The TOP Performance Blog

10 Ways to Market When Cash Is Tight

by Ken Burgin...

A few months ago, Staples and Angus Reid released their latest “STAPLES Canada Small Business National Quarterly Index.” It looks like we believe we are over the hump.

70 per cent of business owners expect at least some improvement to their business over the next six months (compared to 58 per cent in March 2009).

Now that you’re feeling better, get out there and make sure that your customers will come to you rather than your competition when they are ready to buy.

Chances are you are a little tight for cash, so here are ten low-cost ways to market better that we’ve worked out with help from Joanna L. Krotz, co-author of the “Microsoft Small Business Kit”. 

• Stop servicing break-even customers. By now you know this is a theme with us. Every second you spend with a customer who doesn’t help you make money; you are short-changing those who do.
• Make every customer feel special. Always add something to the purchase, whether it’s a hand-written note to a consumer or a recommendation on the latest, greatest business book to a business customer.
• Create business cards that prospects keep. How about a good-looking notepad with your contact info and tagline on every page? Or a free or low-cost trial offer on the back—paper real estate that’s valuable and often wasted.
• Develop an electronic mailing list and send old-fashioned snail-mail letters too. E-newsletters are cheap to send, but you can quickly stand out by occasionally sending personal, surface mail letters to customers and prospects. Just make sure the letter delivers something customers want to read.
• Boost your profile at point of sale, trade shows and conferences. You can quickly create your own signage, glossy postcards with your contact information, product news inserts or a web site for a special event—even if you are not a software pro.
• Combine business with pleasure and charity. Spearhead an event, party or conference for a cause you care about. That puts you in the position of getting to know lots of people, and shows off your small business leadership skills.
• Create a destination. Indigo Books & Music has its coffee bars. Ikea offers child-care centers and cafeterias. Steal this idea. Add a free advisory service. Add customer loyalty services, such as free delivery for second-time buyers.
• Become an online expert. This is the “free sample” approach to bringing in business. Research active e-mail discussion lists and online bulletin boards that are relevant to your business and audience. Join several and start posting expert advice.
• Court local media. Editorial features convey more credibility with prospective clients than paid advertising does. (Check our recent article on how to get PR.)
• Finally, don’t let customers simply slip away. It costs a lot less to retain a disgruntled or inactive customer than to acquire a new one. Send a personalized e-mail (you can automate this process), inquiring whether all is well. For a customer who suffered a bad experience, pick up the phone, acknowledging the unpleasantness and ask if there’s anything you can do. A discount can’t hurt either.

Being kind to customers is the smartest low-cost marketing you can do.

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Ken Burgin is a Certified Duct Tape Marketing Coach.  He helps clients create marketing programs including advertising and design of all media.  To learn more visit http://www.marketingmasters.ca/.   
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Improving your Marketing and Sales in an Economic Downturn

by Laura Baker...

Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.  It’s time for you to get out there in front of the clients, solidifying and building on existing relationships. 

Keep moving ahead with developing your business.  Each of us needs to reinvent our business in order to survive as we succeed as many of us see our business shrink to virtually nothing.  It’s time to start thinking outside the box and identify where your strengths lie and going for it.     

1. Network, network and more networking

Networking is the fuel that drives your business and brings sales.  People like to do business with people that they know, like and trust.  Networking is a great way to get to know more people, get them to like you and show them that they can trust you by helping them with their needs. 

You should make it a point to network two times a week – attend weekly groups, mixers, volunteer, social activities (sports, cooking, book clubs, boating, parenting groups, etc)   I know that might sound overwhelming to some, but it’s important to not make excuses and make time and there are groups that meet early in the morning, before breakfast, lunch, after work, in the evening or on the weekend. 

The more people that you know, the more that you can get them to like you and show you that you can trust them with their needs.

2.  Sell your strengths: 

You can’t be the best at everything, you need to find the things that your really good at and expand on it.  You need to sell those strengths against your competition to gain the sale. 

 3.  Give it away:

Advertise the things that cost little or nothing or special services that you already do.  For example if you’re a caterer give dinner mints, special sauces with your breads, improve your food displays, offer a free signature beverage, a coffee bar, a chocolate fountain or inexpensive center pieces or décor.

