New! Pinterest Business User Accounts |  |
- New! Pinterest Business User Accounts
- How to Turn Website Visitors Into Buyers
- The Mechanics Of Making Money And The Business Physics Of Revenue
- Cell Phone Plan For Small Business: Review of Ting
- Bootstrapped BlueGlass Enters European Market Through Acquisition
- Spotify Attracts Investment: Musicians Fight for Royalty Rules
| New! Pinterest Business User Accounts Posted: 15 Nov 2012 01:00 PM PST Pinterest recently announced some changes aimed at business users, including new business-specific accounts that seem to be the Pinterest equivalent of Facebook brand pages.
First on the list of changes is a new set of terms aimed specifically at businesses. The business terms give guidance on how to best use the site, and they also allow Pinterest to separate the provisions meant specifically for business owners as opposed to individual users. There is a completely separate set of terms meant for individuals using the site. Next up, Pinterest now offers verified accounts specific to business users. Now, when new users sign up for Pinterest they can choose between signing up as an individual as a business. And for those already using Pinterest, accounts can be converted by simply providing some information about the business and agreeing to the business terms. In terms of the resources Pinterest has provided for business users, case studies showing how the platform can be effective for businesses seem to be at the top of the list. The case studies use examples of campaigns from companies that use Pinterest, such as Etsy, Allrecipes, and Jetsetter, that can give users ideas for their own campaigns or uses for the platform. In the above photo, you can see examples of how travel site Jetsetter has built an online community of travelers through Pinterest promotions. The site has also published a list of best practices for businesses, including uploading personal content, building a community, and including thoughtful descriptions. Pinterest has included a guide for using the site's marketing materials like the Pin It button and Follow buttons while complying with trademarks and other rules. With the thousands of businesses already using Pinterest, it makes sense that the site would add some tools and accounts specifically catered toward these users. This move could also signal intentions for the site to monetize its base of business users with future advertising options similar to those offered on other social sites like Facebook and Twitter. The post New! Pinterest Business User Accounts appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| How to Turn Website Visitors Into Buyers Posted: 15 Nov 2012 11:00 AM PST The first step to ensuring a successful holiday sales season is to optimize your eCommerce site. But the next step – converting those website visitors into customers – is equally important and can be even more difficult to achieve. A recent survey about holiday shopping trends by PriceGrabber found that 88 percent of respondents plan to research their holiday gift purchases in advance to find the best deals. Of those respondents, 38 percent plan to spend three to six hours researching holiday gift purchases online.
That means that, even if a customer visits your website, chances are they've visited many others as well. After working with more than 10,000 small to medium-sized merchants over the years, I've put together the following list of best practice tips to help you turn your website visitors into customers. Design Promotions It is important to design promotions that are consistent with and enhance the company's brand's image. Take time to review the success or failure of each promotion to determine the value and focus of future promotions. Whether it's free shipping, rewards programs, or special offers, sales incentives are necessary to compete. Offer Free Shipping Free shipping can be one of the best incentives offered by eCommerce retailers to increase online sales. The PriceGrabber survey found that 77 percent of respondents indicated that free shipping incentives will entice them to make purchases. A great first step in offering free shipping is joining the more than 1,000 merchants participating in Free Shipping Day 2012, taking place December 17th. Other incentive options include offering online coupons or partnering with a vendor to provide third-party authentication of your site. As a best practice, retailers drive the most sales with free shipping when they require a minimum purchase. Prevent Shopping Cart Abandonment Even after a potential customer has selected an item and added it to their shopping cart, that doesn't mean the sale is complete. A 2010 report by Forrester Research that surveyed online customers found that 88 percent have abandoned their online shopping carts without completing a transaction. Simple things like making your website less noisy or switching your shopping cart model can make a huge difference. By designing targeted promotions, offering free shipping and taking proactive steps to prevent shopping cart abandonment, you can ensure that you turn your website visitors into buyers and are able to take full advantage of the holiday sales season. Online Shoppers Photo via Shutterstock The post How to Turn Website Visitors Into Buyers appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| The Mechanics Of Making Money And The Business Physics Of Revenue Posted: 15 Nov 2012 08:00 AM PST Think about a graceful hang-glider and a massive new Boeing Dreamliner screaming overhead. Despite how radically different the hang-glider and the jet are, they are both flying because of the clever application of the mechanics of flight. They would both come crashing down if those mechanics were ignored.
