How to get in the best small business directory for your company
Finding and getting listed in the right small business directory (or directories) delivers three big benefits: It aids your local marketing efforts, It makes your business more local-customer friendly, and It boosts your search engine optimization (SEO). However, before you start making a submission to what you think should be the best small business directory, determine exactly what you want to say. Get your hours, your contact information, your address, and a short statement about your business worked out so that these items will be consistent across all platforms where you submit them. At the same time, search Google for your business and make sure the mother ship of search engines has your information correct. And, if you haven’t already claimed your local listing on Google, head over to this page to input your up-to-date and correct information. Further, Google has a pretty aggressive program to encourage local small businesses to get online. Next, do three more searches: Search for competitors and note any directories they are in, Search Google for “small business directory Your Town Name,” and Search for you and your competitors using Yext’s “Claim Your Local Listings” tool on SEO Bandwagon’s website. Expand the second search above to other names of your geographic area – neighborhoods, counties, state, etc. These searches should give you the big picture. You may find some directories that require membership. Those may be good investments to make, and if they are local groups, they could also pay off in terms of local networking. In addition to hunting down the best local small business directory for your company, there are online services – both free and paid – that will shotgun your small business contact information out to dozens if not hundreds of directories. Many of these will have been found when you did the search on the SEO Bandwagon website. Look over the services listed below to find one that meets your small business directory needs as well as your budget requirements: MyBusinessListingManager Universal Business Listing Whitespark Localeze Yext If you sign up with a paid service provider, they’ll typically monitor your presence in the directories and handle updates for you. With the growth of local mobile-influenced commerce, this is a smart idea for many small businesses. Finally, I haven’t mentioned some of the big players, like Yelp and the various home service rating sites, such as Angie’s List, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important. (With the changes at Angie’s List, by the way, it could be ideal for many local service providers.) If your industry falls under any of their “umbrellas,” get up to speed on how to best use them – one might prove to be the most profitable small business directory of them all. Be sure you know how to manage these review sites like...
read moreHandy apps to power your small business management
When you’re responsible for your small business management you can sometimes feel like the guy in the circus act who’s trying to keep a dozen plates spinning in the air at the same time. For efficiency, consistency, and peace of mind, consider bringing some apps on board to provide you with a solid small business management infrastructure. I’m going to list some of the better – and more popular – apps that can be used in virtually any industry, but there are many industry-specific Software as a Service (SaaS) providers. They’ll cost you a bit more, but they could have the bells and whistles you need to do the best job managing your business. General small business management apps Zoho. I’ve written about Zoho before, but mostly in the context of sales and customer relationship management (CRM). However, today Zoho is an extensive suite of apps that cover almost every aspect of small business management: Sales and marketing, email and collaboration, business processes, finance (invoicing, expenses, even inventory), IT and help desk, and human resources. I might say that it does everything you need except for the fact that it doesn’t do payroll, or integrate with an online payroll provider. You can find ratings for all the Zoho modules over at GetApp. Work[etc]. Although it doesn’t go quite as far as Zoho, Work[etc] does a good job providing a lot of the tools required for small business management: CRM, projects, billing, help desk, reporting, and collaboration. The advantage it has over Zoho is that you don’t have to pick and choose the apps you want – it’s one package. As good as these two systems are, neither has your payroll covered. It’s taken a while for payroll companies to get web savvy and user friendly. I think the better ones have finally seen the light. Here are the ones small businesses consistently rate the highest. Payroll SaaS Gusto. This SaaS integrates with many of the standard accounting software packages. It does your payroll, automatically files state and federal taxes, and handles direct deposit, health benefits and workers compensation insurance. Optimum HRIS. Optimum offers payroll as a stand-along SaaS, or has other combinations that may fit your small business management needs: payroll and HR, payroll and attendance, etc. Optimum will handle 401(k) tracking, direct deposits, check printing, benefits management, W-2 preparation, leave tracking, and more. Patriot. Patriot offers both payroll and accounting software and its payroll system is definitely geared for small business management; it has a DIY option that starts at just $10 a month. However, the point of these apps is to not have to do it yourself, so you’ll probably want to step up to the plate and have Patriot kick in with its full service payroll, which starts at $25 a month for one employee. Accounting and inventory The discussion of payroll brings us to accounting, and I’ve covered that before on these pages. Quickbooks, Freshbooks, and Sage are popular and solid choices. And while I’m calling them out for the accounting power they bring to your small business. Most of them have the ability to do much more, including payroll and inventory. And, now that I mentioned it, let’s touch on inventory control. This isn’t a requirement for all small business management, and today, it may be...
