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Business Directory
Find out what you get when you list your business in the Business Know-How Small Business Directory.
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10 Ways to Make Your
Business Stand Out
What marketing method is more effective than direct mail, web sites, referrals,
or publicity? It's differentiation from your competition.
Use these tips to figure out what's unique
about your business.
Creating an Effective Newsletter
Creating an effective newsletter that engages your readers, motivates them and
keeps them opening your emails month after month is challenging. Use these
tips to create a compelling newsletter to
solidify your customer relationships and boost your business sales
simultaneously.
Protect Your Business from
Internal Theft
As carefully as you screen potential employees, you could still end up with
someone on your staff who steals from your business.
Here are some things you can do to protect
yourself from internal theft.
7 Tactics to Improve Cash Flow
Even successful businesses can have cash flow issues. Here are seven tactics to
make sure you have enough money to run your
business while you're waiting to get paid by customers.
5 Common
Mistakes to Avoid in Choosing a Trademark
You have selected your new trademark, service mark or business name and have
paid marketing and advertising professionals handsomely for their services. But
wait - is that name you picked protectable?
Here are
five common mistakes you should avoid.
The 10 Biggest Business
Blunders (and How You Can Avoid Them)
Why do businesses fail? Is it a lack of money, poor planning, or a failure to
market? It can be any of those things and others. Read this book excerpt to
learn about the 10 biggest mistakes
businesses make, and get tips for avoiding them.
Developing a Customer Save Program for
Your Business
An important part of any business is minimizing customer defections. It’s far
cheaper to keep customers than it is to get new ones, so keeping your current
customers happy is critical to your success. But, no matter how hard you try,
some will want to cancel your service. Having a
simple save or win-back protocol in place can help you salvage customers when
the time comes.
10 Tie-Died and True
Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead
Viral marketing and social networking have arrived on the scene after a long,
strange trip indeed. The Grateful Dead were much more than a bunch of
rock-and-roll geniuses; they were pioneers of the digital age marketing
landscape. Get ten of the
lessons in this excerpt from Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.
8 Ways To Cut Mailing and Shipping Costs
Mailing a letter or two isn't going to break your budget, but if you send out
hundreds of letters a month or ship products to your customers, your shipping
and postage costs can take a chunk out of your bottom line.
Here are eight things you can
do to reduce your mailing and shipping costs.
Sky high interest rates? Here's one solution.
You just got a notice from your credit card company saying your interest rate
has been doubled or worse. If you owe a large balance on that card, it's going
to make your payment go up significantly. How are you going to handle the
financial crisis that's going to cause?
Read more >>
A CAN-SPAM Refresher Course
Remember the CAN-SPAM Act, enacted in 2003? Neither do many
email marketers, if the amount of spam clogging email boxes each day is any
indication. Here's a quick review of the CAN-SPAM
rules.
Join us on Facebook
Are you on Facebook? If so, you can find us there as well.
Connect with us on Facebook to
get the latest updates from Business Know-How right on your Facebook news feed.
8 Hallmarks of a Good Podcast
Podcasting is a great way to show off what you know about your industry and
build credibility and loyalty among your customers. If you want your podcast to
make a good impression with your listeners, check out these eight
hallmarks of a good podcast.
Security Camera Systems Prevent Crime and Save Lives
Security cameras, especially when used in conjunction with an integrated
security system, not only help police identify criminals after a crime, they
also help deter crimes from taking place to begin with.
Read more >>
3 Tips for Getting Past Fear of
Failure
When you face obstacles in your business it can lead to frustration and
fear, neither of which are helpful emotions when you're trying to grow a
small business. Here are three things you
can do to get past those rough patches so you can keep your business
growing.
Boost Sales with Instructional Videos
With over 16 million visitors a day, no business, big or small,
can afford to ignore YouTube. Behind only Google and Facebook, YouTube is third
most popular site in the world. And, it’s a goldmine for the marketing savvy.
Creating a quality instructional video is a simple and effective way to generate
traffic and increase your brand awareness.
6
Low-Cost Marketing Strategies
Small businesses must be extra imaginative with their marketing
efforts in order to attract customers and get them to open their wallets.
Here
are six proven low-cost marketing ideas that help small businesses increase
sales and generate referrals.
