Why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best option for most Small Businesses

What do you value most?

If you are a small business owner and you read beyond this paragraph, I’m going to share my inexorable logic why outsourcing inbound marketing is the best of all possible options to find new customers for your small business.

If you are a small business owner, what are the two things that you value most?

After speaking and working with many small business owners, and being a small business owner myself, I can tell you without a doubt, the two most valuable things you possess as a small business owner are (1) time and (2) money:

1. Time. There’s just not enough of it. It’s your most valuable resource. With it you create the 2nd most valuable thing which is:
2. Money. It’s scarce. If you invest it, there’s got to be a return on investment, period. The higher the better, so if you can measure it, and improve it, so much the better.

Time and money are your most valuable resources. And everybody wants what you’ve got. That is precisely why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best of possible options for you.

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3 Social Plugins to Gain Likes on your Facebook Page for Business (or 3 Easy Ways to Get People to Like You)

Even Scrooge "likes" it

Facebook is changing consumer behavior.  

Instead of searching online, consumers and business buyers who have a need are connecting to people they trust, and asking for referral sources. This is why it’s *more important than ever* to be connected, and Build a Facebook Page for Business. 

As I was writing this post I was trying to come up with a punchy headline, and it occurred me that maybe I ought to write a headline that would appeal to the Ebenezer Scrooge in all of us. I too, was resistant to the social media bandwagon at first, I admit it… Social Media, Bah humbug!  

One this is undeniable though–there are 500 million Facebook users and counting.  

So if you’re a small business owner these days, while you’re counting your pennies and watching every expenditure, you’re also wondering “how do I leverage my network and tap into my market that’s on Facebook?” It’s gotten too big to ignore. That’s why it’s important to know how to Build a Facebook Page for Business. 

To illustrate how this works, I’m using 3 Facebook plugins that illustrate how you can quickly and easily ”Like” your Facebook page from your website. 

3 Social Plugins to Build a Facebook Page for Business

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Could you benefit from a Website Makeover? Or should you just start over?

Does your website need to go?

When you discover you’ve made a bad hire, you usually don’t hesitate to fire the person–or to provide coaching and training to fix the problem(s), so that your employee is a happy, productive, contributing member of the team.  

The same should be true of an unproductive website. You should assess your website so that you can determine whether you can fix it with a Website Makeover — or junk it, and start over.  

Your website represents you. Some might even say, it is you. A finely tuned website could be working for you around the clock–helping spread the word about what you do, how you do it better than anyone, and creating opportunities with customers and prospects who need your products or services.  

I realize that others have put together lists of factors that create a productive website, but I put this list together specifically for small business owners to help them determine if they could benefit from a Website Makeover. If I’ve forgotten anything please feel free to add yours in the comment form!  

7 Factors to Determine Whether a Website Makeover would work for you: Read the rest of this entry

What’s The Four Way Test?

“If you apply The Four Way Test in your professional and personal life, you will be very successful.” ~ My grandfather Charles J. Proctor, Rotarian (in his office at the Travelier Motel in Columbia, Mo, to me when I was 10) 

Rotary International

Herbert J. Taylor (April 18, 1893 – May 1, 1978) was the creator of the “The Four Way Test of the Things We Think, Say or Do” (see below). He wrote this 24-word statement of business ethics in twenty minutes as he set out to save the Club Aluminum Products distribution company from bankruptcy.   

Founded in 1923, Club Aluminum Cookware was sold by door-to-door salesmen until the Great Depression made this method of sales too costly. In 1932, it teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. The then-Vice President of Jewel Tea Company, Herbert J. Taylor, was asked come and help out in the hopes of avoiding insolvency. After he settled the law suits pending against the company, Taylor concluded that Club Aluminum was $400,000 in debt with no chance that existing sales could service even the short-term debt. He was advised to file for bankruptcy. Jewel Tea had concluded that the situation was hopeless and asked Taylor to return full-time.   

Instead, Taylor left his $33,000 salary at Jewel and became President of Club Aluminum, with a salary of $6,000. And, using his Jewel stock as collateral, he purchased the controlling interest in the Club Aluminum for $6,100. When Taylor took over the situation was so desperate. In developing his plan of action, his first priority was to change the ethical climate in the company. “If the people who worked for Club Aluminum were to think right, I knew they would do right,” he affirmed. ”What we needed was a simple, easily remembered guide to right conduct – a sort of ethical yardstick- which all of us in the company could memorize and apply to what we thought, said and did.”   

The Four Way Test Read the rest of this entry