The Lounge

10 Ways to Grow Your Business

The Lounge: 10 Ways to Grow Your Business You probably did a lot of research, when you first started your business you may have sought help from other business owners read books, magazines and other readily available sources. You invested a lot-in terms of money, time and work to get your business off the ground. Now what?
For those of you who have survived startup and built successful businesses, you may be wondering how to take the next step and expand your business beyond its current size.

1. Open another location. This might not be the best choice for business expansion, but it's here first because that's what often comes to mind first for so many business owners considering expansion. Tips for anyone considering another location:

Make sure you're maintaining a consistent bottom-line profit and that you've shown steady growth over the past few years.
Look at the trends, both economic and consumer, for indications on your company's staying power.
Make sure your administrative systems and management team are extraordinary-you'll need them to get a new location up and running.

2. Offer your business as a franchise or business opportunity.

3. License your product. This can be an effective, low-cost growth process, particularly if you have a service product or branded product. Licensing also minimizes your risk and is low cost in comparison to the price of starting your own company to produce and sell your brand or product.

4. Form an alliance. Aligning yourself with a type of business that is similar can be a great way to expand quickly

5. Diversify. Small-business consultant McGuckin offers several ideas for diversifying your product or service line:

Sell complementary products or services
Teach adult education or other types of classes

6. Make Use of other markets. Your current market is serving you well. Are there others? You bet.

Baby boomers, elderly folks, teens, tweens...let your imagination take you where you need to be. Then take your product to the markets that need it.

7. Obtain a government contract. The best way for a small business to grow is to have the federal government as a customer. The U.S. government is the largest buyer of goods and services in the world, with total procurement dollars reaching approximately $235 billion in 2002 alone.

8. Merge with or purchase another business.

Retain Customer Base.
Retain Experienced Staff.

9. Global Expansion. You don't need to acquire another business to expand globally. You just need to prime your offering for an international market.

10. Expand to the Internet. Getting your Web site in search engine results is key-more than 80 percent of traffic comes via search engines. Design and programming are also important, but it's your content that will draw a visitor into your site and get them to stay.

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B2B Spotlight

owner | Paul Fugere
Lets Jump
www.letsjumpfl.com

Industry:Party rental
Company Size:3 employees

What invaluable tools do you recommend to other businesses that would help them market more effectively?

I would recommend a clean, easy to use website.

How will your website contribute to your overall success?

80% of our business comes from our website. Your opportunity to gain the customers business increases dramatically with a professional looking website.

How do you plan on growing your website over the next year?

I would like to give customers the ability to check availability and order online, eliminating the need to make a phone call. Add a larger video page for multiple videos.

Why would your services be of interest to other Webtivity clients?

Other Webtivity clients could use our services for business grand openings, events, or even their own children's birthday parties.

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The Tech Report

Branding your Website
Through Search Engine Optimization

For those that may not know what branding is, it does not merely relate to cattle and farms. Branding, in general, is a mark placed on something to designate ownership. The basic process for branding websites include having your logo, slogan, catchphrase, color, and design theme translate through your entire site, as well as any banners or adds that you post. With the volume of businesses advertising, people surfing, and overnight fads on the Web, one might ask how this can be done effectively.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO will help you narrow down and maximize on your specific market focus using keywords.
SEO will help you to maximize your linkflow, giving you your maximum potential in the search engines.
SEO will help you correct poorly developed site structure and any errors that your site may have effecting search engines crawls.
SEO includes constant modification to obtain the best results.
SEO will further your branding by the use of articles and press releases

The very fact that every major search engine recommends Search Engine Optimization to help search engines produce more accurate results, speak volumes about the importance of good SEO. Yes, good SEO. Realize that all SEO companies are not created equally. Look at what Google has to say about good and bad SEO companies. To see a good SEO company, look at the professional SEO services that we offer, and keep an eye on our blog as our topic for this month is Search Engine Optimization.

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Max Media

Max Media: Make Your Website Famous

Make Your Website Famous

For your website to become famous it is vital that your company and product become synonymous with your website URL. Everywhere you see your company and product, your URL should be seen in bold lettering. Remember that your website is running 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. It can impact people anytime and anywhere, but they need to know how to get to it. Here are some ways to market online and off.

Offline

Make sure that all your current print marketing and advertising specialties emphasize your website URL boldly. Business cards, folders, newsletters, envelopes, letterheads, key chains, mugs, mouse pads, etc.
When you use direct mail postcards, use your URL in an attention grabbing and creative way on the front side, causing the customer to read further and find the information that you want to share with them.
Press release. If you have new information, a new product, something free to offer, issue a press release that includes your URL.
If you use a hold message or messaging system, make sure that it mentions your URL frequently and in creative ways.
If you do any interview, broadcast or in print, make sure you let people know your URL and plan on having an attention grabber when you prepare for the interview. Offer something free during the interview that they need to go to your website in order to obtain.

Online

Search Engine Optimization – A good SEO company will not only increase your website ranking, but will also greatly increase the visibility of your company and product. Be sure the SEO company uses search engine approved and ethical means to rank your website, otherwise you may be banned from search results all together.
Pay per click. Banner advertisements. Maximize your return on investment by researching and choosing insightful areas to advertise.
Include your website in your digital signature. In any blog, news group, forum, or discussion group, make sure that your URL is seen.
Ask your partners and affiliates to mention your website on theirs. Find out what it takes to become a featured member, product, associate, etc.
Press release. Online resources such as PRWeb allow you to submit through their website, which may get your release featured or even picked up by local or national newspapers.

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