by Amber Miller | May 1, 2017 | Blog, Business Development, Networking
Are you wondering how you can put you and your business in front of more professionals in your industry? There are plenty of ways to do it without spending a fortune. We’ve compiled a list of five things you can start doing right away to help drive potential customers to your business.
1. Attend Networking Events
The quickest way to meet other professionals in your field is to get out there and attend networking events. If you get the opportunity to present at any of the events, do it! Contributing to the community often results in you being the first contact people think of when they’re in the market for an expert in your field.
2. Creat Your Own Event!
Take it one step further and create your own networking event! Come up with something simple that would attract other professionals in your industry and hold a monthly meeting. It would be as simple as hosting an hour meetup at your office or a local pub. You could talk about something related to the products you sell that would be interesting for other professionals to learn. Providing free information and putting yourself out there as an expert in your industry can really help draw in potential customers.
3. Sponsor and Lead an Organization
If you do the math, it’s actually a lot cheaper to sponsor different organizations than pay the per meeting cost. If your product or service is a good fit for some of the professional organizations near you, then sponsor them! You’ll get exposure at every meeting and everytime they communicate with their members. Take it one step further and lead your own organization. It’s the best way to get the most out of your organizations and connect with some bright minds.
4. Support A Cause
Customers love to hear how your business is helping the community around you. Support a local cause and do some good for both you and your community. Get involved in local charities, volunteer to help clean up the city, sponsor events, etc. It’s really not hard to get started, and everyone(including the earth) will reap the benefits.
5. Be Helpful and Stay in Touch
It’s hard growing a small business. If you come across something that’s really helped your business, share it with your industry. Becoming an industry expert and answering questions is a great way to find potential customers without putting in a lot of effort. Make yourself available by getting involved in social media and stay connected with your clients.
Are you still struggling to bring in potential clients? Shoot us a message or give us a call – we’ve got a whole list of ideas we can customize to your particular business.
by Amber Miller | Apr 21, 2017 | Blog, Business Development, Marketing
Marketing in the digital world is a whole different ball game compared to competing with your local market. How in the heck does a small business compete with those huge corporations who have teams of marketing people dedicated to making the company more prominent than you? It can seem like an impossible task, but we’re here to tell you… it’s not.
In fact, there is A LOT you can do to boost traffic to your website. If we told you about all the ways, the blog post would never end. We’re going to hit you with three things we think will grab you that new traffic in no time. So, without further ado…
1. Build An Email List
Didn’t know you could boost traffic through an email list did ya? Newsletters are actually a really great way to promote your website. Make sure to add a sign up form on your website and encourage your customers to sign up. Use the newsletter to promote new sales, events, and guess what, stuff on your website!
2. Blog Like Crazy
Content is king and honestly, he’s always going to rule. If you want spiders crawling your website, you need to post high quality content and post it often. We recommend at least getting one blog up a week if not more. You can talk about anything… industry news, new products or services, how your company is impacting your community, how to articles, the list goes on. Not sure what to post about? Shoot us a note – we’ve got lot’s of topic ideas for you.
3. Optimize Your Site For SEO
All that content you’re posting isn’t going to do you any good if it’s not optimized for search engines. There’s no point in trying to manipulate search engines these days. Your main focus should always be to make your website as readable as possible for robots crawling your site. Run reports frequently with tools like Google Analytics and Search Console. They can help you find issues with your site so you can optimize the heck out of it to get better results.
Are you looking for some other ways to boost traffic to your website? Like we said above, we’ve got a plethora of ideas. Just shoot us a note and lets get talking. Small business to small business, we got your back.
by Amber Miller | Mar 29, 2017 | Blog, Business Development, Delegating, Entrepreneur
If you’re trying to run a small business with little help, then you know how overwhelming things can become. Most of the time financial resources come into play, or people feel they can complete projects quicker themselves. The truth of the matter is if you ever want to succeed in business, you’re going to need to delegate.
When you hire a virtual assisting team to help run your business, you’re hiring a team of professionals that will most likely complete a job quicker and more efficiently. In addition, allowing a team to take over all of your administrative, web marketing, and web development tasks will save you a lot of money in the long run. This allows business owners to get back to what they do best, bringing in new customers and expanding their business.
Here are three tips on how you can delegate successfully:
- Figure out what you’re willing to delegate
When you’re first starting out, you should consider assigning smaller tasks and work up to the larger, more complicated tasks. This will give your virtual assisting team time to learn your procedures, policies, and way of doing things.
- Pick the right person for the job
Find out the strengths and weaknesses of each of your team members and pass along projects to those you believe are the best fit for the job. A couple of things to look for in virtual assistants include; confidence, self-motivation, and able to work without constant supervision.
- Make sure you communicate CLEARLY!
This is probably the most important key to great delegation. No matter what the task, always be upfront about expectations, deadlines, and provide all of the information the team or person will need to complete the goals for the task. Communication should be clear and concise — the more direction you give your team, the better your chances of them coming back with exactly what you wanted.
Delegating in business is critical to your success. Set yourself up for the future by investing in yourself now. Get started with an experienced virtual assistant team like Smart to Finish that can make your business succeed and your life a little easier.
by Amber Miller | Mar 21, 2017 | Blog, Business Development, Marketing
Once you have a site up and running, your next task is to entice people to sign up for your email list, membership sites, or buy your products/services. There are several ways you can do this and it is a good idea to try each of these methods to maximize your signup rate. Below we’ve included 5 ways you can effectively get people to sign up.
