7 Things to Do to Position Your Home Business for Success

Running a home-based business takes a definite commitment of time and energy. Working from home involves putting in place a quality marketing strategy designed to build your customer base.

You must think like a corporate marketer in many ways when it comes to promoting your small business. It will thrive when you take definite steps to position it for success. Here are 7 things you can do now to build your home business:

1. Set specific goals

Understand what you want your home business to achieve. Don't start and then run your operation on a whim - hoping for the best. Set specific goals concerning sales, expenditures, inventory to carry, and such.

Precise goals help you budget properly. You find you use your resources more sensibly. Goals keep you from being distracted by unproductive activities that can hurt your business. Goals help you focus on activities designed to grow your business efficiently.

Want to learn more about becoming a Home Business Entrepreneur? Attend the Home Business Summit and learn from the experts, click this link to find an event near you. 

2. Know your products and your customers

7 Things Successful Small Business Owners Do

If you're stuck wondering how to be a successful small business owner, know this: running a small business often simply means making good use of successful small business ideas. Successful small business owners face many ups and downs throughout their work. They know that small business ideas cannot turn out successful unless they use the proper approach and strategies.

If you want to be one of the few successful small business owners, remember that having a good strategy is crucial. Without the right strategy and a proper approach, you are not likely to achieve your goal.

Some small business owners manage to overcome their everyday challenges, while others seem to give up after a while. So, let's find out what successful small business owners do differently from the unsuccessful ones. Let's turn their experience into your success through your small business ideas.

5 #Marketing Tips That Will Help Every Small Business - grab your free report here ow.ly/aUvG30bklGj

1. MAKE ANNUAL REVISIONS OF YOUR BUSINESS PLAN AND BUDGET

7 Ways to Increase Traffic Using Social Media

Social media is huge and growing. There are groups, fanpages, company pages and your own personal page that you can use to engage with your target audience. The following 7 tricks, tips and techniques have been proven to increase the amount of traffic you get from large social sites and more: Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn and other social media sites are just a few of the popular sites and should be considered when producing material for publication.

1 - Automate the Process

Automated social media engagement is possible through HootSuite (free and paid) and IFTTT. They put your marketing on autopilot, and when you are consistently in the face of your audience, your traffic tends to improve. There are other paid software options that you can use to expand your reach that you may or may not find of benefit.

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7 Effective Strategies on Marketing Your Business Locally

When I was studying for my business degree and before my company was formed, I was in need of an outlet to be around other like-minded women. Years previous I was a member of the local Valley Women's Network so revisited their luncheons. Even though funds were very tight at the time, it was important for me to have some human interaction - even if only once a month. Little did I know, going to these meetings ended up being the catalyst for our birth.

During this time I connected with women entrepreneurs who were either eager to start a new business or take their business to the next level. Being the former webmaster for the Vancouver Sun and Province, it was a natural thing for them to ask me questions about branding and websites. I was more than happy to share my knowledge. Eventually conversations evolved into them hiring me so they could get the help they wanted with their marketing presence. The next thing I knew I was in business as a web developer!

Get your free report - click here

Email Marketing: 7 Tips For Great Email Subject Lines

Writing relevant email headlines are crucial for getting people to read what you have to say. Get these wrong and your open rates will be very poor indeed. People need to open your emails to read and gain value from what's inside. So, here are seven tips to help you to come up with powerful and effective email headlines...

Tip #1: Keep the line length short. I've played around with subject line length and have concluded that the longer they are the less effective they become when it comes to email open rates.

Here's what I've found: the ideal subject line length is between two and five words. Five words are at the top end of subject line length. If at all possible, use four words rather than five as that tends to be more effective.

In fact, a subject line length of just two words is often the most effective in boosting email open rates.

Tip #2:

Small Business Advice: Build A Winning Business Model

Whether your company is a start-up or several decades old, the business model is the hub around which all activities revolve. The business model is the blueprint that shows company leaders how to create value and build a money-making enterprise. It is the engine that drives revenue and generates profits.

Fail to devise a winning business model and you will not build a business that succeeds over the long-term. Creation of a profitable business model is a multi-disciplinary exercise that encompasses marketing, sales, strategy, operations and finance.

Identify the primary customers (Marketing)

7 Creative Ways To Inject New Life Into Your Marketing Plan

All companies will find themselves at odds with their marketing strategy. This isn't to say that they are not getting the results they want from the plan. It just seems as though the plan in, and of itself, grows a bit stale and worn. What's more, all successful companies find that in order to stay on the cutting edge and attract new customers, they need to tweak their marketing approach to appeal to new audiences.

It’s a risk that has tremendous rewards, and even more key is the idea that you don't have to go too crazy with new approaches. With these seven slight, creative tweaks, you can breathe new life into your marketing:

1. Use Social Media a Little Differently

7 Marketing Mistakes You Don't Want To Make

Mistake #1: Relying on referrals or word-of-mouth. When you depend on word-of-mouth, you allow middlemen to control your flow of prospective new customers. You may have delivered a superior product at a phenomenal price but if no is talking about it, the cash register quickly stops ringing.

The solution? Make sure you have a marketing program targeted at reaching your most desired customer. Then craft a message that is relevant and meaningful and deliver it consistently.

Mistake #2: 

How to Make Sure Your Business Survives in 2017

According to RSA, the commercial insurance company, 71 percent of the UK's small and mid-sized businesses expect their revenues to either fall or be flat in 2017. The health of any business is not guaranteed forever. At some point, virtually every small and mid-sized business hits troubled waters so this could be a difficult 12 months if you own a small business.

It's not easy spotting the early signs of trouble. Turning around the fortunes of a distressed business is a formidable task, but if you are concerned, you need to jump on it right away. Treat it like a crisis because without that kind of mindset it's hard to bring yourself to take significant action straightaway But the good news is that if you act swiftly and decisively, it is possible to recover and bounce back stronger than before.

You need to start 2017 by taking a cold, hard look at your business. Get some outside help because it's always useful to have an outsider's perspective. An experienced business consultant can help you to see what needs to be done, make the tough decisions and execute a plan.

Here are the 7 areas that you should be looking at