Quick Tip #1: A Great Way to Loose Money

Well, it’s never great to loose money, but many businesses loose money without knowing they lost it. It’s actually pretty easy to loose money just by not watching it.

If you market your business and don’t track how effective your tactics are then chances are you are wasting money on ineffective tactics. Let’s say you print a brochure, you distribute postcards, you pay for a directory listing and you don’t track how your customers found out about your business or what motivated them to buy from you. How do you know if you got even one person from your brochure unless you ask. What if most of your business comes from your postcards, shouldn’t you defer money from a broken tactic to print more postcards, maybe. You have to think about branding and name recognition too, buth the point is, if you don’t watch your money you will loose it. If you don’t track your marketing efforts you will probably not be as effective as you can be with your marketing money.

Quick Tip #1:

Create a simple form that allows you to survey your customers about how they heard about your business. If you have a website, add the survey to your sales and contact forms.

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Charles Bryant
URBANMarketingNetwork.com

Tags: budgetting, Marketing

Simple Plan for Online Success

Bringing your company or organization online is simple, affordable, and smart. You don’t have to know anything about computers or technology; you just have to use the right company to help build
your online organization. Some of the benefits of being online:

• The cost, in comparison to offline marketing and operating costs is very small.
• You can save on printing by offering your print materials online for download.
• You can measure the effectiveness of your online marketing in real time, so you will know how your dollars are being spent.
• You don’t have to pay your Web site a salary with commissions and benefits, it just works 24/7.
• The internet gives you access to customers outside of your local community.

To grow your Web site you have to create a plan and remember that your online operations isn’t much different than your offline operations. Here are some things to think about for your online organization:

• Define the Purpose and Goals of Your Web site
• Define the Structure of Your Web site
• Get a Name for Your Web site
• Get a Home for Your Web site
• Build an Attractive User-friendly Web site
• Promote Your Web site

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Tags: web site planning

Throw Away Your Business Plan and Plan Your Business

Most days I spend a great deal of my time helping small businesses succeed. One thing in common with many of these businesses, they don’t know where they are going. They know they want to make money, grow into a big company selling their product or services. The problem is, a great percentage of them have no idea how they are going to realize the great vision they have for their companies. What they need is a plan.

Before you say, “not another business planning article,” I am not talking about a traditional business plan. I appreciate traditional business plans, but many times they are geared more towards raising capital from banks and investors than guiding your business to success. What I am talking about is simple, to the point, and built to drive results.

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Tags: business planning