4.  Become a Power Negotiator.

Learn to negotiate with your potential client and your vendors.  Currently your rental companies such as your rental companies have inventory such as beautiful linens, décor and serving pieces that aren’t being used.  Negotiate with your vendors to create a win/win situation for your clients.  Ask your vendors to upgrade your order for your client; you will come out looking like a hero.  Remember to take photos as well, upscale photos help sell your company.    

5.  Improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

Work with a web designer or SEO to find new or creative ways to generate more search hits.     

6. How do you communicate with your customers?

Look at how you communicate when you correspond with customers or potential customers.  Do you communicate in a timely manner?  Are you communications easy to understand? 

I’m in the process of getting a logo created and I started this over a month ago.  First, I asked a college from college who is a graphic designer.  I sent over notes and didn’t hear anything for 2 days.  I emailed and texted them to see if they had gotten the information.  They responded that they would call me back the next day.  Four phone calls and two weeks later I get a response from them.  They send a bid for $350 which I didn’t have an issue with.  I called two days later and still no response.  A week after that, I decided to go with another graphic designer who took four days from the time I found them and surprisingly they where ½ the cost of the other person.  I was going to go with the higher cost person, but they didn’t call back to me.  So my advise to you is follow up, follow up, follow up.    

7.  Build your online marketing presence.

The web is the new marketing tool of choice for the young and savvy business owners.  Social media isn’t dying anytime soon; learn to use tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. 

All of these things might seem overwhelming.  There is barely enough time or money to run the business right now, but these tips won’t cost you very much to implement and you can take one item at a time each week.  The goal is to survive these hard times by being tough and going the extra mile to improve your sales.  Then when times are better in the industry, you will be ahead of your competition and ready to thrive. 

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Laura Baker is professional business consultant who specializes in new and or existing businesses in the hospitality and food service businesses.  To learn more, visit: http://www.lasaramgmtgroup.com/.
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10 Top Promotional Merchandise Products

by Francis Murphy

Whilst the very top few Promotional Merchandise products tend to remain the same there is always a few newcomers into the most popular ones.  This article brings you right up to date with the very latest industry figures and may hold a few surprised for you.

1. Promotional Pens

Still number one in the charts and unlikely ever to be removed from the top of the tree.  Promotional Pens come in so many varieties, sizes and colors and every single one of them is practical, useful and always well received.  These days Promotional Writing Instruments are given away free in so many outlets such as banks, shops and restaurants that it's surprising that they are ever sold in retail shops.

2. Promotional Keyrings

By far one of the most cost effective Promotional Items that you can buy.  The humble keyring is usually kept until it is lost or falls apart so if you assume that most people use their keys 4 times a day for 7 days a week that makes the logo on them seen around 1,500 times a year.  If you divide up the cost per view, the Promotional Keyring must be one of the most cost effective Promotional Giveaways in the world.

3. Promotional T- Shirts

You only have to walk down the road to see just how effective Promotional T-Shirts are and how successful they are at getting your message across to the wider public.  Everyone from rock bands to sporting teams and from charities to clubs and associations use these and other Promotional Clothing products to spread the word.

4. Promotional Mugs

Promotional Mugs are used every day in offices, schools factories, in fact everywhere anybody works or plays and very few are plain, they all seem to have a message to get over.  These days it's not just Budget Ceramic Mugs but Bone China Promotional Mugs that are being used more and more.

5. Promotional Stress Products

Every shape and product you can think of and probably a few you can't even imagine are now being made to relieve stress.  With the latest printing technology now being employed for the branding of these items a full 4 color process print is now possible.

6. Promotional Calculators

You can always count on these Promotional Products... literally.  Calculators are always a welcome gift and are particularly popular when given away in conjunction with financial products such as car insurance or pensions.

7. Promotional Pedometers

The healthy lifestyle promoted in newspapers and magazines has helped the Pedometer into the top ten of Promotional Giveaways.  They now come in all shapes and sizes and can now even be incorporated into Promotional MP3 Players.  Promotional Bottled Water is also a popular second product given away with the pedometers

8. Promotional Mousemats

Even though Laptops with integrated mouse pads are more and popular the mousemat remains a firm favorite in terms of Promotional Products.  Available in hard and soft formats and in any shape to suit your promotion they are a very practical gift that will stay on a clients desk for a long time.

