Ask an Expert Articles

Business » Ask an Expert | By Paul Duxbury @

Traffic, is one of the magic words on the internet! The number or volume of visitors to your online business website is what ultimately dictates the success or failure of your home based business or online venture. You can have the best looking website on the internet, offering the most incredible product to your potential customers, but if no one comes to visit then all your design efforts will have been in vain. Now none of us want that do we? I know I certainly don’t because I... more...

Business » Ask an Expert | By John Stanley @

A consumer gets out of bed, visits the bathroom, has breakfast and rushes to the car to leave for work. They have a one hour lunch break in which they need to grab a sandwich at the local deli and visit the bank. Time is limited, but they believe they can accomplish these chores in an hour. They leave work and drive to the bank, the normal ten-minute journey takes twenty minutes and then they cannot find a parking space. Having eventually parked the car they arrive at the bank. ... more...

Business » Ask an Expert | By Scott Gingrich @

When choosing CRM software for your small business, it is critical that you understand the difference between Contact Centric CRM and Account Centric CRM. This is one of the biggest mistakes companies make when choosing CRM. This article is a bit on the technical side, but well worth the read. There are two basic paradigms for CRM systems: Contact centric or Account Centric. In Contact Centric systems, the primary organization is around independent contacts. In Account Centric sys... more...

Business » Ask an Expert | By Paul Duxbury @

If you have been focusing on new and unique visitors alone, then you’ve been missing out on a big opportunity to boost the volume of traffic that would pass through your website. There is only so much new traffic you could win, and once you have saturated your targeted market with your website’s presence, then the number of people who would visit your web pages would surely slow down. This would be a travesty. Traffic, as we all know, is the lifeblood of any online business. Whet... more...

Business » Ask an Expert | By J D Moore @

Here's another Marketing Comet principle: Value is always 100% subjective. "But $1 is worth a $1, and some items are commodities with fixed values right?" Well, without going into economics the value of $1 changes (mostly based on perception). Even commodities have markets. A cup of coffee is worth absolutely nothing until somebody is willing to trade $3 for it. The following comes from Judgment in Managerial Decision Making by Max Bazerman: Read this scenario twice - ... more...

Business » Ask an Expert | By Daryl Campbell @

"I got bad credit I'm not worried" "It happened to a friend of a friend" "I've got other priorities now" "All it takes is guarding your Social Security number" "I can trust the people around me" These quotes are all too common regarding identity theft. The problem is the Federal Trade Commission, various law enforcement agencies and identity theft experts have stated there are no 100% guarantees and the numbers for identity ... more...

Business » Ask an Expert | By Paul Duxbury @

If you have to part with your hard-earned money for some goods or services, who would you rather trust: a novice provider or an expert one? The answer to that question is what makes branding so much important. Branding is the process, nay, the art, of stamping a seal of professionalism and reliability on products or services that are related to you. It’s the core of every business and the heart of every successful trade. Donald Trump has made a living out of branding. He has established f... more...

Business » Ask an Expert | By James Hunt @

Many small businesses spend their short lifetimes, struggling and floundering, before they finally go belly up. While the average person tends to support small businesses and will claim that they prefer ‘mom and pop’ stores, the fact remains that few can compete with the large market chains that are quickly spreading across the country. What many fail to realize, however, is that business consulting offers these small companies a chance to fight back. “What can business consulting do,” ... more...

Business » Ask an Expert | By Maria Andreu @

Clients approach me all the time saying, “Tell me what I need to do to market my services.” I ask, “What do you mean?” They say, “Tell me how to blog/podcast/what to say on my website,” (fill in your own specific here). That’s when I know they lack the one thing without which they’ll never really make it. It’s easy to hung up on details. Marketing advice often makes it even more enticing, promising you phenomenal results if you only do X. The “X” changes every few weeks and usually s... more...

Business » Ask an Expert | By Scott Gingrich @

It seems that having a project come in On-Budget is the and holy-grail of project management, especially when it comes to CRM projects. With their 70% failure rate, CRM projects represent a significant risk to a small business' financial health and warrants more "measure twice, cut once" consideration before beginning. Coming in On-Budget does not mean you managed to squeeze your project into whatever arbitrary budget you came up with when you first started. It also doesn’t m... more...