1. Respond to emails or phone messages with in 24 hrs. If you are keeping boundaries and not working on weekends, put an auto response on your account Friday evening through Monday morning telling the customer you will get back to them first thing Monday morning when you are back in the office.

2. Do what you say you will do, when you say you will do it. Customers would rather you give them a realistic time frame and a quality service than promise it tomorrow while they wait three more days and recieve a less than acceptable service because you don’t have the self awareness to stop over committing.

3. Have an actual person answer the phone during business hours. Automated answering services loose customers. People don’t want to talk with a machine, navigating the Labyrinth of touch tones and directives when they just need to ask a quick question. Business is about relationships with people, not their automated machines.

1. Perception- What catches your eye more a t-shirt with a company logo or a collared shirt with an embroidered logo? Better yet a fleece jacket with an embroidered company logo? Present well and do well. The reality it may cost a little bit more money, but it add more credibility when you present yourself credibly.

2. Know your customer/know your niche- Who is buying what you are selling? Ask yourself, ask your friends, ask your customers what type of people are they, what are they interested in, why do they want what you have, what are their common traits, places they go, things they do? If you are selling a toy for 2 year olds who is your customer? Not just the two year, but their mom too. I am not going to place a billboard above the gun shop out in the sticks b/c mom and two year old won’t be there.

3. Consistency- Studies continue to show repition is key. A one time add in the Sunday paper is a waste of money. Run a smaller add, in the same spot, twice a week for 3 months. By the 2nd month people will begin to notice. With marketing, whenever possible, reptition and consistency are key.

4. Trackability- Make your campaigns trackable, add an additional page on your website that you are putting the link to ini your paper add and then us Google analytics to see how many hits it is getting. Use coupons for redemption. Figure out ways to keep track of the effectivness of your marketing. Add calculation to the game so you can get the most for your money.

5. Make a Plan- Look at what you are offering, when you are offering and look at the next 6 months out. Make a plan of how you will market your business, your product. What avenues are available to you, what type of budget do you have, what is the time commitment? Ask these questions and make a plan. Tweaking the plan along the way is fine if it makes sense.

Technology and online marketing are a whole new post, make that a new series, in and of itself. There are a couple of other post on 285Inc that my colleagues have put up on how to use twitter, free online postings for your business, etc. I am pushing for my savvy co-hort to do a series, very soon, on some tangible programs, websites, methods to push your business hard, fast and calculated online. Stay tuned and I will bug him to get that out soon!

If  you have ever owned a credit card or debit card chances are you have experienced the calssic gut drop when you get your statment and realize you spent way more than you thought. If you don’t track your bank balance you constantly run the risk of overdrawing your account. Planning is essential.

In creating a budget you are projecting the money you expect to come in and the money you expect to pay out. The difference is what will either be invested back into the business or put food on your table. Budgets can be done for differnt lenghts of time. I recommend either by quarter or in 6 or 12 month increments.  You will attempt to project your income and out go by month. This will help you plan and decrease the amount of financial surprises.

A few terms defined.

2 Types of  Expenses:

- Fixed- This will include the expenses that you know are exactly the same month to month (internet, insurance, rent, loan payments)

- Varied- This will include expenses that may change from month to month (power bill, gas bill, payroll) or even be one time fees (insurance deposit, computer purchase, travel expenses, accountant fee, etc)

Projecting Income:

In creating your  projected budget you will seek to identify every area of income possible. If you are a start up you are using a lot of  guess work. If your business has been around a few years you can use reports from years past and have a more educated guess about income on a month to month basis. Break it down as in depth as you can.

Budget Programs:

Having a working knowledge of how to use Excel is extremely helpful in creating a budget. Linking cells in equations so you can change numbers and the math is done for you saves a lot of time.

Once Your Budget it Completed:

Upon completion of  your budget spreadsheet you will have  a projection of what you will be spending, when you will spend, what you “hope” will be coming in, and what the difference is. From this you can begin to figure out how you need to allocate your profit. Do you need to put some away for a slow part of the year, put it into a marketing campaign to push a new product, go on a cruise, etc.

Now, you must also track your income and out-go as it is realized. Meaning, when you pay the bills, get the money from a big job, etc, track it on a blank copy of your budget so you can compare to your projections and adjust accordingly.