9. Promotional Flash Drives

Whilst these items are not inexpensive, they provide great value for money as they are used constantly by the recipients.  They are available in any shape required and the memory chip has lots of variable sizes.  One slight problem is that because the chips are a commodity, they almost always need to be quoted on a daily basis.

10. Promotional Folders

Almost falling off the list but hanging on in there are Folders, the one exception this to this are Leather Conference Folders which continue to be extremely popular with clients that want to impress.

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Francis Murphy is the Managing Director of BTC Group.  For more information, visit: http://www.btcgroup.co.uk/.
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10 Website Copywriting Tips

By Scott Siders (http://www.novowriting.com)

Powerful search engine optimized (SEO) Website copywriting can have a tremendous impact on your sales and marketing.

Here are 10 Website copywriting tips to create a more effective Website and dramatically improve the way you do business online:

1. Keyword research:  This is step one of Website copywriting.  There are many excellent free and paid services online that you can use to identify what terms your target audience is searching to find your competitors online.  Targeted keyword research plus strategic SEO Website copywriting equals better search rankings than your competition on Google and other search engines.

2. Headline:  The headline is number two on my list, but it's number one for SEO Website copywriting. You absolutely must include your keyword in the headline.  If you don't, it's like putting up a "For Sale" sign without stating what's for sale.  For instance, if you had a 2008 Black Honda Accord for sale but your sign said "Car for Sale," how much are you not communicating?

3. Keyword placement:  In addition to the headline, your primary keyword should appear in the first one or two sentences, be sprinkled throughout the copy as much as possible without distracting from your message, and be included towards the end of the page.

4. Homepage copy:  This is where we see some of the most problems with Website copywriting.  You've undoubtedly seen sites with two sentences on the homepage, as well as sites with thousands of words on the homepage.  Both strategies are unsuccessful.  Too little copy doesn't allow for keywords to be used and simply doesn't persuade a visitor to take action.  Too much copy can dilute important keywords, and usually bores a visitor into clicking away from the site quickly - a double whammy when you consider your Website copywriting goal was to attract the potential customer to your site with relevant keywords and then compel him/her to take some kind of action.

5. Persuasive copy:  "Why am I here, and why do I care?"  People are busy.  No matter how great your site looks (put all the bells and whistles on it if you like), if the copy isn't engaging, they will very quickly move on to a competitor's site.  It's that simple.

6. Bullets:  This is an often overlooked aspect of Website copywriting. The search engines pay attention to bullets because they call-out important items, so include a keyword or two in your bullets as well.  Bullets break up chunks of copy and make information easier to digest.  Since many Web users are skimmers, they may only read the bullets anyway, so make sure you include key benefits of your products and services.

7. Customer-focused copy:  "What's in it for me?"  Visitors to your Website don't care about you.  It's the brutal truth.  They care about your solutions to their problems.  Your Website copywriting needs to reflect this fact.  How does your product/service benefit them?  Do they save money?  Time?  Get a unique product?  Personal service?  Give them the benefits before the features in your Website copywriting and they'll be more likely to take action.

8. Subheads:  Are your keywords in your subheads?  The search engines recognize keywords in subheads to be more important and, like bullets, compelling subheads help break up the copy.

9. Strong call to action:  Your copywriting isn't complete without a persuasive call to action.  Whether it's asking the visitor to contact you for more information or to purchase a product on your site, the call to action needs to specifically state what you want them to do in a way that reminds them of the benefits of your products/services.

10. Metadata:  After you've completed your Website copywriting, remember to provide your Web programmer/designer with the meta title, meta description, and keywords to include in the code for the search engines.

There's still one question you need to ask yourself:  What do I want my Website to accomplish?  Figure that out, and you'll know your Website copywriting strategy.

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Scott SidersScott Siders is a marketing copywriter with Novo Writing, a full-service copywriting firm specializing in marketing.  For more information, visit http://www.novowriting.com.
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How to Ruin Your Business Reputation

by Michele Pariza Wacek (http://www.michelepw.com/)

A while ago, I got an email from one of the "gurus" I follow and it shocked me.  The gist of it was this person wanted to trade services for a household item.

To say it floored me would be an understatement.

What was worse was a few days later this person started sending emails promoting their coaching program.  How could anyone who had gotten the "trade" email even consider signing up for their coaching program?

Now this was a pretty obvious blunder, but there are other, smaller blunders, you might be making that are hurting your business reputation and your ability to attract clients.  But first, I want to make something clear.