3
Dumbest LLC Formation Mistakes
Whether you're incorporating your business on your own or having a professional
handle it, there are several common mistakes that people make.
Find out what
they are so you don't make them, too.
Major Account Sales -- Will you profit by selling to big companies?
Are you ready to move your business to the next level? Are you planning to
target big corporations because you think acquiring some major accounts will put
your business on the fast track to greater profits and success? Working with big
customers may bring more profits, but it can also bring requirements and
expenses that are hard to fulfill. Here's a
guide to the pros and cons of working with big companies.
A Different Alternative for Business
Financing: CDCs
Community Development Corporations, or CDCs, exist in many communities to
provide financial assistance to businesses that are beneficial to the community.
Find out how CDCs work here.
Ways to Test Subject Line Performance
If you have spent any amount of time crafting sales emails, you know the
importance of a good subject line to its overall performance. You also know
predicting which subject lines will set your bottom line on fire and which will
leave your readers cold is more like fortune-telling than weather forecasting.
Here are a few tricks you can use to find out which
subject lines are going to do well and which ones aren't.
How to Get Paid What You're Worth
Clients and consultants alike usually dread fee discussions. Here are six
strategies to help you preserve your profit margins
and your client relationships as you work through pricing discussions.
Do You Have What it Takes to Work at Home?
Think you'd like to work from home? Whether you hope to be an offsite employee
or plan to start your own home business, be sure you're prepared for the unique
challenges you face when you work at home.
Tips on Preventing Armed Robbery
Movies often glorify armed robbery and the criminals behind it. However, being
robbed at gun- or knifepoint is a terrifying crime for its victims.
Find out what you can do to prevent it
from happening to you.
7 Simple Secrets to Reducing Your Refund
Requests
If you sell any kind of information product online, like ebooks,
training materials, reports, or white papers, you know how frustrating requests
for refunds can be. Here are seven simple and inexpensive things you can do to
reduce your refund rate. Many of them even apply to
traditional product sales.
Find the Leaks in Your Order
Form
You spend a lot of money enticing people to your Web site, so it’s vital that
you devote just as much attention to getting them to complete a purchase. Poor
sales conversion rates are the bane of many businesses, but web analytics can
help isolate where the leaks are so you can
make improvements to your order process.
Take Steps to Avoid the Violent Crime
of Carjacking
Carjacking is a crime that can end not only in the destruction of
property, but also injury or loss of life. Here are things you can do to
protect yourself from would-be carjackers.
5 Social Media Mistakes Businesses Make
Think it's time for your business to start using Facebook or Twitter? Before you
jump in with both feet, make sure you're not about to make one of these
five social media mistakes.
How to Create an Effective Mentoring Program
How do you retain and prepare your best talent to lead? Mentoring programs are
one of the most effective tools in achieving business results.
Here are ten guidelines for creating an effective
mentoring program.
10 Cheap Ways to
Create a Professional Marketing Impression
Whether you are launching a business, event or a new product,
you have to give the impression you know what you’re doing from the get-go.
Otherwise no one is going to spend their hard-earned dollars with you. Here are
ten ways you can create a professional marketing image on the cheap.
4 Secrets for Selling
Value Instead of Price
Are your customers worried about price and not seeing the
value of your product or service? Here are four secrets that can help you sell
on value so that price is no longer an issue.
10 Ways to Grow Referrals in Less Than 10 Minutes a Day
While most businesses are spending enormous amounts in an effort to attract new
customers, a select few use a strategy that has virtually eliminated the need
for marketing. Building a business on referrals isn’t costly or time-consuming
once you know the secret.
Top 5 Lies Told by Job Candidates
Every employee in a small business has a big impact on performance, company
culture and the bottom line. That’s why hiring the wrong candidate is a
costly, sometimes critical, mistake.
Be aware of these five common lies your job candidates may tell in an
interview or on their resume.
Fans and Followers More Likely to Buy
The things we choose to do online are a pretty clear reflection of how we are
living our real lives out here in real life. When we
become a fan of something on Facebook or follow a business on Twitter, we
actually do more business with those favored companies.
People Skills Win Over Knowledge
What would you expect to be more important in the business world: your
knowledge of important topics or your people skills? A recent survey
suggests that it's how you interact with
others that has the biggest impact on your success.
