JustSmallBiz Marketing

Do You Make These Mistakes with Your Online Presence?

Today, I want to talk to you about do you make these mistakes with your online presence.

We all know that online presence is important, but I'm not sure we all do all the things that we can to avoid making mistakes that hurt us.

The first one I want to talk about is not paying attention to your Google+ page or your Google My Business Page, whatever Google is calling it these days. The reason why this is important is because you can see anytime you search for something on the Internet. If there's a business, for example, it'll come up.

Warning: If you don’t do these 3 things you are losing customers

Today's topic is, "Warning ‑‑ If you don't do these three things, you are going to lose customers," or at the very least, you're not going to gain customers.

These three things are 1) you must have offers that are compelling; 2) you must have offers with time limits; and 3) you must deliver on expectations.

Let's look at the first thing; have offers that are compelling. I tend to look at direct mail that comes in because I'm in the business. I don't know if everybody else does, but there's a lot of direct mail that comes through that just has generalized stuff on it. There's no offer. It's just, "Hey, we're a business. We do landscaping, or we are a dentist." You probably get dentist stuff all the time.

Who Else Wants to Stop Throwing Away Money on Advertising that Doesn't Work?

Hi, this is Brad Swezey, President of JustSmallBiz Marketing. Today, I want to talk to you about who else wants to avoid throwing away money on advertising that doesn't work. Nobody likes to throw away money.

As small business owners, we often don't have a lot of money to throw away on stuff, because we're trying to grow our businesses on a shoestring budget. I want to talk to you a little bit about that, on how you can avoid throwing away money on advertising.

First, I want to talk about a client of ours who, before they became a client, they had spent a lot of money in advertising in a couple of free magazines that are sent out around the area. They look good. They were glossy. They're very nicely done.

The only challenge with that is you don't know how many people are actually reading them. Free magazines are often not read at the rate of people who will pay for some kind of subscription, because they want to read the content.

Who Are Your Competitors Busier Than You?

Today, I want to talk about the question: How often do you find yourself saying, "Why are my competitors seemingly more busy than I am when my company is better?"

There might be three things that they're doing that you're not doing, despite the fact that you're better. We're going to talk about these three things.

The first is they're probably not missing opportunities to build customer contact lists. By that I mean, most people don't respond and buy right away. Sometimes, they need to be nurtured and be contacted repeatedly because things get in the way.  (Listen for the rest of the story or read online)

Whose Fault Is it When Your Small Business Gets Bad Reviews

Many small business owners, myself included, understandingly, put our hearts and souls into our businesses which is why when we get a negative review, it can hurt us to the core. Sometimes, like every other human being out there, our tendency is to first blame the customer and say, "This is an exception," or something else like that.

 

Now, is this right or wrong? It depends. Regardless, it ultimately is we, the small business owners, who are generally at fault.

Who Else Wants to Cut Their Advertising Costs by 37% While Increasing Sales by 15.6%?

Hi, good afternoon. Today's topic is "Who else wants to cut their advertising cost by 37 percent while increasing sales by 15.6 percent?"

 I use those figures because that's what we've been able to do for one of our clients in an established industry that didn’t grow as much. We have documented results. I want to talk about , related to that, how you can approach your advertising and increase sales while spending less money on advertising.

Typically, what happens if I go into a business from a marketing consulting perspective, and they don't have a true marketing person ‑‑ by that I'm talking about somebody who's given the title of marketing director, marketing coordinator, etc. in a small business, which is typically what you see. Somebody is out there and their whole job is to go to networking events or something.

I'm talking about a marketing professional with decades or years of experience and education behind them that can take a coordinated approach to marketing. If you walk into most small businesses, they either don't have a person or they don't have the right type of person.

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What Every Small Business Owner Should Know about Digital Billboards

Today I'm going to talk about what every small business should know about digital billboards.

Digital billboards, for those of you that don't know, are those screens on TVs, mainly, that you see in restaurants, hotels, etc. where there are advertisements and information. Today I'm going to talk about what every small business should know about these digital billboards.

The first is where they are located in a place matters as much as the place they are located.

In other words, let's say you're a business connected to something tourism‑related and you get pitched with the idea that these digital billboards are in a hotel. On the face of it, it looks like it might be pretty good. But where they're located in the hotel might be a problem.

They might be in the area where somebody's walking by and focused on getting to their room, or getting to the counter to check in, and the billboard's located on the left or the right, and the people don't even look at it. Typically, those of us who stay at hotels, we go into the hotel, we want to check in, and when we check in, we want to go to our room.

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Three Early Warning Signs That Your Small Business is in Trouble

I'm talking to you today about three early warning signs that your small business is in trouble.

They're out there. Whether or not you pay attention to them is up to you. But if you do pay attention to these early warning signs, you might be able to take care of some problems before they become big ones.

The first one I want to talk to you today about is your good employees. You start noticing that your good employees are quitting. When your good employees stop expressing themselves to you because you're not listening to them and you don't think their ideas are valid, etc., they'll often quit.

Why are they quitting? Because they're good at what they do, and why not go work for a business that may understand them and also offer them an opportunity to excel? No one wants to be part of a sinking ship.

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What Every Small Business Owner Should Know About How Consumers See Their Businesses

What I want to talk about today is the question, "What Every Small Business Owner Should Know About How Consumers See Their Businesses." Because we often are in our businesses all the time, we fail to realize sometimes how consumers or customers see our business. That's why I want to talk about three things you really should know, about how customers see your business.

The first one is you're a means to an end. They have a need or want that they need to get taken care of; That's their primary reason for coming to your business. There may be secondary and other reasons for them to come to your business, but fundamentally they want to come to your business for something.

If somebody wants coffee, they come to your business primarily to get coffee. If the coffee's bad, chances are they're probably not going to go back there no matter how good everything else is. You really want to make sure you know that the consumer's need or want that is primary to them, that needs to be taken care of. If you don't take care of that, all else will fail.

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The Three Secrets of Beating Your Competition

Today, I want to talk about the three secrets of beating your competition. Like I've said before, there's obviously many ways to beat them, but I want to talk about these three today.

Those are basically one, don't fall prey to advertising promises made to all of them, including you. Two, know your target market's needs and wants better, and address them better; and the third one is showing appreciation for them, by doing something a little bit more than what most businesses do, which is often nothing. You want to do those things. Let's look at those in more detail.

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