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Make a Small Business Feel Much Bigger

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So you own a small business. And when you say “small business”, you mean small. Real small. Small enough to be intimidated by the much larger business sharks out there. Maybe you’re just a small group of people working from home on the same project. Maybe you’re even one or two people running the entire thing from a bedroom! However small your small business is, there are things you can do to increase your stature.

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Just because you’re not a massive company with vast riches, it doesn’t mean you can’t sit at the same table. You can get many of the same opportunities if you play your cards right. The best thing to do, if you’re a little anxious about the size of your company, is to make it look bigger. It’s true that some prospective clients or partners will be reluctant to work with really small businesses. So here are some tips that will help your company seem much bigger than it is.

Build an amazing website

A surefire way of detecting a really small business is by looking at their website. If the design is basic, haphazard or messy, then it can be a dead giveaway. The fact is that your website is how many people are going to be introduced to your business. It can’t look like something a newbie to Geocities or Freewebs might have come with.

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Look at the websites that bigger companies are using. They’re sleek, modern, easy-to-use, innovative. You want to spend time on them just because they’re a pleasure to visit. Consider working with a web design agency to ensure a professional look.

Get a prestigious address

A company that works in the heart of big business city is going to look more attractive to potential customers. If your office address is in the middle of some suburb on the outskirts of town, then people will know you’re pretty small fry. That, of course, shouldn’t reflect on the quality of your service. But people may make their judgements nonetheless. This is why you should consider working with commercial movers such as myBekins. If you can get your business into the big commercial cities of your country, then you’re going to have a lot more prestige to work with!

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If you don’t have the resources for a direct move, you can use a virtual address. This is an address in a desired business location that you can use as your official address.

Become incorporated

Incorporation is the process of officially forming a company with the government. Of course, you will have had to have declared yourself as a company to your national revenue service in order to get taxed correctly. This isn’t all there is to do, though.

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If you get your company registered officially as a limited company, this can make all the difference. You will officially be a company, with the ‘LTD’ tag and everything! This can help your business look a lot stronger on your website and other relevant copy. This can affect the amount of tax you’re paying, though. It will usually affect it for the better, but you might want to consult an accountant before taking this step.

Powerful Marketing Gems To Help You Build Your Brand

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Good marketing can be the difference between a company that is just surviving and one that is flourishing. But with a glut of information out there on what the right way to do things is, it can be hard to weed out the gems from the dirt. That is where the following information can be useful.

Color is vital

So, it may sound a little basic to include color into your marketing materials, but it really isn’t. Color is much more of a complex thing that we often give it credit for. In fact, certain colors can evoke particular emotions, something that can have a huge effect on how customers relate to and feel about your business.

Marketing is the business of getting your company brand out there and getting potential customers to respond positively to it. That means choosing the right color or color combination for your brand is very important. For some more information on this check out this article on which color relate to which emotions and how you can utilize this is your logo and brand creation.

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Money well spent

Marketing is a specialist subject. It is something that people go to college for years to study. It’s also something that changes all of the time very quickly. That means reading a few how-to books doesn’t qualify you to do the in depth detailed work that many campaigns need to be successful.

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It’s not that you can’t have an educated overview of what is going on. It just means that you do need to do is raid the coffers to invest in a professional to do things are pivotal for your company. Such as video making and contract creation.

Of course, many businesses struggle with the cost of employing the best marketing professionals, because they have to outlay the money before they get to see the results.

However, it is well worth finding the finances by reinvesting current profits or going to a provider like Swift Corporation for a loan or an advance that is easy to replay back in installments.  You can even risk going into your business overdraft, for a job well done. As paying peanuts gets you monkeys, not really the caliber of worker you want looking after your vital customer facing image!

New content is king

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As you may or may not know after Google’s recent Fred update, the way that search engines respond to marketing tools like content is changing… again. This means that you have to stay current and move with the times to remain relevant and high in the search engine ranks.

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To do this, consider the type of content you produce. Eschew the general and go for something that more specifically answers the possible questions that can spring up around a topic.

Also, the value of video content is now huge due to this update, so consider making clips that show the customer how to use your products, or make things relevant to the field you are in. Some great example of this are the Buzzfeed videos made for Pinterest, which play even when they aren’t clicked on, drawing people’s attention.

Giving Your Business The Promotion It Needs

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When we start a business, we are often clueless to the types of promotion that it actually needs. In this day and age, we are living in a digital world. With this, most of the focus is on promotion via means that we can access through our computers, tablets and smartphones. This isn’t to say that that’s not a good idea – more than half of the world are connected to the internet, and it’s the biggest resource that we’ve ever had in our whole history which is open to getting ourselves out there and communicating with our target demographic. So are we missing other options?

Social Media

Although on the rise, social media is not utilised as much as it could or should be. This is a vital tool in business promotion, especially as certain platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have invested so much into making it compatible for businesses – especially small businesses. Their data analytics can prove to be such a useful tool when assessing who your posts are reaching, where in the world they’re reaching and how many people are actually seeing them. You can pay to promote the posts that you’re putting up so you could have the potential of reaching a global audience. You can’t get much better than that. Make sure that you are clued up on the rules of business for each platform that you are using – they are all very different in terms of how they are meant to be used. For example, if you put out one post a day on Facebook, this could be seen as being spammy. Put out one post a day on Twitter and it’ll be history and off people’s feeds in as little as 4 minutes.

