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Increased Effectiveness for Small Businesses using LinkedIn

posted in: Small Business Marketing (Tags: , , , ) - No Comments

5:42 pm 5:42 pm

Recently we put together 15 reasons why using LinkedIn is an effective tool for small business marketing.  Today we will post the first seven.

How to get most out of LinkedIn:
1. Increase your LinkedIn visibility:

By adding connections, you increase the likelihood that people will see your profile first when they’re searching for someone to hire or do business with. In addition to appearing at the top of search results (which is a major plus if you’re one of the 52,000 product managers on LinkedIn), people would much rather work with people who their friends know and trust.

2. Improve your connectability:

Most new users put only their current company in their profile. You should fill out your profile like it’s an executive bio, so include past companies, education, affiliations, and activities. You can also include a link to your profile as part of an email signature. All these would help you increase your connectivity.

3. Improve your Linkedin profile Search Engine ranking:

LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search engines to index. To increase your Search Engine ranking do this, create a public profile and select “Full View.” Also, instead of using the default URL, customize your public profile’s URL to be your actual name. To strengthen the visibility of this page in search engines, use this link in various places on the web. READ MORE

Are you Marketing?

posted in: Small Business Marketing (Tags: , ) - 1 Comment

12:29 pm 12:29 pm

I was talking with my wife, and business partner, Paula the other day. I was upset because I’d heard that several business owners, that we know personally, are having a really hard time with their businesses. The Christmas and end-of-year selling period are over and they are being confronted with another slow-down in their respective businesses.

As we were talking it became clear that none of them were actually working from a marketing plan. They were just “spitballing it”. Thrashing around in hopes of bumping into some idea or situation which would cause their sales to pick up.

One of them was waiting for his sales people to start generating new business. Another was thinking of lowering prices, as if losing more profit was going to help stimulate sales. A third was just going to try praying harder.

All of these business owners are suffering from a distinct lack of an action plan for marketing their products and services. Here are seven danger signals that you should be aware of. READ MORE

I Hate Selling! (Part 2)

posted in: Small Business Marketing (Tags: , , ) - No Comments

6:14 pm 6:14 pm

Creating opportunities to sell

Marketing is an organizational discipline with a distinct creative component. It’s much like cooking. Unfortunately, we have come to believe – anyone can cook, right? All you need is a cook book. This compendium is filled with recipes, the organizational structure for cooking.

It is this line of thinking that has many small business owners convinced that they can cook up their own marketing. After all, one only needs to follow a simple recipe – right? Any one can cook a meatloaf but how many of us know how to prepare braccioli or what to serve with it?

Without a well planned, adequately financed and consistent marketing effort most small business owners are reduced to sporadic selling. With little activity to generate selling opportunities most business owners begin to be haunted with the specter of “cold calling” one of the most dreaded of all of the marketing tools. This is where selling goes bad.

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