Building a Small Business Website

April 30, 2008 By Doug Mcisaac View Comments

Once again, FSB, delivers a nice concise article answering th question that many small business owners are asking themselves. “Should I have a website and how do I get started?”
There answers are high level, but it certainly gives you a starting point.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/28/smbusiness/take_business_online.fsb/?postversion=2008042912

clipped from money.cnn.com

Building your first business Web site

There are several factors to consider when establishing a Web presence, including the type of business, what you want to do online, and your level of technical savvy, says Robert Monroe, who co-coordinates the business and technology program at Carnegie Mellon‘s Tepper business school. He suggests first asking yourself these basic questions:

“Your Web site is going to be a key marketing component of your business,” Farris says.

“Don’t forget to save some money for ongoing site traffic improvements,” Cutting says. He employs a search optimization company to make Dakin Farm easier to find. ?

Share and Enjoy:

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Small Business Marketing Conference

April 25, 2008 By Doug Mcisaac View Comments

They just had a great small business marketing conference down in Houston. The focus was on online marketing and it looks like they covered a lot of good information. Here’s the link to the site: Small Business Marketing Unleashed

This further confirms my thoughts that small businesses are just beginning to wake up to the fact that marketing has changed and the old ways just don’t work as well anymore. Businesses that understand how web marketing fits into their marketing mix will dominate their markets for years before their competition realizes what is happening.

We will see more and more conferences like this and the local marketing companies will learn that if they don’t understand how to provide a multichannel solution for their clients that they will lose them.

The days of wasting money on branding style ads for local businesses are over. Advertising costs too much and it doesn’t work as well as it once did. Less and less time is spent reading the paper, watching local TV or using the phonebook. In today’s market you have to be there when your client is looking for you and more and more they are looking online.

Share and Enjoy:

10 Step Guide to Making Money Online – Especially if You’ve Been Failing for a While

April 12, 2008 By Doug Mcisaac View Comments

Decide on your goal, your time line and your time commitment
Decide how you will get there – Affiliate, eBay, Adsense, info product, ecommerce etc
Make a written plan that you feel you can follow – block out time on your calendar that you will be working on your new venture.
Get off every e-mail list. If you must, keep one or two that are pertinent to your interests.
Stop all of your paid monthly programs – But I’ll miss out on all of the new PLR content – hmm what about the 1,000 articles already on your harddrive?
Learn one of the programs you already have on your harddrive. Most of the systems work at least a little bit. Besides you will learn more by completing a system that fails than you will reading and not implementing the best system out there.
Finish something. Get your website or blog up, get your product done etc… Choose a path and stick to it.
Stop wasting time reading forums and / or blogs unless you have a plan or reason to be posting.
Check your email rarely. No more than once every couple of hours.
Buy my course – Just kidding

Share and Enjoy:

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: internet marketing, making money online, online marketing

10 Step Guide to Failing Online – Follow This and You Ensure Your Failure

April 10, 2008 By Doug Mcisaac View Comments

Buy all of the new tools and programs. The ones with a monthly subscription option are the best.
Join every Giveaway event and download everything you can.
Download every free report that you can find.
Get on everybody’s list — Because can’t get too many e-mails telling you to buy Product Launch Formula or Mass Control.
Read every email that comes in – as soon as it comes in. You might miss some new trend if you don’t.
Read and comment on forums – especially posts complaining, complaining about gurus really helps you grow your business.
Bonus points if you subscribe to each post you make so you can respond if someone disagrees with you.
Join Facebook and MySpace and every other Social Site on the web to make friends and find more people who will complain about how bad their business is going.
Attend every teleseminar and watch every video.
Make sure that your website is “Perfect” before you launch – you cannot spend too much time getting it right
Spend your time writing top ten lists when you should be producing products

Tomorrow I will post the Top Ten Ways to be Successful Online.

Share and Enjoy:

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: internet marketing, online marketing

Small Business Marketing — The 5 Deadly Sins

April 1, 2008 By Doug Mcisaac View Comments

I interviewed Walt with The Marketing Caddy on BlogTalkRadio March 31st follow the link if you would like to listen to the recording of our discussion:
The 5 Deadly Marketing Sins of Small Businesses
1. Not having a marketing mindset.
2. Failure to fully leverage assets.
3. Marketing to Everyone.
4. Same and Lame.
5. No Lead Generation Systems.
Bonus: Fear and Lack of Understanding of the Internet as a Marketing Tool.

Share and Enjoy:

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , lead generation, small business marketing