Are you finding yourself at a crossroad?  Do you feel less motivated or enthusiastic about your job or your life in general?  Don’t be stuck in that rut,choose to take action. Re-invent yourself!  Why not? What’s stopping you?

It’s never too late to follow your dream and if your dream is to start your own business, then stop making excuses and start today!  I think a lot of people are paralyzed by the fear of the unknown.  They ask themselves, “Where do I start?” or “How can I afford to start a business?”

It’s really not that difficult to start a business nor is it that costly (depending on the type of business you wish to start).  The emergence of virtual companies has reduced start-up overhead exponentially and more and more people are launching their businesses each day.  I say, why not at least try.  You’ll never know what could have been if you don’t change what is.

Here are a few resources you should check out if you are considering starting your own business.

http://www.sba.gov/content/follow-these-steps-starting-business

http://www.inc.com/guides/start_biz/

http://www.toolkit.com/small_business_guide/sbg.aspx?nid=P01_4000

Best wishes!!

Now, to most, this may seem extremely obvious, but believe it or not, there are so many people out there who are NOT monitoring the return on their investment when it comes to their marketing dollars.  This is vital in determining your future marketing strategies as well as evaluating the effectiveness of your current ones.

How are you qualifying your efforts today?  Do you KNOW where your leads are coming from?  How sure are you?

I was speaking to a Realtor client the other day about what they have been doing in terms of marketing.  She then proceeded to tell me she got 2 clients from those efforts.  I asked her, how do you know they are a result of that particular marketing campaign.  She informed me that she had included a “text to” feature in the ad. This allowed her to know where and how these new leads found her.  This is a great example of evaluating the effectiveness of a campaign.

It is pretty easy to keep track of your results when you are only using one Marketing Channel, but how do you track when you are using multiple channels?  There are a number of ways to do this.

First, you need a benchmark, right?  A benchmark is a qualifying marker that tells you where you are starting from. This way, when you evaluate your “growth” you know just how effective it was from the starting point.  Do this consistently and you can see just how much of a return your dollar is getting you in that particular channel.

Another way to monitor the effectiveness of a campaign is to send them to a very specific destination. Example:  Set up a “squeeze page” that is only designed to capture leads from a very specific marketing campaign. This way you know that every lead that is captured on this website is a direct result of your campaign.

This is just a starting point and there are dozens of ways you can track and evaluate your efforts.

I am providing a marketing campaign tracking sheet for your convenience.

Marketing Campaign Evaluation

Have you heard a lot about WordPress over the last few years but never really had the need to check it out?  Are you looking to start a blog or even a website but don’t know which platform to look at?  I can tell you that I have been fortunate or perhaps unfortunate enough to experience life on many sides of a website and/or blog.  Wordpress is, in my opinion, one of the easier platforms to use.  Now, there will be a learning curve no matter which platform you choose, but I believe WordPress does a nice job of creating something that people with little to no coding experience can use.  Now, when you get started you will probably go to wordpress.com first.  Let me share with you the differences between wordpress.com and wordpress.org.  Wordpress.com is hosted by WordPress and is Free and WordPress.org is self hosted and is also free.  You just have to pay for your server/database.

There are some drawbacks and benefits to both. I took the following information directly from WordPress Support.  Keep in mind that there are people out there who specialize in WordPress so don’t feel like you have to go it alone.

The distinction between WordPress.com and WordPress.org can cause some confusion for people. Let’s clear it up.  WordPress.com is brought to you by some of the same folks who work on WordPress, the Open Source blogging software.  WordPress.com utilizes the same WordPress software which you can download at WordPress.org.  With WordPress.com the hosting and managing of the software is taken care of by the team here at Automattic.  With WordPress.org you need to install the software on your own server or with a 3rd party provider.

WordPress.com Benefits

• It’s free and much easier to setup
• Everything is taken care of: setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc
• Your blog is on hundreds of servers, so it’s highly unlikely it will go down due to traffic
• Your posts are backed up automatically
• You get extra traffic from blogs of the day and tags
• You can find like-minded bloggers using tag and friend surfer
• Your login is secure (SSL) so no one can get into your account if you use wifi

WordPress.com Cons

• We provide 100+ themes (and adding more every day) which you can modify and edit the CSS, but you cannot run a custom theme*
• You can’t hack the PHP code behind your blog*
• You can’t upload plugins

* The VIP program on WordPress.com for high-traffic and high-profile sites allows you to run custom themes, custom PHP code, ad code, and WordPress plugins.

WordPress.org Benefits

• Ability to upload themes
• Ability to upload plugins
• Great community
• Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded

WordPress.org Cons

• You need a good web host, which generally costs $7-12 a month, or thousands of dollars per month for a high traffic site
• Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run
• You’re responsible for stopping spam
• You have to handle backups
• You must upgrade the software manually when a new version comes out
• If you get a huge spike in traffic (like Digg or Slashdot) your site will probably go down unless you have a robust hosting setup

WordPress.org is free blogging software. With WordPress.org, you can install themes and plugins, run advertisements, edit the database and even modify the PHP source code. WordPress.org is the home of this software. Anyone can download the software for free but it must be installed on a web server before it will work. Web servers are generally not free. Hosting your own WordPress software can be fun and rewarding; it also places full responsibility on the blogger. If you mismanage your web server, you can lose your entire blog.

For no charge, WordPress.org provides downloadable blog software, community mailing lists, community support forums, documentation, and free themes and plugins.

WordPress.com is different. You do not have to download software, pay for hosting or manage a web server. When you sign up for a WordPress.com blog, you will get a URL like “andy.wordpress.com” or you can map a domain so your blog is available at “example.com” without the “.wordpress.com” portion.  You do not control the software or the database; FTP and shell access are not included. WordPress.com is based on a multi-site version of the WordPress software which does not permit uploading of PHP themes or plugins (although many popular plugins are built into WordPress.com ).  Popular JavaScript embeds such as YouTube are supported, but for security reasons some of the lesser known embed codes will be stripped out.  CSS is also restricted by default for security reasons, but you can purchase a paid upgrade to gain the ability for full CSS editing.  What you can do on WordPress.com is blog for free.

For no charge, WordPress.com provides web hosting, unlimited database storage with redundancy and backups, automatic software upgrades, community support forums, multi-lingual administration and themes, real-time traffic stats, comment tracking, blog and post rankings and other features not available anywhere else. These features will always be free for blogs started on WordPress.com; if you ever find yourself being charged for these at WordPress.com, pinch yourself and wake up!

WordPress.com is a commercial enterprise owned by Automattic, a company started by the founding developer of WordPress and staffed by full-time developers, designers and support agents. It runs a multi-site version of WordPress. WordPress is also free, Open Source software. Developments sponsored by Automattic are regularly contributed back into WordPress.org so the community can benefit.

WordPress.com offers paid upgrades as a way to provide premium features without forcing bloggers to host their blogs elsewhere. These upgrades are optional. Basic blogs will always be free on WordPress.com and the basic services will continue to be upgraded with better features.

Social Media is not just a fad.  It’s a new way of Marketing your business, products and services.  If you aren’t one of the 500 Million plus people currently using social media, then I would highly encourage you start today!  Did you know that there are approximately 77 Billion page views a day on Facebook alone? Or, that the average time a user spends on Facebook is 32 minutes?  You can’t buy better product placement.  BUT, just having an account on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc doesn’t guarantee that you will start rolling in new clients.  You have to differentiate yourself from your competition. You need to strategize on where to find your target market and how you will engage them.

You can create very strategic campaigns using social media and start to really understand the buying habits of your customers online.  With all of this exposure, why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to pick up a piece of branding real estate on the 2nd most visited website in the world?  You wouldn’t be able to afford this kind of advertisement space in the traditional sense so stop stalling and get started!

Are you blogging? Do you even know what a blog is? I am consistently surprised when I speak in front of entrepreneurs at just how few of them are blogging, have a blog or even know what a blog is!

Many people don’t think they need a blog, that a blog is valuable or that they have the time to blog. They couldn’t be further from the truth.

A blog can be a few bullet points, a video, a few paragraphs, etc. It can be material that you’ve already created and just repurposed.

Blogs are generally one of the most visited pages on a website and have the best search engine optimization out of any other areas of your site.

If you don’t have one, you can start one very easily and quickly. You do not need to be an advanced Internet user.

Just make a decision and start today! “Indecision is a form of self-abuse”.

So taking Risks is something that we all hear about but are programmed as a child to “be weary of”.  Do you think those warnings subconsciously effected the way that we approach challenges or opportunities in our adult life?  You know the saying, “Without Risk, there is no reward.”  Well, that is true.  If you always do what’s comortable, you’ll never grow.  I like using sports analogies because I think we can all understand those pretty easily.  In sports, why do you have practice?  To improve and to develop your skills, right?  We all admire those athletes who continue to excell and out perform their previous “at bat” or “average points per game”.

