How You Can Use a Small Business List

Small businesses are usually sole proprietorships, partnerships or privately owned corporations. They employ a small number of employees and often do not have financial turnovers as large as those of large multinational companies. Small businesses are present in every industry. Ranging from interior designing to jewelry sales and even pet services, it is hard to avoid any of these businesses in our daily lives.

However, with so many small businesses selling products and services in society, we often forget that they can potentially be a very lucrative pool of customers as well. Any company that provides products or services to small businesses can benefit greatly from having a small business list.

Fortunately, the advancement of technology has enabled almost anyone to get access to a small business list with ease. There are online portals available for organizations and individuals to communicate with these small businesses, allowing them to get up-to-date information about company details and any other updates. One can also do a quick search online to look for such publicly available small company details. However, this is a potentially long and tedious process.

A good alternative is to look for small business mailing lists offered by list brokers and compliers on the web. The small business lists provided by brokers enable immediate access to a large pool of up-to-date information about other small businesses. The best part is that these lists are continuously being updated, so you won’t have to worry too much about getting outdated information. A quick rental of such a list would save one the time of having to personally search and update records.

Next, after having a small business list, individuals and other businesses can use it to their advantage. Entrepreneurs, start-up firms and home-based workers can use the list to conduct market analysis and research for example. This way, they easily identify market needs and are able to offer their products and services to these potential clients.

Another way a small business list can be used is to send out promotional material to highly targeted business prospects. For example, if you own an air-conditioning repair service, you could send out promotional brochures advertising your services to small businesses that could very well be your clients in the future. After all, which business office doesn’t own an air-conditioner or two?

The benefits of having access to a small business list is worth it’s weight in gold. But should one compile the list themselves, or rent one instead? If one wishes to manually compile the small business list himself, he will have to ensure that they are constantly being kept up-to-date.

This is because companies often make changes in their management, causing contact persons to change, or even a change in company address. The time and monetary costs required to maintain an accurate list of small business contact information is not small.

To avoid this, it would be best to rent a small business list and spend their time on making actual sales.

Having immediate access to a complied updated business list helps individuals and organizations to save time and money. When they require small businesses for their marketing needs or require help in their businesses, they can tap on this large resource base easily and efficiently.

Chris Burns is an authority on mailing list services providing valuable advice at http://www.MailingListsUSA.com where you can learn more about Business Mailing Lists.

Credit Card Services Qualify You for Small Business Loans

If your business still does not have a merchant account that allows you to offer full credit card services, you are turning your back on profits. Just take a look at all of your competitors. All of those that pose serious competition accept credit card payments. Those that do not have credit card services do not have great sales figures to show, either. Even statistics point to the fact that companies that have credit card services earn much more than companies that do not have credit card services. The average credit card sale is $40 while the average cash sale is only $9. That means you are losing potentially $31 per sale.

You may also be spending more by accepting only cash and check payments in your business. The processing of cash and checks has been found to be more costly, requiring more manpower in handling. Studies have shown that the average processing cost of credit card payments is only 2.7% of a transaction while the average processing cost of checks is 4% of a transaction and the average processing cost of cash is 4.8% of a transaction. Once again, you are leaking profits by refusing to accept credit card payments.

So how do you accept credit card payments in your business? This is where credit card services come in. The old route is to apply for a merchant account in a bank. You will then have to lease the software and equipment necessary to actually process payments and send the data to your account. If you want to accept credit card payments online, you need to apply to a payment gateway that allows real time credit card authorization for online transactions. You should ensure that your payment gateway is compatible with the bank or financial institution where you have your merchant account, and with the software and equipment you have leased.

In choosing the bank or financial institution for your merchant account, consider their expertise in combating fraud and reducing chargebacks. Also make sure that they are experienced in handling merchant accounts with online transactions.

If you are a small business owner, stick to a bank or financial institution that caters to small businesses rather than large companies. You may be able to get better rates and packages designed for your specific niche.

There are options for credit card services that offer everything you need in one easy package. You will not have to deal with various entities or go through various procedures. Often, these options also have added benefits, among them, quick reporting on your credit card sales figures. They may also offer interest on your credit card sales income, even up to money market rates.

One very important feature of your credit card services that you may not know of is that it can automatically qualify you to avail of small business loans. Once you have established a record of sales through credit, most credit card services will allow you to make cash advances that are practically like getting previously approved small business loans without having to put up any required collateral. The credit card services consider your future income through credit card sales as your collateral. This can go a long way in further growing your business.

Payment will not be a problem, either. For as long as you have sales through credit payments, you automatically get to pay your small business loans. It does not matter how much your sales are. Your payments are automatically deducted as a percentage of your sales. You are always covered.

