- Take a Client Out for Coffee. The first step to revitalizing your business has to be figuring out what area you want to work on. But handing out a stack of surveys to your customers isn’t really going to get a lot of answers: you’ll be lucky if you get any response at all. Sitting down with a customer and chatting about what he likes and dislikes in your product can provide plenty of information, especially if the client feels that he or she is getting something out of it. So rather than struggling through some mass emailing asking how you did on a scale of 1 to 10, pick a client or two to take out. Which clients? You might consider the client that you’ve had the hardest time with over the past year. Find out where the problem was, from the client’s point of view, and why he stuck with you. You just might be able to avoid a repeat next year.
- Read Up On SEO. You probably (or should) have a website to support your business. But so do your competitors, and they might just be appearing above you in a Google search. Search engine optimization is the key to making sure that you’re the top result for a given set of keywords. You can hire a professional to optimize your website, but you should still learn about SEO so you understand the terms of the trade. You can start learning at sites like SEOmoz and Search Engine Roundtable.
- Take a Break. If you’re feeling the spark that convinced you to start your business has disappeared, you may need a little revitalization yourself. Taking a break when you’re the boss feels impossible, but it’s necessary: successful business owners experience just as much burn out as corporate employees spending eight hours a day in a cubicle. Start small, if you aren’t sure how your business will handle your absence. If you’re the type to take phone calls during dinner or have a Blackberry on your hip all weekend, just try disconnecting during non-business hours. Do something enjoyable or relaxing, and see if you’re at least a little more prepared to tackle Monday.
- Offer a Social Media Giveaway. With a traditional giveaway, every entrant gets one chance to win. But you can offer an online giveaway with a few more opportunities to pick up a prize: if you post your giveaway on your website or blog, tell participants that if they mention your contest in a blog post of their own, in a note on Facebook, in a message on Twitter, in a newsletter to their email contacts or elsewhere online, they can pick up additional entries. If you’re offering a cool prize, your contest can get mentions on hundreds of websites. To confirm that a participant has really posted about your contest, you will want to require URLs of those posts as a condition of entry.
- Ask for a Recommendation on LinkedIn. Google your name. If you have an account on LinkedIn or another major social networking site, links to those accounts are probably among the most highly ranked results for your name. People looking for you will find those accounts right off the bat, so you want them looking the best. One of the easiest ways to make sure your LinkedIn account looks good is to make sure that you have at least one recommendation. LinkedIn has even made it easy to request that members of your network recommend you: if you take a look at your recommendations page, you’ll see a “Get Recommended” button. If you don’t already have an account on LinkedIn and other sites, like Facebook or Twitter, you can set one up easily and improve your Google results almost immediately.
- Put Your Press Releases Online. There’s only so much a press release can do, sitting on your company’s website. You might email it out to a few different bloggers or news sites, but it’s only going out to people you already know about. You can reach a wider audience with your press release by submitting it to sites like PR Leap and PRWeb. Both of these sites do charge fees to post your press release, but they also reach tens of thousands of readers. Those readers include numerous bloggers who are looking for easy stories, as well as members of the traditional media looking for a hot topic.
- Send Out an Email Newsletter. Email newsletters may seem like they’re behind the technological times on the surface, but they remain one of the most effective methods of staying in touch with existing clients online. If your newsletter includes information that your recipients feel is worth forwarding, you can even pick up new customers surprisingly quickly — newsletter recipients will forward an email because it’s easy. Web surfers are less likely to pass along a website or other information because they have to copy and paste it into an email and complete several more steps.
- Attend A BarCamp. You probably already attend a conference or two within your professional niche each year. Those conferences may be pretty expensive and require quite a bit of travel. You can get the conference experience, cheaply and locally, by attending a BarCamp. BarCamps are usually focused on technical topics — PodCamps, for instance, focus on podcasting while WordCamps focus on WordPress. These technical topics can provide the introductory level material you’ll need for a number of online marketing techniques, as well as provide networking opportunities. Most BarCamps are listed on the BarCamp wiki.
- Outsource One Task You Dislike. Enjoying your work is just as important as increasing your sales. If you’re like most business owners, there is one task that you absolutely hate — for some it’s invoicing, for others it’s finding advertising opportunities. But you can get that task off your plate, and get back to the work that really is important to bringing in more income. You can outsource it to a specialized professional or to a virtual assistant. VAs have a range of skills, perfect for a small business, and are more affordable for most businesses than hiring new employees or going to a specialist who handles only a limited variety of tasks.
- Quit Advertising in Print. While print advertising can bring in some customers, placing a newspaper ad isn’t much different than firing a shotgun blast: you’re sending out an ad to thousands of readers, but most of them have minimal interest in your product or service. But with online advertising, you can often target your ideal customers specifically. With contextual advertising, for instance, you can advertise to potential customers who are specifically searching for information on your keywords. You can also advertise on blogs and websites that cater to the specific niche you are targeting. Therefore, you can slash your advertising budget by moving online, without losing new sales.
*From time to time, I'll present info from past WHY magazine articles or WHY Xtras in case you missed them the first time around. :)
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