Well, we need to do that in our personal and professional lives as well.  Challenge your skills by trying something you have never done before.  Take a chance, a risk.  Now that we have so much information available at our fingertips there is no reason why you shouldn’t be continuing to educate yourself and challenge yourself to improve each day.  Why not start an ejournal to chart your progress?  I bet if you start a 30-day journey and keep account of each day’s wins or learnings, you might be surprised at just how quickly you will evolve and enhance your skills and knowledge.  Give it a shot and let me know what happens after 30 days!

“Whatever the cost, the program is priceless! Erin gets the profitability aspect of social media! Show me the Money Professional. She spoke to over 100 today in Boca Raton. Some of those present are the veterans who have been around for 30 years, survived and now ready to keep relevant!”

Timothy Kinzler – Coldwell Banker Real Estate
Realtor
www.facebook.com/timkinzler

Ecommerce is a booming business in the U.S. and across the globe – and it’s not slowing down anytime soon.

This infographic, from online coupon aggregator My Coupon Codes, shows the online buying market, illustrating what, where and just how much people are buying online.

The data is based on a 2010 Nielsen survey of more than 27,000 Internet users from North America, South America, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.

The study revealed that online reviews play an increasingly important role in purchasing decisions; 57% of online respondents consider reviews prior to purchase, particularly for cards, software and consumer electronics; and 40% of participants said they would not even buy electronics without consulting online reviews beforehand.

This article was taken from Mashable.com and you can access it’s original link HERE.

What is Marketing?  Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.

Okay, so now that we have the boring definition of it out of the way, let’s have some fun!  What are some fun ways to “Market” yourself or your business?  Come on… you should have a dozen ideas popping into your head at this very moment!  What about creating a funny, but short 2 minute video and watching it go viral?  What about creating a sweepstakes where the winner gets to help design a new ad campaign?  How about a customized Facebook Fan page where your users get interactive with your brand?  Companies are now asking their customers to help them create their next marketing campaign and the feedback they are getting is amazing!  I could go on and on….

If you find yourself so overwhelmed with the amount of “work” that needs to get done, that you feel you’ve lost your creativity try and set some time aside solely for brainstorming.  Anything goes!  Write down any and every thought that comes to mind and then start connecting the dots.  I think the ideas will start flooding out, but you have to be willing to be silly and to not judge yourself.  We stunt our own creativity by being too judgmental so just relax and let your thoughts run wild!  Have fun!

One of the critical mistakes that entrepreneurs make is taking on too much responsibility. This might sound crazy but it’s true.  Most people venture out on their own because they want more freedom, correct?  They want to be able to spend more time with family or take more vacations?  Perhaps they want to be able to retire sooner or make more money.  Well, all of those reason are great, BUT they will only happen if you are able to stratagize and plan effectively.

If you are not prepared to entrust areas of your business or cannot find qualified help, then you are in for a surprise.  Depending on the nature of your business, you may try to do it all on your own.  By all, I mean things like the book keeping, marketing, consulting, actual service or product manufacturing, customer service, website maintenance, social media etc.  Just listing them makes me exhausted but we all know, we’ve tried it!  For one reason or another, we have attempted to take on more than we could handle and, although we might succeed at it for a while, we eventually realize that it is not sustainable nor scalable.

Someone once asked me, “What is your Exit Strategy”?  I said, “To sell my business to someone else”.  They smiled and said, “Do you plan to work for that someone else?”   I didn’t understand at first but keep in mind that no one wants to acquire a “JOB”.  They want to acquire a “BUSINESS” and unless you plan on sticking around and working so that the ship continues to float, then that is exactly what you have created.    You need to start building an All-Star team around you so that you can focus on growing the business and delegate some of the other tasks.  There are ways to hire talent without having to increase your payroll dramatically.

Once you have more qualified and dependable help, you can focus on strategies that will allow you to do more business, funding your expansion of your products, services and team.  Most small businesses fail to live beyond that vital tipping point. The point where you break through your capacity and continue to grow.  You’ll find many people who closed their “proverbial” doors because they just couldn’t remain profitable.  Why is that?

Well, I can think of a number of reasons but the ones I want to highlight are:  they began to fall behind in production and loose business, customers were dissatisfied and taking their business elsewhere, expenses began to outweigh revenue and ultimately it was no longer profitable.  These are very real scenarios and if you don’t believe me, just ask someone you know who used to own a business and closed shop.

By creating a very clear plan and revising that plan periodically, you can avoid some of these very real pitfalls.  Create a Business Plan or have a professional create one for you.  We use Business Plan Pro and feel that this is sufficient to get started. Of course, if you are creating a business plan to fund for capital I would strongly encourage having a professional assist you with yours.