Early flight pioneers watched birds in flight and concluded that a flying machine that allowed them to "flap their wings" would be the ticket. And ludicrous as it sounds, that made absolute sense at the time, given what people observed. “Making Sense” Doesn’t Make It True But the fact that it "made sense" didn't make it the correct approach. Of course, it wasn't until years later (and after untold mistakes, dead-ends, injury, and death) that flight pioneers came to understand the true mechanics of flight. And once the mechanics of flight were understood, aviation really took off (I just couldn't resist). The financial results your business creates are subject to certain mechanics too – just like flight. The concept of financial results is a meta-concept. That means it is an aggregated concept that is the natural outcome of certain underlying "laws" or mechanics. It doesn't matter what size of business you own, what industry you are in, or what level of experience, passion, or desire you have. The financial results your business creates are subject to the same mechanics of making money – what I call Business Physics. The Mechanics Of Revenue Let's look at revenue as an example of how to apply Business Physics to improve your financial results. It's obvious your business has to generate revenue if it's going to make money for you. But to control your financial results you need to break the meta-concept of revenue down into mechanical components. Revenue is the result of the combination of three separate elements:
Viewing revenue this way reveals that you can increase revenue by doing any of the following:
Different Paths – Same Destination Looking at your revenue from this perspective allows you to clearly see the different paths that you can take to get to your desired end result. And then you can pick the one that is the best fit for your business, your personality, and your lifestyle. For example, maybe you have lots of customers but they only purchase a small part of your total product or service offering. Your best path to increased revenue may be to approach existing customers to encourage them to buy other things you could offer them. Or maybe you have a large number of inactive customers who, for some reason, haven't bought from you for quite a while. Your best route to increased revenue may be to develop a strategy to encourage them to come back and become active once again. There is an almost infinite number of ways you can combine Business Physics to create the financial results you want – in a way that is meaningful and sustainable for you. There is no one best answer that applies to every business. Just like there are many ways to apply the mechanics of flight – the right way ultimately depends on what you are starting with, where you are now, and what you want to accomplish. Remember the graceful hang-glider and the massive Boeing Dreamliner both harness the same mechanics of flight. It's just that their designers had two different ideas about what flight should look like. Hang Glider Photo via Shutterstock The post The Mechanics Of Making Money And The Business Physics Of Revenue appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Cell Phone Plan For Small Business: Review of Ting Posted: 15 Nov 2012 05:00 AM PST A few weeks ago, I heard about a new cell phone provider called Ting that is targeting US-based business owners (and consumers, too). It is built on the Sprint cellular network, but the price plans are completely different from mainstream carriers — a la carte plans so that you can pick the level of voice, text, and data you want and change it as often as you want.
Small business readers routinely ask me tech questions and one that I receive often is: What Phone Should I Get? The beauty of Ting is that you buy your phone, feature type, aka “dumb phone” or smartphone and then choose a plan configuration that works best for you. Ting sent me a loaner phone for this review so I could not help myself and ordered the Samsung S III. For individual mobile users and families, Ting has an online calculator that helps visualize the total savings with Ting over two years. For small businesses, Ting offers a "Total Cost of Ownership Worksheet" to determine what you'll pay in a typical month along with the total cost of ownership over one and two years. If you are interested in trying out the worksheet yourself, you can download it by going here, and go to the small box on the bottom right hand side of the page.
What I Really Like:
What I’d Like to See:
In my view, Ting is shaking up the mobile phone hierarchy in the USA and I’m glad for it. Their pricing and options are clear and customer support has been excellent. If you’ve been in the market for a new phone and are looking to save money, you should evaluate Ting for Business options. The post Cell Phone Plan For Small Business: Review of Ting appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Bootstrapped BlueGlass Enters European Market Through Acquisition Posted: 15 Nov 2012 04:30 AM PST Digital marketing agency BlueGlass just announced its acquisition of Quaturo, a London-based content marketing agency, signaling the company's intent to continue growing in new markets.
