Smart business owners know consistently finding clients is crucial to their success. After all, without a steady stream of new and repeat customers, there’s nobody to serve, no money to be made, and no reason to keep the doors open. How do you find clients who are ready to buy, even though the economy has changed?
Finding clients takes effort and creativity- especially in a tight market. The good news is, though, that regardless of the economy, people still need the solutions you offer and expert advice to eliminate the challenges they face. All you need are a few simple tips on how to go about finding clients when the market is tight.
Step One to Finding Clients
Hang on to the clients you have! No marketing strategy is as cost effective or as efficient as keeping the clients you have already established a working relationship with in the past. Meet your deadlines, go above and beyond what’s expected and do it all with excellent customer service as your goal. This will help you hang on to every single client you have.
Step Two to Finding Clients
Don’t be afraid to go back to former clients and check in with them. Even if the working relationship ended under not so great circumstances, it can still be revived in certain situations. If you dropped the ball with a client that you previously had a good working relationship with, get in touch, own your mistakes and ask for another shot. You have nothing to lose — and you never know, you might be pleasantly surprised.
Step Three to Finding Clients
Ask for referrals. Go through your current and past client lists and contact the clients who have been especially happy with your work. Ask them if they can refer you to friends and colleagues of theirs. When you receive the referrals, make sure you dedicate your self to those new clients in the same way as if you were working for your original connection. This referral base could turn into a plethora of new clients if you work it with integrity and commitment.
Step Four to Finding Clients
Participating in social media is a terrific way to find new clients. Work up a special or a sale of your services and offer a limited time (or limited number) of specials via Twitter or Facebook. Watch the numbers closely, though. It’s easy for this type of deal to take off like a rocket and give you more work than you can comfortably handle in no time flat. Know your limits!
Step Five to Finding Clients
Check out the job boards. If you’ve never used a job board like or , now may be the time to give it a shot. Setup a membership at one of these two boards or both. Each offers a free membership, but you are much better off spending the money on a paid membership. It will show prospects that you take the process seriously and it will provide …
Using Blogs For Small Business Seo
Using Blogs For Small Business Seo
Blogs are probably one of the easiest, cheapest and most effective marketing tools out there for small businesses today. They have so many benefits, especially in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO).
Google, and the other search engines love fresh content; same as humans, we don’t want to read out of date content, and neither do the search engines (not that they actually ‘read’ the content, but they don’t want to present old content to searchers). Because of this, Google will prioritise fresh content over old content in their results. So imagine you have recently created a blog post all about the benefits of your product – such as your particular brand of easy clean paint brushes. When someone searches for ‘easy to clean paint brushes’ in Google, there’s a good chance that your blog post on your super easy to clean paint brushes will show up high in the search results. Your result is likely to be higher than some of your competitors who just have a product page featuring their brushes, that they’ve not updated in six or more months. In terms of search engine optimisation, you must remember that search engines don’t rank websites, they rank pages – and they love brand spanking new pages! Having a site with regularly updated content and regular new pages also means that overall your site gets more ‘trust’ from the search engines. So some of the benefit from the new content will roll over to other pages as well, even if they haven’t been updated in a while.
Another benefit of adding fresh content to your site on a regular basis is that the search engine bots will crawl your site on a more regular basis – meaning that any crucial updates you’ve made to your site/content will be refreshed in the search engine results a lot quicker. Have you ever wondered what the ‘cached’ link means when you look at search results in Google? Clicking on this will show you the last time Google crawled that web page – so you can see exactly what Google is seeing. If you have updated your website with some new product pages, Google will not know about it until the next time it comes to crawl your site. So if you hardly ever update your site, Google will be in the habbit of only crawling your site on a monthly (or so) basis. This means that none of your new product pages will appear in the search engines results during this month – not until Google crawls your site again. However, if you constantly add new content to your site, Google will get into the habit of crawling your site a lot more often – the ideal crawl amount is daily, but realistically, weekly will do. Having your site crawled on a regular basis, means your brand new product pages will show up in the search engine results a lot quicker.
So we’ve established that the …
Great Affiliate Marketing Tips To Generate More Sales
This means that you will have to think of some brand new techniques to sell the products. The following article contains just a handful of the most proven affiliate marketing strategies.
Maximize business profits by signing up with affiliate marketing companies. Affiliate programs have been shown to generate much more site traffic than passive methods such as banner advertisements. Each prospective affiliate program should be carefully assessed based upon its popularity, ease of use, and compensation plan.
You can make good money through affiliate marketing, but that is only the case if you know what you’re doing. Having a high search ranking is an important aspect of running a website or blog. Completing this will allow you to have better affiliate links which leads to more money.
