What to look for in your business analysis

Based on questionnaires obtained by the opinions of marketing experts, it was determined that marketing analysis were a paramount factor in business success. A marketing analysis can improve marketing management and business problems. This is done by assessing and evaluating the company’s marketing ability, effectiveness, threats, and opportunities. A marketing analysis can be a valuable tool in discovering potential risks within the company’s activities.

A problem often found in businesses is that they don’t conduct analysis, and within the middle of their marketing efforts, they realize they have no real plan or way to monitor the effects of their marketing campaigns. Having a plan of action helps pace and organize marketing efforts.

Backlink Building

To help build the authority and rank of your website, you should establish quality backlinks on niche websites, and not just broad or directory websites. By including links on sites relevant to your own, you will positively help your website ranking and attract new customers.

In addition to niche websites, your backlinks should include sites with a high page rank. Link building strategies can easily come from participating in blogs, online forums, and local event groups. When placing a backlink on these sites, you should utilize unique keywords and descriptive anchor text.

Another option to find credible backlinks is to search your competitors’ link groupings. A link grouping is a page on the internet from which all, or most, of your competitors get incoming links.

By searching your targeted keywords, common backlinks of your competitors can be located. Once these backlinks are identified, you should visit and include your website link on these websites if possible. If these websites are a relevant niche to your business, it should produce favorable results.

— For more lessons like this, purchase your copy of Act Like a Business: Think Like a Customer by Dr. Elijah Clark from all major bookstores. —

Think like a customer

To sustain a relationship with a customer, you’ve got to think like a customer. Every time you visit, call, or send an invoice to your customer, consciously or unconsciously, your customers are asking themselves a bunch of questions like: why did I hire these guys or purchase this product? Do I still need them? Is this worth what I’m paying? Am I making progress? Am I seeing the results they promised? Is this the best company to purchase from?

Remember, it’s usually many little things that add up to the decision to terminate a relationship. If you are aware of, and address those issues from the start and keep focused on satisfying the customer throughout the relationship, you’re in a much better position to sustain the relationship. Instead of only sending customers invoices and questions, send them thank you letters and random gifts to help balance things out.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is about optimizing your website to increase traffic by improving internal and external strategies that will ultimately increase site traffic to your website. Businesses that practice SEO can vary, and there are many unique elements to consider when optimizing a website. The goal of SEO is to discover the search terms and phrases needed to build and generate website traffic. Don’t worry, if you’re confused about this, you are not alone.

Most web traffic is guided by three major search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo!). If your site isn’t found by search engines or your content isn’t optimized enough to be picked- up by their databases, you lose a great opportunity of marketing your website to potential clients or customers.

Whether your site provides services, content, information, or products search engines are a primary navigation method for almost all internet users. Experience and statistics have proven that search engine traffic can make (or break) a website’s or business’ success. SEO targeted website visitors provide revenue, publicity, and exposure like no other. Investing in SEO, whether through finances or time, can create an exceptional rate of return.

— For more lessons like this, purchase your copy of Act Like a Business: Think Like a Customer by Dr. Elijah Clark from all major bookstores. —

Keeping your customers satisfied

Keeping customers satisfied requires:
• Keeping customers engaged in the sales process and current in the market.
• Educating customers on why they should choose you over your competition.
• Knowing the needs of your customers (through market research and testing) and satisfying those needs.

Not every customer is destined to be a life-long customer – but if you follow the tactics above, both you and your customer will be set up for a happy and productive relationship.

Mobile Optimization

Some businesses have websites but don’t have a properly built website that is optimized for mobile devices. Even if you do have a mobile website, customers may complain that the website doesn’t look as good or that the website’s performance on mobile devices is sluggish.

When you’re building your mobile website keep in mind that it’s on a phone, or device smaller than a computer monitor, meaning your buttons need to be bigger, some content needs to be moved, and some content needs to be removed or blocked from being seen on the mobile version of the website.

