71 posts categorized "Small Business"

Owning a small business means working with a smaller budget than larger organizations. This means cutting corners in some departments, and doing without the bottomless supply closet you'd find in a major corporation.

Even though you can't buy every new business gadget on the market, a few tools you simply can't do without:

1. A Calendar. Any Calendar.
   Given how little time small business owners have, and how many demands get placed on that time, it's amazing how many still try to make it through life without a calendar and schedule. It doesn't matter whether it's a paper wall calendar, an advanced paper planner or one of the hundreds of electronic versions. Your life will be better once you're using one. 
2. ELance and oDesk
   Small businesses lack the budget to hire full-time staff for every task. ELance and oDesk are hubs for freelance professionals looking for gigs. You'll be able to choose from outsourcing tasks to cheap labor to finding local professionals to do the job. Prices stay low because of the competitive environment.
3. Hootsuite and/or Mailchimp
   Hootsuite lets you plan and time posts to various social media platforms. Mailchimp helps you organize and run email lists and broadcasts. In both cases, these tools cut much of the scut work out of your marketing communications, freeing your time to make sure all of your communications are brilliant. 
4. A Smart Phone
   Yes, you can get by with a regular cell phone. No, that regular phone won't coordinate your communications between your phone, text, email, calendar and social media. It won't let you read reports while waiting in line at the bank. It doesn't let you use the countless apps designed to make running a business easier. If you can afford smart phones for your whole team, it's usually worth the investment. 
5. Google Analytics
   Google's analytics service analyzes keyword and website performance to help you figure out how good a job your web team is doing. Without its metrics, your web marketing is pretty much a shot in the dark. If your business model relies heavily on web promotion, you should invest in Market Samurai, the upgrade for-pay version of this concept. 
6. Square
   If you remember the bad old days of leasing credit card machines and paying exorbitant processing fees, you love Square even if you've never heard of it. This is a small attachment you plug into your iPhone that lets you process credit cards anywhere you go. Combined with an order tracking app that connects to your bookkeeping, it replaces between three and five 20th-century tools. 

Readers, what tools save your bacon every day? Tell us about them in the comments below...

What could you do with an extra hour every work day? That's a total of 250 hours a year -- about a month worth of work days. That kind of time could revolutionize your small business, improve your health or give you the work-life balance you deserve. The trick is making that hour happen. There are three basic strategies for finding that kind of time...

Drop Commitments

Are there activities taking up your time that don't contribute enough to your life? If so, drop them like the bad habits they are. Some examples:

• Watch one less hour of televisions each day.
• If you're sleeping eight hours a night, try seven. But don't go for six instead of seven, or five instead of six.
• Reading is great, but you can listen to an audiobook or a podcast while in the car rather than sitting and reading.
• Is there a social commitment (PTA, service club, HOA) that takes your time but you're doing out of obligation rather than the commitment's value?

Boost Productivity

You've heard about "work smarter, not harder." This is doing exactly that -- finding hacks that can make you work so smart you have an hour left over when the work is all done. 

• Get 30 minutes exercise each day. Some productivity experts say this will boost your productivity by at least an hour.
• Schedule your day each morning, and conform to that schedule as much as you can. 
• Give yourself permission to close your office door during peak work times. What your team needs can wait -- and you can work free of interruptions.
• Answer email only two or three times a day. The constant email habit wastes hours. Ditto for social media.

Delegate

You're the boss. If you can put some tasks you've been taking on into the hands of your trusted minions, that's time you can spend on the work only you do best.

• Find somebody else to do every business-related errand you currently do yourself. All pickups, dropoffs, shopping, shipping and cleaning task should be off your docket. 
• Identify two or three tasks only you can do, but you could teach to a team member. 
• Hire your kids to take care of a few hours' worth of household tasks. It will free up your time and teach them responsibility.

In most cases, you'll find your five hours a week with a combination of the above methods. Think of it as a budget for your time. Just like finding extra money for a major project at work, you're creating "time income streams" to budget things you want to get done.