A Few Tips:

- Build emergencies into your budget. Your computer could crash, a solid client could back out, have an emergency plan build in.

- PLAN, PLAN, PLAN!

- Never, ever, ever, ever stop tracking and projecting your budget. You work hard for you money, know where it is, where it is going and where it is coming from.

- “Take care of the pennies and dollars will take care of themselves.”

The majority of small businesses go under in the first 5 years due to lack of understanding cash flow and how to financial operate a business. DON’T BE THAT BUSINESS!!!

There are a few key questions that help define your mission and get you on a path to financial feasability.

1. What gets you excited?

You can’t force passion and you are more likely to work harder and smarter for something you believe in and are psyched about.

2. What can you be the best at?

No one goes into business expecting to provide a mediocre service.  If you expect failure or mediocrity, you’ll be sure to get what you planned for. Think big, think positive, think realisticlly. Passion fuels the opportunity to be the best.

3. What makes money?

What is your X factor, X being the item you are selling that keeps the money coming in. Remember cash flow is KING. As much as we would all love to be altruistic the reality is we still need food on the table.

Mission lives at the cross roads of the these 3 questions. (insert graphic of 3 way stop or road convergence). When faced with decisions, questions of direction for your business, your mission will guide you. Studies show that writing down your goals, in this specific case your mission, makes you 80% more likely to achieve them.

Gather your board, your buddy or yourself and take the time to figure out why you are in business in the first place. Ask yourself these questions and allow your mission to be your guide.

5 Key Aspects of Small Business

1. Mission- If you don’t know why you are in business and what the purpose of your business is then you can do nothing effectively with the next 4 aspects. Defining your mission and why you are in business is worth more than anyone you ever worked for probably cared to think about.

2. Budgeting- Cash flow is KING.  You must know where your money is coming from and where it is going.  A budget allows you to control your money and tell it where to go…not the other way around.

3. Marketing- You are not in business if no one knows you exist. Marketing is not rocket science, however, there are some basic principals that will apply to almost any business. Marketing requires a plan and some fore thought.

4. Customer Service- You don’t exist without customers. Know who your desired customers are and know how to take care of them.

5. Network- Business is about relationships that are mutually beneficial. You to the customer, you with other business owners. Even if you are a strictly internet business, relationships are key. There is no route to your business more valuable than word of mouth.

There are many websites and applications that you can use to do specific Twitter searches.  Why is this important?  You want to identify, as best you can, your niche market so when you periodically pitch something on Twitter (not all the time because you will loose your following quicker than you can say “fried cheezy bananna”) you will capitalize on hitting the mark.  A few of the websites that I use are http://search.twitter.com/, which is a great way to find people, as well as http://www.wefollow.com/, which is a directory that you can add yourself to and find like minded Twitter users.

(Insider Tip!  If you change the URL on wefollow to display a much higher page you can find people who are just getting started in the following game and are more likely to follow you.)

EXAMPLE:

http://wefollow.com/twitter/entrepreneur/page2

change to

http://wefollow.com/twitter/entrepreneur/page200

The two Twitter applications that I continually use are Tweetdeck and Nambu(Mac OSX only).  These both have search functions built in, as well as grouping specific users.

Ok, there are the tools, now, get to work!  You can follow as many as 1000 people a day before Twitter cuts you off.  That is a whole lot of people and for the most part people will follow you back as long as they like what you are talking about and are engaging.  Keep in mind though you can’t just feed off of Twitter.  You need to engage people and be “social”.  Be genuine, say real things and yeah, every now and again promote yourself or your message.

If you are logged in to your twitter account and you open up your favorite browser and navigate over to wefollow.com you can do a search for a topic that you are marketing towards and just start clicking on people that look interesting.  You can follow quite a few people in a very short period of time.  Give it a whirl and remember to follow us too!

Google Analytics – this is a free analytics service provided by Google. Simply open an account and paste the tracking code on every page of your website and you’ll be able to see a wide range of information about your website visitors. For SEO purposes, you want to look at the ‘traffic by non-paid keywords’ report to see which keywords are producing traffic for your site. Setup conversion tracking and sort the list in descending order by keywords which are producing the highest number of conversions. Keep an eye on this report to find new keywords which are driving traffic and conversions which you weren’t aware of and then focus SEO efforts on them as well.

