5 Easy Ways To Increase Sales In 5 Minutes

Only have five minutes to spare then use your time wisely and incorporate these 5 quick and easy changes and see your sales and readership numbers increase:

1. Use up to a maximum of 17 words in your main headline to increase readership
2. Use a Drop Cap Letter in your main headline to increase readership
3. Insert order buttons adjacent to your customer testimonial boxes to increase conversions
4. Put a customer testimonial below your P.S. to increase conversions
5. Change your price to end with a "7" to increase conversions

Making these minor changes or taking these five tips into account when writing a new article, web page, sales page, email or a sales letter could see up to a massive 40% improvement in readership or conversions.

5 Keys to Mobile Marketing

In these recession led, budget conscious times, mobile marketing may provide a more cost effective solution for your business. The addition of mobile marketing to your marketing mix for 2010 could see you boosting your sales, your prospects database and your customer list.

Before starting you campaign, you should consider the following 5 key elements:

1. Accurately target your recipients – chose your recipients with care, ensure that the audience is applicable to the offer you are making
2. Unique incentive – make a really good offer, whether it’s a discount, a free item or entry in to a prize draw
3. Re-usable option – don’t just send one message to a prospect, build your list for the future with an ‘opt-in’ for future offers option
4. Call to action – make the call to action as easy as possible, make sure they can easily redeem it by a code or click to call option
5. Testing and tracking – track the number of receipts and redemptions of your offer. This enables you to see if it was successful and if you need to make any changes before repeating it or rolling it out to a larger audience. Remember always test, track and refine everything you do and then repeat what works and scrap what doesn’t.

So, put your mobile marketing campaign to work and start promoting your business.

7 Small Business Networking Mistakes

Networking, the hot topic of the moment is vitally important to small businesses. As a small business or a new business just starting out, networking and making the right connections can make all the difference now and in the future.

So when you get involved in networking, don’t be afraid, it is not as daunting as it may seem, here are 5 mistakes you should avoid.

1. Not being prepared, take lots of business cards or leaflets
2. Not rehearsing your sound bite, you need to be confident and make it flow
3. Do not attend a networking event and sell to those you meet
4. Do not just collect details for the sake of getting your numbers up, spend your time wisely and talk to people where their is mutual benefit for both parties
5. Do not pretend to be something you are not, be honest and genuine and people will reciprocate
6. Do not forget the network of people you already have, do not become solely focussed on building a new network, expand the one you have
7. Do not be selfish, remember its not all about you, people will help you if you offer them help, but not if you just take, take, take.

Now you are armed with your business cards, strapline and sound bite, so go off and network like crazy!

Discover what is happening in your business & take control today

Do you run and hide at the mention of book keeping or sales analysis?

One of the most daunting tasks for most small businesses, unless of course you are an accountant, is the prospect of having to do your own book keeping and organising your records.

However this can open a wealth of opportunities for you and your business to grow and capitalise on some hidden gems.

If you are a sole trader you will need to keep track of monthly expenditure and income as well as VAT, if applicable.

Take charge today

The first thing to do is take charge, don’t be frightened and get yourself organised.
It does not have to be a complicated system when you are first starting up, but good organisation is vital for your business.

It can be as simple as 1, 2 3

1. Put every invoice and receipt for each month in a clear plastic envelope, clearly labelled expenditure with the month and year in question.
2. Now take another file or folder for income and add all your invoices that you have raised on your customers, again label accordingly.
3. Now you have that organised in two files, the next step is to transfer this to, for example, an excel spreadsheet and then keep it up to date with just a few minutes a day.

You can develop an easy to use spreadsheet with columns for income, expenditure and if applicable VAT. As you grow there are lots of software packages you can consider that include product records, stock control, Vat calculations, automatic statement runs and much more. But for now, we are just looking at the spreadsheet option and some of the benefits.

Benefits
This will allow you to quickly see all your suppliers and how your monthly expenditure is against your monthly income and where that income is coming from. Now you can see the profit you are making each month.

With these important figures to hand, you can see if you need to make adjustments to your expenditure or if you are doing well and could consider spending some money on marketing and growing your business even further.

Big businesses do a huge amount of analysis on turnover, profit and loss, gross and net margin %, customer segmentation, product analysis and much more, every month.

As a small business it is very important that you also know where you stand, as small changes have a big impact on your business and your cash flow.

You really cannot afford to wait for the end of the year when you give a big box of paper to your accountant to sort out and then, eventually he tells you if you did ok or not!

Your hidden gems
Here are some of the advantages of getting things under control and being more organised

• You are up to date
• You can meet your deadlines
• You can see how your finances really are at any given point in time
• You can give the VAT man all the information he needs when he arrives for a spot check
• You can defend your position when the tax man demands a large sum from you, if you have no records, you have no proof
• You know how profitable your business is
• You know which customers are your big spenders and which spend little, but take up all your time
• You know which customers have paid and who has not
• You know how much you owe suppliers
• You know which suppliers you spend a lot with, so you can ask for more discount
• You know which products sell well and which are gathering dust
• You know where your stock is going and when to reorder
• You have the facts and figures to make the necessary adjustments to protect and grow your business
• You know, you do not have guess or panic anymore

“A few simple steps and you are in control of your business, your business is no longer in control of you.”

There are many things you can do with the extra time and money and even more important without the extra worry, so take control and move forward to a more organised, proactive and confident you.

Social Media - Here To Stay?

Some really amazing facts and figures on social media......






I would love to hear what you think...

Do you agree or disagree "In the future we will no longer search for products and services, they will find us".

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