Whether you suffer from analysis paralysis, slow-starting mornings, a social media addiction, or any of a thousand other contributing factors, procrastination can kill your productivity as a manager. This is especially true of the most important projects, since the size and stakes make it harder to get motivated to start on them.

If the paragraph above hits close to home, try on a few of these prescriptions for procrastination.

1. Subdivide, Subdivide, Subdivide
   Take twenty minutes to break big tasks into small, ordered chunks. Don't "work on your novel." Make a list of 200 items, all of which say "write one page." Then schedule that subdivided chunk for a specific hour at a specific time.
2. Set a Two-Minute Timer
   If you're dreading a task, set a timer for 120 seconds and make yourself work for that long. Keep the timer in easy reach, since you're likely to go ahead and finish once time's up...unless you have to leave the area to turn off the buzzer. For a higher-tech solution, RescueTime offers a simple task-tracking program that runs in the background of your computer.
3. Get the Hard Stuff Done
   Schedule an hour or two first thing in the morning for the hardest/most intimidating/most onerous tasks on your schedule. This is much easier than tackling the same tasks when you're low on energy after knocking out the easy stuff.
4. Bribe Yourself
   There's nothing wrong with promising yourself a ten-minute break, a treat from the vending machines, or a quick nap after you've finished a looming chore. Just know which bribes work best for you, and keep the rewards in line with your goals. (For example, ice cream as a bribe for getting to the gym won't serve your plan to lose ten pounds.)
5. Write it Down, Then Do it In Order
   Make a to-do list, fill your schedule, print out an agenda...whatever format best suits your personal organization or work flow. When it's 10:45, you do what you wrote down for 10:45 and no excuses.
6. Set Time Limits
   This one makes enormous sense, but it's surprising how few people use it. If you're putting off prepping for that meeting, change the task to "prep for the meeting by 10 AM Tuesday."  Just double-check your schedule to make sure the meeting isn't on Monday afternoon.
7. Tweak Your Environment
   If you hit the Facebook Timeline and lose your mornings, turn off Internet access during your peak work hours. If you get into too many office conversations, work with a pair of headphones in. Identify what distracts you in your environment, and get rid of it.
8. Avoid Multi-Tasking
   It might feel like you're getting more done, but it takes time — up to 15 minutes with each switch — to regain your focus and become truly productive. You'll get much more done if you set up a place for every task, and do every task in its proper place.

Here's one of the problems with running a small business during difficult economic times. You need the best possible people if you want to survive the tough economy, but money to keep them is scarce. One all-too-common solution is to beg your people to stay even though you can't compete with the compensation offered by larger companies. A better one is to find low-cost benefits to demonstrate how much you appreciate their contribution.

Here are seven of our favorite ideas:

1. Flextime
   Nine-to-five is traditional, but one of the most inconvenient schedules to work because of rush hour. Unless your business is entirely appointment-based, when your team works is often unimportant so long as the work gets done. Offering flextime gives them more power over their lives.
2. A Sincere Thank You
   This isn't a general announcement, feedback sandwich, or off-the-cuff "hey, thanks." This is making eye contact, taking a moment, and giving a team member your undivided attention while you specifically mention a good job and what it meant for the company. It's free, and does more to build loyalty than anything else on this list.
3. Local Discounts
   If you have a workforce, other businesses will offer them a discount simply for the free advertising that comes with the lower price. Take an afternoon to talk with decision-makers at local gyms, restaurants, beauty parlors, day cares and other shops that your employees are most likely to use. You'll be surprised how many are willing to play ball.
4. Dog Days
   House-trained, well-behaved dogs in the workplace improve productivity and decrease absenteeism. Though this isn't appropriate for all environments -- it would be a disaster at most day cares, for example -- in places where it works, it can work wonderfully.
5. Eating In
   Lunch for your entire team costs very little compared to most traditional benefits packages, but makes a huge difference in morale and camaraderie. This benefit works equally well as a surprise, or as a regular weekly event. Buying dinner on nights you expect your team to work late is especially important.
6. Wellness Lunches
   Wellness programs reduce absenteeism, improve productivity and make a positive difference in the lives of employees who use them. One inexpensive wellness benefit is to extend lunch breaks by 30 minutes, provided the employee uses that time to attend a wellness event like a gym workout or group fitness class. The "lost" time pays itself back in renewed energy and focus.
7. On-Site Services
   You can buy ten-minute chair massages for a medium-sized staff for less than $200. Shoe shines and dry-cleaning services are similar services you can bring in to show your team how much you care.

