Business Growth Blog

It may seem like a simple question, but there’s a lot more to blogging (good blogging that is!) than you might think. People read blogs all the time, but when it comes time to actually create one, the questions start popping up!

What is a blog? “A personal website or web page on which an individual records opinions, links to other sites, etc. on a regular basis.”

Read on to get 8 tips for writing good blog articles.

A lot of people balk when they think about having to hire people to do jobs that they can do themselves. One of the biggest lessons I learned over the past couple years is that it costs too much money NOT to hire people to do specific jobs.

Everyone knows you need to proofread. Spelling and grammatical errors make you look sloppy and unprofessional. The problem is, when you've spent so much brain power trying to write and format good content, and you go over and over it to make it just right, proofreading becomes almost impossible. Your brain automatically fixes mistakes.

Y've seen ths thgs bfro – where the wrods dn't haev to be spleled correctly in oder to know wht is bing siad.

Spell check is just one small part of a clean document though. With one click of a button you can find misspelled words – that part is easy. It's the words that shouldn't be there or are spelled correctly, but used wrong, that can get us into trouble.

Read on to find out 9 proofreading strategies, typical error rates, and what you can expect to pay for the service.

Determining what should be on your website, let alone how it should look and function, is not a task for the faint of heart. It's one of those projects that takes a lot of hard thinking and seems never to end (which it shouldn't - you should be continually working to drive better results from your site). However, there is one thing you can do to make it easier, save time, and ensure you're keeping up with - or surpassing - industry trends: a competitor analysis.

Here are 5 ways a competitor analysis can help you create a better website:

Back in the day, it wasn't such a challenge to figure out what to do for marketing. Phonebook, a mailer, maybe a trade show or two - oh, and don't forget - dial for dollars! But everything is different now that "Google has the answers to life," as I tell my kids (especially my 12-year-old son who always asks, "Why?" - "I have no idea, look it up!" I say).

Your prospects and customers are doing the same thing when they have questions - looking it up. This explosion of information on the Internet has opened up opportunities for businesses to get in front of their target buyers and gain market share, but it's also making sales and marketing increasingly complex. The most important thing business owners, CEO's, and other executives in charge of driving growth can do is to constantly stay in the know about the growing number of marketing strategies available. Otherwise, they may get left in the dust as their competition passes them by.

If you're not currently doing inbound marketing, take a moment to watch this short video and see if it's something you should consider as part of your upcoming growth initiatives.

One of the age old questions companies ask people is "how did you hear about us?"

That is one of the most important pieces of information you can gather. Unfortunately, many companies I talk to don't have a clear process for how to collect or leverage that data to drive important business decisions.

By effectively tracking lead source, you can fully evaluate where you get your best customers and how that impacts your business growth. Here's an example of how it can work:

Many organizations are turning to inbound marketing to help them increase awareness, get more meetings, and build a stronger sales pipeline. Here are some articles and resources that can help you deepen your understanding of inbound marketing, determine if it’s right for you, and start formulating a plan for your organization.

You know what they say: You have to spend money to make money. But finding the right marketing tactics to invest in can be tricky, and the consequences have a huge impact on an organization’s growth trajectory - either positively or negatively.

Here are 2 common ways businesses often lose money on their marketing investments. Avoid them like the plague!

I was watching The Profit the other day, and Marcus Lemonis said something that I also feel strongly about:

“If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business. If you can’t track what’s selling or not selling, you can’t do any forecasting to build inventory. You can’t even monitor trends or customer behavior. You have no shot at success.”

We're ultra busy, and taking extra time to input contact data is...annoying to say the least. Most of us just put the minimum amount of information into our contact database as fast as we can and go on our merry way.

That's all fine and dandy – until we want to send a message to a specific group of people, and we have no way to segment out contacts based on certain criteria. Or, we think we have a list of 3000 people, only to find out that only 200 of them have email addresses. Bummer!

The most important part of sales and marketing is to understand who is on our contact list (and who we want to be on the list). My team has spent a lot of time working with our clients to clean up their contacts and implement processes to collect and report on the data.

When we validate contact data, the 4 most important things we look for are: