, through methods like printing out fliers or sponsoring little local events. Now there are all kinds of opportunities out there on the Web—you just need to know where to look.
Here are seven ways to promote your business online that won't cost you a dime:

1. Use the three big local listing services
Registering your business with Google Places allows it to be found more easily on Google searches and it shows up on Google Maps. All you have to do is fill out the form and register, then get your business verified through their confirmation process, which can be done either with a phone call or snail mail. Yahoo! also has a big database of businesses called Yahoo! Local. It's free, and is certainly worth the few minutes it takes to set up. Microsoft's Bing has a similar service that's easy to sign up for.

2. Embrace social media
Social media isn't just a tool to gain exposure—it has now become a necessary time investment for every business to make. You can tie in ads and offers on your Facebook page and have a direct channel with your customers on Twitter. Networking on LinkedIn—both at the personal and company level—can be another way to help your startup.

3. Start a blog
A blog not only helps your company get its name out through followers, but is a way to connect with your consumers more directly. But remember that one of the major keys of blogging is to keep your stream updated as frequently as you can. A dormant, abandoned blog is worth nothing.

4. Put up multimedia on YouTube and Flickr
YouTube provides a free way to distribute creative promotional videos, but in order to succeed you must put up content that people want to view and are relevant to your business—a simple ad will not work. A Flickr profile can also help by giving you one place to compile all the photos for your business, and allows you to link back to your website.

5. SEO your company website
Search engine optimization cannot be underestimated in the world of constant Googling. Pick up a book or head over to an online how-to-guide on SEO and make sure your site is primed for performance on search engines.

6. Press releases
Every time your business does something newsworthy, don't hesitate to shoot off a press release—maybe folks will pick up on it. They're a powerful media tool to use to help generate publicity, and having free distribution of them is a bonus. There are dozens of websites out there that you can use for your press releases, such as PRLog and 24/7 Press Release .

7. Join a relevant online community and contribute
Every niche has communities online that you can get involved in. But just signing up for a forum and posting every once in a while about your business isn't beneficial for anyone, and will likely just annoy people. Actively contribute and build a rapport with the community, while keeping your business out of it. Passively promote your business by putting a link in your signature or mentioning it only when the context is appropriate.

Don’t hesitate to click here if you want more information or help implementing them.

Credit: americanexpress.com

Ideas You need to Grow Your Business Without Spending Money.

Here are ideas you need to grow your businesses without spending money.

1. Bill faster. Your receivables can count for 40 – 50% of your actual assets. Don’t batch invoice: bill as soon as you can.

2. Simplify your business . Weed out the unprofitable and the hard-to-see.

3. Simplify your marketing message. Read Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

4. Get your business and your web site listed in relevant directories . To find directories, Google the name of your town plus directories url” (e.g. “cobourg directories url”).

5. Learn to delegate . Figure out what you do that turns dollars. Then delegate the rest.

6. Encourage employees to explore more efficient approaches to their tasks instead of relying on their standard way of doing things.

7. Don’t forget suppliers. They might not be on your payroll, but they are more apt to do a few things for you at no charge because you really take care of them.

8. Work faster. If you can condense three four-month jobs into three three-month jobs, you can do one more job in the year.

9. Reward your team for meeting budgets and time lines. A 5% bonus is cheaper than a 20% increase in costs.

10. Cut overhead by automating most of the non-producing items like accounting, customer care, voice mail, sales reporting, ordering and record keeping.

11. Make sure you’ve clearly outlined project scope , and don’t be afraid to charge your customer for changes.

12. Offer to be a spokesperson on your specialty when your local media need an expert opinion. Send them a relevant press release every month.

13. Give something valuable away on your web site; at your front counter; when you send out your invoices; when you deliver goods. This should be free to you, but valuable to the recipient, for example, coupons or a “How To”.

14. Highlight offers, features, promotions and news in your email footers, invoices and letter signatures.

15. Start social accounts with Twitter.com, Facebook.com and LinkedIn.com and post articles .

16. Go where your audience is on the web. If your potential audience hangs out on forums, then post to those forums. Become a trusted advisor.

17. Get your supporters to refer you. Check out “ Make A Referral Week” to learn more about how referrals can build business.

Don’t hesitate to click here if you want more information or help implementing them.