Don’t Forget Tradition – Consider The Past

Just because this is the rise of the age of technology doesn’t mean that we solely have to rely on that in order to get our brand message seen. Think about all of the traditional methods that people used back when computers weren’t in wide circulation. Newspapers and magazines are still going round, as are leaflets. Places such as Blue Bee Printing are still able to provide customers with die-cut magnets to hand out for promotional purposes – bumper magnets are still in use, as when will people ever stop driving cars? Not any time soon, that’s for sure. The more that you think outside of the box and consider what people are still going to go for are ways that you can promote your business without really trying. Handing out little things for free such as key rings, mugs and other trinkets that people can utilise within their home with a little bit of company branding on it ensures that you will always be the first port of call should they need you for the particular thing that you can provide. Letting your customers spread the branding for you is one of the best things that you can do – and that they can unknowingly do for you.

7 Reasons Your Website Conversion Rate Is Low

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We often hear about the importance of website traffic. SEO and marketing companies often promise to multiply their clients’ traffic by huge amounts. But, in reality, traffic means nothing if your website users don’t turn into customers. In fact, if you are getting tons of traffic, but users are simply visiting your website and then leaving, it is something to be very alarmed about. It means that there is something wrong with your website, and this is why your conversion rate is low. Are you making one of the following mistakes?

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  1. You are attracting the wrong audience – Often, conversion rates suffer when you are attracting the wrong audience to your website. This occurs when you are targeting the wrong keywords, posting content on unrelated websites, and generating content that does not appeal to your target market.
  2. Your content is uninspiring – The importance of interesting, original, engaging and informative content cannot be ignored. Getting users to your website is one thing, but you need to keep them there, and the only way to do that is with inspiring content that encourages them to engage. Take a look at this blog post for more information on creating content that converts.
  3. Your website lacks consistency – Your internal CTAs and external campaigns set specific expectations, and your sign up pages and landing pages need to deliver on these expectations. Message inconsistency is a huge problem that will result in people looking for a business that is more reliable.
  4. You aren’t tracking current website performance – This is one of the biggest mistakes business owners make today. How are you ever going to boost the performance of your website if you don’t know how it is performing at present? With expert analytics and reporting for your small business website, you will be able to determine where you are going wrong, enabling you to make the necessary improvements that will boost your conversion rate.
  5. Your calls to action are vague – In simple terms, if you don’t tell your website users the steps they should take, they aren’t going to take them. You could design the best home page in the world, but if it doesn’t lead anywhere, the bounce rate is still going to be high. Your calls to action need to be clear and specific to what the user is looking for.
  6. You don’t use persuasive language – The chances are you are going to need to be persuasive, unless you have an offer that is completely irresistible. You need to address the problems that your target audience experience, and paint a picture of what they can expect once they have purchased your product or taken advantage of your service.
  7. Your product or service is ill-defined – Lastly, one of the main reasons why conversion rates are high is when a firm’s product or service is not defined effectively. You may have an incredible product or service to offer, but if you aren’t doing it justice in terms of the description, no one is going to be interested. Write the description from the customer’s perspective; think about what matters to them most.

30 Minutes To Build Your Freelancing Blog

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If you’ve always had a soft spot for the digital world, you may be interested in embracing the blogger life. Bloggers work primarily online – although they can do their research and meetings offline too if this is necessary for their articles – and have found a way to monetize their writing hobby. Here’s a little hint for you, it isn’t the actual content that generates revenues, but the advertising that can be published on the website, as display ads or as part of a link building exchange – all in the sake of white hat SEO. So here’s how to build your perfect blog site in 30 minutes only.

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Time 0-5 Min: Get The Basics Sorted Out

Before you start writing, you need to consider how you want your blog to be called. This will be the domain name of your blog, which is the URL of your home page. Domain names are renowned for being extremely difficult to find, so if you need a little inspiration, why not try a domain name generator like this one. It’s a brilliant way to find awesome combinations! Additionally, you will need to sort out a server solution for your website – here for ideas – , as most blogging platforms only offer limited storage space for free. If you want to become a professional blogger, you’ll need to produce a lot of content; ergo you need a lot of storage space!

Time 5-10 Min: Shape It

Now, it’s time to be looking out for design and layout options. First of all, think about your logo, as a logo will make your blog appear professional. You can find plenty of affordable tools online to design your logo, or you can simply get in touch with a designer on Fiverr.com if you want a unique touch. You will find some great blogging platforms, such as WordPress, that offers hundreds of customizable layouts to give your blog its identity. Some come even for free, so in a matter of clicks, you can have the template you want.

Time 10-25 Min: Build Your Brand Message

It’s now time to prepare all the main elements of your blog: Build your brand online, as seen on the blog. You need to know what your brand is, which means you need to know what makes you unique as a blogger. Are you a mother of three talking about parenting? Are you a survivor of a disease who wants to help people recover their health issues? Define who you are, and make sure to explain it in your About-me page. Also, add a contact page with your blog-related social media platforms – which you need to create – and a contact form for readers who want to contact you.

Time 25-30 Min: Go Life

Last, but not least, your first post on the blog needs to be as good as you can get it. How to write the perfect blog? It’s simple. Focus on who you are writing for – for instance, if you are the mother of three mentioned earlier, it’s likely that you are writing to all parents, future, and present – to identify what your audience is interested in. It will give you the boundaries of topics you can discuss. And then start writing your first post! It doesn’t have to be long – 300 to 500 words is a healthy average. Finally, check your grammar before publishing!