A few quality tips from a reliable book on affiliate marketing is much more valuable than information that is available from a multitude of sources. While you are establishing your business, you must be willing to work without compensation. Be aware that reading too many books could be considered a stalling tactic. Get the tips you need, stop reading and put them to use.
If you run a specialty goods store, such as a sports store, your customers are coming there with the idea of purchasing sports products. Your affiliate links will not be useful unless they are specific to your overall site content. It is more likely that you will get clicks on links that are related to the information contained no your site.
Only put your stamp of approval on products you believe in. The products you promote are a reflection of your website and yourself. Customers and clients will build their trust for you in accordance with the products you promote. Selecting good products and pricing them fairly is among the best ways to retain your customers.
Use a reputable tracking service that provides accurate reports of what you are owed. Affiliates have been known to incorrectly track sales, which can cause a loss of profits for you. If you have a good tracking system in place, you will be spared both the frustration and heartache that comes from losing out on money you should have received. While there may be some costs involved, you will find that it is well worth it.
If you rely on one or more affiliate partners for your revenue stream, communicate with them as often as possible. By increasing communication, you will do better in business and increase profits. Your most profitable affiliate marketing partners are pearls beyond price, and you should be willing to take extraordinary measures to cultivate and care for them.
Those affiliates in California who were suspended in 2011 can re-install their links now. There was a law that made California get rid of California affiliates but it has since been changed. If this change applies to you, sign up again.
These techniques are used because they’re an effective method of bringing in customers. Use it for your position and …
Want To Become Limitless in Your Business?
I was watching the movie Limitless on video the other evening. If you haven’t seen the movie, it involves a writer who has complete writers block and his book is due, his girlfriends leaving him and he’s going down fast.
He by chance, runs into an old girlfriends brother who offers him a “solution” to all his issues.
A simple pill makes him limitless. Suddenly he’s focused and can suddenly recall everything he’s ever read or seen. He can learn languages in days and accomplish whatever he desires. He becomes charismatic and unstoppable.
The only issue, he has to continue to take the pills. Plus…
A loan shark knows he has the pills, a big time stock broker knows he’s “cheating” with his picks and basically wants to bring him down and some people suspect something suddenly isn’t right with him. Won’t ruin the movie for you if haven’t seen it, but basically…
He’s just too good and knows too much.
You may be wondering that’s great but what does that have to do with my business Eric?
Great question and the answer Roll Please…
There may be no “magic pill” for your business, but just knowing even a little more than others and acting on that knowledge, can be the dramatic difference between you and your competitors being king.
It’s amazing how much we really do know currently but didn’t or don’t do anything with that knowledge.
How about the old “if I only would of took action on my idea” because someone else actually went out there and made your idea a reality first and is getting rich. Let me ask you since were on the subject…
What could you implement and take action on today that you know about, but been waiting for “another time” or the “right time”? There’s a great proverb that go’s…
“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
What one thing can you take action on and do today that your competitors aren’t doing?
Is there a way that you can not only show it, but also communicate it to your customers or prospective customers?
Once you implement one thing, then move on to the next and then the next and so on. This way you will always be breaking the limits in your field or niche.
Maybe it’s something obvious…Maybe it’s if you look…I ‘s there.…
Great Second Job Ideas
When searching for another job many people often want something which pays fairly decent it is not too strenuous. Other standards of the second job are often that it’s part-time with flexible hrs. Flexible hrs usually mean from 6pm-10pm Monday through Friday along with a couple of hrs around the weekend. A number of you might be prepared to work overnight for any couple of hrs. The fundamental purpose of another job would be to generate enough earnings to take care of your current lifestyle.
The shameful part is the fact that lots of people require a second job simply to maintain. Which means that either their first job just isn’t performing. Or they feel the need for extra money to purchase a new vehicle or perform some holiday shopping. Regardless of what your purpose in obtaining another job is you must do it now or soon or else you wouldn’t be searching Google for second job ideas.
Many people who are searching for another job are restricted to working at places like Walmart, McDonalds or perhaps your local supermarket chain. Incidents where get tele-marketing jobs simply because they hire fast because of our prime turn-over rate. They are jobs that you could only do for such a long time prior to being completely burned out. And when you are burned out usually everything and everybody who is around you suffers since your mood has had a turn for that worse.
What’s promising…
There’s one other way. It’s known as Multilevel Marketing. BEWARE!!! Multilevel Marketing isn’t for individuals people that aren’t motivated. It isn’t for individuals who begin to see the glass half empty. It isn’t for individuals which are easily swayed through the opinion of others. It isn’t for individuals that need to make fast, fast money without investing in real work. It isn’t for individuals that simply don’t have confidence in themselves.