The problem isn't that you're struggling right now.  That happens.  It's the nature of business and every seasoned business person knows it.  Businesses will lose money or be flat from time to time.  There's no shame in it, you just need to keep doing something about it (i.e. marketing, analyzing your offerings or your target market to see if you need to make a change, etc.)

The mistake happens when you make this too transparent.  I'm not saying you should lie and say business is great when it's not. (In fact, please DON'T lie. That's another way to hurt your business reputation big time.)  But (and this is ESPECIALLY true if you have a service business) don't make it obvious you're struggling.  No one wants to hire a consultant who isn't busy.  In the back of people's minds is the worry if the consultant isn't busy they must not be good.  So you MUST not come across as too eager or that you have too much time on your hands.

No matter how desperate for customers you are, you must get that under control.  People will sense desperation and either run from you or try and take advantage of you.  Neither is all that good for you (either your business or your psyche).

So what can you do? 

Here are 3 tips to help you stay strong no matter what's going on in your business:

1. Keep marketing.

Now is the time to step up your marketing.  You have the time, why not write extra articles so you have them "stockpiled" when you do get busy again.  Now might also be a good time to do a promotion but do NOT say it's because business is slow.  Find some other creative way to do the same thing (for instance, maybe you have a "back to school" special, now that the kids are back in school you have some extra time to take on an additional client or two.)  Or your promotion can be around a product or a group program.  (Having a promotion around your product or group program doesn't carry nearly the social stigma of pedaling your service.)

2. Don't answer your phone.

Yes, you heard me.  Let voice mail pick it up or keep your virtual assistant on to return phone calls.  Busy people don't sit by the phone willing it to ring.  You need to get your mind off your phone (or your inbox) and on to drumming up customers.

3. Don’t drop your fees.

Your fees aren't the problem.  Something else is the problem.  Either you aren't marketing enough or your target market isn't the right target market for you anymore (or you need to tweak your offerings or something else is going on).  But the moment you start dropping your fees or doubting yourself is the moment you'll start down a vicious downward cycle.

Now, this doesn't mean you can't put together a lower priced package and promote it. That's fine and it may be a smart business decision. But to lower your hourly rate -- not a smart move.

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Michele Pariza Wacek is a Marketing strategist and owns Creative Concepts and Copywriting LLC, a copywriting and marketing agency.  She helps entrepreneurs become more successful at attracting more clients, selling more products and services and boosting their business.  For more information, visit  http://www.michelepw.com/. 
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Hey, October is Self Promotion Month!

by Rebecca West

Do you own your own business?   Then you must self-promote because no one else is going to do it for you. 

So what?  Well, if no one knows about your service, you’re not going to have a business for very long!

Self-promotion should not be smarmy and obnoxious.  It should be honest, forthright, and feel like you are forming mutually beneficial connections with others.

How can you self-promote the right way?  Try these six tips:

1.  Be the “Go-To” Gal or Guy.  When networking, really listen to the services others provide.  Educate yourself on what and who is out there and be ready to link people with what they need.  If you become the “go-to” person then you’ll be remembered as helpful and willing and will be first in the minds of people when it’s your service they need.

2.  Don’t let people live with rats.  You provide a useful service, right?  If you own a pest control company, wouldn’t you agree that people with pests really do need your service?  Regardless of your service, if you truly believe that you have something valuable to offer, then frankly it’s selfish not to tell people about it.  Why are you letting people continue to live with rats if you can do something about it?!

3.  Be nice.  I love Les Schwab.  I wish that I could buy my groceries and get dental work done at Les Schwab.  Because they are SO DARN NICE and always helpful.  The moral?  If people LIKE you they want to do business with you, and they will find ways to do business with you one way or another.  

4.  Specialize.  I know, it’s scary, but if you say that ‘everyone’s your client’ then you’re really not for me.  I want to know that you are great at what you do, and to do that you have to specialize.  You’ll fear losing clients, but long term you want to be seen and sought-after as an expert, and you can’t do that as a jack-of-all-trades! 

5.  Show up.  Facebook, Twitter, Biznik, E-women, Le Tip, BNI... they can all work but you’ll only get out what you put it.  So be consistent, show up regularly, get to know the members and take an active interest in what they do.  And do this for months and years, not weeks.  Show up when your business is slow, and especially when your business is busy.  Only then will you reap the rewards of networking and self-promotion.  

6.  Tell a good story.  Don’t ever, EVER, tell someone your job title when they ask what you do.  That’s just a quick way to end the conversation.  Seriously... “I’m a psychologist” “I’m a plumber” “I’m a designer.”  Boring!  How about “I help people overcome their fear of the dark.” “I unclog the sink after the kids try to see how many legos will fit in the garbage disposal.” “I makeover living rooms so that people aren’t embarrassed to have their friends come over.”  You see, it may not tell *everything* you do, but it *will* get the conversation going!

Self-promotion is all about showing up and not being selfish with the knowledge you have that can help others.  Be educated, helpful and nice, and you will find success!

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Rebecca West is the owner of Rivalee Redesign - an interior design company that makes the most of what you already own to create warm, updated, welcoming rooms out of once unfinished, unfriendly spaces.  For more information, visit the Rivalee Redesign Website. 
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Top 5 Website Analytics Programs

by Leslie Lyon (http://www.spas2b.com/)

The future of most businesses has become information analysis.

And being that a strong online presence is taking first position in today's business marketing strategies, you must analyze your website aggressively to understand its contribution to current and future profit generation.

Maximum online profit generation can only occur if you take an analytical approach

There are a number full website traffic statistics and analytics systems available, but are you using any of them?  And aside from Web Analytics, there are also comparison resources and performance metrics that should be considered. 

Do you know what paths visitors are using to gain access to your website?  What is the ratio of new vs. returning visitors?  Which keywords are drawing visitors to your sites?  Which Search Engines?  What is your bounce rate?  Where are most of your inquiries coming from?  Is your Home Page customer-focused?  How do you compare to your competition?  

What exactly will keep your business mojo running?  

Take a look at our Top 5 Web Analytics Resources.  Some offer better information than others for user behavior and some are stronger when it comes to facts and figures.  With your research and once you have done your own needs analysis, it should become clear to you, which will suit your situation the best.  Enjoy!

1.  Google Analytics - Provides full website analysis. 

It is currently a free service, but it requires that you have an account with Google and that you meet specific online criteria.  Once your account has been set up, Google begins to gather data on your site(s), and reports it back to you via pages and pages of graphs, maps and stats.  Everything from the number of visitors to your site; to new visits vs. repeat visits ratios; average time on site; top traffic sources; top pages; keywords; and so much more, this program is a must. 

My two favorites have to be the map and site overlays.  The map overlay tells you exactly how many visitors are coming from each area in the world; and the site overlay pops up percentages onto each link on your web pages, to show where visitors are clicking.  This is definitely worth the investment in time that it takes to get set up.

2.  Google Trends - Compares key words and phrases.

We all know the importance of key words and key word phrases.  Here you can input two or more key words or phrases to evaluate and compare their effectiveness against each other, with the results displayed on a graph.  You can drill down further to uncover results on specific target locations, and more.  This is a very useful tool to help you choose the appropriate word content within your web pages, to ultimately boost your exposure and organic ranking.   

3.  Compete - Identifies competitive strategies. 

Compete is an online competitive service that combines intelligent site and search analytics to help you improve your online marketing initiatives by identifying competitive strategies.  Knowing this information can take your SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimization) efforts to the next level, and help you stay on top with site metrics and audience profiles. 

4.  WeWe Score - Rates your website's customer focus.

When visitors find your website, they really only care about how well you can help them meet their needs.  Your focus has to be on the customer, which is conveyed through the words you use on your site.  This website counts certain words on your site that are the key indicators of whether your focus is on them, or on you.  This can be helpful in better understanding the impression you are making on your prospects, and where you need to make changes in order to grab and entice customers to go deeper, when they land on your home page.  

5. Trace My IP - Tracks IP addresses for traffic analysis, and much more.

Although we use all of the above sites at Spas2b, I've just found this one, and frankly, it looks very intriguing.  Is the time coming that we will actually be able to zero in on the name of the person visiting our websites, and where exactly they are from?  It appears that this kind of advanced data gathering is just around the corner, but for now, just knowing more about our visitor details through the activity reports provided here, is a great way to develop strategies; monitor results and improve outcomes.

