3 Ways to get your product in stores and in front of buyers
Does your small business sell a product or service that needs to get in front of a larger audience, or find its way into more stores? Maybe you’re trying to sell it online right now, but you just aren’t connecting with customers. You’ve tried SEO and maybe even Adwords in your small business, but the search volume just isn’t there to drive the amount of traffic you need. You need a different approach. Here are three strategies that are proven small business winners and the tricks you need to know to pull them off: 1. Traditional media placement. Magazines and television will create awareness of your product. However, you really need to do your homework and be totally persistent (read: pesky). The key is to be familiar with when and how they feature products like yours in their publications or programming. It also helps if you can cleverly come up with angles that make your products “fit the mold” that they will be looking for. For example, why would your product (or service) make a great graduation gift? You need to contact editors and producers (repeatedly) pitching your idea. Here’s a tip for the major magazines that almost no one outside of Madison Avenue knows: Many publish their editorial calendars online! For example, check out the 2015 editorial calendar for Forbes Magazine. Search Google for the magazine editorial calendars that would best fit your product or service. If you can’t find the editorial calendar of a magazine that would be ideal for your small business’ product, go to a library and have the librarian bring you a year’s worth of the magazine so you can do your research the old fashioned way. 2. Get it into the hands of bloggers. The same way you research traditional publications, research bloggers and online publications. In these kinds of strategies, the key is to do all the hard work yourself. Show people exactly how your product or service is something their audience will appreciate learning about. It is well worth the investment to hire a professional photographer experienced in product shoots to put together a portfolio for you. Editors and bloggers travel the path of least resistance. If they have to bust their buns to feature items from your small business, they’ll probably pass. 3. Research where similar products are sold and set up a sales funnel. If your product is like others on the market, or sold in places where certain other products are always sold, look those products up online. Often the websites of the symbiotic products will have a “Where to buy” page. Note all of those places and explore their websites. Try to find an email address and person’s name, especially for the owner or someone in charge. With that information, set up an automated sales funnel for your small business using software like Infusionsoft, or some of the email service providers, such as Constant Contact, Mailchimp or Aweber. Keep track of where everyone is in your sales funnel and make improvements on it as you gain more experience or sales history. If you’re willing to invest the sweat equity in these strategies, they will pay off. When your small business sells something that doesn’t have a huge search volume, you need to get it into people’s hands or...
read moreHow enterprising women can get the recognition they deserve
If yours is a woman-owned business, let me ask you two questions that are probably “no-brainers”: Would you like to spend 28-March 1, 2015 at The Ritz Carlton Coconut Grove in Miami? Would you like to be recognized for the work you’ve done building a financially successful, thriving business; exhibiting leadership at the local, state, national or international level; and mentoring and giving back to support other women in business? If you’ve answered yes to those questions, you need to nominate yourself for a 2016 Enterprising Women of the Year Award. Winners will receive great recognition and publicity for themselves and their businesses. They’ll find their stories written up in local, national and even global media outlets. Further, each woman recognized will be featured in Enterprising Women magazine. The award is sponsored by Enterprising Women: The Voice of Women Entrepreneurs and the deadline for nominations is midnight Nov. 1, 2015. By the way, the reason I asked two questions at the top of this article is because if you can’t be at The Ritz Carlton Coconut Grove during the event, you can’t enter. All winners need to be in attendance. Here are the other criteria: Your company is at least 51 percent owned and managed by a woman; You are a woman who owns, manages and controls the business with a partner, and you own at least 33 percent of the business; or You are a woman entrepreneur who leads a company that has obtained venture capital and, as a result, you now hold an equity position of less than 51 percent in your company. Winners will be selected in six different categories and the categories are based on the size of your enterprise with the smallest having up to $1 million in annual revenues and the top category being those enterprises that have more than $100 million in annual revenues. Within each of those six categories, several women will be recognized. You can see the 2015 winners here to get an idea of the contest’s scope. The event is a great conference as well. There will be plenty of seminars that will help you keep up with the latest business trends and you’ll have many opportunities to network with like-minded businesswomen. Women who can make things happen for you in your future will all be in Miami and that’s a gathering you don’t want to miss. I hope you enter and if your schedule doesn’t allow you to make the trip this year, start planning right now for the 2017 conference....