Google Trends – this is yet another free service by Google which shows the trends of particular keywords over time. You can compare the trends of multiple keywords against one another, with a specified country. As the process of ranking a website at the top of a search engine can take 12 months or more, you want to make sure that the trend of your target keyword is moving in an upwards direction.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool – The Google Adwords Keyword Tool provides keyword suggestions based on ‘descriptive words’ or ‘website content’. Although this tool is made to assist Google Adwords advertisers, you can use it to research SEO keywords as well, by selecting ‘Exact’ from the ‘Match Type’ drop down menu. The best thing about this tool is that you can see estimated traffic volumes for exact match phrases within any country where Google has a search engine. Google is the major player in the search engine game and they are giving you tools to better your search.

Google Adwords Traffic Estimator – this is a free tool provided by Google, which provides Adwords advertisers with an estimated cost of running a PPC campaign using specific keyword phrases. Use it like this: export the exact match keywords from the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, paste them into the Google Traffic Estimator, select the country you are optimising in, run the search and then sort the keywords in descending order by ‘estimated cost per day’. This is a great way of identifying the keywords which may have high traffic volumes but don’t convert very well, because those phrases which do not produce revenue for advertisers will have a low cost-per-click and an overall lower estimated cost per day as a result.

What are the main e-mail marketing strategies?

The two main e-mail programs are designed for two major purposes. Promos are short, to the point e-mails with flashy images. These typically encourage the viewer to take immediate action. Immediate action can be a wide variety of things such as make a purchase or download something now. The other e-mail program are newsletters which push out much more information to boost your viewers trust and increase your credibility. By offering good quality FREE information to your viewers about your niche market they will view you as the authority on the topics thus trusting you when it comes time to make a purchase. This program works on a long term basis. You can mix the two programs but keep in mind the intended goal when hitting the send button.

Who should I send my e-mail campaigns out to?

Consider every contact point with your customers as an opportunity to gain their e-mail address and permission to send them your e-mail campaigns. Offer incentives that are exclusive on your e-mail campaigns to give people a reason to sign up.
There are e-mail address lists that you can buy but I would highly recommend staying away from them, in most cases they are scams and if they are selling lists to you that means the addresses have been bombarded with other e-mail campaigns. Just stay away.

By using Constant Contact you can also have a signup box on your site that they provide.  This will make it as painless as possible for users to signup and their info will automagically go into your database.  Once in there you can manage if you want to separate them into groups to pinpoint a specific niche group.  Very powerful tool!

How often should I send out a campaign?

The rule of thumb is to send out an e-mail campaign at least monthly and no more than twice a week. If you wait longer than one month your target audience might forget why they signed up in the first place and if you are slamming them with daily campaigns they will most likely get fet up with them and unsubscribe.

1. Google Local – List your business and as much information as it will let you and watch your location pop up on google maps and in search engines. This free service will even allow you to enter a coupon to further drive visitors to your site.

2.Yahoo Local – This is Yahoo’s version of Google Local and will bring a new target audience to your listing.

3. Windows Live Search – Windows Live Local Listing Center service allows business owners to add their business information within Live search and Virtual Earth.

4. Yellow pages – These guys call me all the freakin time and it is really annoying but at least they will list businesses for free.

5. HotFrog – is one of the USA’s largest online business directories and is growing by the day. They help customers to find businesses and businesses to find customers – country-wide.

Just start writing. Write about what you think is interesting and chances are other people think the same thing. Think about writing as a conversation with your target audience and write that way. All of us can speak at least well enough to be understood in a conversation. So treat blogging like it’s a conversation and don’t worry about being the best writer out there. The beauty of your own blog is that you get to start each conversation (blog post), you get to choose the topic and the way of looking at the topic. Then, invite your readers to respond.

Maybe its your New Years resolution to start a blog and write a post once a week. Devoting your time to blogging for your business and fulfilling other marketing strategies will ultimately help you online traffic.

There are a few blog platforms on the web but the most popular is definitely Word Press. The extensibility lends itself to growth better than all of the others.