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Leslie Lyon is Founder of Spas2b - a full service Spa Consulting & Spa Management education, specializing in classroom & on-line distance learning courses.  For more information, visit http://www.spas2b.com/.
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Use the Economic Downturn to Position Your Business For Success

by K. MacKillop

For any business in the early stages of operations, the current economic downturn provides a unique opportunity to really examine the details of how your venture is running.  

Flat or declining sales are a struggle for any existing business, but a serious analysis and making appropriate changes will not only keep your venture afloat but will also prepare you for explosive growth once the economy improves.

Financial Management

The first step is to re-evaluate every expense, line by line.  Look for any cost that could be reduced or eliminated altogether.  Ask yourself how reducing the expenses would directly affect the actual work product of your business.  Eliminate any expenses that does not directly affect the sales cycle. 

Next, evaluate direct costs.  Check with suppliers for better deals -- remember, their sales are probably down as well, and they are motivated to retain existing customers.  Consider alternative vendors.  If nothing else, you may find a better deal that your current vendor is willing to match.

If you provide perks to your employees, be sure to communicate any changes before they are implemented.  Most workers will understand, and many will be grateful to still be employed, even if the free snacks and ballgames are cut out for a while.  

If you must cut staff, be as sensitive as possible.  Don't make any promises about the future and be sure you comply with any clauses in your employment contracts and manuals.

Marketing

Marketing is often one of small business's highest expenses.  While these costs should be evaluated, cutting marketing should be the last resort.  Marketing drives sales, so it may require more marketing to achieve the sales you need during a recession, not less.

Every marketing effort should be evaluated for its cost-per-objective and cost-per-sale.  That is, if your marketing objective is to increase website traffic, every promotion related to that objective should be evaluated in terms of results -- how many more visitors are you seeing for every dollar you pay?  And how many of those visitors are being converted to sales?

You will likely find that some efforts are far more cost-effective than others.  Consider shifting some of your marketing budget to these elements that produce more actual sales.

Planning

During slow periods, entrepreneurs also have some breathing room to plan for future growth.  Consider any changes in your market or industry that are likely to occur during and after the downturn.  Re-evaluate your mid- and long-term plans to be sure they still make sense.  

Identify projects you and your staff can work on during the slow times to prepare the business for growth. For example, if you plan to expand to a second location or to increase staff, develop any missing or inaccurate standard operating procedures (SOPs), update the employee manual and training program, and work up the numbers on exactly the level of sales needed to make the growth possible.

Conclusion

An economic downturn can be a great opportunity for a motivated entrepreneur.  Don't twiddle your thumbs waiting for sales to increase, but use the time to tighten the belt and prepare for future growth.

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K. MacKillop is co-founder of LaunchX LLC and authors a small business startup blog.  For more information, visit http://www.launchx.com/.
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The Importance of Selecting the Right Name for Your New Website

by Eva Judge (http://www.wkwd.com.au/)

Currently there are over 106 million domain names worldwide. 

To put this into context, as a potential website owner, you will have to compete for the spotlight with thousands of other sites of similar nature to yours.  For this reason, whether you are in the market for a basic website or a custom web design, it is important that an appropriate domain name is selected.

What is a Domain Name?

Simply put, a domain name is the actual name of the website that is input across the text field of a web browser (For example is www.wkwd.com).  In essence, the domain name becomes the website name that all of your customers and potential customers will come to know you by.

How Do I Choose a Domain Name?

A professional web design or e-commerce design company can help you choose an appropriate domain name.  The actual process is quite simple, however, there are a few things that you should consider when selecting the best name for your website.

Shorter is Easier to Remember -

Even though you want your business name as your domain, you want to make sure that you keep the name as short as possible without losing your brand's recognition.  If you have a business such as "No Worries," then it's pretty easy to choose a name, like www.noworries.com.au.  However, if your name is "The No Worries Bottle Shop" you may still want to consider something along the lines of www.noworries.com, or www.bottleshop.com.

Keywords Rule -

You might be asking, "If you own 'The No Worries Bottle Shop', why would you compromise your brand by shortening it to bottleshop.com?"  The fact of the matter is that keywords in your domain name will help your search engine ranking.  You might even consider purchasing several domain names that have the keywords of the items you sell and point those domain names toward your website.  Your web design firm or a Search Engine Optimisation specialist will be able to assist you with this process.

