small business

Promotional marketing is in its own renaissance right now. In a world of digital connections, absence of in-person interaction with customers, and a beleaguered economy, companies, and especially small businesses, are realizing that customers still appreciate a free gift and a personal touch.

Giveaways are incredibly inexpensive and profound in impact for a small business. A simple gift can pack more punch than your competitor’s massive advertising budget. Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Many small businesses make mistakes, and smart entrepreneurs will learn from the mistakes of others. With that in mind, we have compiled a list of some common mistakes that small business owners often make....

1. Knowing It All

We've all been there. After countless calls, meetings and an endless amount of work, you just can't get the customer to say "yes" and move forward. There can be hundreds of theories and ideas as to why this happens more times than we care to admit. Let's put all the theories aside and get to a solution you can use right now to determine if the customer is serious.

The problem in these types of situations is as a salesperson, you've invested time and effort and the last thing you want to do is quit and walk away. You are thinking, "The prospect could be very close to saying 'yes.'" It's either your pride that doesn't allow you to walk away or it's the fear of having to report to your sales manager that the work you've done with a prospect is not going to materialize into any business.

Brushing up on your marketing tactics is never a bad idea. Whether it is deciding on what new tactics to dive into, or how to make the ones you currently use better, sometimes the best idea is to just take a step back.

Look at your goals
When setting goals there are two things you need to consider--one is how attainable they are, and the second is how you are going to reach them.

As the now preferred deployment model for enterprise applications of all shapes and sizes, there is no doubt why the Software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry is outperforming all other business software sectors. SaaS is a method of deploying software over the Internet for licensed use of an application in an on-demand fashion. While in times past SaaS hardly made sense to embrace, technology advances and recent economic changes have put it back into the fast lanes of the Information Superhighway. Companies want to focus on what they do best. SaaS such as hosted exchange allows them to focus on their core business directives, outsourcing peripheral tasks to companies that do those tasks better or more efficiently than they could do in-house.

One of the most common questions asked by internet business owners is “How can I increase sales?” Many articles, ebooks and reports have been written on this subject and trying to absorb that information just tends to make us more confused than ever! Below are some easy, innovative ideas to increase sales that anybody can implement into their online marketing strategies.

In the post-financial-crisis world in which we now live, most business owners and entrepreneurs view commercial financing in a completely different light than they did before. With traditional bank loans getting harder to obtain, many owners have had to look “outside the box” for the capital they need to sustain and grow their firms.

The age of social networking is more than upon us-it is becoming INGRAINED in us. Many of us are so addicted that we can hardly get out of bed before we begin checking to see status updates on Facebook and Twitter. Reconnecting with old friends and staying in touch with current ones are great reasons to use social networks-but what about using them to market your business?

The fact is, those same networks that you are using to share pictures and reminisce about old times can be great sources of income for your business. In addition, there are plenty of social networks out there that are made specifically for doing just that.

For those of you blogging away on wordpress.com, there is a new upgrade you should be aware of—PubSubHubbub. No that is not a new tongue twister, but rather an automatically integrated update that updated wordpress.com blogs to RSS feeds using PUSH (short for PubSubHubbub).

Restaurants, fast food chains, and diners all share a similar makeup that can ease new owners and start-ups into the process of opening for business. From the kitchen staff to the pos system registers, there are priorities that have been proven effective by years of experience. At the same time, these businesses also face the threat of being too standard in an age that has focused much of its interest on change.