Credit: Bplans

Branding For Small Businesses Made Simple

There’s a lot of content out there that is written to help small business owners do their own marketing, but it’s often written by marketers who are adept in things like analytics, content marketing, and technical jargon. It may be written using terms you don’t understand and business processes you’re not familiar with, and then you’re left with no clue how to start marketing your brand.
If you own a small business, or are responsible for marketing one, you need to know how to be effective in your market without the hoity-toity language of marketing. You need marketing for beginners.

"Branding strategy doesn’t have to be complicated, nor do you have to hire an expensive expert to help."

Here, in a nutshell, are four simple things you can do right now to grow your brand:

1. Develop buyer personas
As a brand, you’re speaking to human beings who share your ideals, and who want or need your product or service. If you don’t know who you’re talking to, you’ll have trouble reaching your audience. Creating a buyer persona brings those individuals to life and helps you figure out how to market to them.
A buyer persona is simply a description of the person you’re trying to reach. You might have several. Give the persona a name. Write out the features of that person (“Sally has a master’s degree and likes buying organic food”) to illustrate her and get to know her. Then, when you do your marketing, keep that “person” in mind and address your messaging to her specifically.

2. Establish your tone of voice
How you communicate your marketing message is referred to as the tone of voice you use. It might be professional, casual, or even funny. The tone you use should resonate with your audience. For example, if you’re a B2B firm, you might do better using a more formal tone than a casual one peppered with teen-friendly acronyms. Just make sure to choose a tone that is consistent across all marketing channels.
If you’re outsourcing your content, your writers will need to use your brand’s voice as if it were second nature. Help them by creating a document with your brand guidelines, meeting with them, answering their questions, and giving them examples of the tone you are going for.

3. Know your brand’s values
Establishing what your brand stands for can help you immensely in your marketing because you can then communicate those values to your customers.
How can you do this? Jot down the things that are important to your company. For example, do you care about the environment? If you do, let people know about the choices you make that align with this value, like using green energy in your office, only buying recyclable or reusable office supplies, or volunteering to clean up your community.

4. Blog consistently
Blogs are hugely important to your marketing strategy: 81% of Americans trust the information they read in blogs. They can take you further than any ad campaign.
Write about things that matter to your customers: write about topics that they have questions about or that can enhance their lives in some way. And if you really don’t have time to blog, hire someone to do it for you.

Click here to get started.

Credit: Forbes.com

Should You Hire A Virtual Assistant?

There comes a time in every successful startup company where you have to outsource work . As a business owner, you know that your time is valuable, and it should be spent doing the important things you excel at. Don’t get me wrong, every part of running a business is important, no matter how small- but some things are worth paying someone else to do. One of the first things that people outsource are small administrative duties, which a virtual assistant can do.

What Is A Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant by definition is usually a self-employed professional who carries out many different administrative jobs depending on each different client or project. They usually work for multiple people, but they just split their time up between each client. This is a better alternative to small business owners who are just starting out than hiring a full time administrative assistant.

What Do Virtual Assistants Do?
This is a very broad answer. Some virtual assistants can do many different things for you . The best way to find a good fit for you, is to determine what tasks you need to outsource, and go from there. Hiring a virtual assistant is a huge undertaking, and you can’t take it lightly. Once you know the tasks that you need to outsource, you can start searching for virtual assistants. Many of them specialize in a certain area, so it would be beneficial for you to find one that has specialties that could benefit your company.

Are Virtual Assistants Expensive?
As it is with anything in life, you get what you pay for. If you are looking to hire someone for dirt cheap, be expected to get the same quality of work. The best VA’s out there may charge $30 or more an hour, but they are there to make things easier for you, which is worth every penny if you ask me. It shouldn’t be hard for you to find a VA that fits in your budget, as long as you are not being a tight-wad. Just think about what you are saving from not having to hire on a full-time employee with benefits.

How Do You Pay A Virtual Assistant?
Most (if not all) virtual assistants charge by the hour. They should give you their rate up front, and you both can determine how many hours you expect them to work per week. There is a possibility that you don’t have an exact number of hours the tasks will take, so there are ways you can track their hours instead. Tracking hours is a way that you can tell how long the tasks are taking them, and decide if they are as efficient as you hoped they would be.
If you find yourself in the position where you feel like you need to bring someone else on board, congratulations! I know it feels stressful, and even scary, but this is huge for you. This means that your business is growing to the point where you can’t do it all on your own. That is something that many business owners only dream of. Hiring a virtual assistant is not as scary as it seems, in fact it can be fun! Find someone that you can get along with well, and that will compliment your skills with their own. If you find the right VA you will feel less stressed, confident, and hopeful about your future.