What kinds of benefits does your team say they appreciate the most? Tell us about them in the comments.

We're excited to announce the launch of our latest integration - one that we know so many of you have been waiting for - Constant Contact

Setting up the Constant Contact integration is extremely easy. Login to your Ez Texting account, click Integrations under the Advanced Features menu, and when that page loads you'll be able to add a new Constant Contact connection. After you've authorized the Ez Texting application you'll choose the lists you'd like to sync from and the Ez Texting Groups to add those contacts to. As with all of our integrations, you can sync manually or have us update the sync whenever you login to your account.

What's so great about connecting your Constant Contact and Ez Texting accounts? SMS Marketing and Email Marketing are perfect compliments to each other. By syncing your contacts between accounts there's no longer a need to manually export and import contacts. Everything is done in seconds - and can even refresh the list every time you login so your list is always up-to date.

While email marketing is great for long, rich content - and will never be replaced - text messaging allows you to reach those same contacts in a different, complimentary way. Short & Sweet (160 characters), universally supported, and with open rates over 90% within three minutes of receipt, text messages allow you to reach nearly all of your contacts, wherever they are, whenever you need to reach them. Text messaging is great for appointment reminders, mobile coupons, and time sensitive info.

If you're new to SMS Marketing, be sure to check out our Free SMS Marketing Resource Center, as well as dozens of tips, ideas, best practices and dos and donts right here at the blog.

You can also check out Ez Texting over at the Constant Contact Marketplace!

Login now - or see all of our web app integrations.

As we begin a new year, it's a good time to analyze where you are and how that compares to where you want to be. Statistics are the single most effective tool for doing exactly that. Whether you're a veteran MBA or a first-year business owner, these seven numbers will give you a strong sense of how your company is performing. 

1. Return on Investment This is how much money you make compared to how much you spend for any business investment, expressed as a percentage. ROI= ($ Earned / $Spent) x 100. The higher the number, the better your employee, program or improvement. Run this not for your company, but for various investments to see which ones deserve the most energy.
2. Marketing Conversion Rate You can't tell exactly how many eyes see your marketing message, but you do know how much you're spending. Divide that by the number of customer contacts you get from any given marketing endeavor to know how much each contact costs you. Use it to know which initiatives are working the best.
3. Sales Conversion Rate This is the number of sales you make divided by the number of customer inquiries you receive. It's most useful when you run it at different levels -- such as for initial calls, for first-time visits to your shop and for engaged sales conversations. By comparing the different levels, you can tell where your sales process has the most room for improvement.
4. Previous Performance Comparison A less complex formula, this statistics helps you gauge your progress and make predictions for coming weeks. It's a matter of comparing your performance in one week with the corresponding week from previous years. As the year progresses, it provides a reasonable gauge of how you can expect future weeks to go.
5. Variable Expenses The only basic statistic on this list, it's here because of its importance to controlling your company's success. Variable expenses are those that change from month to month, such as utility bills and supply costs. Holding them down is literally free profit.
6. Daily Acts of Promotion You won't find this in many marketing textbooks, but it's a great way to measure one of your most important jobs as a business owner. Simply count how many times per day you make a significant contact with a potential new client. Handing out a business card or calling to "check in" are two examples. Set goals and hold contests between your marketing team.
7. Net Margin This one is worth knowing daily, but takes a little preparation to be useful. Figure out how much your regular expenses like payroll and utilities cost each day, then add any costs unique to that day. Subtract it from how much cash came in. That lets you know whether you made money or lost money for your efforts. Businesses with a longer-term cash cycle can do this weekly, monthly, or however often their flow makes the most sense.

