5 Reasons There’s Never Been aBetter Time to Start a Business Mike Armour This is the greatest time in history to start a small business. Sure, money for startups is not easy to come by. The economy, while technically in … Continue reading
Category Archives: Web Marketing
Web designers increasingly turn to video to tell their story. They know that internet users are now conditioned to glean much of their information about products and services from visual presentations. Done professionally, however, online video demands resources which may be beyond the capabilities of a small startup. However, SlideShare videos embedded on a web site provide much of the impact of video and can be produced with nothing more than PowerPoint software.
You can think of SlideShare as the slideshow equivalent of YouTube. It’s a searchable site, which people use for research on hundreds of topics. For research, in fact, SlideShare has certain advantages over YouTube. With an actual video you must watch for several minutes before you know whether (or how well) it’s going to address your concern. With a slideshow, you can quickly navigate through the content and determine its usefulness.
Even though its relatively simple, from a technical viewpoint, to create online slideshows, they need to be designed and created with care.
They must be visually engaging, concise,and easy to follow. And users must be able to navigate the entire presentation in three minutes or less.
In addition, the small display size of the slideshow in typical web page configurations requires larger font sizes, fewer words, and close attention to spacing and margins.
Online slideshows provide a simpler and less costly alternative to video producing for telling your story in images on web pages. Slideshows do not require expensive equipment or elaborate editing software, as is the case with video. And they are far less time-consuming to produce.
Since these slideshows can be created in PowerPoint and uploaded to free sharing sites, slideshows can be created with minimal expense and a limited investment of time.
Thus, for cash-strapped startup businesses, online slideshows may be a preferable alternativein creating a rich graphic presence on their website.
Continue readingSplit testing is a technique which allows you to determine how small changes in your advertising materials impact your response rate. While very popular with internet-based businesses and advertising on the web, split testing can be utilized with almost any type of advertising medium.
To be effective, split testing needs to honor certain guidelines which are outlined in this article. And it depends on the business owner’s willingness to gather and analyze metrics tenaciously. Split testing requires a significant investment of time and effort, but the payoff is continuous improvement in the success rate of your marketing campaigns.
Continue readingSplit marketing allow you to monitor response rates to your advertising and to identify how the response rate changes when you make small variations in an ad or a marketing piece.
Done consistently, split testing gives you vital insights into the decision-making of your potential customers — insights which you can gain in no other way.
Are you thinking of selling goods or services online? Or have you started that process, only to find yourself confused by all of the terminology, acronyms, regulations, and fees associated with credit card processing? You’re not alone.
In this article I walk you through the behind-the-scenes process of accepting online payments. My goal is to clarify how the pieces of this process fit together. That way you can make more informed decisions in creating your online platform.
In the previous issue I emphasized how vital it is for startups to brand themselves proactively from the very beginning. This article continues the discussion of branding by examining some of the tools that you use in establishing your brand.
Continue readingOnce your basic business plan is in place, your startup needs a well-defined marketing plan. Track Two of our LeaderTrack Small Business Coaching Series guides you through the vital steps in creating a long-range marketing plan.
Continue readingThe business plan for every startup should include a strategy for capturing email addresses sooner rather than later. Despite the rising use of texting and all of the grumbling about spam, email marketing done well remains a powerful tool. In … Continue reading