Marketing Your New Business

Articles Index

Getting Found
It seems to be getting harder and harder to achieve visibility for your company without spending a lot of money, but it can be done. The trick is knowing how to “get found”.

Entrepreneur’s Guide to Successful Trade Press Publicity
There are many benefits to hiring professionals to help you develop effective PR and marketing campaigns; however, if you lack cash, you don’t have to choose between hiring an outside firm or doing nothing at all. Instead, do some of the work yourself. By following a few useful tips, you can go a long way toward gaining the valuable visibility you’ll need to be successful.

First Impressions
Within the first three seconds of a new encounter, you are evaluated… even if it is just a glance.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Powerpoint Presentations
It’s not surprising Powerpoint© slideshows have become the norm for visuals in most business presentations. They are quick to produce, easy to update and effective to inject visual interest into the presentation. However, they can also spell disaster even for experienced presenters. The key to success is to make certain your slide show is a visual aid and not a visual distraction.

Google Yourself
The ready availability of information on the Internet makes it easy for people to do free basic background checks on people before entering into business relationships with them. This is something you should definitely do yourself before hiring anybody as an employee, consultant, or contractor. So what does Google have to say about you? If you don't know, you'd better find out. Those skeletons in your closet may not be as hidden as you think. Or worse yet, you may have someone else's skeletons!

Authorpreneurship—Books as Business
Whether you are writing a book to support and promote your business image, or are undertaking writing as a separate project, learn to treat your book as a business venture, or it will quickly become a very expensive hobby.

"E" Is For "Everything"???
The Internet is here to stay. How can it benefit small local businesses - and what's currently going wrong? Here are some key elements that prevent many Web site owners from maximizing the potential of their Internet-based activities.

Speak to the World Without Saying a Word
We speak to the world without saying a word through non-verbal communication. Almost every facet of our personality is revealed through our appearance, body language, gestures, facials expressions, demeanor, posture and movements.

Ignore That Pie in the Sky
A question often asked of entrepreneurs is ‘How big is your market?’ Whether you are trying to raise capital through equity investment, or building a business plan and sales strategy for an already established company, this question is one of the most important you can ask yourself – and the answer is one of the most difficult to base in reality.

Money Talks
Many business people never consider standing in the front of their buying public to share professional wisdom. If you're one of them, you're missing the boat. Speaking is a marketing strategy you can immediately embrace to get in front of potential customers. Speaking puts you within handshaking distance of your best prospects, many times helping you close sales before you leave the room.

Testosterone-Free Marketing: Not Just Business as Usual
Some women take to marketing and sales effortlessly. Many more avoid it. That results in businesses that struggle and limp along rather than create the success their owners hoped for when they started. Women have great relationship-building skills. However, often they are more concerned with building relationships than actually doing business.

Case Study: Using a Weblog to Achieve #1 Rankings in Google
This is a case study documenting best practices in using a weblog to achieve #1 rankings in Google.

Tracking Your Visitors
Tracking the visitors to your site is an essential part of any online business. Simply knowing how many visitors you are getting is justification enough to have some kind of statistics tracking capability. But, you will want to know more about your visitors and their behavior for the success of your ebusiness.

What's So Small About Your Small Business?
When asked the inevitable question “So, what do you do?” more times than not, a small business owner will reply “I run a small design company” or “I own a small business”. Yet, there is nothing small about running a small business. Usually it takes a bigger effort than the large businesses. You have to act as Accountant, President, Sales and Marketing. What’s so small about that? How does it help your business when you refer to it as small?

4 Simple Fresh Approaches to Triple Web Site Profits
One of the most ignored factors after a sale is having a strategy to retain the customer and to maintain sustained customer satisfaction. Sustained customer satisfaction becomes important in every business, but even more so on the Internet.

Your First Time
Most people do it for the first time in college. Some in high school. But you? You have remained sheltered and untouched. Until now.

Presentation Tip: Making Statistics Understandable
The use of statistics in a presentation is a double-edged sword. When used appropriately, statistics can make a presentation more credible, more persuasive and more authoritative. Used inappropriately, they can make the presentation less interesting, less effective and less audience-centered. Here are some tips on how to make statistics work for you rather than against you.

Presentation Tip: Stop the Verbal Spam
We’ve all seen it. A speaker thoroughly familiar with his or her product gives a presentation filled with information about the history of the product, the development of the product, how it is used, and a list of ten nifty features. But at the end of the presentation, we’re left wondering what the point was. That describes “infodumping.” It’s the verbal equivalent of email spam.

4 Elements of a Successful, Profitable Website
By capturing your visitors’ names, growing your list of email addresses and sending relevant, responsible email to your customers and prospects, you are building a relationship with them. In any business, the relationship is the intangible, powerful force that creates loyal, repeat customers.

Educate First . . . For Success
Exponential growth is not based on the number of e-mail or print ads you send out or the circulation of the publication containing your ad, it is based on the willingness of people to contact you or to pass your information on to someone they know will be interested.

The Missing Link
While there are many components of effective communication, entrepreneurs should begin with the most critical, the message. You must take your vision and translate it into a clear, focused and compelling message that can be conveyed to all stakeholders.

Is Your Domain Name Hurting Your Sales?
Choosing a domain name is an important part of the overall marketing process and should not be taken lightly. Make sure your domain name represents your company, product and image, and you'll be setting a great foundation for future sales.

Honing Your Pitch
If you’re getting ready to launch a new product or service, or even a new company, chances are you’ve spent a lot of time, effort, and probably money to prepare for the roll-out. But how much time have you spent developing and practicing what to say? If you’re like most business people, probably not a lot, and that can come back to bite you.