Now do you still need further convincing on the benefits of credit card services for your business?

Advanced Merchant Services
Contact Name: Roger Inman
P.O. Box 1475
Safety Harbor, FL 34691
Bus: 7276423606
Bus Fax: 8774136067
E-mail: rinman3@tampabay.rr.com
Website: http://www.bankcardprocess.com/

Top 10 Marketing Concepts for Small Business

Over the past decade more and more people are getting fired, getting downsized, or getting fed up with their corporate jobs and embark on the journey as a small business owner. Unfortunately, most of the new small business owners fail to consider their marketing plans or strategy. There are many marketing concepts for small business marketing to consider and plan for, but here is our list of Top 10 Marketing Concepts For Small Business Marketing.

Marketing Concept # 1: Consistency

Consistency is the number one marketing concept for small business marketing only because it is left out of marketing concepts for so many businesses. I have worked with a long list of clients, big and small, that are extremely inconsistent in all areas of their marketing. Consistency helps lower the cost of marketing and increase the effectiveness of branding.

Marketing Concept # 2: Planning

Once small business owners decide to be consistent with their marketing, planning is the next major concept to engage. Planning is the most vital part of small business marketing or any level of marketing, for that matter, and so many owners, marketing managers, and even CMOs plan poorly. Put the time into planning your marketing strategy, budget, and other concepts presented here to ensure success.

Marketing Concept # 3: Strategy

Strategy immediately follows planning because your strategy is the foundation for the rest of your marketing activities. In the process of planning, you must develop your strategy: who you will target, how you will target them, and how will you keep them as a customer.

Marketing Concept # 4: Target Market

Target market is also another key concept for small business marketing. Defining exactly who you are targeting allows small business owners to focus on specific customers and reduce marketing waste. A well-defined target market will make every other marketing concept so much easier to implement successfully.

Marketing Concept # 5: Budget

Although it is listed at number 5, budgeting is important throughout the entire process. Creating a marketing budget is usually the hardest and most inaccurate part of small business marketing. Most small businesses owners lack a great deal of experience in marketing, so their budgets usually end up skewed. The most important part of this marketing concept is to actually establish a marketing budget. From there, you can worry about how to distribute your available funds.

Marketing Concept # 6: Marketing Mix

The marketing mix is usually defined as product, pricing, place, and promotion. As a small business owner, you must specifically decide on your products (or services), the appropriate pricing, where and how you will distribute your products, and how will you let everyone know about you and your products.

Marketing Concept # 7: Website

In today’s market, a business of any size must have a website. I hate when I see businesses that have a one page website with out-dated information. Customers, be it businesses or consumers, will search the web over 60% of the time before making any purchasing decisions. This marketing concept contains a slew of additional components, but you must at least develop a small web presence of some kind and keep it updated.

Marketing Concept # 8: Branding

Many small businesses owners also neglect this concept. Small business marketing must focus on this marketing concept just as much as large corporations do. Branding consists of the pictures, logo, design scheme, layout, make up, and image of your products and even your company. Branding is how your customers perceive (please place a lot of emphasis on that word!) your products and company. Make sure to pay special attention to what kind of brand you are building through each step of your planning and implementation.

Marketing Concept # 9: Promotion and Advertising

Promotion and advertising is a very complex marketing concept, but must be considered for any type of business and its products and services. Once you engage the previous 8 marketing concepts, you must finally let your target market know about you and your products. Proper promotion and advertising will result in effective brand recognition, and, ultimately, increased sales.

Marketing Concept # 10: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The concept of customer relationship management has become a huge industry in the marketing world. There are many types of software and services offered to help businesses of any size handle their customer relationship management. Since there is so much available, usually for a large sum of money, small business owners usually look at this concept as something they are not big enough for or have enough money to implement. Don’t be fooled by the massive industry that has evolved from this concept. Maintaining proper customer relationship management is essential to creating loyal and consistent customers.

This list of marketing concepts should be examined, researched, planned, and implemented, especially by small businesses, in order to be successful. Also, your marketing doesn’t stop here. Each business is unique and will have additional components that must be considered, but this list will jump-start any marketing plan.

Nate Stockard is the owner of Stockard & Associates, Inc, a marketing and design firm in Houston, TX specializing in small business solutions. He is also the author of The Market Seedling, an informative source of information, articles, tips, and advice for small business owners and marketers.

How To Get Maximum Search Benefit From Your Small Business Blog!

If you have a small business blog, or are thinking of starting one, you should be aware of the ways you can use your blog to drive traffic to your Website. It’s simpler than you think.