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Credit: Huffpost

10 Deadly Startup Mistakes to Avoid

Countless startups fail every year. But there are not countless reasons that they fail. “I’m talking to entrepreneurs three or four times a week, and they’re all coming to me with the exact same issues,” says Tarek Kamil, a serial entrepreneur with five launches under his belt (most recently, as founder and CEO of the communications platform Cerkl). “People are falling into the same traps over and over. If they could just avoid those common mistakes, the chances of their company being successful would significantly increase.”
He’s not the only one who thinks so. Mentors, VCs and serial entrepreneurs all say they routinely see entrepreneurs fall prey to a common set of mistakes. So what are they? You should know.

1. Not prepping your life
No one would show up to run the Boston Marathon without training first. The same should be true of startups. You need to warm up with some prelaunch training, from getting proper rest and nutrition to shoring up relationships. “You have to be rigorous about making sure you’re ready and that every area of your life is in check,” Kamil says. A startup will take a toll on your life, guaranteed.
If friends and family don’t understand what’s about to happen and are not supportive of your vision, they’ll cause personal misery, not to mention a major distraction from the business. Have a candid conversation to manage expectations. “Tell them, ‘I’m going to give this my attention --and while it doesn’t mean you’re not important to me, it may feel that way,’” Kamil says. “You need to make sure these areas are buckled up, because entrepreneurship will shine a light on whatever parts of your personal life are weak.”

2. Confusing a product with a business
In this age of apps, Atlanta-based serial entrepreneur and company strategist Eric Holtzclaw says wannabe ’treps don’t always know how to build upon their success. “A product solves an individual need,” he says, “but a real business has something customers will come back for again and again.”
Here’s how to make the distinction: Do you have potential revenue streams beyond the customer’s initial purchase of a product? That’s a key factor for prospective investors, who “want to see what the next thing is and want to make sure that there’s some longevity beyond what you’re offering today,” Holtzclaw says. “Are you going to license the technology to someone else? What does the business look like in three or five years? That’s a big concern from an investor perspective, and that will help you determine if you even have a business at all.”

3. Not paying for expertise
We say this with full respect: You’re not good at everything. You can’t be. And yet, every part of a business should be done expertly -- particularly the tricky stuff like taxes and legal issues. “Structuring not only the company but also potential investments in the wrong way can come back to haunt you,” says serial entrepreneur Greg Rau, COO of Ridago, a hardware engineering firm based in Oregon.
So where it really matters, don’t download some free online guide or think you can handle it yourself. Find an expert whose job is to know exactly what you need to do. The place Rau says entrepreneurs are particularly in need of an expert eye: “When drafting the terms you accept investment on,” he says, “if you don’t pay attention to things within the terms sheets, like liquidation preferences, that could hurt you on the future sale of the company to the point where the founders may end up with nothing.”

4. Ignoring data
“Magical thinking can kill any business,” says Lisa Stone, the San Francisco–based cofounder of the online community BlogHer. You can’t just believe you’ll succeed—you need to actually crunch some numbers and figure out if you will succeed. There has to be data that validates that your big idea is real, or at least provides a leading indicator that it could be. Once you collect that data, use it to create key performance indicators or milestones to show your idea or business is progressing.
Stone speaks from experience. In the early stages of BlogHer, she and her partners were told that women would never blog in large enough numbers to support an annual conference. But the data they collected from their first small test conference confirmed their belief that the plan would work. The event, organized in four months, sold out with more than 300 women showing up and netted the team $60,000, which was poured back into the company.

5. Scaling too quickly
Here’s a scary number: Seventy-four percent of high-growth internet startups fail because they scaled too fast, too soon. (That’s according to a report by Startup Genome.) “It happens a lot,” says Erik Rannala, cofounder and managing partner of Los Angeles–based Mucker Capital. “People raise money, think they’re flush with cash and then spend it on the wrong things. But by the time they realize that spending isn’t getting them anywhere, it’s often too late.”
What are they spending on? Oh, anything -- from marketing to hiring too many employees too quickly. But the basic problem is the same: They’re draining the budget on things that aren’t essential to expansion or determining whether their business is even viable. “When you start to spend money, you need to either have more or have a way to generate more,” Rannala says. “Because if you run out of money before you actually hit any real business milestones, you’re going to have a very hard time raising more.”