read moreMicromarketing benefits: Great rewards for a challenging strategy
A guy used to joke that he was working on selling an old bicycle inner tube for a million dollars. People would look at him and say, “You’re crazy! Who’s going spend a million bucks for that?” “I don’t know right now. But I only have to find one buyer.” That exchange captures the essence of micromarketing benefits. It is the polar opposite of mass marketing and a little distance away from niche marketing. With micromarketing, you define a very small target audience that you want to hit. And, whenever you’re trying to hit a small target, you know that the “degree of difficulty” goes up greatly. However, the reward for being able to hit such a small target increases as well. Micromarketing benefits may outpace niche marketing If you’ve taken my advice over the years to firmly implant your business in a niche market, do you have the potential to take it even further, and define a micromarket you can exploit? Micromarketing benefits can be even bigger than those you experience in a niche market – especially if you’re beginning to experience serious competition in your niche. Enjoying financially significant micromarket benefits may require tweaks to your basic product or service to make it especially appealing to this small group of buyers. Ask yourself questions like: Can I make my offering geographically specific? Can I tailor my offering for a certain narrowly defined demographic? Can I reshape my offering so it appeals to a group with specific interests (hobbies, professions, etc)? Can I adapt my offering for a group with a certain spending history? Someone in the travel industry, for example, might put together a vacation package that appeals to recently divorced individuals with incomes over $150K per year who live on the West coast. It could be an upscale modification to a standard Las Vegas vacation package. Conceiving the micromarket and dreaming of the associated micromarketing benefits may be easy, but connecting to it can prove more difficult. Internet retargeting strategies can work. Also talk to reps at some of the digital and traditional marketing firms; you may need to use direct mail. Adapt pitch for the micromarket At the same time take a hard look at your current advertising and marketing. These materials need to be spot on. If you, or the creative people you work with, are totally accustomed to crafting pitches for one kind of buyer, you may need a radical change in your “mindset.” The types of materials that work for the average consumer, for example, won’t resonate with the top 1 percent. This is true for other groups as well. The key to long-term success in any business is maintaining forward momentum by finding new markets and offering new products or services. Going forward, being able to cash in on newly discovered micromarketing benefits could drive your success to new...
read moreThis week in small business: Productivity tips to propel 2017 profits
One of the reasons the recovery from the last recession seemed to never really gain much speed is because we didn’t experience the gains in productivity that usually accompany a recovery. This week’s collection of curated content has enough productivity improve advice to fuel a few recoveries! Leadership, management, and productivity Are you guilty of these afternoon habits that Maleah Black says are killing your productivity? And if afternoons aren’t your only productivity hole, Ayodeji Onibalusi shares the “Ivy Lee” productivity method to keep you going strong all the time. Finally, here are six phrases that are sabotaging your team’s productivity. In this article, Annie Pilon offers 10 important tips that cover a wide range of common business activities. Would you be shocked if I told you that sometimes things get over-hyped in the social media? Jonathan Crossfield’s article, Do You Operate in a Social Media Bubble? 3 Questions to Ask, is a good read on this topic. Marketing and sales Marketing Land columnist Matt Umbro calls on marketers to use their intellectual abilities to question, scrutinize, analyze, and make informed decisions. Here are 40 mobile marketing resources you should try and bookmark right now…according to Donte Ledbetter. It’s possibly too late for this year, but take note of Greg Jarboe’s advice for next year: How brands can make the most out of Christmas video marketing. Eugene Kim tells us how Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff turns dry earnings calls into funny sales pitches. It’s the $64,000 question: Which social media outlets should you use to market your business? Mark Parent gives his take on the answer. Dan Radak tells us why e-commerce companies shouldn’t ignore offline marketing. You’ve seen the bumper sticker: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” I don’t think it’s true, but I do think there’s something in: “He (or she) with the most social media management tools wins,” and that may be why Jamil Velji wrote this article. Check your website against Karla Cook’s important insights: “What Is Whitespace and Why Does It Matter? 8 Websites to Inspire Your Web Design.” Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Thomas Colson’s Business Insider article shares Kelsey Skinner’s seven tips for a successful business pitch. Carter Thomas nailed it with this one and all Millennials would be wise to read it: Advice for a young entrepreneur – Trade your work for leverage. Remember the James Brown hit It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World? Entrepreneur associate editor Aashika Jain discusses being a woman entrepreneur in a man’s world. And while we’re on the topic, check out Anushay Hossain’s piece: “How This Company Connects Women-Led Startups To The Capital They Need.” If you’re starting out as a solo-entrepreneur, this Tech Featured article will give you a lot of clues on how to take your business to the next level. Michelle Sun takes on four entrepreneurship myths in this piece she wrote for Forbes. Although this was written for an Indian audience, virtually all the advice is relevant to any ambitious entrepreneur on the planet: Finding money to launch your...
read more3 simple tips to sharpen your Google search skills
For many of us, our relationship with Google could best be described as “complicated.” It gives us a wealth of information and provides us with a huge list of useful services, but we might also feel, rightfully I suspect, that it’s a little too dominant in some areas. But that’s not the topic here today. Today I want to help you search more efficiently. When you do a plain Google search, you often get more results than you can mentally process, so let’s look at three simple ways to enhance our searches on Google so we can drill down to the relevant information we’re really after. When I did a standard, plain search on Google for social media marketing I got 274 million results. Even though Google tries to give you the “best” results first, it’s possible that what I want to see is buried down a couple of hundred pages. The first thing I did was narrow it down to social media marketing on just my website. You do this by putting site:URL in the search box as illustrated below. We call this an “operator.” That narrowed my search results down to 1,280. Using the site operator is very handy. If you want to see what a competitor is saying about a certain topic, you can focus right down on it. However, I can focus this even more sharply. My last search returned results where the three words (social media marketing) could be anywhere on the page. For example, it would find a sentence like, “Social studies majors who have taken media classes at Harvard can make excellent marketing professionals.” That’s not what I’m looking for. To get even better results, put the exact phrase you want to find in quotation marks. When you do that Google will ignore all the times when the words are spread out in the article. Here’s how that worked for me: Now I’m down to fewer than 500 search results, but let’s not stop there. Say I only wanted to find social media marketing articles that talked about Hootsuite, then I’d used the plus (+) operator and Google would give me a list of only the social media marketing articles where Hootsuite was mentioned. Here’s how that looks: Just 13 search results. How we’ve got something! Make using these operators a habit, your standard operating procedure. Your time is valuable and you’ll end up with better...
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