Small Business Blog Bounty

If you want to learn about what’s new in small business, go to the experts. This list, which is by no means all-inclusive, features some of our favorite small business blogs.

Counterintuitive Lead Generation

If you think lead generation via the web and marketing to current clients doesn’t work, think again.

How Well Do You Know Your Customers?

As you push into new markets or introduce new products and services or line extensions, who will shop you? Who’s most likely to respond to your offers and the positioning of your products or services?

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)—Your Competitive Advantage

To capture a larger market share and be viable, sustainable and profitable, you absolutely need to differentiate or distinguish your business, products and/or services from your competitors. In other words, you need to make your business special in the eyes of your customers and prospects.

Putting Statistics to Work for You

While there are many fee-based companies that offer demographic and other statistical information designed to make your marketing more effective, there are several great sources that will cost you nothing

Video Conferencing’s Clear Improvement

As rising fuel prices and travel cutbacks continue to shake up the airline industry, business travel has become increasingly expensive. While video conferencing isn’t a replacement for face-to-face meetings, it can enhance long-distance communication and minimize travel needs.

DHL and One World: Bringing You a Global Advantage

DHL’s partnership with One World Yellow Pages helps bring your business from local to global overnight. If you’re looking for a way to promote your business, source new products or build leads online, check out One World.

Your Competition Has a Personality

Competitive research can take any number of forms, but it may be best to go right to the top. Start by looking at the way leadership at any competitor makes its decisions; it’s actually the key to understanding how those you’re up against will move.

How Your Website Communicates Your Competitive Edge

Often, your website is the first (and sometimes only) place that customers and prospects find out about you. It’s critical that it be a true point of differentiation for you, clearly communicating your value proposition and your competitive edge.

Building a Blog Strategy

Once you’ve made the decision to develop a blog, you need to go in with a true strategy. Publishing a blog is a long-term commitment, and you need to make sure you’re adequately prepared

The Art of Pitchcraft

In terms of growing your business, a clear, compelling elevator pitch is essential. It needn’t be a single sentence, but the delivery ought to be measured in seconds, not minutes

Functional, Flexible Widgets

If you’re seeking inexpensive ways to upgrade your website or blog—to add valuable functionality—consider widgets. These mini-applications are easy to implement and can make your site or blog work harder than you might have imagined.

Building a Unique Customer Experience

You’re only as great as your customers say you are. While 80% of companies think they deliver a superior customer experience, less than 10% actually do. So how do you bridge the gap between perception and reality to deliver a great customer experience?

Sales Training Toolkit

You may not be a salesperson, but you’ll need to develop the skillsets that can help you market and sell effectively, regardless how great your product or service is (the truth is that nothing sells itself). This roundup of articles and tools can help you build on your base of sales knowledge.

Gauging Return on Marketing Dollars (ROMD)

We often think of any business function that involves use of time and expertise in terms of return on investment (ROI). If you break the functions down by discipline, it may be worth your while to measure your customer and prospect outreach activities based on ROMD, or return on your marketing dollar.

Get Found with Local Search Engines

Local search engines let users choose their searches by state, city or even neighborhood, which makes the process more efficient. And the pricing gives small businesses the opportunity to play on a field they might not have thought possible before.

Advertising: Getting to the Right Message

Business owners who are not in the writing business often struggle to create copy that sells, and many avoid placing ads or doing direct mail because they don’t know what to say. Asking yourself these seven key questions before you ever create any advertising or marketing message can help you effectively get the word out about your business.

You Are a Salesperson

When you don’t have a staff out there beating the bushes for you, you’re the only one that fills your sales pipeline. You may have developed a great product or service, but you’re not a salesperson. The truth is, whether you need to make cold calls, create a presentation or build sales relationships in any other way, selling is different for the small business owner.

Positioning Your Business for Success

Why is positioning important? Whether you’re a builder, lawyer, sell baseball bats, jewelry or vitamins, you want “shelf space” in your prospects’ minds when they’re ready to buy.

Web Analytics: Know Your Audience

As opposed to other types of marketing analysis (e.g., direct mail), web analytics—the process of collecting, measuring and analyzing user activity on a website—offers real-time, in-depth answers.