A mobile website should be a watered-down version of your main website and should include only key selling points and a call to action. Keep in mind that most mobile users aren’t on your website to view your special graphics or large photo gallery. If your site is not built or optimized specifically for mobile users, your bounce rate will skyrocket and you’ll lose a potential customer over a fixable problem.

— For more lessons like this, purchase your copy of Act Like a Business: Think Like a Customer by Dr. Elijah Clark from all major bookstores. —

Website building to do

A strategy that I have found to work well in improving website conversions includes adding an online blog or newsgroup. This method has shown to be a positive step in influencing conversions as well as conversations. In addition, it helps to generate a higher domain authority when utilizing unique content which can benefit the site’s ranking within search engines. Furthermore, blogs and news updates elevate customer satisfaction and attract traffic to your website.

Another question that should be asked when building your website is, “Does my website compete with my competitors?” and “Does it target my desired customer group?” If you don’t have your website built by a designer who understands your industry, then the answers are likely to be, “No.” Your website needs to represent you and your business. If it looks cheap, so will your business. If you try to cut corners, your customers will know. It’s better to have no website at all than a badly designed, poorly built website that doesn’t represent your business in a positive light, doesn’t serve the needs of your customers, and doesn’t drive traffic.

— For more lessons like this, purchase your copy of Act Like a Business: Think Like a Customer by Dr. Elijah Clark from all major bookstores. —

Have you tried marketing research?

It is difficult to be both a specialist in your profession and an expert in understanding customers and potential customers. In developing marketing strategies and enhancing knowledge, it is essential to conduct market research to better comprehend your customers and their needs.

The subject of marketing research knowledge has significantly increased in response to growth in disruptive innovation including the internet and technology development. Marketing requires time and dedication to research your customers considering they do not always think, act, believe, or have the same priorities or values as you.

The keys to understanding how to grow your business are in researching your industry and target audience. Once you have researched your customers and developed a targeted strategy to grow sales, your business will flourish with little effort. As market research grows in popularity, your business should persistently react to the market demands and innovations.

Website Design

A website gives your business the opportunity for exposure 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. There is no other medium that allows consumers to discover all of the benefits of your business, at their convenience, and provide a source for direct correspondence from the user to you in real time. The benefits of a website are limitless.

Building Process. When building a website, make certain that you design the site for your customer and not for you or the graphic artist or designer. Design for the individuals that will use the site. By building for your customers, it allows you to target who is actually going to be viewing, and hopefully purchasing, from the website. Don’t design for looks, but for a purpose. If customers don’t like the colors then, no matter what you or your designer may think, those colors need to be changed. When building a website, you need to focus on attracting your target audience and making the site user-friendly.

A properly built website requires an effective title and meta tags, incoming links, and a strong architectural design. In addition, you should implement social media strategies through the use of proper link baiting, keywords, and creating a pay-per click campaign that will increase customer conversions.

— For more lessons like this, purchase your copy of Act Like a Business: Think Like a Customer by Dr. Elijah Clark from all major bookstores. —

Why you aren’t getting referrals

As humans, we are greatly influenced by our relationships. We each enjoy being members of loyalty programs and networking groups that align with our goals. We have selected and continue to go to the same supermarkets, gas stations, banks, and purchase from only select companies. This happens because of an unspoken relationship that exists with these businesses and brands. They make us happy, we trust them, and their consistency is calming in a chaotic world.

Relationships are natural, and our preference of who we develop relationships with are often based on past experiences and expectations. Similar to dating relationships, customer and businesses relationships involve courting, falling in love, marriage, honeymoon, and then the questioning of whether the relationship has a future. At that moment of questioning, the relationship either continues down a happy road or ends in divorce or breakup.

Are you successfully developing good relationships with your customers or are you just present? Are they only with you because they are content or do they actually feel that you are the best option for them? If you haven’t gotten a referral in a while, then you may not be pleasing your customer as well as you think. After reading this email, start a new one and write your customer a thank you message. You’ll be surprised how far it goes.

If you’re a professional — whether you’re an entrepreneur or an executive — you need proven, high-level strategies to really make your business grow and it starts with understanding the needs of your customers.