How Can Your Small Business Grow in a Down Economy?

Here are three things that that can be done at this time starting today:

1. Sell more to your existing customers. It’s the fastest way to enhance your sales! They already know your identity, where you stand along with the quality of one’s goods and services. So, schedule an hour to produce 2-minute F.O.R.D. follow-up calls to your top 20 customers. Ask about their: Family? Organization? (company, church, school, etc) Recreation? (vacation plans, sports, etc.) and Dreams? Then ask: What can we all do that may help you? Listen to what your Customers are suggesting! Take notes, they’re going to inform you want you must improve. Finally ask them for a referral, recommendation, or testimonial. Statistics demonstrate that 40-50% of the people they refer is going to take action and phone you. Half (or 20-25% of referrals) will purchase from you. Also start spending 25-33% of one’s Advertising budget on promotions/coupons for existing Customers.

2. Return for your Core Business. Cut your losses by reducing under-performing projects and re-focus on your own core business.

3. Look for new opportunities in counter-cyclical markets. What other “up” markets might you offer your core services in (e.g. Foreclosures, Healthcare, Green Industries)? Or are there any upscale or downscale markets making it possible to offer the services you receive?

What is a handful of types of what Small Businesses did to develop in down markets? I was recently interviewed through the Wall Street Journal to explain what three Businesses had done to “Re-tool their … Read the rest >>>

How Can a Small Business Successfully Use Promoted Tweets on Twitter to Their Advantage?

A few months ago, Twitter rolled out Promoted Tweets, a fresh service that lots of are calling its first viable business structure. An advertising platform of sorts, it not only allows the micro-blogging to intend to generate its revenue but offers benefits to marketers too. If your business carries a presence on Twitter, be assured that Promoted Tweets enable you to bolster your marketing efforts.  The following are some examples.

Promote Your Stuff

At present, most brands are using Tweets to showcase their products and services. A perfect instance of this is the way Google used the plan to increase Google Instant, a search enhancement that delivers results because the user types them in. Small businesses can leverage this tool in much the same way. When it comes to Promoted Tweets, however, the secret is ensuring your posts have what Twitter calls “resonance” a phrase that could easily translate to relevance. If your tweets strike a chord in users, it’ll gain prominence in the search results and also come in user feeds. This is definitely what you would like.

Encourage Re-tweets

There is much value inside the Twitter post that gets “re-posted” in addition to being a small enterprise owner investing in Promoted Tweets, this is just what you must focus on. An easier technique of doing this is to make available incentives to encourage users to re-post their content. You must not necessarily provide freebies. Generous discounts or exclusive sales offers may be equally effective. Twitter is often a … Read the rest >>>