The Danger of Do-Not-Mail

Don’t look now, but our ability as businesses to reach prospects and customers is becoming increasingly regulated and difficult. The next marketing medium on the block? Direct mail. For the past year, we’ve seen a rise in states considering Do-Not-Mail registry

Getting Personal with PURLS

As technology becomes increasingly inexpensive, every business can afford to target customers more effectively, and the web has become the great leveler in getting us there. Personalized websites (PURLs) are powerful tools that can enhance the effectiveness of any marketing program.

Circumvent the Sales Slump Cycle

We all know the deadly grip of selling slumps: you have a series of bad days and missed sa1es, you aren’t hitting your forecast and you can’t stop worrying about it. These strategies can help minimize the downward spiral of a slump.

Building Your Base

Prospecting is tough work, regardless of what you sell. Before you put anyone in your ongoing database, make sure you prequalify them as best you can. The better you know your prospects, the more likely you are to make a sale.

Effective E-mail Marketing

E-mail marketing hasn’t been the tool everyone thought it would be just a decade ago, but there are ways to make it more effective.

Expanding Your Reach

At some point your current target markets or channels will not fully support your growth plans. If you decide to move into a new market, make sure you do your homework.

Keeping Customers for Life

If you think about the money you spend to generate the customers you have, doesn’t it make sense keep as much of that “customer capital” as possible? The key to making the most of your captive base is understanding which customers have true “lifetime value.”

Building Traffic During the Summer Lull

Getting customers in the door during prime vacation time can be tough. Often, the temptation is simply to lower prices down the line. That can be a risky proposition.
There are ways to create promotions and build business that don’t have to cut into margins at all.

Loyalty Breeds Customer Devotion

Since 1981, customer loyalty programs have exploded. But do they work for small business? Yes they do, provided you keep it simple and be clear on what you’re trying to achieve.

Service Brings Customers Back

Statistics show that more than 50% of us are unhappy with the service and attention we receive from those who sell to us. A well executed, effective customer service strategy provides the most treasured asset for a small business: repeat customers.

Creating the Right Rebate Program

Rebate programs have been around as long as they have because of their proven sales lift. If you have the right offer, keep the promotion clear and concise and make the redemption process simple and speedy, you’ll have a solid, successful program.

Driven by Word of Mouth

No ad or marketing you’ll pay for has the power of a referral. A referral program has the potential to increase your sales from a targeted audience at a low cost, attract new, high-value customers and much more.

Gauging Customer Satisfaction

Are your customers happy with your products and services? If you don’t know, just ask them. Developing a customer satisfaction survey doesn’t have to be complex.

Loyalty Program Toolkit

A loyalty program is one way to keep your best customers closer to you and get the most lifetime value from each one. Here’s why they work and how they work.

Harnessing the Power of Podcasts

As a marketing tool, a podcast is a great way to easily educate prospects and customers of the key benefits and features of your product or service. “It’s also a way to build trust, differentiate your brand and maintain a relationship after the sale,” notes well-known digital media expert Jake Ludington.

Sales: Getting Your Foot in the Door

As a business owner, the sales mindset can sometimes be tough to get into. Kathleen Gage, co-author of 101 Ways to Get Your Foot in the Door and head of sales consultant firm TurningPoint, offers a range of tips and tactics that can help you prospect more effectively.

Simple-to-Implement Customer Loyalty Programs

Customer loyalty programs aren’t limited to the big retailers. The truth is that there are a number of loyalty programs that cost little to implement while increasing your business by 20% to 30%. When you consider that it takes up to five times the money to acquire a new customer than it does to gain repeat business from existing customers, a loyalty program makes a great deal of sense.

Charting the Forces That Affect Competition

You know your business, but understanding the overall market environment in which you operate can seriously boost your potential. Looking beyond trends and drilling deeper into the analysis of the competitive landscape can position you for long-term success.

Seeing Yourself Through Customers’ Eyes

If you survey your customers regularly or even hold focus groups, you may have an idea about what they’re thinking. But a mystery shopping program can tell you what they’re experiencing.

Get Your Proposal Noticed

Imagine a prospect to whom you’ve pitched sitting with your response to their RFP. Actually, you need to imagine them surrounded by a pile of responses, which is a more realistic scenario. How can you climb to the top of that pile?

Raising Prices without Guilt

At some point, market demands—higher cost of goods or services sold, price cutting by the competition, etc.—will force you to raise prices. It’s never an easy decision, but there are ways to make it work without too much strife for you and your customers.

Intelligence on Intelligence

Gathering data on your competitors not only shows you where your business stands in the market, but it can help you see where the real opportunities are. These articles and analytical models can help you formulate a plan and then execute on it based on your needs.

