A “call to action” is defined as an activity requested of a consumer. It could be purchasing a product, requesting for information, completing a survey, or subscribing to an online newsletter. Call to action is your signal for communicating to visitors or users what you expect them to do. An effective call to action can increase your conversion rates, whether that means sales, leads or however you define the end-goal. Examples of call to action include: “Order today before supply runs out!” “Click here to subscribe!” “Sign up now and get your free gift!” “Join our affiliate program.” “Add to

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Loyalty marketing is defined as “the effort to identify, maintain, and increase the yield from best customers through long-term, interactive, value-added relationships.” It is basically the creation of programs that aim to recognize and reward customers based on their value to the company. For big businesses, loyalty marketing is an integral part of their marketing programs. But not for small businesses. Many small businesses, while recognizing the benefits of having a loyalty program, are typically overwhelmed by the effort of identifying customers and tracking loyalty programs. They also lack the prerequisite ability to slice and dice the customer purchasing history;

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Whether you are thinking of a new product to introduce or to find market opportunities for your products, it is important to study social and business trends. New social trends transform how goods are built and sold. Business opportunities grow out of the changes in the social order. I just got a copy of the book “Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes” by Mark Penn and it is proving to be a very compelling read. The book identifies relatively small patterns of behavior in our culture, which the author calls “microtrends” — trends that have great influence on

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This is totally not my style, but I suppose one can be excused for bragging once in a while :o) PowerHomeBiz.com is mentioned in a New York Times article published today, October 2, entitled “Getting Paid, One Way or Another” written by Paul Brown. It feels good to be noticed — flashing ads and all — by the big boys occasionally.

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One way to start a business is by buying an existing one. Your local baker may be thinking of retirement and want to sell his business; or you’ve heard about a business being sold that you think presents a very good opportunity. However, before you get your checkbook and buy that business, it is important to determine if that business is worth buying. Like buying cars, you don’t want to put your hard-earned money into a lemon. Here are some questions you need to ask: What is the legal structure of the business (is it a sole proprietorship, partnership or

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MarketLive released a report on how online retailers can maximize search engine effectiveness in terms of bringing traffic, conversion, customer loyalty, engagement and other critical variables. Called the MarketLive Performance Index, the report provides very interesting data on the effectiveness of search engine results. Here are some of the data from the report: Search marketing drives 28% of visitor traffic on retailer sites, on average, and as much as 36% for some retailers. Search engine marketing significantly contributes to a retailer’s sales, with traffic coming fom Google generating nearly 14% of an e-retailer’s revenue, through Yahoo, 3.25%, and through MSN,

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I was reading the CONDÉ NAST PORTFOLIO magazine and one story caught my attention. It was an article about an up-and-coming British cellist named Jamie Walton who wanted to get his hands on a $1.7 million, 300-year-old Guarneri cello. Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford the cello with his $50,000 a year salary. So what he did was to find investors willing to give him money, and then pooled their money together to raise the funds to buy the cello. He could either buy off the investors later, or if he chooses not to, the investors could agree to sell the cello

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I’ve posted a new article at PowerHomeBiz.com on how to make the transition from being an employee to a business owner successful and pain-free. If you’ve been an employee all your life, the move to becoming an entrepreneur can be very daunting, even scary. You will lose the steady paycheck. You will make your own decisions and steer your own business. And unlike being an employee where you can be physically present but mentally absent (and still get paid for just showing up to work), as an entrepreneur you will have to work. If you don’t work, you may not

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Many folks are interested in the idea of shopping-while-making money through mystery shopping jobs. Unfortunately, many find themselves scammed after paying websites that supposedly offer mystery shopping assignments but turn out to be rip offs. While there are indeed a lot of scams in terms of mystery shopping jobs, mystery shopping is a legitimate market research tool used by big companies to evaluate the quality of their services. Hence, mystery shopping is real and many people are earning money from it. If you are interested in learning about honest-to-goodness paying assignments in mystery shopping, I suggest you go to the

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If you are advertising through pay per click in the search engines, I found a very useful guide on the how to improve the results of your search engine marketing. This paper from the Internet Advertising Bureau entitled “Turning 10 Paid Search Mistakes into Pure Profit” is a must-read for every marketer working to reach customers via search engine marketing. What I like most about the paper is that it clearly identifies the problem, discusses why this is a mistake, and suggests ways to remedy the mistake and increase effectiveness of the campaign. Here are the top 10 mistakes to

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