Despite its rapid growth, Pinterest isn't as well understood as many of the other social media networks that can support your text message marketing. It's not for everybody, but certain industries and projects go well with Pinterest's highly visual format. If you're thinking about adding the site to your SMS marketing campaigns, it's best to keep a few things in mind. 

Who It's For
Pinterest works best for businesses that communicate well with pictures. Interior designers, architects, artists, tourism bureaus and wedding venues are some examples of companies that often do well on the platform. 
Businesses that don't have visually compelling products, and almost all service companies, are usually better off focusing elsewhere. It's hard to put up a compelling photo of your legal or accounting services.

The Basics
Users browse Pinterest to look at photos arranged in categorized "boards" (think photos pinned to a bulletin board). If an image catches the eye, that user can click on it to link to the site where it's hosted. That's how Pinterest marketing works. 

With SMS, you can send a single image from a board to your subscribers, with a link to that board as part of the message. Your mobile users can then navigate to view an entire board of compelling images of your products, then follow those images to a website where they can make a purchase. Bonus points for combining the opportunity with some kind of limited-time discount, poll, contest or other key SMS strategy.

The Five Rules of Pinterest Marketing

1. Don't Post Proprietary Images
   Pinterest's EULA says any image you post becomes their intellectual property. Only post images you own, and only those images of yours you won't mind seeing used elsewhere. 
2. Use the "Recent Activity" Feature
   This lets yo u track social sharing of your images over the past hours or days. Use it after Pinterest-related broadcasts to gauge the effectiveness of any given batch.
3. Double-Check Your Landing Page
   Remember that your SMS subscribers will most likely view your landing page from a mobile device. If you don't have a mobile-optimized version of your website, check your landing page from a variety of devices to make sure it's attractive and easy to navigate.
4. Get Social
   Share images from other uses, mixed in with your promotional content. As with other social media platforms, users who only ever post advertising are quickly ignored by the crowd.
5. Use Only Your Best Images
   You'll be competing for attention with high-quality, compelling images from all over the world. Put only your best stuff up there.

Don’t miss the other entries in this series: Supporting SMS Marketing With LinkedIn, Supporting SMS Marketing with Twitter and Supporting SMS Marketing with Facebook

Entry By Jason Brick

For most retail shops, and even some restaurants, the holiday season is your anchor in the storm of business success. The better your income in December, the better your entire following year. Suggestive selling -- whether it's impulse buys at the register or package deals to inflate each ticket -- is a key to getting the most money for the least effort. It's worthwhile to remember -- and train your staff to remember -- some dos and don'ts of the suggestive sale technique.

Do create packages of related items, such as a console game and extra controllers or a wine and appetizer pairing with an entree. Pairings that make sense feel more like service than like obvious sales.

Don't suggest more than one option. A yes or no is quick, easy, and usually a yes. Asking for a last-minute decision can alienate.

Do make the offer sound like advice. "Our white wine and tapas appetizers go great with that, and they're on special today" beats "Would you like to add today's special to that entree for just..."

Don't argue, become pushy, or act disappointed if a customer says no. That's a great way to lose that individual's next sales.

Do put signs around your store listing item bundles and suggestive sale offers. This orients customers so they're not surprised by the questions once they get to the register.

Don't offer so many suggestive sale items that it confuses your staff. Keep things simple, and quiz your people on the offerings until they can guide customers to them without hesitation or thought.

Do keep a supply of your most popular suggestive sale items at each cash register. Customers are much less likely to buy if they have to leave the counter to get additional items.

Don't ignore gift cards as an impulse buy. "How about a gift card for your (secretary/officemate/kid's girlfriend)" can feel like a present all of its own to the right harried holiday shopper.

Do remember that this is selling. It works best when you ask with eye contact, a friendly smile and a confident voice. Don't even bother unless the customer is already having a peak shopping experience.

Any holiday veterans out there have a success story to tell? Share your experience in the comments.