The Evolution of Networking

The web has changed the way we communicate on almost every level, and networking is no exception. Network sites like LinkedIn, Ryze, Ziggs, sales-specific site Spoke, the Downtown Women’s Club (DWC) and others mix both social and professional elements to help push business agendas.

Keys to Sales Forecasting

Among the critical elements for which you need both a short-term and long-term plan is sales; it’s the foundation for the success of your business and sets the bar for expenses, profits and growth going forward.

Upselling: Dig Deeper into Your Customer Base

Upselling—moving a customer into an upgrade of a product or service or shifting them from an entry-level purchase to a higher-end one—is the best way to gain more revenue from existing customers. And done right, the process makes it easier the customer to buy.

Market Research on a Shoestring: Do-It-Yourself Focus Groups

A focus group can tell you the things customers won’t tell you unless you ask. They might think it, but they won’t volunteer information about your business, service, product or anything else until you give them the opportunity. The good news? A do-it-yourself focus group can help you get that vital information without it costing an arm and a leg.

Building the Do-It-Yourself Focus Group

A focus group can be an inexpensive way to get vital intelligence about how the market perceives your product or service, where you’re hitting the mark or how to improve it. This group of articles, tools and resources can help you build a group from scratch or find the help you need if you’re seeking professional assistance.

Debunking 5 Common Sales Misconceptions

Understanding these common mistakes will help you avoid them and make the most of the time spent building sales..

Is It Time to Raise Prices?

One way to immediately improve sales is by raising prices. But when is it the right time for an uptick?

Effective Lead Generation

Making any sale starts with solid lead generation. Here’s how you can identify the best prospects for your business.

Outsourcing Sales: Gaining More by Spending Less

Among the benefits of taking sales out-of-house is the opportunity to gain increased exposure in new markets, conserve capital, test-market new products and, of course, keep overhead down.

Boost Your Bottom Line with Affiliate Marketing

If you want to bring in new dollars and extend your reach on the web, an affiliate marketing program might be right for you.

Affiliate Marketing Resources

A roundup of affiliate marketing resources.

How Entrepreneurial Execution Determines Success

Entrepreneurial execution is about bringing together the right team and aligning all aspects of the company toward achieving a common goal and doing it with maximum efficiency. If your product, service or concept is a good one, success or failure is determined by execution.

The Roots of Service: Thanking Your Best Customers

The most successful customer service often comes out as a “thank you” to your best customers. It may come in a subtle form, such as an acknowledgement each time you deal with a frequent customer, or from a full-blown customer-appreciation program.

Web Surveys Offer Fast Feedback

If you’re looking for feedback about your products, services or overall customer satisfaction, try a web-based survey. Offered by a variety of companies, web surveys are inexpensive, easy to create and a good way to get information from customers quickly.

Competitive Analysis Resources

If you’re looking for ways to document and chart your competitors, these resources, including in-depth explanations about competitive assessment and free competitive analysis templates, can help.

Getting a Return on Your Offer

What makes an offer really work? The success of any offer is based on four key factors: targeting, clarity, a focus on value and urgency.

Multiplying Your Brand

Professionalizing your business often starts with the way customers and prospects perceive you. So your “business face” to the world should be cohesive in every way. If you brand your stationary one way, but your advertisements a different way, for example, you won’t get the extra impact of having your brand seen multiple times.

The Benefits of Sales Reps

When you need help selling and you don’t have the income for a full-time hire, a sales representative or rep firm—someone with the right contacts who earns money only if you do—may be the right answer.

Where Are Your Customers Coming From?

You can learn a lot about where you’ll find your next customers from demographic information. We offer a regional view of what consumers look like, how they spend and what they make—information that can help you effectively position your products and services.

Building Your E-mail Database

If done right, e-mail communication can be an excellent, inexpensive way to reach people with special offers, news about your business and more. The problem is that we’re all constantly bombarded with spam and useless junk e-mail. But if you can effectively reach customers who’ve already used your products or services, you’re speaking to an audience that’s predisposed to read your message and respond. Here’s how to get those e-mail addresses.

Branding Basics: Understanding the Brand Trilogy

A total approach to branding requires creating the brand, selling it and fulfilling its promise.

Emotional Branding

Your personal experiences and roots in business can offer a compelling tale that may help to strengthen your brand.

Branding Resources

Resources to help you grow and strengthen your brand.