The first thing to understand about your blog is that each entry is counted as one Web page. Even if you have your blog set to display 10 blog posts on the same page, each of them is counted as a separate Web page by the search engines. That’s why it is important to treat each blog entry as an SEO tool. The following tips should be kept in mind for each blog entry in order to optimize them for the search engines and drive more traffic to your Website from your blog:

1. Optimize each blog post around a single keyword

2. Make sure your keyword is in your blog post title, preferably at the beginning

3. Use subheads with or tags that also use your keyword

4. Include 1-3 keyword links (anchor text) in your blog posts

5. Sign every blog post with a signature link that uses your keyword

6. Use bold and italics effectively to emphasize certain keywords and phrases

7. Be sure to ping the directories

8. Include tags for all of your blog entries

9. Use categories effectively

10. Make links appear natural by linking to internal pages of your Website

Because each blog entry is a separate Web page, the search engines will crawl them and index them just as they do your Web pages. Optimize each one heavily around a specific keyword related to your Website and that’s an extra doorway into your Website for each page indexed at the search engines. Also, by adding anchor text to a couple of those keywords and pointing those links to relevant internal Web pages of your Website you are improving the SEO effect of your blog entry. A poll of top SEO experts by SEOmoz revealed that a majority of those SEO experts said these type of keyword links are among the top 10 most important SEO factors for ranking Web pages. Don’t give up on keywords and anchor text.

You’ll also want to include keyword tags with each blog entry. Those tags will be used by the search engines to index your pages appropriately for your keywords. Also, social bookmarkers will find it easier to tag your blog entry if they like it and this makes it easier to share among their social group.

Your blog category should indicate an important element of interest as well. Unlike tags, you should only choose one category for each blog post. Don’t use “main” or “uncategorized.” Those are too generic. Use a specific keyword-related category as that will make your blog posts more crawlable by the search engines.

There are more than 100 blog directories that you can ping to let them know you have updated your blog. I suggest you do this every time you update your blog. With WordPress, and several other blogging software platforms, you can input each directory into a field and the software will send out an automatic ping each time you update your blog. If you are not using WordPress you should go to Ping-o-Matic and use it to ping your blog for free.

Finally, if you sign your blog posts with a keyword-rich signature that points to a relevant internal page of your Website, this will make your Website more crawlable and give you another anchor text link. Use something like, “Find Out More About Keyword.” Then add another link that points to your home page.

The important thing to remember about keywords and links, whether on your blog or your Website, is to make them appear natural. The benefits are enormous.

Did you find this article useful? For more useful tips and hints, points to ponder and keep in mind, techniques, and insights pertaining to credit card, do please browse for more information at our websites.
http://www.bigblogs.com

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Small Business Information You Should Know

What are small businesses?

Small businesses are businesses with less staff. The staff limit is different for different areas. These businesses are generally owned by individuals or are started in partnerships. Other criterions to decide small businesses are the turnover and profit. The less is the turnover or the profit, the smaller is the business. The smallest businesses are called as ‘micro businesses’ and those managed by families are called as ‘mom’s and pop’s business’. These smaller businesses generally have employees in number from 0 to 10. Many a times, the owners are the workers in these businesses.

Advantages in small business:

The basic advantage of starting a small business is that you need less capital and money to start the business. Also, one can start a small business on part time basis. The basics of a successful business are the regular modifications that one does to it. In small businesses these modifications can be easily done as one does not need to follow any trend or face any compulsions in small business unlike in big businesses. Also, a small business can give much more to its customers than a big one as they have the power to provide each and every customer the required personal attention and take into account all the suggestions and even implement some of them. Small businesses provide daily bread to many a people and thus are very important.

Marketing small businesses:

The most common methods of marketing small businesses are customer referrals, mouth publicity, radios, newspapers, internet, directories, boards, etc. Television ads can be a bit expensive for advertising small businesses. Internet marketing is considered the most cost effective and result oriented method of marketing small businesses. The ads can be placed on websites or even search engine web pages. The costs are decided on the size of the ad and thus can be easily moderated.

Small business ideas:

– Franchisee business: this is one of the extremely profitable ideas of a small business. The only things that you need to start this business are a place and some capital. The best part of this business is that the things that you sell are already quite famous in the market and thus you need to do very little expenses on the marketing.

– Event planner: if you know the knack of organizing things perfectly, then you can become an event planner. You need to plan out meetings, parties, weddings and other such get-together for your customers in the given budget. The best part of this job is that it is extremely interesting and your work does the marketing for you.

– Computer repair: if you have done any hardware or software course or have learned any computer language then you can start the work of computer repairing. You just need to sort out simple problems in computers. The best part of this job is that you get to learn a lot more than you have about computers. But, you should do only the work that you can manage and avoid doing any guess work.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.unitymarketing.com