Entry By Jason Brick

As a small business owner, if you're not listening to business podcasts, you're missing a top opportunity for keeping your mental tools sharp. They let you learn new skills, keep up on events, and challenge yourself -- all while you're driving your commute, running errands or working out. The biggest problem with this form of media is finding the quality 'casts in the flood of available options. Do yourself a favor by checking out these six top business podcasts broadcasting this year:

1. Manager Tools It's been operating since 2006, but remains one of the top podcasts for managers and business owners. Each cast addresses a specific skill ranging from greeting team members each morning to handling succession of a new manager. Runtime is about 30 minutes.
2. Quick-and-Dirty Tips Not one cast, but a whole network of 5-to-10-minute programs on a wide range of topics. Business owners will get the most out of "Get It Done Guy," "Sales Guy" and "Grammar Girl." These little bites of information are great for short runs to the store and similar brief tasks.
3. EntreLeadership A newer project by personal finance guru Dave Ramsey, in which he applies his "Dr. Phil of Money" personality and approach to management and leadership in small businesses. Some sample topics include using influence instead of authority, and basic time management. Runtime is 20 to 45 minutes.
4. The Startup Success Podcast Focuses on skills, news and practices for startups and microbusinesses, but most of the information is broadly applicable to small and medium companies. Also includes frequent interviews with authors and thought leaders. Each episode runs about 40 minutes.
5. Work-At-Home SuccessThis 45-minute podcast bills itself as one-stop-listening for work from home business owners. Topics range from work habits to interviews to product reviews. Mostly focused on microbusiness success, it still has a thing or three you can apply to your team in a larger context.
6. Social Media Today Podcast Less of a "traditional" podcast than it is the broadcast of a several Social Media Customer workshops and webinars, this is the next best thing to a college class on emerging and hot business technology, especially what's up with internet and social media marketing. Run times vary according to the topic and style of presentation.

Naturally, 2012 saw more than 6 excellent podcasts go out into the world. Tell us about your favorites -- or a new one to include in our 2013 roundup -- in the comments below.

Entry By Jason Brick

The holidays are a time crunch even for people who aren't running a business. When you add being responsible for the biggest retail season of the year, it's amazing any of us survive to see the New Year. This holiday season, do yourself and those around you a favor by using some or all of these tricks to maximize your holiday schedule for better productivity and lower stress.

1. Get Up One Hour Earlier You'll feel a little rocky the first few days, but this hour of extra productive time can help you clear a major task or a bunch of minor errands off your docket, allowing you to start the day with momentum and enthusiasm. If you keep it up, you'll find yourself able to get to bed on time...and end up getting more sleep than if you set your alarm for the regular time. 
2. Practice Saying "No" 'Tis the season to over-commit. You'll be asked to parties, begged to run errands, tasked with participating in community events. Give yourself permission to take on only the items that will truly improve your holiday experience. Remember: saying "no" to something you don't want is saying "yes" to something else you find more important. 
3. Schedule "You Time" Get to the gym. Go on a date with your spouse or family. Take ten minutes to relax and breathe. Get a haircut or a manicure. Time to refresh pays off in productivity later down the line, but it's often the first to go when the schedule gets tight. Write it in your calendar, in pen.
4. Combine Errands From last-minute gifts to picking up the turkey for a feast, errands are just part of the holiday routine. You can cut your errand time in half by planning your tasks and combining them strategically. Bonus points for listening to podcasts or a good audio book while you're out and about. 
5. Cybershop Shopping online takes less than ten percent of the time it takes to shop in a physical store, once you take into account drive time, parking, dealing with crowds and waiting in line. The prices are usually better online, too. Challenge yourself this year to see how much of your shopping you can do from your desk. 
6. Overestimate Your Schedule When things get tight, it's tempting to try shoehorning tasks into your schedule so you can do everything you think you have to do. If one runs long, you end up with a cascading series of late arrivals and overruns. Instead, schedule 125% to 150% of the time you think a task will take. If nothing goes wrong, you have bonus time to take care of those little things that add up every day.