• Sell to your list
If you have a list, hopefully they are already accustomed to buying things from you. Current customers are a very powerful thing when it comes to selling new products or services. They’ve already bought from you before which means they’ve trusted your brand before — who is stopping them from trusting you again?
• Create a list
If you don’t have a list set up – work to create one. Offering free goodies in exchange for emails is a sure fire way to building an email list. Write an ebook about a topic in your niche market – something that will enrich your customers in some way.
• Sales page
You’ll definitely need to create a sales page (also called a landing page) to direct traffic to. If the sales page is highly effective then all you need to do is direct more traffic to the page to get signups. Test test test and review!
• Market the sales page
This may seem obvious but once the sales page is up and running, you’ll want to market it using any means you can think of. You can put a link for it on your blog or website, use social networking, email and content marketing, etc. Basically, employ any means you’d use to market a standard website.
• Start an affiliate program
This one is really fun. Once you get the affiliate program up and running, just start an affiliate program. This means that other people will promote your landing page to their lists and you’ll reach a wider range of people. Granted, it will cut into your profits but this is an easy way to get people coming to your site.
This list of ways to get people to sign up for the site is by no means complete. If you can think of other methods, by all means use them and share them in the comments below! Contact us if you could use a couple other ideas on getting people to sign up for you stuff!
by Amber Miller | Mar 18, 2017 | Blog, Business Development, Entrepreneur, Memberships
Are you looking for other ways to increase profits using the web? Aren’t we all? One thing to consider is starting a membership site. It’s really quite simple… set up a website, charge a monthly fee, offer your customers awesome content, keep it running, aaaaaand profit. Ok – maybe there’s a little bit more to it than that, so that’s why we’ve got this handy list of benefits to owning a membership site.
• Dominate the competition in your niche
If you have a membership site, you’ll stand out amongst the people who have a score of e-books but nothing else to offer their customers.
• Get more money out of your list
You may have heard that “the money is in the list”. And, you’ll want to get as much money from your list members as you can. A membership site is the perfect way to do this.
• Increase customer loyalty
If your site has great content and you respond promptly to all queries, a membership site will increase customer loyalty a lot better than selling individual products. This is because the customer will feel as if you’re more accessible.
• Develops a sense of community
Membership sites that have a forum help encourage a sense of community. So not only do the members interact with you, but they can interact with each other. This is a good selling point and a benefit for the owner of the site because it is another thing that will help increase your customer’s loyalty.
• Great way to build a list
If you want to start a free membership site, or offer portions of your membership site for no cost, it can present an effective way to build a list.
• Develop passive income
Although internet marketing is a great career, the money can be a little unstable. A membership site is a good way to not only make more money, but to make the income you do bring in a lot steadier.
• They don’t need to be complicated
A lot of people assume that a membership site is complicated. Not necessarily. There are plenty of options that are simple, such as exclusive content delivered via autoresponder.
Back to that profit, let’s look at the math… say you have a membership site that offers exclusive content related to your niche. If you charge $19.95 a month and have 100 subscribers, that translates to nearly $2000 profit and all you needed to do was refresh the content and make sure the site is running properly.
Not a web person? Or a writer? We can help you with both. Shoot us a note at Smart to Finish – we can build, maintain, and market your new membership site and really make it a seamless process.
by Amber Miller | Feb 14, 2017 | Blog, Business Development, Delegating, Entrepreneur
These days, it seems like the world is moving way too fast for any of us to keep up. If you’re trying to run a small business while trying to keep up with the hustle and bustle of life today, it’s especially difficult. There’s just so much to do and so little time to do it. We’ve all experienced times where you’re so bogged down with stuff to do it seems like you’re never going to get to everything you need to. Where does the time go?
If you feel like you’ve lost track of time and you’re ready to take it back, then read on my friend. We have compiled a list of five ways you can take back your free time and be more in control of your availability. So without further ado…
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Where is all of your time going in the first place?
Before we can figure out how to better manage your time, we need to know where it’s all going in the first place. Track your time for a couple of weeks and see where you’re spending the most of it.
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Time to Eliminate
Now that you’ve figured out where all your time is going, you’re ready to start eliminating those non essential tasks you’re spending way too much time on. Have a virtual assistant or part time employee? Delegate these tasks out!
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Avoid Multi-tasking
I know, I know, this is much easier said than done. But think about it… if you focus on one important thing at a time and just keep busting them out, eventually, you’re going to be through your to-do list and it’s only noon… Time for a lunch time margarita, don’t ya think?
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Set Aside Time to Communicate
Only check email a couple of times a day and set a specific time aside to do it! Continuously checking your email throughout the day is extremely wasteful because you’re focusing on more than one item, and you’re going to get distracted by new items coming in all day long. Just stop. Check first thing in the morning and after lunch, and that’s it!
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Learn it’s OK to say NO
You need to figure out what your limits are. If you’re already stretching your time thin, say NO. It’s really OK to say it if you just can’t manage the work. Your customers will be much happier waiting for products and services if they know you can focus your entire energy making sure they’re getting the best of your products and services. If you’re rushing through too many client orders at once, things can get messed up, mistakes can be made, and customers can get upset.
Still having trouble trying to figure out time management? We would love to help get you back on the road to vacations and free time with the family. Contact us today to get started.
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