TheMiddleShelf | Tips, Advice, Musings for Your Business, Career, Life

Rise To The (.com) Top

April 1st, 2011

Maria Helm

You are now running a business and it makes sense that you need a website. You have invested in a great website layout and design, excellent copy and graphics. But is your company’s site in the fast lane of the information superhighway or stuck in a cyber cul-de-sac?

Is it doing its job in terms of driving customers to look at and buy your goods and services? Does it appear at, or near, the top of an online search?

No matter how good your site looks, it’s wasted if your online audience is too small. As most of you know, you can pay to boost your search rankings, but there are some free tools that you or your web designer can use to boost your ranking.

1. Submit your site to Google, Yahoo!, Bing and dmoz.

2. Content is king. Put yourself into the minds of your potential customers. What would potential customers type into a search engine? Make sure you are using the right keywords on your site. Google’s keyword tool can help.

Start Hiring When You Want To Grow Your Business

March 25th, 2011

Maria Helm

How much time do you spend each day going to the post office, inputting data or running errands instead of working with paying clients? Hiring your first employee will help you grow your company and free up extra time to grow yourself as person.

Ask yourself where do you see your business in a year? In five years? If you want to grow – serve more customers, create new products, make more money- you cannot do it all alone. Think about why you went into business. It probably wasn’t to do administrative tasks. With an employee – the right employee – you’ll spend more time on what you’re good at (and make money doing) and less time on grunt work. That’s just one benefit and here’s a few more:

Spend your time on money-producing activities
Produce more products or services
Serve more customers
Make money when someone else is working
Bounce ideas off someone else
Use your time on the things you do best and like to do.

How do you know when it’s the right time for you to hire? Perhaps like retail stores, restaurants, and many tech companies, you need employees the day you open your doors. Or you’re so busy that you turn away work or can’t handle routine tasks. It’s amazing how many self-employed individuals don’t have time to get out their invoices. If you’re thinking of hiring, consider the following.

Achieving Success with Email Marketing Sign Ups

February 23rd, 2011

Maria Helm

In the less than 1% chance you hadn’t noticed, consumers and business clients alike have lost all tolerance for spam. Firewalls are going up everywhere. Software applications and ISP providers, now police junk mail. Families and businesses are installing filtering devices. Legal controls have also kicked in, such as the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act. But even when following the letter of the CAN-SPAM law, which restrains but doesn’t outlaw spam, e-mail marketers may still antagonize thousands of their potential customers by using unscrubbed, bulk e-mail lists.

To effectively harness e-mail marketing these days, you need to first secure the recipient’s prior consent, a nod of interest. You should be using only permission-based, “opt-in” lists.

There are many smart ways to motivate customers to sign up for your e-mail marketing newsletter or messages. These strategies can build the kind of lists that fuel results.

1. Identify the customer need — and then fill it. People will give up personal information only in exchange for something they value, whether that’s your must-read, in-the-know newsletter, unique entertainment, or dibs on buying the latest hot release. You need to research what your target customers consider valuable and compelling. And then deliver it. Be sure to make it clear that you indeed have what they want.

2. Target your messages.If you sell bicycles, you wouldn’t advertise in a cooking magazine, would you? So how come so many marketers send out bulk messages to bulk lists? It’s mostly because e-mail marketing is so cheap that mailings to thousands become tempting. Spend some time finding out which customers on your list are bicycle mavens and who also happens to love cooking. Then segment your lists and messages accordingly.

3. Make it easy to sign up. An invitation to join your e-mail list — along with the benefits it offers — should appear everywhere your marketing does. Put an opt-in form on the home page of your Web site. Every time a salesperson talks to a customer, ask for an e-mail address. Include the invite on direct mailers, at live events, and in all media advertising.

Make Honesty Your Best Policy

January 28th, 2011

Maria Helm

Thought I’d share with you a valuable lesson learned from a previous job I had many years ago. Here it goes . . .

Immediately upon showing up for work as a mid-level marketing manager at a new company, I was told that everyone in the company flew coach on domestic flights unless the only seats available were in first class. I understood the rationale behind such a policy and had no problem conforming to the rule. One of my fellow department managers, however, wasn’t so accepting.

After we became better acquainted, he confided over a post-dinner libation that he flew first class on most longer flights and just put on his expense report that the coach section was full so he was “forced” to upgrade his flight status to first class. “No one ever checks,” he boasted. Being relatively new to the company, as well as being relatively honest, I told him I didn’t think his company air travel modus operandi was particularly admirable and that I’d continue to travel in the “cheap” seats. He just scoffed and accused me of being a “real sucker.”

How Recent Tax Cuts and New Hires Will Affect Your Payroll Service

January 20th, 2011

Maria Helm

January started off on the right foot. The announcement that the unemployment rate had fallen to 9.4 percent was great news for Americans – especially small business owners.

The CBIZ Small Business Employment Index reported that the largest employee increase since June of last year was this past December. Phillip Noftsinger, a business unit president for CBIZ Payroll Services, explained that due to an increase in demand and consumer spending, small business owners were able to increase the number of employees hired.

“The results of this month’s report are consistent with the tone of other employment reports that we have seen throughout the month and encourages one to look to a brighter 2011,” Noftsinger said.

And the good news keeps on coming: Starting this month, workers will get a two percent pay raise thanks to President Obama’s tax cut. The tax cut entails unemployment insurance to be extended for an additional 13 months, a two-percent employee side payroll tax credit, and $40 billion in tax breaks for families and students.

However, Noftsinger included a word of caution for small business employers: “I expect a number of small business owners to remain cautious toward substantial increases in employee hires over the short term as the country’s economic seas have yet to calm completely,” he said. “Still, this positive trend should gain additional traction.”

If you are a small business owner getting ready to add a few heads to your roster, here are a few tips on how to maintain a low cost for payroll services: