The Wax Blog

If you’re not familiar with it, the Intuit Small Business Blog is a great resource for small business owners looking for pragmatic advice on marketing, cash flow, employee management and other topics. Rachel Hartman interviewed me for a piece on measurement. Here’s a quick blurb, you can follow the link at the bottom to see the full article.

5 Ways to Make Sure Your Marketing Efforts Pay Off

by Rachel Hartmann

You’ve put in hours upon hours spreading the word about your product, but has all your hard work been worth it? Small businesses often commit one of two marketing blunders: They jump from one tactic to another, or they stick way too long to the “tried and true” ads, says Bonnie Harris, principal of Wax Marketing in St. Paul, Minn. Fortunately, you can gauge your success and resolve any problems by accurately measuring the results of your marketing efforts.

Harris offers these five tips for figuring out what’s working, what’s not, and where improvements need to be made:

For the rest of the piece, jump to the Intuit blog here. 

Andy Boyd is works in the credit card industry. But you can still trust him. 

Do you own a small business? If so, there is a good chance you are facing an uphill battle when it comes to your marketing campaign. But as we all know, getting your message in front of the right people is essential to your long term success. The way that you do this depends on many factors including your industry, knowledge, and overall goals.

Why not take marketing cues from companies that are currently running successful campaigns? For example, credit card companies are well known for marketing their products with a high level of success. By taking the principles of what they are doing and combining with your current strategy, you can formulate a plan that will yield the results you have been searching for. Here are three ways that credit card companies market themselves. As a small business, you can learn from these strategies.

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Marketing your business on the road by exhibiting at professional trade shows is an excellent opportunity to make new contacts, sell products and increase exposure. However, without the proper planning and preparation, the results can be dismally disappointing. Time and money can be wasted by poor visual displays and unprepared, unfriendly staffing. Successful businesses know that advance planning and attention to detail can reap huge rewards that may translate into years of new customer and client relationships. By taking full advantage of trade show exposure, a business can increase its sales and services and thereby raise its profits.

Once the protocol has been worked out successfully, it can be repeated at show after show with the same positive expectations. The following steps suggest how any business can maximize the trade show experience: (more…)

By Beth Graddon-Hodgson

Although the Google Panda update has been responsible for the decline in ranking success for many sites – in some cases,  for justified reasons – it has helped reinforce a number of important concepts that apply to blogging. What Google has been so kind to reinforce is  a number of concepts that we’ve discussed before on this blog. But considering there’s now more demand to put the related strategies for use, it is worth revisiting.

Whether you’re just starting a blog or already have one setup, there are some things you should implement now.  Panda reminds us of the power of these simple strategies: (more…)

Last week we took a look at some of the pros and cons of the Google Panda changes. This week, let’s consider some of the things that you’ve got to do differently on your blog to help your website thrive under the new regime: (more…)

In April I wrote about guest posting as a way to improve your online reputation and I think we all know why it’s great for your traffic numbers.  (If you’re not sure, here’s a great post from sideincomeblogging.com that explains it in detail.)

You may not be sure HOW or WHERE to guest post. And you may also be banging your head against the wall at yet another social media task that has no immediate ROI.  Just trust me, guest posting is an important part of your online marketing tasks. And it doesn’t have to be a time drain. Here are some easy ways to find good blogs to write for, and tips on writing them: (more…)