6. Clinging to the wrong idea
“You have to realize that sometimes you’re pushing up the wrong hill or you’re pushing into a brick wall you’re never going to break through,” Rannala says. This mistake is especially prevalent among first-time entrepreneurs and people entering an unfamiliar market -- folks who just fall in love with their original idea and can’t recognize how much it’s failing.
Don’t go on gut. Go on evidence. Evaluate how your product fits in the market. Maybe you run experiments on what tactics or product tweaks draw in customers the best. Or maybe you closely track how much it costs you to acquire each customer -- and if small tweaks make that cost go up or down. “For consumer internet companies, for example, there are five or six tried-and-true ways to acquire customers,” Rannala says, “and if you try them for six or 12 months and none of those tactics are working, that might be a sign that there’s something wrong.”

7. Failing to delegate
It’s perhaps the most classic problem in management: Rather than give up control and trust others to take the reins, you try to do everything yourself -- and fail. The instinct is understandable, of course. “Most good entrepreneurs are very strategic, so they don’t want to have to worry about whether the fine details are being accomplished,” Holtzclaw says.
So, what to do? Delegate, obviously. Start by drawing up processes, almost like a guidebook for how to do things the way they should be done. That way you’ll feel calmer, and your employees will have the direction they need. “If you don’t do that, you’ll hire too quickly because you’ll think, I’ve got to bring somebody in because I’m so overwhelmed,” he says. “Well, if you’re overwhelmed and no one can take anything off your plate, you’re never going to get out of that state. You have to delegate.”

8. Thinking money solves everything
Struggling entrepreneurs often think that if they can juuuuust raise another round of financing, their problems will be solved. But money doesn’t work like that. It can’t solve a fundamental issue with a business model, says Carter Cast, professor of entrepreneurship at Kellogg School of Management and venture partner at Chicago-based Pritzker Group Venture Capital.
“If your business model isn’t sound, throwing money at it is not going to work,” Cast says. “You have to fix the problem first, and then raise the money. Doing it the other way around will only get you in more trouble.”

9. Underestimating how long sales take
Let’s get this out of the way: Sales take time. Many startups even think they can close a big enterprise account in three to six months -- but in reality, a deal like that can take more than a year. And if your business plan doesn’t account for that, you’re going to be in trouble.
“They have to sell in to the c-suite, the line manager, the technology folks and the product manager. There are multiple levels of approval, and then there’s a scoping and discovery and implementation process,” Cast says. “I’ve seen many companies run out of money because they have been too aggressive in estimating their timelines.”

10. Fearing failure
“Fail fast” may be a popular catchphrase, but Kamil isn’t a fan of it. No matter how much entrepreneurs may glorify failure, there’s still that scary word: fail. And nobody wants to be the opposite of success. “It’s really the wrong term, because ‘failing’ means there’s no benefit, and most times that’s just not true,” he says.
Change the mindset. You didn’t fail --you ran an experiment that will improve your next business. “It’s learning,” Kamil says. “Although it hurts a little bit each time, now you’ve learned something, and you can apply that lesson to move forward and make your business better.”
So, were these still 10 types of startup failures? Sure, technically. But that just means they’re also 10 ways to learn.

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Credits: entrepreneur.com

Truths About Emails You Can Use to Cut Through the Clutter

The average user receives 147 emails a day

. People spend about 2.5 hours checking their email

. In less than three seconds 80% of emails are deleted

. The average person writes about 40 emails a day

. There are 12 messages we receive that will take more than 90 minutes of our day

There’s a lot of talk about email and its effectiveness. Some think the medium has lost all ability to communicate a message while others still rely heavily on its ability to send information to a targeted group. If you’re with us in the second group and still believe in email’s ability to communicate your message, the infographic below highlights ways you can be sure your email remains in the effective bucket.

For starters, the text in your email should NOT contain the following words: confirm, join, assistance, speaker, press, social or invite. Some words to include in your subject line to get a better response or to get the emails opened are: apply, opportunity, demo, connect, payments, conference and cancellation. Email users are also more likely to read your email between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. or around noon while most people are on their lunch.
Once you get someone to actually open your message, be sure the call to action is located on top. For example, if you’d like someone to click on a link put that link on the top line. You should also make your email message concise. Bullet points help get your point across and make it easier for the reader to scan your email message.
What tactics do you use to get your emails read or responded to? Are you still using email to reach your targets? Tell us about your experiences in the ‘Comments.’

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Credit:  Media space solutions