Selling-Why it Pays to Be an Unpaid
Consultant
Should salespeople be willing to give free advice to their clients? Does free
consulting lead to increased sales and profitability or is it a waste of time.
Here's what one expert has to say.
What You Can Learn from Silly Viral Videos
Your inbox is probably full of them -- the latest viral video sensations from YouTube. From piano
playing cats to unfortunately placed piñata bats, silly videos have become big
business. Find out why some videos go viral and get
tips on how to create a viral video for your own business.
How a Grandmother Started a
Multimillion-Dollar Business
Starting a business was not something Anita Crook set out to do at nearly 60
years of age. But when her pocketbook organizer idea took off, this South
Carolina grandmother found herself
running a multimillion-dollar business.
Damage Control for Social Media
The Internet brings numerous marketing opportunities but also poses threats to
small business sales. Sometimes, a corporate blog or a comment in a social Web
site is followed by derogatory remarks or belittling statements.
Here's advice on when and how you should
respond to negative comments.
12 Point Checklist for Successful Negotiations
Do sales negotiations make you nervous? Put yourself at ease and increase the
likelihood of a successful outcome with this
negotiation checklist.
Hazard Material Safety Prevents Fires in Homes and Workplaces
If you work in a home office, you might not think hazardous material safety is
something you need to worry about. Your home, however, likely has quite a few
products containing chemicals that could fuel a fire or pose other dangers.
Here are some guidelines on how to safely store
hazardous materials.
5 Up-sell Strategies for Your Business
Up-selling is one of the best ways that you can make a little extra money with
each sale online. When a company uses a great up-sell strategy, they can
increase each sale made by 20 percent or more. Here are
five easy to implement up-sell strategies for your web site.
Does Volume Make Up for Low Price?
When customers ask you for a discount in exchange for their promise of a large
purchase, or multiple future purchases, it's hard not to give in. After all,
you'll make up for the lower price by selling more
of your product and gaining a good customer, right?
5 Ways to Work Smarter and Be More Productive
Ever noticed how some entrepreneurs get way more done than others without
working themselves to the bone? If you ever want to be able to have more time
for things you enjoy, working smarter is critical.
Here
are five things you can start doing right now to become more productive without
working longer hours.
How to Build an Online Business
from the Ground Up
What goes into creating a successful online retail store when your background is
in something entirely different? Find out in
this startup story of the ecommerce business Air & Water Inc.
12 Simple Steps to Avoid Burnout
Many people experience burnout at some point in their lives. Business owners and
the self-employed are even more likely to fall prey to burnout because the buck
stops with them. If you feel as if you’re starting
to burn out here are some things you can do to avoid it.
What to Do when Someone Copies Your Web Site
When you find that parts of your Web site have been maliciously stolen by a
competitor or a scammer, whether it be an article, images or even the whole
design, it’s important to have the offending site remove the copied content.
Here are the steps to take to have the copied
material removed.
Fake It or Make It: 9 Truths for Authentic
Customer Experiences
Trust and transparency are more important to today's consumers than ever before.
Here are nine things to consider if you want to
create
authentic experiences for your customers.
7 Steps for Preventing Auto Theft
Professional car thieves with power tools can strip a car down to it's skelton
in just a few minutes. Watch a demonstration and find out
what you can do to make your car less appealing to crooks.
4 Unique Buying Phases of Your Customers
Most customers follow a four-phase buying pattern when choosing where to make
their purchase. Use your knowledge of these patterns to determine the
best pricing for your products or services.
Environmental
Sustainability and Your Small Business
In Part 1 of this series, we busted four myths of going green. Here, in Part 2,
get 12 ideas for things your business can do to
help the environment and even reduce
your expenses.
4 Valuable Take-Aways from
Attending Business Conferences
It's true that attending business conferences costs you time and money,
something that's in short supply for most small business owners. Yet the
benefits that you'll get from taking a break from your daily routine to
meet with other people in your
industry can far outweigh the costs.
Direct Mail Marketing
for Small Businesses
When you have a small business, you know that one of the most important aspects
of your business plan is advertising. You probably already have a Web site and a
Twitter account, but what about doing direct mail? Is
direct mail a thing of the past
or is it still useful today?
Why Workplace Teams Fail (and 7 Ideas to
Fix Them)
Many teams in the workplace were never designed to succeed to begin with. Find
out why, then use these seven tips to build
better teams.
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