This is Part Two of a three-part series titled, “Which Ecommerce Platform is Best for Your Small Business?” In Part One, we identified the “must-have” and “nice-to-have” features that Greenfield Highland Beef wanted for their online farm store. Continue reading Evaluating Ecommerce Platforms for Your Small Business
Tag: small business
SEO for Reluctant Small Business Owners
Common Sense SEO
If you’re like most small business owners, you’re reluctant to spend $500+ a month to hire a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) agency.
Reputable SEO firms provide a host of useful services that can benefit your business, but unless you’re relying on web traffic to woo customers, you probably don’t need to hire an expert to get found on the web.
Here are three “common sense” SEO practices that you can do on your own.
3 Tips to Increase Sales for the Holidays (and Beyond)
Many businesses, especially brick-and-mortar stores, do 25-30% of their business in the final two months of the year, then go through a serious sales slump in January and February. But if you stay focused on your customers’ needs, you can use the holidays to build a loyal customer base that supports you all year-round.
Here are three “Don’ts” to help you increase sales during the holidays–and beyond.
Continue reading 3 Tips to Increase Sales for the Holidays (and Beyond)
Harness the Power of LinkedIn: Simple Tips to Get More from Your Profile
“I don’t know what to do with LinkedIn,” my clients and colleagues say when I suggest it. Although LinkedIn’s always been a useful way for me to keep up with and expand my network, I admit that up until now, it hasn’t offered much to users who aren’t actively job hunting, recruiting, or seeking new clients.
LinkedIn is about to launch a promising redesign, however, with an improved news feed and some snazzy messaging and meeting scheduling capabilities. With over 130+ million users in the United States (and at least 25 percent of them logging in regularly), LinkedIn deserves to be part of your marketing toolkit.
Here are my suggestions about what to do with LinkedIn.
Continue reading Harness the Power of LinkedIn: Simple Tips to Get More from Your Profile
How to Increase Your Email Open Rates
Email is still the most trusted, popular and effective marketing tool available: that’s why our inboxes are stuffed with it. So what’s a good open rate for your marketing emails? Overall, average open rates hover around 21%, but open rates range from 11-27%, depending on the industry, Constant Contact reports.
The only statistics that matter are your own: Is the percentage of people who open your emails increasing or declining? Here are some tips to help you improve your open rates.
Lazy Guide to Marketing Resources
Having trouble keeping up with all the
latest marketing tools (or even getting started)? Fortunately, there are lots of places—most of them free–to find great articles, videos, and resources to help you up your marketing game. So if, like me, you’d rather spend your vacation time gardening than sitting at your computer, here’s my lazy guide to marketing resources.
Should You Should Advertise on Facebook?
It use to be easy to answer the question, “Should I advertise my business on Facebook?” When Business/Organization Pages started in 2007, promoting your business or organization was free and easy. Anything you posted had a good chance in showing up on the news feeds of your fans and followers. Today, the likelihood that your post will show up in a Fan’s feed (your organic, or unpaid, “reach”) is pretty small, unless you advertise.
Bring Out the Best: Descriptors vs. Taglines
One of the most powerful ways to market your business or organization is to create a short phrase to help it stand out. Whether you’re using a descriptor or a tagline, a few well-chosen words can help shape how people think or feel about you.
Continue reading Bring Out the Best: Descriptors vs. Taglines
How to Plan a Creative Campaign
FROM THE TOP EGG
Campaigns aren’t just for politicians or community activists: they’re useful any time you’re trying to motivate a group of people to think, feel, or act a specific way.
I define a “campaign” as an effort to achieve a specific goal during a measurable time period: get someone elected, sell 100 tickets to an event, or get people to choose a designated driver. A campaign can serve as your entire marketing strategy or as one piece of a larger plan. It usually includes a strong creative component that appeals to inner feelings and motivations.
Good Egg Marketing and Sirius Design recently partnered up to help the Valley Food & Farm program of Vital Communities in White River Junction, Vermont develop a new campaign.
Here’s an overview of our key steps and how the campaign evolved.
—Myrna Greenfield
What I Wish I’d Known at Start-Up
Launching any type of business—especially in food—is exhilarating, exhausting, and endlessly surprising, but the more that you know when you start up, the better. Here’s some advice from friends and clients of Good Egg Marketing.