BlueGlass's marketing services include SEO, paid and organic search, content marketing, and social marketing on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Quaturo specializes in producing content that will help businesses get noticed online, which is very much in line with the overall goals and vision of BlueGlass, according to BlueGlass's Co-founder and CMO Chris Winfield:
One of the main goals of Quaturo, now BlueGlass UK, is to show European companies the value of content and digital marketing strategies:
Winfield also stated that while this acquisition is the agency's first foray into the European market, it certainly won't be the last. Currently, BlueGlass has offices in Florida, California, New York, South America, and Australia. Previously, BlueGlass had acquired SEO company 3 Dog Media in 2010 and digital content marketing agency Voltier Digital toward the beginning of 2012. Before this most recent acquisition, the company had 75 employees, and all employees from Quaturo will be staying on, bringing that number up to 80. The team at the new BlueGlass UK is receiving training this week on the methodologies and practices used by BlueGlass. In addition, they now have access to all of BlueGlass's services and resources, and clients will have access to BlueGlass's technology and internal tools. BlueGlass has been completely bootstrapped and self-funded since its launch. According to Winfield, BlueGlass fills a gap in the digital marketing landscape, falling between the few giant holding companies that own most of the largest marketing firms, and the small boutique firms with just a few employees and clients. The company was formed in 2010 and revenue has been growing at a steady rate of 65% per year. Quaturo was founded in June 2012. The post Bootstrapped BlueGlass Enters European Market Through Acquisition appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Spotify Attracts Investment: Musicians Fight for Royalty Rules Posted: 15 Nov 2012 02:30 AM PST It’s often been said that content is king on the Internet, but recent investment in Spotify, the online music site, and battles over online music royalties by musicians who have also become among the Web’s biggest content creators drives home the value of content in every business…including yours. Content doesn’t just have inherent value of its own. It can help you define your brand, market, and sell your products, and even be the main product of your business, as we’ll see below. Let’s look at how content online or off can help you build value in your business today. Investing in ContentThis ain’t YouTube. Another $100 million in investment from Coca-Cola and other big players in the streaming music service known as Spotify is the best example of the value of content in any business model. As opposed to services like YouTube, which essentially depend on users for content, Spotify’s whole business model depends on its ability to deliver content, specifically commercially released music from a variety of artists, to subscribers with both free and paid subscription accounts. The music is expensive and the company has yet to be profitable. The New York Times Pandora’s box. Another streaming music delivery service wants to change the way it pays content creators, specifically some of the biggest chart-toppers in the music industry, but the artists aren’t having it. The battle lines are drawn to determine the value of content online, at least the most popular tunes. Only you can determine the value of quality content when building your business, and that value will depend on how you use it. It’s important to understand what content can do for you. The Hill Balance of PowerWho’s in the driver’s seat? Guest posting is an important way content is used by small businesses online to market their expertise and build their brand. This much is really no secret, but the question is whether content creators or business owners and managers should be in charge of how relationships with editors of various sites are handled. Blogger Amanda DiSilvestro makes the case that content creators should always be in the driver’s seat. Get Busy Media The author as brand. In an admittedly whimsical approach to the idea of Google Authorship and AuthorRank, blogger Tyson Stevens argues that content creators are becoming brands of their own. If you haven’t thought of your business as a content creator, perhaps you should. The expertise and authority behind content creation is becoming a new kind of currency both on and off the Web. Right Hat SEO Better SalesA graphic description. Content comes in all flavors, from blog posts to other kinds of marketing copy, but the most interesting content trends to watch are those that take on a category of their own. Infographics are an excellent example of this. Very popular in Internet marketing, infographics are an exciting component to add into your marketing mix. Blogger Juliana Weiss-Roessler tells you how and why. Intechnic On with the show. You may not think of a PowerPoint presentation as content that can build your business’s brand, but Bernd Geropp would probably disagree. Here he explains with an entertaining video and accompanying post why the content you present in a meeting must be every bit as entertaining as that cool blog post, video, or infographic on your Website. Otherwise you may be subjecting your audience to a fate Bernd calls “death by PowerPoint.” More Leadership, Less Management An air of mystery. If your experience with sales is limited to making a couple of cold calls and shooting out a few e-mails to prospects on your list, then welcome to the wondrous world of Paul Castain. Castain’s approach combines the mystery and drama of great storytelling with the rhythm and balance of fine art…and he even uses props. Paul’s content includes hand addressed direct mail pieces with a QR code leading directly to a landing page explaining more about his offer. It may not be everyone’s version of content marketing, but it gets results. Sales Playbook The post Spotify Attracts Investment: Musicians Fight for Royalty Rules appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
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