In my last post, I made a strong case why you should start testing right away – so you have time to build data. But if you really need to refer to data that you don’t have, one of the next best things you can do is – look at other people’s testing results. One site where you can look at what other people have done, their results and also figure out what to test on your own sites is ABtests.com. You can see the results of ad click through tests, landing page tests, sign up or registration tests. Or,…

We all know metrics are important. You need to know which ad is pulling sales, which emails are getting clicks and so on. But sadly, many people I talk to still don’t track their efforts. When they finally need to come up with some data to make decisions, woo an affiliate or show results, they don’t have it. I have a feeling it is because people feel intimidated. ‘Tracking’ sounds so complicated and so technical they are afraid it will take so much time technical know how so they don’t do it. I’m here to tell you, it can be…

Compliances of every sort are viewed as good and bad depending on your perspective. In every case there are costs associated with them. They’re usually meant to protect something or deliver some assurance of quality. Being compliant while mandatory, is a great opportunity in branding. Informing your compliancy among your stakeholders assures them of your leadership profile. Some eco-compliances deliver a sustainability story that you can capitalize on. Your small carbon footprint for instance provides a great story for your customers to tell. It benefits them to have suppliers who are compliant. It rubs off on them.…

Small business owners struggle with marketing their products as well as their services, contracting new customers, and maintaining their current customer base in order to succeed. In order to create and maintain the latter, the former must be done and done well. Marketing and advertising is the key to any small business success. This began with direct selling, evolved into advertisements with flyers, posters, then emails, websites, and now electronic ads on social networking sites. Targeting the appropriate customers is the best way to anticipate and meet the needs of those customers. Social networking sites include LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and…

We entrepreneurs are a busy bunch. It seems we hardly have a spare moment to fit in learning anything. Thankfully, some good books and learning material come in the handy audio format. Which means, you can learn while you’re commuting or really, anytime you have a pocket of time like when you’re waiting for something or somebody. Audio learning is not new. Even in the days of cassettes and 8-tracks (remember those? Yes, I’m showing my age), there have been motivational audios, business management and so on. But today, you got to admit our gadgets make it so many times…

I’ve been asked over at Linkedinif I could possibly outline my branding process. So I thought it might be a good idea to share this here as well. My branding process called “Brand Navigator” is a proprietary process aimed at establishing a brand based on a differentiation strategy. It is essentially broken into three components: Internal Brand Analysis, External Brand Analysis and Brand Action. In the first component it is the goal of the branding team which by the way is made of stakeholders of the brand. They can be management, employees, customers…

This guy is so amazingly creative! With just a tiny ad and $6 he landed the job of his dreams.

Weeks ago, I took my children to a party. They had a blast and left with a bag of goodies. One of them declared what a great day it was and how happy they were. On the way home, she discovered her sister has a coveted toy that is not in her goodie bag (the contents were different). She starts pouting, becomes upset and spits out the famous words, “This is the worst day of my life” I wondered what happened. How did that happy day turn into the worst day of their lives in a heartbeat? Then I watched this…

Take a good look at all your marketing materials… What is the conversation you hear? Are you discussing all of your expertise? Do you discuss your people, your resources, perhaps the size of your facilities etc? While all of these topics are good for discussion, don’t you think it’s best left for another time? Shouldn’t your initial contact with prospective new business focus the conversation in another more important direction? Businesses are searching for solutions to challenges they face. The fact of the matter is your message should be all about them – not you. All the “you stuff” can…

If you want to save time, money, and energy while building up your small business to its ultimate potential, you should absolutely consider using cloud applications. The following are some free user-friendly and effective programs to get you started in exploring the wonderful, cost-effective world of “cloud”. Freshbooks Freshbooks’ tagline is “painless billing” — and with their user count currently at over 2 million (and write-ups in Tech Crunch, USA Today, and the New York Times) they must be right. Use Freshbooks to manage invoicing/expenses and time sheets for up to 3 clients, as well as send and receive an…