Hyphens Are Not Your Mate -

You should never us a hyphen in your domain name.  This topic could be left at that, but it's important to understand why.  First of all, nearly everyone who uses the Internet understands that most names within domain names are all one word. This means that it has become the standard.  Many people use this theory when searching for a business on the web.  They'll place their cursor in the text field on their browser and start typing away "www.businessnamehere.com" and see if it works.  If you decide to go against the standard, then you risk people having problems finding your website.  Hyphens are not standard therefore you simply should avoid using them.

Numbers Are 2, Two, Too, To Hard Work With -

Another thing to avoid in your domain name is numbers.  As you can see in the sub-title, a good example of this is the number two.  When someone verbally gives out your domain name, you want the person hearing the information to be able to go home, type in the domain and come to your website.  This can be rather tough if you have a business named "Got To Be a Good Business" and you decided that it'd look cool if you set up your domain name to be "www.got2bgood.com".  This same rule applies to shortening words like "be" to "b".  Keep it simple and people will find your website.

A Unique Name is a Memorable Name -

When you choose your domain name, be sure that it's unique.  This doesn't mean, one of a kind, strange or so far out there that no one gets it.  It just means that you should avoid a domain name that is similar to others because people might mistype it and end up at someone else's site.

Creating a domain name can be simple and fun.  Just stick to these little bits of advice and you'll have a great domain name for you site in no time at all.

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Eva Judge is with White Knight Web Design & Development - Their aim is to lower the cost of web development and design but still deliver a high quality product and service.  For more information, visit http://www.wkwd.com.au/.
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Comment Below:  What did you love, learn or disagree with in this article.  Thanks for your feedback!

Why Marketing is Essential to Grow Your Business

by Kim Clausen (http://www.ready2gomarketingsolutions.com)

There are a lot of things in our day that demand our time and attention.  Some help move our business forward and some have us ending our day wondering what we have accomplished.

We have a tendency to let ourselves get distracted by the things that are screaming the loudest for our attention, and we also have a tendency to spend time on things we enjoy the most, regardless of whether it is a money making activity or not.  And unfortunately, many times it is not.

For most of us, marketing is an essential activity for our business.

We must market ourselves and our services to our target audience so they become aware of us and are interested to learn more.  With today's competitive economy, the idea of hanging out our shingle and hoping people will find us will lead to a definite doom.

Therefore, if you are truly committed to having a successful business, and your business is not yet where you want it to be, then you will need to be spending the majority of your time on marketing activities.  And the majority of that time should be spent on income generating marketing activities.

There are two types of marketing activities - active and passive.

Active marketing activities give you the greatest exposure, establish connection and creditability,
and get you greater results quicker.

- Speaking
- Training events like workshops and teleseminars
- Networking - at meetings, organizations and such
- Social networking with purpose
- Creating joint venture and alliance partnerships

Passive activities are activities you need to be performing in your business but aren't as direct in generating income but very effective just the same for generating awareness, growing your list and creating interest.

- Article marketing
- Blogging
- Maintaining Your website
- Working on your brochure
- Keep in touch activities - like sending cards, notes and newsletters

If you are committed to growing a successful business, then until you have reached the level of success you desire, you will want to be working full time in your business.  Therefore, if you only have 3 clients, then the rest of your work week would be spent mostly on marketing activities.

For those of you who have a job that you want to leave and are really committed to building your own business, then I encourage you to put your head down, make the short term sacrifice and squeeze as many hours out of your day as you can marketing your business.

It is only temporary and the faster you get your business grown the sooner you can leave your job.

If your business is where you want it to be and you have a steady stream of referrals and people contacting you, then you may be able to reduce your marketing activities, but you do not want to ever completely let up on the marketing pedal because clients will come and go.

In sales, it's called the pipeline.

You want to always be putting names in your pipeline, and nurturing those relationships so that you always have a steady stream of clients coming in while others leave.

If marketing is a necessity for companies like Weight Watchers and McDonalds, then marketing will most likely be a necessity for us too.  Therefore, it is advantageous for us to spend our time on activities that will move our business forward - and marketing is indeed one of them.

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Kim Clausen founded Ready2Go Marketing Solutions as a way to help personal development professionals more easily market their business.  To learn more, visit http://www.ready2gomarketingsolutions.com. 
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Comment Below:  What did you love, learn or disagree with in this article.  Thanks for your feedback!