Bloomtools provides a list of the latest "must haves" for growing your small business. Best of all, most them are free!
A functional website
Is your website up-to-date and a true reflection of your business strengths? Do your customers get value from it? Does it actively get results for your business? If not, then you are missing out on the value that many businesses are gaining from the internet. Find a developer that can identify what will work for your business online. They need to supply you with a simple content management system so you can easily update the site yourself, a variety of features like a shopping cart and a photo gallery that can be added to the site at any time and, most importantly, reliable ongoing support.
Email marketing
According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing has a return on investment of almost $50 for every dollar spent. It is a must-have for anyone that is serious about growing their business, particularly in these quiet times because it is so cost-effective. Newsletters, promotions, event invitations, welcome letters and numerous other strategies work really well with email marketing because it’s highly targeted, personalised and easy to measure results. Look for an email marketing system that can integrate with your website and has in-built spam compliance and reporting capabilities.
Google Analytics
Ever wondered how many people come to your site and where they come from? Your site should generate basic statistics on its own, but you can find that out a lot more with Google Analytics. To set it up, simply sign up for a free account, put the tracking code on your website and you’re good to go. Analytics measures how many visits your site gets, how long users spend there, what pages they look at and much more. You can also also set up ‘goals’ to find out how many achieve a certain objective on the site, such as buy something or fill out your contact form. Visit www.google.com/analytics for more information.
Facebook was a country, it would have the world’s 8th largest population, with more than 150 million members, so it’s definitely worth getting your business on it. Set up a profile for your business and use it to communicate with your customers in a creative way – promote your products, list your events, upload pictures and create online discussions. There are also paid advertising options on Facebook as well, which can be a very valuable option if your target consumers are social networking users. Being on Facebook will be one of the biggest marketing trends of the year, so jump on board now. Check out www.facebook.com for more information.
