7 Steps to Web Sites That Sell

Your web site is like a fight of stairs into your business. Once you’ve got prospects to your home page – your online front door – you want to move them to action. If you miss a step or two, prospects will fall and won’t make it in the door to your business. If you put the last step first and your first step last, prospects won’t find the steps you want them to take. There is a hierarchy of information and elements you need to present to prospects to make it easy for them to become customers and clients.

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Simple Ways to Move Your Business Forward

Life as an entrepreneur is tough, more so if you are operating on a limited budget. Adversity is a constant companion on every business owner’s journey to success, and you need all the help you can get. Below are some simple things you can do to push your business forward: Establish or rethink your business strategies You need to have an overall strategy for your business to help you know where you want to be. Having a clearly-laid out plan for your business will prepare you to cope with business problems, and deal with any obstacles that crop up in

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Improve Your Follow Through Internet Marketing Skills

Are you getting people to your site, but just not turning out the number of sales you’d like to see? Perhaps you’re not following through with each visitor as much as is needed. No matter how good your promotion is, you won’t be taking full advantage of it until you have a complete follow through plan. Naturally, there are many ins and outs regarding getting more sales from your web site. However, let’s walk through the basic plan you should have in place. From there, you’ll be able to adjust all those ins and outs as necessary. Advertising The main

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Is Your Marketing Strategy Killing Your Profits?

With the wrong marketing strategy you could be killing your profits and limiting your business. Your marketing strategy is like the driver in a car, with marketing tactics being the engine. If you know where you want to go and how to get there, your marketing tactics will help you attract many more clients, if not you could crash. Every business uses one or more of the following tactics to attract clients; mailings, advertisements, phone calls, networking, promotional events, a web site and sending email. If you use any of these and aren’t attracting as many new clients as you

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How to Win the Marketing Game

Win the Marketing Game: Once you know the rules to marketing you can apply them to map out your marketing strategy, and to select marketing tactics that will leave your competition in the dust.

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Selling Services: Tips for Marketing Smarter to Earn More

An accountant once told me that he never met anyone who didn’t want to make 30% more money. Whether you want a better lifestyle or to take more vacations, buy a fancy car, spend more time with your family, send your children to college or to give it all away, you could always use more money. If you are selling services, your primary limitations on earnings are your costs and the number of hours in a week. Most independent professionals are already working well over 40 hours a week and can’t work longer hours to increase earnings. Your goal should

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How to Generate Leads and Grow Your Business

If you are an independent professional or small business owner, building the list of prospects you market to should be one of your core marketing activities. It is important to continuously work to generate leads. The more people who are interested in your products and services, the better your chances of growing your sales. Wouldn’t you like to have the contact information for another thousand or ten thousand prospects for your products and services? Obviously you want to choose promotional strategies that pay for themselves. If an ad costs a thousand dollars and brings in fifteen hundred dollars of business,

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10 Tips to Effective E-mail Communication

E-mail has been around for a while. And even though we have augmented e-mail communications with newer technologies, like team rooms, and chat and video teleconferencing, e-mail remains, for most businesses, the primary communications mechanism. It has become such a powerful and pervasive component of our communications toolbox that people who sit so close to us that we can hear them type and use it to communicate with us. And the average knowledge worker receives LOTS of e-mails each day. In fact, most of us receive so many that we feel overwhelmed and almost paralyzed when we look at the

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Web Content and the Secret to a Sticky Website that Sells

An interesting debate is raging among copywriters, web designers and content providers about the key differences, if any, between writing copy for the web versus writing web content. According to prolific copywriter Nick Usborne, a survey conducted among the readers of his email newsletter “Excess Voice”, offers some interesting results. They seem to be split almost three ways: one-third consists of copywriters, another content writers and the final third both. Web Content vs. Web Copy This is an important debate, I believe, since all online copy is content but not all content is copy. And that’s a real problem. Most

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8 Common Business Plan Mistakes

Often you may hear about what a business plan consists of. While including the necessary items is very important, you also want to make sure you don’t commit any of the following common business plan mistakes: 1. Putting it off. Don’t wait to write a plan until you absolutely have to. Too many businesses make business plans only when they have no choice in the matter. Unless the bank or the investors want a plan, there is no plan. Don’t wait to write your plan until you think you’ll have enough time. “There’s not enough time for a plan,” business

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“Welcome Home”: A Strategy to Connect with Employees and Customers

“Welcome home!” These two small words carry potent possibilities for creating a connection that evokes loyalty and teamwork. Yet, one seldom thinks of “welcome home” in the context of work. In fact, it is only through recent incidents that I have become acutely aware of the power this gesture holds. Scene ONE: a world away in the remote regions of the western Himalayas. Our team had been warned of the dangers in crossing the white water rivers fed by glacier melt. The crossing would be on foot and had to be done as early as possible in the day-before the

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5 Commonly Missed Tax Deductions for Small Business Owners

Small business owners have the ability to take advantage of many tax breaks to cut down on their tax bills and hold on to more of the money their companies. If you own a small business, consider claiming the following commonly overlooked deductions when you file your taxes next:

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