read moreUse Cybersecurity Month to test your knowledge and train your team
When you leave your small business each night at closing time, you can set the alarm, lock the doors and know that your business is protected. One person, following the directions, can secure the building. However, the security of your computers, data and network are not cared for so easily. You can’t reduce cybersecurity to the responsibility and actions of one person. Every person who operates a computer in your small business, the IT professionals who set up your systems and even the companies that provide the software you run can all dramatically impact the security of your computers and data. October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. I always stress the importance of revisiting the topic with your small business employees at your regular meetings, but this special month is a good time to redouble your efforts, look at the big picture and make sure your team is up to speed. If you had a broken window where a burglar could gain access to your business, you’d take care of it immediately, right? Well, unless they are properly trained and have the right attitudes, your employees are the digital version of that broken window. If you check the website referenced above, you’ll see that each week has a specific cybersecurity topic associated with it: General Cybersecurity Awareness Creating a Culture of Cybersecurity at Work Connected Communities: Staying Protected While Always Connected Your Evolving Digital Life Building the Next Generation of Cyber Professionals The page also offers links to resources you’ll find helpful. Touch bases with others in your local small business community and see if there are any nearby events you can attend or send your employees to. Sending employees off campus for seminars and conferences is a great way to get “buy in” on issues like these. And when I scan the list of weekly topics above, the second one – Creating a Culture of Cybersecurity at Work – is perhaps the most important for a small business owner. As a fun way to get your team thinking about these issues and putting cybersecurity in perspective, check out this cybersecurity quiz on the Christian Science Monitor website. It covers a lot of cyber attack history and highlights the extensive and costly damage that can result from these digital incursions. After getting the big picture, you might have your employees take this quiz that is designed for computer users. When we become aware of the things we don’t know, it makes us more cautious and motivates us to learn more. If you want to have some fun with these, try a little “gamification” and offer a prize for the person who scores the highest on the two quizzes. But in the end the real winner will be your small business, if you can elevate your culture of cybersecurity. More reading: Security expert Robert Siciliano has written some excellent guest posts for us on small business security and several cover important cybersecurity...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: Bring science into your marketing, Google’s cybercrime advice and more
As you go through the top small business Interweb content of the week, you’ll notice that there’s an article on neuromarketing and another one on how to use psychology in the social media. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a Harvard STEM grad to learn these lessons. Leadership, management and productivity Google has taken a close look at cybercrime and is offering us some advice on how to prevent it. There are a lot of changes in store at both Facebook and Twitter. Make sure you’re up to speed and making the right tweaks in your small business. Uh-oh. We’ve been told that the new chip credit cards are a lot more secure, but that may have been jumping to a conclusion…at least in the US. Marketing and sales Good blog posts perform with your audience and boost your SEO. The steps in this post lay out some great principles to follow. Do you feel the pressure of holiday marketing on your shoulders? Here are six things you must do for success. If you want some new ideas to boost your CTAs, check out these unconventional tips. Maybe you need to take a psychological approach to boosting engagement in your social media marketing. If so, this article will help. The best marketing messages are personalized marketing messages. Discover four ways to do it. Do you blog? If so, you need this checklist. Here’s how to understand and maximize your reach on any social network. The desire and ability to build strong brands is often hindered by the increasing complexity of today’s marketing world. Here’s where you need to focus your efforts. Do you have a system of categorizing and tagging your WordPress blogs? You need to get on top of it. Here are seven opportunities in social media marketing that you’ll miss out on if you don’t know your audience. Good news! You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to take advantage of neuromarketing in your small business. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation If you’re really serious about your next startup, you might want to locate in a state that is very friendly to entrepreneurs. Some startups get overwhelmed with feedback. Here’s how Slack dealt with it. What’s your opinion? Will the web like Facebook’s new emojis? Politics, government and the economy In September the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) small business optimism index ticked up ever so slightly. The survey also revealed that good hires are hard to...
read moreHave some nagging questions? Have you asked this group?
I was listening to the story of a guy who was opening a store to sell watches. He had great watches to sell and he pulled in some very creative people to design a dazzling store. His front window display was one that pedestrians loved to stop at and enjoy. Sales, however, did not follow. How could a store that was so eye-catching and stocked with top-of-the-line watches fail to rack up record-shattering sales figures? The answer is really very simple: He didn’t have any experience selling watches from a physical location, and the way his store was merchandised didn’t appeal to people who were actually ready to buy a watch. Entrepreneurs tend to have a lot of confidence in themselves – which is good because otherwise they wouldn’t take the necessary risks – but it can also cause them to unwittingly charge down dead ends. The wise and experienced entrepreneur knows when it’s time to reach out for help and that’s what this shop owner did. And the strategy that ultimately paid off best for him is a strategy you can use as well. Today. He started talking to all the sales reps that came through his shop. He would take them out to lunch and pick their brains. After all, this group of professionals knows which stores are moving the most inventory and they are familiar with the way the stores are setup and operated. They see it all. Further, it’s definitely in the best interests of your sales reps to see your business make as many sales as possible. At the end of the day, it’s more money in his or her pocket as well. Have you taken the time to pick the brains of the various sales reps you see over the course of a year? Ask for their advice. Try to find out what’s working for other businesses similar to yours and also ask for an honest critique of how you are doing business. If you’re a retail business, ask your reps to give their opinion on how you have products displayed and how your store is organized. Make notes about what they say and try different strategies based on their input. When you have more than one sales rep tell you the same thing, you can be pretty sure they’re onto something. So when sales reps walk through your door, see yourself as the one who needs to get something from them, not just the other way...
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