Who will it be for? It’s for anyone that may think outdoors this area. It’s for individuals people which are self-motivated. It’s for individual’s people that will set goals and remain going to achieve them. It’s for individual’s people that know you will find different ways to construct earnings than employed by some company the only people who make real cash would be the people at the very top.
If you feel you poses the abilities to become network internet marketer I quickly counsel you to do your homework on Multilevel Marketing. When I only say investigate, obtain the opinion from individuals people which have been effective. Don’t get advice out of your cousin that became a member of Amway in 1997 and didn’t follow-through now he thinks all Multilevel Marketing possibilities are ripoffs.…
5 Common Mistakes Marketers Do When Engaging in Article Marketing
If you are beginning to use article marketing for your business there are some common mistakes marketers do when engaging in article marketing and you are going to want to avoid them when you begin your article marketing journey. Here are a few to look out for.
Not Informative Content
A common mistake most article marketers do is they think they can write about anything and that is not true. You want to write content that informs. People look at these article directories for information to help them. If your article can not inform and educate then the article will not do well at all nor will some article directories accept the articles you have written.
Not Quality Content
Another quite common mistakes/pitfalls marketers do when engaging in article marketing is not writing quality content. The actual true secret to article marketing is good writing plain and simple. So when you begin writing whether you want to write the articles yourself or hire someone to write for you, you need to write quality content. You do not want to make your article too technical, arrogant, fluffy, or long winded. Nor do you want to be cryptic. You are not writing for yourself anymore. You want to make sure your articles are concise, straight forward and to the point. You do not want to waste your reader’s precious time with anything extra. Your goal is to inform the reader. A lot of writers forget that.
Over Promoted Under Promoted
Sometimes marketers can over promote in their articles and some under promote because they do not want to appear they are over promoting. Remember you want to have quality content that is to inform your reader not to go on about what is going on at your website today. You do though want to insert links to your website. The best place to do this is in the resource box. Yet you can strategically insert them into the body of your article if you want to have them in the article body. Be sure to check with the article directory you are going to submit your articled for some allow hyperlinks to be incorporated in your article.
Not Using Keywords Right
The common pitfalls marketers do when engaging article marketing is failure to use keywords right. Using key words in your article is also an important aspect to getting traffic to your article then eventually to your website. Keywords can help get you a higher search engine results if you learn about them and use them wisely throughout your article.
Not Spell Checking
You’d be surprised how many may forget to use their spell checker and really give their articles grammar and spelling look over. This is a sadly a common mistake found in article writing so know if you’re beginning to use article marketing for your business to make sure you take the extra time to spell check your work once and twice. Maybe even invest in grammar spell checking software.…
Social Media Automation Tools to Increase Your Marketing ROI
Social Media Automation Tools to Increase Your Marketing ROI
Want to stop wasting time on social media and get better results from your social media marketing efforts? Then this list of social media automation tools is for you. One or more of these tools could help you to save time while increasing your marketing ROI:
Facebook to Twitter: This is a tool for Facebook which can be used with any profile or page. Just click the Facebook to Twitter link while you’re logged in and you can link your pages to Twitter and share your content instantly.
Gist: Gist is a handy tool which can keep track of all of your social networking, social media and email contacts with one easy to use web based interface; it’s also available for Outlook and Gmail, so you never have to lose an opportunity to connect with the people you need to keep in touch with.
Hoot Suite: If your business uses Twitter, this is one automation tool you’ll want. HootSuite allows you to write tweets and schedule them to post later and keep an eye on keywords as well as providing a lot of other useful functions. It can also be integrated with other apps, making it an especially helpful tool to have.
: This tool can update your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networking and social media pages all at once, or any combination you like. It’s free and works on mobile devices as well.
RSS: Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an easy way to aggregate the content you need in one place, saving you the time of going from one site to another or wading through content you don’t need. It works with Google Reader and other RSS feed readers and can also be used with Google Alerts for user specified keywords so you can keep an eye on what people are saying about your business.
Selective Tweets: This is an application for Facebook which allows you to decide which updates you want to share with your Twitter followers rather than sharing all of them. You don’t want everything on your Facebook page out there for the whole world and this tool gives you total control over what to share and what to keep to a smaller audience.
SocialOomph: This service lets you schedule your social media communications and post it automatically. There are both free and commercial versions available; only the commercial version handles Facebook page and profile posting and scheduling.
Tweet Old Posts: Sometimes you come up with blog posts which have information which is useful whether you publish it now or years from now. This plugin for lets you repost old content which is still relevant to your readers.
TweetBleep: This service lets you monitor any keywords you like on Twitter for $20 per month; the results are sent to you by email.
TwitterFeed: This cloud based service lets you share your blog content as you post it to Twitter, Facebook and other social media and …